This people is not only considerable for its antiquity, but for its duration, which has ever continued from its origin till now: for whilst the nations of Greece, of Italy, of Lacedemon, Athens have long since passed away; this nation still subsists, and notwithstanding the efforts of many mighty kings, who, according to historic testimony, have tried a hundred times to destroy them; an event, also, which it is easy to suppose would have occurred in the natural course of events, in so many years; yet they have been always preserved; this disposition, and considering what strong proba- | this, the most ancient people, that we must come to bility there is, that other things exist beside those ascertain the tradition. which I see; I have inquired if that God of whom all the world speaks, has not given us some traces of himself. I look around, and see nothing but darkness on every side. All that nature presents to me, only suggests cause for doubt and distrust.or Rome, and others that have arisen much laterIf I saw nothing in nature that intimated a divinity, I would determine not to believe any thing concerning him. If I saw every where the traces of a deity, I would cherish at once the peaceful repose of faith; but seeing too much evidence to justify a denial, and too little to minister assurance, I am in a pitiable state, in which I have wished an hundred times, that if a God sustains nature, she might de-and their history, extending from the primitive clare it unequivocally; and that if the intimations she gives are false, they may be entirely suppressed; that nature would speak conclusively, or not at all, so that I might know distinctly which course to take. Instead of this, in my present state, ignorant of what I am, and of what I ought to do: I know neither my condition nor my duty. My heart yearns to know what is the real good, in order to follow it. And, for this, I would count no sacrifice too dear. times to the present, involves the period of all other histories within its own. The law by which this people is governed, is at the same time the most ancient, the most perfect, and the only one which has been recognized without interruption in a state. Philo, the Jew, shows this in several places; and so does Josephus against Appion, where he observes that it is so ancient, that even the term of law was not known by the most ancient nations, till more than 1000 years afterwards; I see many religious systems, in different parts so that Homer, who speaks of so many nations, and at different periods of the world. But I am not never uses it. And it is easy to form an idea of its satisfied, either with the morality which they teach, perfection by simply reading it; where we see that nor the proofs on which they rest. On this ground, it had provided for all things with so much wisdom, I must have equally refused the religion of Ma- equity, and prudence, that the most ancient Greek homet, of China, of the ancient Romans or the and Roman legislators, having received a measure Egyptians, for this one reason, that any one of of its light, have borrowed from it their chief and best them, not having more marks of verity than ano-institutions. This appears from the twelve tables, ther, and nothing which simply and positively determines the question, reason could never incline to one in preference to the rest. and from the other proofs adduced by Josephus. This law is also, at the same time, the most severe and rigorous of all; enjoining on this people, under But, whilst thus considering this varied and pain of death, a thousand peculiar and painful obstrange contrariety of religious customs and creeds servances, as the means of keeping them in their at different periods, I find in one small portion of duty. So that it is very wonderful, that this law the world, a peculiar people, separated from all the should have been preserved for so many ages, amidst other nations of the earth, and whose historical re- a people so rebellious and impatient of the yoke; cords are older, by several centuries, than those of whilst all other nations have repeatedly changed the most ancient of other nations. I find this a their laws, though much more easy of observance. great and numerous people; who adore one God, 2. This people also must be admired for their and who are governed by a law which they profess sincerity. They keep with affection and fidelity, to have received from his hand. They maintain, the book in which Moses declares, that they have that to them only, of all the world, has God re- ever been ungrateful to their God, and that he knows vealed his mysteries: that all mankind are corrupt, they will be still more so, after his death; but that and under the divine displeasure: that men are all he calls heaven and earth to witness against them, given up to the guidance of their corrupt affections, that he had given them an ample warning; that at and their own understandings; and that hence ori- length God, becoming angry with them, would scatginate all the strange irregularities and continual ter them among all the nations of the earth; and changes among men, both in religion and manners, that as they had angered him in worshipping those whilst they remained as to their rule of conduct as Gods who were no Gods, he would anger them in unaltered; but that God will not leave even the calling a people who were not his people. Yet this other nations eternally in darkness; that a deli- book, which so copiously dishonors them, they preverer shall come forth for them; that they are in serve at the expence of their life. This is a sincethe world to announce him; that they were pre-rity which has no parallel in the world, and has not pared expressly as the heralds of his advent, and to summon all nations to unite with them in the expectation of this Saviour. its radical principle in mere human nature. Then, finally, I find no reason to doubt the truth of the book, which contains all these things; for The meeting with such a people surprises me, there is a great difference between a book which and on account of the many wonderful and singular an individual writes and introduces among a peoevents connected with them, they seem to me wor-ple, and a book which actually forms that people. thy of the greatest attention. They are a nation of brethren; and whilst other nations are found of an infinite number of families, this people, though so extraordinarily populous, are all descended from one man; and being thus one flesh, and members one of another, they compose a mighty power, concentrated in one single family. This is an instance without parallel. This is the most ancient people within the memory of man; a circumstance which makes them worthy of peculiar regard, and especially with reference to our present inquiry: for if God did in all ⚫ previous time communicate with man, then it is to There can be no doubt that this book is as old as the nation. It is a book written by cotemporary authors. All history that is not cotemporary, is questionable, as the books of the Sybil, of Trismegistus, and many others that have obtained credit with the world, and in the course of time, have been proved to be false. But this is not the case with cotemporary historians. 