ments, in all the statutes and ordinances of the Lord blameless. Obeying the positive commands of God is walking humbly with him, and, in some cases, as in that of Abraham particularly, is more peculiarly and eminently so: and Saul never acted more proudly, nor ever offended more highly, than when he transgressed against a positive command. God slighted sacrifices, one part only of obedience, and hypocritically performed, in comparison of whole and entire obedience. He slighted them, in some cases, not because they were positive duties,' but because they were part only of what God required, and reduced to an external part, separate from that true and sincere piety which ought to have gone along with them. For the like reasons, and in the like circumstances, God will as much slight any moral duties when hypocritically and outwardly performed, upon ill principles, or upon no principles. "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the "poor, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." A man may feed the poor for ostentation or vanity, may clothe the naked for his own interest, may visit the sick for his curiosity, may relieve the widow and fatherless for the ends of vain-glory and popularity; and then those outward moral performances will be altogether as contemptible as the hypocritical sacrifices of the Jews were, which the Prophet so justly censures. Or if they had not been hypocritical, yet if they were offered only as partial obedience, and as a kind of composition in lieu of the whole; in this view also they deserved to be spoken of with contempt and disdain. And the like may be said also of any moral duties, if amounting only to a partial obedience. If a man, for instance, is charitable to the poor, but yet indulges brutal lust; or if he is sober, chaste, temperate, but exceeding covetous withal and extorting, such partial obedience is as contemptible as were the Jewish sacrifices. "Whosoever shall keep the whole * 1 Cor. xiii. 3. "law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all f." I say then, that the sacrifices of the Jewish dispensation were not slightly spoken of on account of their being positive institutions, but either on account of their being made mere outward and hypocritical performances, or as being at best no more than partial obedience; in which cases, even moral services are as contemptible as positive. Now let us proceed. The author objects farther, as follows: "The princi"ples laid down by the prophets of old, and confirmed 66 by our Saviour himself in his approbation of the maxim, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice, are directly contra 66 dictory to those which the remarker insists upon." To which I answer: that maxim, "I will have mercy rather "than sacrifice h," is first applied by our blessed Saviour, by way of justification of himself for preaching the Gospel to publicans. Matt. ix. 11. The ritual laws restrained the Jews from conversing familiarly with heathens, or unclean persons; notwithstanding which, our blessed Lord sat down to eat with publicans in order to convert them, showing mercy to their souls. I know not whether this kind of mercy will be taken into our author's list of moral virtues, nor whether he will reckon preaching the Gospel among the positive or the moral duties. If he thinks it positive, then this application made by our blessed Lord in that instance is not to his purpose: for all that it proves is, that one positive duty of great consequence is preferable to another positive duty of slighter consequence. However that be, I will venture to assure him, that wherever one duty is preferred to another, it is not because one is moral and another is positive, but because one is more important, in such and such circumstances, than the other. That is the rule to go by, as observed above: the other is mere imagination. I would further observe to him, that when King Saul transgressed a po f James ii. 10. Answer to the Remarks, p. 71. ➤ Hosea vi. 6. Matt. ix. 13. xii. 7. sitive command, the Prophet, in that case, applied to him a maxim very like to that of Hosea vi. 6. or tantamount to it. "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to "hearken than the fat of rams i." Obedience, we see, is the thing that God requires, be it in a positive instance or a moral. Only we are to judge from the circumstances, in doubtful cases, which is the precept then chiefly to be regarded, which most insisted upon, or necessary to be insisted upon, and so we may learn how to perform the most acceptable obedience. Had the Jews of old ever been in any disposition to throw off the legal rites, and to abolish the daily sacrifice, we should have had more tragical complaints of it from the Prophets, than of any other of their immoralities or abominations. But indeed they never durst come up to that height of profaneness: for that would have amounted to an open revolt, and a total apostasy from God. Immoralities are high