XVII. ON SPIRITUAL LEPROSY.* Lev. xiii. 45.—And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. By superficial thinkers it has been objected to several parts of the Mosaic law, that its injunctions are frivolous and minute, and of a nature that ill comports with the majesty and wisdom of the Supreme Being. The exact specification of the different sorts of sacrifice, the enumeration of the different sorts of creatures, clean and unclean, and the various species of ceremonial defilement, have been adduced as examples of this kind. To this it may be replied, that, at this distance of time, we know too little of the superstitions among pagan nations, and consequently of the peculiar temptations to which the ancient Israelites were exposed, to enable us to form an accurate judgment respecting the expediency or necessity of those provisions. Many legal enactments which appear unseasonable and unnecessary to a distant observer and a remote age, on close investigation of the actual circumstances in which they were, are discovered to be replete with propriety, and to be founded on the highest reason. But the most satisfactory answer to this, and to most other objections raised against the law of Moses, is derived from a consideration of the peculiar nature of that institute, which was throughout figurative and typical. In the infancy of revealed religion, and when the minds of men were but little accustomed to refined reflection, it became necessary to communicate moral and religious instruction by actions and observances, and to address their reason through the medium of their senses. The people of Israel, at the time they came out of the land of Egypt, having been long surrounded by idolatry, and in a state of depression and slavery, were a people, we have the utmost reason to believe, of very gross conceptions, deeply sunk in carnality and ignorance; a nation peculiarly disqualified to receive any lasting impression from didactic discourses, or from any sublime system of instruction. Their minds were in an infantine state; and divine wisdom was imparted to them, -not in that form which was best in itself, but in that in which they were best able to bear it: and being very much the creatures of sense, religious principles were communicated through the medium of sensible images. Thus they were reminded of the eternal difference between right and wrong, between actions innocent and criminal, by the distinction of animals and meats into clean and unclean. Their attention was called to a reflection on their guilt, on their just desert of destruction, and of the necessity of a real expiation of sin hereafter to be Preached at Leicester, December, 1810. made in the person of the Saviour, by the institution of sacrifices, without the shedding of whose blood there was no remission. To convince them of the inherent defilement attached to sin, and of the necessity of being purified from it by a method of God's devising, it was enjoined that several incidents, such as touching a dead body, the disease of leprosy, and some others, should be considered as polluting the person whom they befell; in consequence of which they were pronounced unclean, and separated from the camp and the tabernacle. In allusion to the ceremonial uncleanness contracted by touching a dead body, St. Paul, that infallible interpreter of the import of the Mosaic law, styles evil dispositions "dead works."-" For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God ?”* To every instance of ceremonial defilement there are two circumstances attached. 1. The forfeiture of certain privileges, especially that of approaching God in his sanctuary. 2. A representation of the defiling nature of sin. But of all the various sorts of ceremonial uncleanness, there is none which appears to have had so much a typical import as the case of leprosy, which, accordingly, occupies more room in the enactments of the Levitical law than all the others put together; and is treated of with a niceness of distinction, and a particularity of detail, peculiar to itself. Not less than two very long chapters of this book are devoted to the ascertaining of the signs of this disease, and prescribing the methods of legal purification; so that no one who believes there is any thing whatever of a typical nature in the laws of Moses can doubt of the regulations respecting leprosy being emphatically so. It is my full conviction of this which has induced me to make it the ground of this discourse. If we set ourselves to inquire for what reason the leprosy was selected in the Mosaic ritual as the most eminent representation of moral defilement, we shall perceive there was something very singular in this affair. Besides its being fitted for this purpose as it was a very dreadful and loathsome disease, there is the utmost reason to believe it was supernatural. Those who have travelled into eastern countries make mention indeed of a distemper under the name of leprosy; but there is much room to doubt of its being the same which is treated of in the books of Moses. If you read the rules prescribed there for ascertaining its existence, you will find certain circumstances to which there is nothing parallel in any disease now existing in the world: for it attached itself, not only to the bodies of men, but to garments and to houses; it affected the very stones of buildings, fretting and consuming them. A considerable part of the laws on this subject respect its subsistence in houses, which in certain Read carefully Lev. xiv. 34-45. Michaelis and others have endeavoured to prove that the leprosy of the Old Testament is, in no case, supernatural; but their reasonings are, in my judgment, far from satisfactory.-ED. cases were ordered to be completely demolished, and the materials cast into an unclean place without the city. It seems to have been inflicted by the immediate hand of God: "When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession," the Lord is introduced as saying, "and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession; and he that owneth the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, It seemeth to me there is as it were a plague in the house."* In various periods of the Old Testament history, we find it inflicted as an immediate judgment of God, as in the case of Moses, Miriam, Gehazi, and Uzziah. After it was cured, it was suffered sometimes to spread again. By this awful visitation the inhabitants of the house were forcibly reminded and admonished of their sins and is it possible to conceive of a ceremony more adapted to strike a stupid and insensible people with awe? The typical import of this kind of ceremonial defilement leads us to consider sin in the following lights : I. As an alarming, dreadful disease, for such the leprosy unquestionably was. There are spiritual diseases as well as bodily, and the former much more to be dreaded. These diseases may all be resolved into sin. As the human frame consists, not merely in a number of parts put together in the same place, but of parts vitally united, all with their separate functions and due subserviency to each other, which gives us the idea of a system; so the mind consists of faculties and powers designed to act under due subordination to each other. Sin disturbs this harmony, confounds this order, and consequently is truly and properly in the mind what disease is in the body. In the Holy Scriptures it is compared to the most afflicting disorders;-to blindness, deafness, lethargy; and the removal of it is expressed by healing. "Lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ́ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them." Sin is a fretting leprosy; it spreads itself throughout all the principles and powers; and [wherever it spreads imparts its own malignity.] II. It defiles as well as disorders.