Abraham, Isaac and Jacob wander about like private men and strangers in the land without any human resources for protection; and they collect together a Church by the Word or Voice of God, and by the Holy Ghost. And though they are unceasingly exercised with various sorrows and distresses, they still find themselves delivered from all evils, protected and defended from above! So also Jacob, when about to take his journey with all his family through the territories of his angry and embittered brother, is filled with fears and hesitations, and the difficulties seem insurmountable by all human counsel, but in the night he wrestles with the Lord and is encouraged, confirmed and protected. And many like examples are contained in this little but momentous book of Record, which shows us that God is ever with his Church. It commands and encourages us also to seek and hope for help and defense from him. For these things were recorded and handed down to posterity that we might be encouraged by such examples and might know that God in the same manner is ever willing to protect and defend us. _Fourthly. We must bear in mind the continual succession of the Church._ Men magnify the ordinary succession of all human things; the titles and honors and decorations of parents and the magnificence of houses and places. Cain, Ishmael and Esau arrogated to themselves dominion and superiority in the Church, because they had the advantage of their brethren in age. The ancient Babylonians maintained that their opinions concerning God were the most true, because that was the most ancient dwelling place of our fathers, and because it was the capital and citadel of their empire; just as bishops and colleges now on account of an ordinary succession assume to themselves this peculiar honor, that they cannot err; and that they are the habitation and the pillars of the truth. But Paul shows us in Romans 9:6, etc., that all such judgments and opinions are refuted in Genesis, where the apostle shows in the most forcible manner that the Church is not propagated and continued by any prerogatives or privileges of birth or place, but by the calling and Word of God. The family of Jacob was the Church; because it retained the doctrine of the Word from heaven; but Esau did not retain it. Thus the Church which fell away and declined in Palestine was restored by the calling of the great teacher Abraham, and by the renewal of the promise to him with additional evidences and testimonies, and this history shows that the Church is the care of God, and is regenerated and revived by him; as Paul says, "And he gave gifts unto men, prophets and apostles, and pastors, and teachers." Let us not then be moved by honors of dignity, or places, or an orderly succession, so as to be made to believe that the church is that assembly of men who oppose the Gospel and who would kill and exterminate all honest men on account of their profession of the doctrine of godliness, as Cain did.