3. How different this from other books! I do not wonder that the Greeks have their Iliad, or the Egyptians and Chinese their histories. We have only to observe how this occurs. These fabulous historians are not cotemporary with the matters which they record. Homer writes a romance, which he sends forth as such; for scarcely any one doubts that Troy and Agamemnon no more existed, than the golden apple. His object was not to write a history, but a book of amusement. It was the only book of his day. The beauty of the composition preserved it. Every one learned it and spoke of it. It must be known. Every one knew it by heart. Then four hundred years afterwards, the witnesses of things have ceased to exist. No one knew by his own knowledge whether it was truth or fable. All they knew was, that they learned it from their ancestors. It may pass then for truth. CHAPTER XII. THE JEWS. THE creation and the deluge having taken place, and God not purposing again to destroy or to create the world, nor again to vouchsafe such extraordinary evidences of himself, began to establish a people on the earth, formed expressly to continue till the coming of that people whom Messiah should form to himself by his Spirit. 2. God, willing to make it evident that he could form a people possessed of a sanctity invisible to the world, and filled with eternal glory, has exhibited a pattern in temporal things, of what he purposed to do in spiritual blessings; that men might learn from his excellent doings in the things which are seen, his ability to do his will in the things which are not seen. With this view, in the person of Noah, he saved his people from the deluge; he caused them to be born of Abraham; he redeemed them from their enemies, and gave them rest. The purpose of God was not to save a people from the flood, and to cause them to spring from Abraham, merely that he might plant them in a fruitful land; but that as nature is in a measure symbolical of grace, these visible wonders might indicate the unseen wonders which he purposed to perform. 3. Another reason of his choosing the Jewish people is, that as he purposed to deprive his own people of carnal and perishable possessions, he would show by this series of miracles, that their poverty was at least not imputable to his impotence. This people had cherished these earthly conceits, that God loved their father Abraham personally, and all who descended from him: that on this account, he had multiplied their nation, and distinguished them from all others, and forbidden their intermingling with them; and that therefore he led them out of Egypt with such mighty signs; that he fed them with manna in the wilderness; that he brought them into a happy and fruitful land; that he gave them kings, and a beautiful temple for the sacrifice of victims, and for their purification by the shedding of blood; and that he purposed ultimately to send them a Messiah, to make them masters of the whole world. The Jews being accustomed to great and splendid miracles, and having considered the events at the Red Sea, and in the land of Canaan, but as a sample of the great things to be done by Messiah, expected from him the accomplishment of wonders far more brilliant, and compared with which, the miracles of Moses should be but as a spark. When the Jewish nation had grown old in these low and sensual views, Jesus Christ came at the time predicted, but not with the state which they had anticipated; and, consequently, they did not think that it could be he. After his death, St. Paul came to teach men that all the events of the Jewish history were figurative; that the kingtom of God was not carnal, but spiritual; that the enemies of men were not the Babylonians, but their own passions; that God delighteth not in temples made with hands, but in a pure and penitent heart; that the circumcision of the body was unavailing, but that he required the circumcision of the heart. 4. God, not willing to discover these things to a people unworthy of them, but willing, nevertheless, to announce them that they might be believed, did clearly predict the time of their fulfilment, and did sometimes even clearly express the truths them-. selves; but ordinarily he did so in figures, that those who preferred the things which prefigured, might rest in them; whilst they who really loved the things prefigured, might discover them. And hence it followed, that at the coming of Messiah, the people was divided. The spiritually-minded Jew received him; the carnal Jews rejected him; and have been ordained to remain, to this day, as his witnesses. 5. The carnal Jews understood not either the dignity or the degradation of Messiah, as predicted by their prophets. They knew him not in his greatness; as when it is said of him, that Messiah, the son of David, shall be David's Lord; that he was before Abraham, and had seen Abraham. They did not believe him to be so great, as to have been from everlasting. Neither did they know him in his humiliation and death. "Messiah," they said, "abideth ever; and this man says that he must die." They did not believe him to be either mortal or eternal. They expected nothing beyond an earthly carnal greatness. They so loved the material figure, and so exclu sively devoted themselves to it, that they knew not the reality, even when it came both at the time and in the manner foretold. 