Imatges de pàgina
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hearted generation, there would have been no occafion for permitting polygamy and divorce, and allowing the avenger of blood to kill the manflayer. Thefe laws evidently suppose their corruption, and connive at it, in fo far as to free it from temporal punishment.

The fpiritual covenant-relation, between God and true believers, can never be diffolved (a). These then interested in the Sinai covenant were not true believers; for they are charged with spiritual whoredom and adultery, and with breaking the covenant like Adam (b), and God is faid to give them a bill of divorce, and put them away (c).

4. But it will more clearly appear, who were interested in the Sinai covenant, by confidering, who were allowed to partake of the feals of it. Now circumcifion belonging to all the Jews in common, the Sinai covenant, of which it was a feal, must belong to them too. Circumcifion, I acknowledge was also a feal of the righteoufnefs of faith. But it was not fo to all who received it. As derived from Abraham, it was to all who imitated his faith a feal of the covenant of grace as inferted in the ceremonial law a feal of the Sinai covenant. Or rather, it was to Abraham, a feal both of an external and spiritual covenant. And therefore, even to these, who were only interested in the external covenant, it was of use.

As all the feed of Jacob were circumcifed, fo none of them were excluded for want of inward holinefs, from the paffover and other fæderal

(a) Jer. xxxi. 32, 33. xxxii. 40. Is. lv. 3. xxxi. 32. Hof. vi. 7. (c) Ifa. 1. 1, 2.

Hof. ix. 15.

(b) Jer.

Jer. iii. 8.

rites of the Jewish church. Bad men might therefore be then in covenant with God: for God would not have permitted any, to partake of the feals of a covenant, in which they were no ways interested. Every one that was not ceremonially unclean, or on a journey, and forebore to keep the paffover, was to be cut off by death from God's people (a). Depravity of heart, or wickednefs of life, did not exempt from this obligation. And even thefe, who being unclean by reason of a dead body, or in a journey afar off, could not folemnize the paffover on the fourteenth day of the first month, were required to do it, on the fourteenth day of the second month. So that, on one or other of thefe days, every Ifraelite whatfoever was bound to folemnize it. And therefore, though Chrift had told his dif ciples, that one of their number had a devil, they don't defire him to point out the guilty perfon, which, doubtlefs, they would have done, had an immoral character, as much unfitted, as ceremonial uncleannefs for eating the paffover.

Three times a year, even at the feasts of unleavened bread, of harveft, and of ingathering, all the males of Ifrael, were required to appear before the Lord (b). The Jewish Rabbies mention eleven claffes of perfons, whom this precept did not bind, as the blind, lame, &c. but instead ofcepting men of wicked hearts and lives, they exprefsly tell us, that all, fave these eleven claffes, were bound by that precept (c).

Every feventh year, at the feaft of tabernacles, all Israel, man, woman, and child, were bound

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(a) Num. ix. 13. (b) Maimonides tit. Chagig, c. 2. apud Selden de Synedr. Vet, Heb. 1. 1. c. 7. () Ibid.

to appear before the Lord (a). And the Jewish doctors, do not except from this precept excommunicate or immoral perfons (b).

Agreeably to this, we no where read, that either prince, or prieft, or prophet, excluded any perfon on account of moral pollution, from facrifices, from the paffover, or from other fæderal rites and folemnities. Nay, Jofiah, that pious prince, commanded all the people in common to keep the paffover to the Lord God (c), though he knew too much of their idolatries and other wickedneffes in the reign of his predeceffor, to imagine that the hearts of all his fubjects were right with God, and fincerely devoted to his fervice. No rebukes however are given to the princes or priests on that account, in the writings of the prophets, which doubtless would have been done, had their conduct in this particular been blame-worthy. But the prophets well knew, that man could have no right to preclude any from that, which the law of God allowed, them, I fhould rather have said, under the fevereft penalties enjoined upon them.

The Sadducees were men of the most dangerous principles and abandoned lives. Yet they were allowed to facrifice and partake of the paffover. Nay, fome of them were advanced to the high priefthood. The Pharifees, their mortal enemies, faw this, without ever oppofing it as unlawful. So fenfible were they, that the law of Mofes afforded them no handle for fuch an oppofition.

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The Pharifees were mightly offended at our Lord, for eating and drinking with publicans and finners, and would have efteemed themfelves blame-worthy, had they done it (a). Yet the felf-righteous Pharifee and immoral Publican go together to the temple-worship, and the former does not look upon himself as defiled by the prefence of the latter (b). Perfons ceremonially impure polluted any garment they touched, or any place they entered. Moral impurity had no such effect, elle adultreffes would not have been brought into a place fo holy as the temple (c).

Our Lord and his apoftles were accounted, both by Pharifees and Saducees, as the vileft of men, the filth of the earth, and the off-fcourings of all things. Yet no attempt was made to debar them from the facrifices or facraments of the Jewish church. Doubtlefs, the malice of their enemies would have prompted them to have inflicted that cenfure, had it been ever inflicted for error or vice. But they, who blamed our Lord for eating with unwathen hands, did not blame him for entering the temple, and partaking of the paffover. And they who were angry with Paul, for bringing Greeks into the temple, exprefs no difpleasure at him for entering it himself.

Our Lord, who knew the unbelief of his brethren, and their worldly carnal difpofition, would not have bid them go up to the feast of tabernacles, John vii. 5,-8. if the obligation to attend that folemnity, had reached only to the regenerate.

Hezekiah's not obferving the paffover the first month, because the priests had not fanctified

(a) Mat. ix. 11. v. John viii. 2, 3.

(b) Luke xviii. 1o,

(c) Num.

them

themselves fufficiently (a), is no proof that inward holiness was neceffary to qualify for that folemnity. For fanctified, in that hiftory, means no more than free from ceremonial uncleanness, which many bad men might, and many good men

might not be.

It is readily acknowledged, that men of bad lives, at leaft after the return from the Babylonifh captivity, were excommunicated and thruft out of the fynagogues. But it fhould be remembred, thefe fynagogues were only private focieties of a late original, and perfons thruft out of them ftill had access to the temple-worship. Excommunication precluded men from certain private devotional exercifes, and from free and familiar intercourfe with their brethren. It deprived of certain marks of honour and refpect, and probably was attended with fomething of pofitive difgrace. And therefore, fome of the chief rulers were afraid to confefs Chrift, leaft they fhould be put out of the fynagogue, because they Joved the praife of men, more than the praise of God (b). One circumftance of difgrace was, that excommunicate perfons entered the temple,. and went out of it, at a different gate from others. Yet ftill they had an undoubted right to facrifice and partake of the paffover, just as the Effenes had, who facrificed in a part of the temple separate from the reft of the Jews (c). Whatever therefore were the effects of excommunication, exclufion from any public exercife of worfhip, could be none of them. The hiftory of our Lord and his apoftles is a demonstration of this. The Jews had decreed to excommunicate any who fhould confefs Jefus to be the Chrift (d): (b) John xii. 42, 43.

(a) 2 Chron. xxx. 3. (c) Selden ubi supra.

(d) John ix. 22.

They

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