-Like the leprosy, it is a most loathsome disease; it is filthiness of flesh and of spirit. "Cleanse thou me from secret faults." "Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin."§ III. It cuts off those in whom it prevails from communion with God, both penally and naturally; that is, by the force of judicial sentence, and by its natural influence. IV. To those who have just apprehensions of it, it will be productive of that sorrowful sense of guilt and unworthiness so forcibly expressed in the words of the text. Lev. xiv. 34, 35. Isa. vi. 10. John xii. 40. 8 Psalm xix. 12. » Psalm li. 2. XVIII. ON SPIRITUAL LEPROSY.* LEV. xiii. 45.—And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall сту, Unclean, unclean. In this discourse we propose to make an improvement of the two former, which treated of the spiritual import of the Mosaical law concerning lepers. Having shown that the ceremonial defilement incurred by leprosy was designed as a standing representation of the polluting nature of sin,—and the legal method of purification, a type of the manner in which the power and pollution of sin are removed under the gospel, I shall proceed to attempt applying the whole doctrine to the character and circumstances of my hearers. I. Let the doctrine be improved into an occasion of inquiring whether we are healed, or are yet under the leprosy of sin. When we hear of the ravages of so dreadful a disorder, supposing we give any sort of credit to the report, it is natural to inquire into our own situation, and to consider how far we are in danger of being overtaken with it. During the prevalence of an epidemic disorder, accompanied especially with symptoms of danger, prudent men are wont to manifest great solicitude to avoid the places and occasions of infection. In the case before us there is ground for much serious inquiry peculiar to itself. The leprosy of sin is not like some other disorders which affect some individuals alone, while others escape; it is a universal malady,-no child of Adam escapes it; it attaches to the whole human race; and the only persons who are not now involved in that calamity are such as are cured, saved, redeemed from among men ;-terms which in their most obvious import imply the former prevalence of disease. The bitter fruits of human apostacy extend to each individual of the human race, as may be sufficiently inferred from the very appellation of Christ, the Saviour of the world," he shall be for salvation unto the ends of the earth," as well as from the most express declarations of Scripture respecting the universal prevalence of guilt and corruption, in all instances where it has not been counteracted and controlled by divine grace: 66 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others."+ Since this is the case, if you are not now in a state of sin, yet, as you were so formerly, you have undergone a great change, and must consequently have some recollection of the circumstances attending it; * Preached at Leicester, December, 1810. ↑ Acts xiii. 47. † Eph. ii. 3 and though you may not perhaps be able to specify the precise moment of your conversion, some traces must remain upon your memory of the circumstances connected with an event so replete with important consequences. In the course of our discussion on this subject we have observed, that the cure of sin must be preceded by a sense of the malady, by a humiliating conviction of defilement, urging us to cry with the leper, "Unclean, unclean." Did any ever witness in you this appearance of concern for sin, this apprehension of your misery as a guilty creature before God? Were you ever heard, we will not say to cry out in a public assembly, as did the three thousand that were converted by Peter, but in the most private intercourse with a Christian friend, and inquire what you must do to be saved? Are you conscious to yourselves of having ever felt serious and lasting solicitude on that head? Did it ever rest with a weight upon your mind at all proportioned to what you have felt on other occasions of distress? Was it ever allowed to put a check to your worldly amusements, to your gay diversions, or to the pursuit of any scheme whatever, from which you could promise yourselves profit or pleasure? We will take occasion, in treating on the subject before us, to observe, that the only method of deliverance from the malady of sin is a devout and humble application to the Lord Jesus; for he, and he only, “shall save his people from their sins ;"* and now, not less than in the days of his flesh, it is his prerogative to say, "I will, be thou clean." Supposing you thus to have applied, and to have succeeded in your suit, you must have some remembrance of those solemn transactions between Christ and your soul. You can recall the season when you committed yourselves into the hands of the Redeemer; when, like the leper in the gospel, you fell at his feet, crying, "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." Your struggles after the Saviour, your attempts to believe, accompanied with prayer that he would help your unbelief, and the rest you have found in him after being tossed by the storm, cannot all have passed like the fleeting images of a dream, without leaving some traces in your mind not easily effaced. If you are conscious that nothing of this nature has taken place, if you recollect no such transactions, you may be assured they never took place. Waiving, however, these points of inquiry, and admitting it to be possible that all this may have disappeared from your mind, still, since sin is a universal malady from which none are naturally exempted, if you are now healed, you must be conscious of your being very different from what you formerly were. Admitting you can give no account of the circumstances or time of your cure, yet you can at least say with him in the gospel, "One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." Your taste, inclination, and pursuits must have undergone a great alteration; and whereas you were formerly alienated from God, and took no delight in him, he is now your avowed and deliberate end, your chosen portion. Whereas you were formerly utterly disinclined to prayer, it is now your constant practice, and considered as a VOL. III.-G • Matt. i. 21. † Matt. viii. 3. |