Jews could not eat together, and so could not live together. God tells them in direct words, that the design of this law was to keep them separate from the Heathens, and all their abominable customs-ye shall be holy unto me, for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people that ye should be mine.

Thus was the law concerning beasts understood; for this end was it observed; and thus is it applied and interpreted in the Acts of the Apostles: where Peter, referring to his vision of the animals in the sheet, saith; ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me (by putting an end to the distinction of meats) that I should not (now) call any man common or unclean. The separation was now at an end; and therefore this law, which had kept it up, was no more to be observed.

This law, as I have said, which forbid them to eat with Heathens, made it impossible to live with them; and this might be sufficient to account for it. But it is delightful to see, how that law which kept up the distinction, comprehended in itself the sense and reason of the distinction. Forbidden meats were so fixed on as to resemble forbidden men; änd lawful meats, properly understood, were so many lessons of purity, patience, obedience, and integrity.

To this question then, wherefore serveth the law? the apostle, we see, is right in one of his answers: it was added to the Patriarchal religion, to prevent those transgressions and abominations which heathenism had brought into it. In his second reason we shall find him as right as in the first; namely, that the law was a schoolmaster unto Christ. And when Christ caine, the Jews, who had been under this school

master, ought to have known him immediately, and to have said: "These new and wonderful things, which we are taught to believe of Jesus Christ, are the very same in sense and substance with what we ail have seen and been acting over from the beginning of our law. As children are sent to a schoolmaster to acquire the first rudiments of learning, so have we been brought up to learn these things: and as children are shut up in a school, so have we been shut up from the world, to practise over continually those signs and figures which describe to us Jesus Christ."

For, is Jesus Christ a mediator between God and man? And had not we our mediator, Moses, between God and us, at Mount Sinai? Is Christ the true high priest of God? And have not we always been used to the sight of an high priest and his ministry? Is he a sacrifice for the sin of the world? And hath not the blood of sacrifices always been shed amongst us for atonement and sanctification, and always taught us that without shedding of blood there is no remission? Is Christ the lamb of God redeeming us by his blood, and turning away the wrath of God? And did not a lamb in Egypt save us by its blood from the destroying angel, when the first-born of Egypt were slain? They say Christ is the true passover. And is he not in every respect like the passover we have been used to? How wonderful is it that his bones were not broken when he hung upon the cross! but were not we forbidden to break a bone of the paschal lamb? They say he hath ascended into heaven, there to appear in the presence of God for us: and did not our high priest go yearly into the most holy place of the temple, and return from thence to bless the people, as the Comforter is now sent down from Jesus Christ in heaven? These and many other like things have we

learned under our schoolmaster the law; and if we do not now see and understand them, after we have so long been used to them, we must be lost in ignorance, and incapable of receiving information.

What I have here said for the Jew, he should have said for himself; and he would have said it, had not the love of this world, together with a vain trust in the letter of the law, and in his own righteousness built upon it, blinded his eyes and hardened his heart. And when he had blundered in the beginning, by rejecting Jesus for not encouraging him, in the love of this world; his pride would never condescend to compare the figures of the law, to see whether these things were So. He had determined that Jesus was not the Christ before he had enquired; so he would never enquire after he had determined. Wonder not that the Jew 'thus erred for the Christian world is still full of such Jewish scholars, who begin where they should end; who first determine, and are never afterwards disposed to enquire. Instead of beginning with the wisdom of God, and from thence deriving the wisdom of man, they begin with what man has established, and thereby they judge God, as the Jews crucified Christ.

An examination of the text has enabled us to lay down such certain principles as will correct some modern mistakes. The law, you see, did not give life. It could not give it, because the promise had given it before and had the law given it, the promise must have lost it. Some have hence concluded, that the Jews under the law had no knowledge of another life and another world. But what do they mean? that while the Jews practised the book of Leviticus, they were not permitted to read the book of Genesis, which told them of the fall of man from life to death; of the promised seed; of the life, and pilgrimage, and death,

and burial, of the patriarchs; of the intercourse of man with God and with his angels? Could they know these things, and know nothing of another world! Is such an opinion worthy of a man of learning, which is scarcely worthy of a child? We allow it to be true as a. fact, that the Jews preferred the carnal part of their law, and neglected the spiritual: but it is much to be lamented that any Christians should follow them in their mistake, and lay the fault upon the Bible, as if the books of Moses were wholly secular. But as this has been done, it was wise in the Church of England to provide against this error in her seventh article; where we are rightly taught, that in the Old Testament and New everlasting life is offered to mankind by Jesus Christ; and that they are not to be heard, which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory pro

mises.

It seems indeed true, that the promises of God, so far as they are added to the law of works, are transitory, and do relate to this world only. The promises of the law are given to two covenants; so it has promises and better promises *; promises temporal, and promises spiritual. And are not Christians at this day upon the same terms? have they not a promise of this world, and of that which is to come? I look upon the cases of the Jew and the Christian as perfectly símilar; and that as temporal blessings were given to the due observance of the law of Moses, so the promise of this world is given to the keeping of God's commandments, while faith only can entitle us to the promise of the world to come.

A good argument for the divine original of the law of Moses may be founded upon its temporal promises.

Heb. viii. 6. See Eph. ii. 12.

For who but God, the Proprietor of the World, and' the Disposer of all Events, could fulfil those promises? Human lawgivers have added punishments and penalties, for those are in their power; but they never added promises, which were out of their power. Who was it that could bring armies of aliens to vex and punish the sins of Israel; and who could turn them to flight, but the same God, who could blow with his wind, and carry an army of locusts into the Red Sea ? Therefore a law promising and threatening such things as are above man, could come only from God, who was able to fulfil his promises. And unless the nation, who were so many ages under the law, had found them true, they would have had no reason to remain any longer under it. The argument is very plain, and can never be answered.

When we reflect on the case of the Jews, and the principle on which they fell away, it must occur to our minds (because we see too much of it before our eyes) that Christians fall away after the same example. They are born under the promises of the Gospel; but they aim at nothing more than the keeping up of a moral character, because common honesty is absolutely requi-ite to those who would obtain and enjoy the blessings of this life. But when will you find such people at their Bibles? When will you find them at their prayers? When will you find them at any good work for the love of Christ, and the prospect of an heavenly kingdom? If all these were selected out of a country called Christian (profligates and atheists I take not into the account), and we were to add to them the multitude of those who justify themselves, and expect to be saved by their own works as the Jews did, there would be left a remnant, but only a remnant, of those