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LECT. the feed first promised in paradise, and afterwards to Abraham, was the fum and fubftance of the patriarchal faith; and all the earliest institutions of priesthood and facrifice were intended to keep up this expectation. But when the perverseness of men had changed and corrupted the primitive inftitutions for the bafe purposes of idolatry and the worship of falfe Gods, it became neceffary on account of these frequent tranfgreffions to add a written law, with a stated form of pofitive fervices, never to be altered nor departed from; and all of them descriptive of the falvation which was to be effected by the promised feed; whence you are not to wonder, that in him they all meet and find their interpretation.

They who were bound to the obfervation of the law, were thereby feparated of neceffity from the world; and, as St. Paul very strongly expreffes it, but up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed* ; confined to a fet of ceremonies and fer* Galatians v. 23.

vices,

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vices, under which it was in a manner im- LECT. practicable for them to evade the objects of their faith, when they fhould be revealed in their true form. Not only the substance of what was expected, but all the particulars and circumftantials had been acted over in figure for ages together: and so the law was a schoolmaster unto Chrift; preparing those who were under it for the reception of the gospel, and as it were forcing them upon it, if men could on that principle be reconciled to truth.

When the gospel appeared, the Jew should have reafoned thus with himself. Do they fay Jefus died for our redemption? So did the pafchal lamb die to redeem our whole nation in Egypt. Did he afcend afterwards into heaven? So did our high priest go yearly into the most holy place, carrying thither the blood of a facrifice flain in the worldly fanctuary. Is there no remiffion of fin without fhedding of blood? There certainly was none under the law. Has Jefus appointed a baptifm with water? So had our law its purifications for the washing

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LECT. washing away of uncleannefs. Is the partition we have fo diligently kept up between ourselves and the Heathens to be broken down at last, and is the true religion to be carried out amongst all nations? So was our tabernacle brought from the folitary wilderness under Jofhua, whom the Greeks call Jefus, into the poffeffion of the Gentiles. Numberless other questions might be asked, shocking to the prejudices of a Jew, which would bring their own answers with them out of the law of Mofes and fuch was the ufe the Jew ought to have made of it.

From the various applications of particular paffages from the law, previous to the revelation of the gofpel, it appears that the law was in itself a spiritual as well as a figurative system, for the forming of the heart, and the purifying of the mind; yet conveying its precepts in parables and figns which wanted an interpretation: and that interpretation is occafionally dropped in fo many parts of the fcripture, especially in the Pfalms, that the prophets and mafters

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masters of Ifrael appear to have understood LECT. the law in a spiritual fenfe. If the bulk of the people did not understand it so, we muft not impute this to any uncertainty or obfcurity in Mofes and the prophets, but to that carnal affection which naturally chufes the form of religion without the fpirit of it. Their pride, their affectation of falfe wisdom, their avarice, their adultery, blinded them, and made them as averse to the sense of a miracle wrought before their eyes, as to the fense of the darkest verse in the Pentateuch. The world, always has been, and now is, to those that are fhut up under its laws, a schoolmafter to turn men away from Chrift; and a conceited worldly minded Christian, proud of the powers of reafon without grace, is at this hour as blind to the fpirit of the gospel as the Jew ever was to that of the law. For ignorance of the true Spirit of Christianity, and the defign of its doctrines, I would match the modern philofophifing Socinian with the blindest Jew for the one has made the gospel as void as the other made the law. Read the writings

L

LECT. writings of fome whofe books have made

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a great noise in the prefent century, and you will know no more of the Christian church and the Chriftian facraments, than the wandering Jew, who now travels about to cheat Christians with his wares, knows of the priesthood and facrifices in the books of Mofes.

The law is of ufe to us Chriftians for the illuftration of the new teftament, whofe language and myfteries are fo founded upon it, that the language of the gospels and epiftles is unintelligible without a particular attention to the law; and in proportion as our knowledge of it encreases, our faith will grow stronger. Thus the law ferves for evidence both to the Jew and Gentile; and the fame schoolmaster, which fhould have brought them to Chrift, will keep us with him. For, did the apoftle in his preaching fay nothing but what Mofes had faid? And did the gofpel teach nothing but what the law had fignified long before? Then muft the gofpel be that very falvation, which was known to God from

the