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guishing them under the contrary terms LECT. of the letter and the spirit: which terms are not unfrequently applied in the language of civil life to the laws of the land, in which there is a literal fenfe of the words, and a deeper sense of their general intention, called the fpirit, which the letter cannot always reach.

The letter of the fcripture is applied to the outward inftitutions and ceremonies of the law, as they stand in the words of the law without their interpretation: the Spirit of them, or the intention of the lawgiver, is the fame with the doctrine of the new teftament, called elsewhere the good things to come, of which the law had an image and fhadow. In its washings and purifications we fee the doctrine of baptifm; that is, of regeneration by water and the fpirit of God*. In its facrifices we see the neceffity and efficacy of Christ's death once for all. Had it not been neceffary for man to be born of the fpirit, and redeemed by the blood of Chrift, the * Ezech. xxxvi. 25,

law

LECT. law would not have troubled the people

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with washings and facrifices; for in that cafe they would have fignified nothing, and confequently would have been superfluous and impertinent: whereas if we take them right, the fervices of the law are the gospel in figurative description, and the gospel is the law in spirit and fignification. The paffover of the law is a fign of Chrift that was to come; and

Chrift when he is come is the fenfe and fignification of the paffover. It is the duty of a christian minifter not to disappoint the law or the gospel, but to do justice to the wisdom of God in both, and put these things together, for the edification. of the people. "Our fufficiency, faith the apostle, is of God, who hath made us able minifters of the new teftament, not of the letter but of the Spirit: for the letter killeth, but the fpirit giveth life." The letter of the law, voided of its evangelical intention, leaves our bodies washed but our fouls unclean; it leaves us nothing but the blood of bulls and of goats, and confequently under guilt and forfeiture ;` whence

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whence the apoftle hath truly affirmed, LECT. that in this capacity it is a miniftration of death. In his reasonings with the Jews, he preffes them with the unreasonableness and wickedness of refting in the literal obfervation of the law; telling them, that by the letter and circumcifion they tranfgreffed the law. But how could this be? did not the law ordain circumcifion in the letter? it did undoubtedly: yet, however paradoxical it may appear, the literal obfervation of the law was a tranfgreffion of the law. From whence it is a neceffary confequence, that the letter of the law was ordained only for the fake of its spirit or moral intention; which the Jew neglecting, while he trufted in the law as a form, was in effect a tranfgreffor of it; and was condemned in his error by the Gentiles, who without being born under the letter of the law, had now attained. to the spirit of it, and were better Jews than the Jews themfelves: for, adds the apostle, he is not a few which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcifion, which is outward in the flesh; but he is a few

LECT. which is one inwardly, and circumcifion (as

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Mofes himself had taught*) is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter.

To enquire more particularly into the errors of the Jews and the causes of them, would be foreign to my defign. The fact is plain, that they erred by a literal interpretation of their law; and that by ftill adhering to the fame, they are no nearer to the gospel now than they were seventeen hundred years ago. On the other hand, the apoftles of Jefus Chrift fucceeded in their labours by being minifters of the Spirit; that is, by interpreting and reasoning according to an inward or figurative fense in the law, the prophets, and the pfalms. All the fathers of the chriftian church, followed their example; particularly Origen, one of the most ufeful and powerful of primitive expofitors. Then were the Jews confounded, the heathens converted, the word of God was efficacious, and the people were edified. The fame way of teaching was observed in the middle ages,

* Deut. x. xvi.

'till the times of the reformation; and even then our best scholars ftill drew their divine oratory, particularly the learned and accomplished Erafmus, from the spiritual wisdom of the first ages. To revive and promote which, within my own little sphere, is the defign of this and the following lectures: in all which I shall invariably follow the rule of making the fcripture its own interpreter. And now I have opened the way by fhewing in what refpects and for what reafons the style of the scripture differs from that of other books, and that it is fymbolical or figurative; I propose with God's leave to distinguish the figures of the scripture into their proper kinds, with examples and explanations in each kind, from the scripture itself.

LECT.