ild a more excellent and glorious temple than former
generations have seen. I mean not of the building of the material temple
at Jerusalem, which the Jews do fancy and look for,--but I speak of the
church and people of God; and that I may not seem to expound an obscure
prophecy too conjecturally, which many in these days do, I have these
evidences following for what I say:--

1. If Paul and James, in those places which I last cited, do apply the
prophecies of building a new temple to the first-fruits of the Gentiles,
and to their first conversion, then they are much more to be applied to
the fulness of the Gentiles, and, most of all, to the fulness both of Jews
and Gentiles, which we wait for. "Now, if the fall of them (saith the
Apostle, speaking of the Jews) be the riches of the world, and the
diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their
fulness?" Rom. xi. 12. And again, "If the casting away of them be the
reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life
from the dead?" ver. 15. Plainly insinuating a greater increase of the
church, and a larger spread of the gospel at the conversion of the Jews,
and so a fairer temple, yea, another world, in a manner, to be looked for.

2. The Lord himself, in this same chapter, ver. 7, speaking of the temple
here prophesied of, saith, "The place of my throne, and the place of the
soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of
Israel for ever, and my holy name shall the house of Israel no more
defile, neither they nor their kings," &c.; which, as it cannot be
understood of the Jews after the captivity, who did again forsake the
Lord, and were forsaken of him, as Jerome noteth upon the place, so it can
as ill be said to be already fulfilled upon the Christian church, but
rather that such a church is yet to be expected in which the Lord shall
take up his dwelling for ever, and shall not be provoked by their
defilements and whoredoms again to take away his kingdom and to remove the
candlestick.

3. This last temple is also prophesied of by Isaiah, chap. ii. 2, "And it
shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house
shall be established in the top of the mountains (even as here Ezekiel did
see this temple upon a very high mountain, chap. lx. 2), and shall be
exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it," &c.; ver. 4,
"And they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their s