misdemeanours; but throwing off all positive laws, all instituted religion, is all immorality at once, is compendious wickedness, and defiance to the God of heaven. We know that the daily sacrifice ceased under Antiochus Epiphanes; which was a misfortune only to the Jews, and not their fault: and yet even that misfortune is described beforehand in tragical colours by the prophet Daniel, as a sad and dismal judgment upon the people. Such is the regard due to positive institutions, while they continue in force, or while they have not been repealed by the same authority that gave them. The Jews, however otherwise wicked, were never impudent enough to leave off their sacrifices and solemn assemblies: which is so far from showing the contemptible nature or slight obligation of those positive observances, that it rather shows quite the contrary. They are the last things that even the wickedest of men will throw off, because the so doing is downright apostasy. It is a step beyond i 1 Sam. xv. 22. Daniel viii. See also Jeremiah's Lament. ii. 6. of another like case. common crimes or great immoralities, and such as none can take till they are mad enough to run any the most desperate lengths. Men may break through the laws of the second table, and there may yet be hopes of reclaiming them, while the laws of the first (which are of primary obligation, and the foundation of all the rest) have any hold of them: but if they throw off even the laws of the first table too, they are then lost and gone beyond recovery. But I pass on to what the Objector has to urge farther. "The Prophets," says he', " tell us,-To what purpose "is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? I delight "not in the blood of bullocks.-When ye come to appear "before me, who hath required this at your hands, to "tread my courts m?" Very well: and yet these very things which the Prophet here speaks so slightly of, are elsewhere styled a "sweet savour unto the Lord "." Which is a demonstration that not the sacrifices themselves, but the bad manner of preparing them, the evil dispositions defiling them, the wickedness that crept into them; these were what the Prophet's censure was laid upon and therefore he speaks as slightly of prayers in the same chapter, (though prayer is commonly reckoned among the moral duties,) for the prayer of the wicked is an abomination P in the sight of God. But my Corrector says further," How easy would it have been to have re plied to Isaiah, upon the Remarker's principle, that "obedience to a positive institution is at once an exercise "of obedience to the law, and of faith, of worship, and " of repentance." Yes certainly, and so it is, when the obedience is sincere, and duly circumstantiated. And yet the Remarker will not scruple to speak as slightly and contemptibly of unworthy receiving of the Sacrament, as Isaiah spoke of the unworthy offering of sacrifices. Who 1 Answer to the Remarks, p. 71. n Levit. i. 9. P Prov. xxiii. 9. m Isaiah i. 11, 12. has required it at the hands of profane men, while such, to come to Christian Baptism, or to the holy Sacrament, to defile these sacred mysteries and to increase their own damnation? Nevertheless, worthy receiving is literally what I said it was, and all that I said, as I shall show more distinctly in due time and place. But the Objector goes on 9. "The Prophet certainly thought and acted upon a dif"ferent principle, when having treated, as it were, with contempt, the positive institutions of the law, he adds "moral virtues, as the things which should render them acceptable to God.-Wash ye, make ye clean', &c." The Prophet, I presume, had more sense and more piety than to treat any of God's ordinances with contempt. What he contemned was, the profanation of those ordinances, not the ordinances themselves; or to speak more strictly, the ordinances as profaned, and not merely as positive ordinances. Any moral performances, if outward only and hypocritical, or if otherwise cancelled by iniquity and disobedience, would have been as worthless as any thing the Prophet speaks of. The Prophet bids the people "cease to do evil, learn to do well." Is not obeying God's ordinances, whether positive or moral, doing well? How does this exclude positive institutions? But the Prophet adds, "Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, "judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." Right, he mentions the particular articles in which the Jews were most faulty at that time. At other times, they are as much blamed for profaning and polluting the Sabbaths, positive ordinances: and had any of them omitted circumcision, a positive ordinance too, they would not have been admonished only by a Prophet, but "cut off from the "people." However, I allow that mere outward acts, whether in positive or moral duties, are worth nothing in a religious account. And as soon as the Objector knows Answer to the Remarks, p. 72. • Ezek. xx. 13, 16, 24. xxii. 8. xxiii. 38. Isaiah i. 16, 17. |