6. Skeptical men try to find their excuse in the unbelief of the Jews. "If the truth was so clear," it is said, "why did they not believe?" But their rejection of Christ is one of the foundations of our confidence. We had been much less inclined to believe, if they had all received him. We should thus have had a much ampler pretext for incredulity and distrust. It is a wonderful confirmation of the truth, to see the Jews ardently attached to the things predicted, yet bitterly hostile to their fulfilment; and to see that this very aversion was itself foretold. 7. To establish the Messiah's claim to confidence, it required that there should be prophecies going before him, and that these should be in the hands of men altogether unsuspected, and of diligence, fidelity and zeal, extraordinary in their degree, and known to all men. To attain this object, God chose this sensual nation, to whose care he committed the prophecies which foretell the Messiah as a deliverer, and a dispenser of those earthly blessings which this people loved. They felt, therefore, an extraordinary regard for their prophets, and exhibited to the whole world those books in which Messiah was foretold; assuring all nations that he would come, and that he would come in the mode predicted in those books, which they laid open to the inspection of the world. But being themselves deceived by the mean and ignominious advent of Messiah, they became his greatest enemies. So that we have the people which would be, of all mankind, the least suspected of favoring the Christian scheme, directly aiding it: and by their zeal for the law and the prophets, preserving with incorruptible scrupulosity, the record of their own condemnation, and the evidences of our religion. 8. Those who rejected and crucified Jesus Christ, as an offence to them, are they who possess the books that bear witness of him, and that testify that he would be rejected as an offence to them. Thus by their rejection of him, they marked him as Messiah; the truth upon those whom it blinded, so plainly and he has received testimony both from the righteous Jew who believed, and from the unrighteous who rejected him: both those facts being foretold in their Scriptures. that others might read it. For the visible external For the same reason, the prophecies have a hidden sense-a spiritual meaning, to which the people were adverse, concealed under the carnal meaning which they loved. Had the spiritual meaning been evident, they had not the capacity to love it: and as they would not have approved it, they would have had little zeal for the preservation of their Scriptures and their ceremonies. And even if they had loved these spiritual promises, and had preserved them uncorrupted to the days of Messiah, their witness, as the witness of friends, would have want-receiving him, for they were the depository of the ed its present importance. On this account, it seems good that the spiritual sense was concealed. But on the other hand, if this sense had been so hidden, 10. The Jews had in their favor, both miracles as not to be seen at all, it could not have served as and prophecies which they saw fulfilled; the doca testimony to the Messiah. What, then, has God trine also of their law required them to worship done? In the majority of passages, the spiritual and to serve but one God. Their religion had been was veiled under the temporal sense, whilst in a of perpetual duration. Thus it had every mark of few, it was clearly discovered. Moreover, the time being the true religion; and so it was. But we and the state of the world, at the period of fulfil- must distinguish between the doctrine of the Jews, ment, were so clearly_foretold, that the sun itself and the doctrine of the Jewish law; for the doctrine is not more evident. The spiritual meaning also is actually held by the Jews, was not true; though asin some places so plainly developed, that not to dis-sociated with miracles, prophecies, and the perpecover it, there needed absolutely such a blindness, as tuity of their system; because it wanted the fourth the flesh brings upon the spirit that is entirely en-essential characteristic-the exclusive love and serslaved by it. vice of God. This then is the way which God has taken. This spiritual.meaning is in most places concealed; and in some, though rarely, it is disclosed. But then this is done in such a way, that the passages where the meaning is concealed, are equivocal, and equally admit both senses; whilst the places where the spiritual import is displayed are unequivocal, and will only bear the spiritual interpretation. So that this method could not properly lead to error, and that none but a people as carnal as they, could have misunderstood it. For when good things are promised in abundance, what forbad them to understand the true riches, except that cupidity which at once eagerly restricted the sense to earthly blessings? But they who had no treasure but in God, referred them exclusively to God. For there are two principles which divide the human will, covetousness and charity. It is not that covetousness cannot co-exist with faith, or charity with earthly possessions: but covetousness makes its use of God, and enjoys the world; whilst charity uses the world, but finds its joy in God. It is the ultimate end which we have in view, that gives names to things. Whatever prevents our obtaining this end, is called an enemy. Thus creatures, though in themselves good, are the enemies of the just, when they withdraw them from God; and God is accounted the enemy of those whose passions he counteracts. Hence the word enemy in the Scripture, varies in its application with the end sought; the righteous understand by it their own passions, and carnal men, the Babylonians; so that these terms were only obscure to the wicked. And this Isaiah means when he says, Seal the law among my disciples.And when he prophesies that Christ should be a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, but blessed are they who shall not be offended in him. Hosea says the same thing very plainly: Who is wise, and he shall understand these things; prudent, and he shall know them. For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them; but transgressors shall fall therein. And yet this Testament which is so composed, that in enlightening some, it blinds others, did stamp The Jewish religion, then, must be differently estimated, according as it appears in the traditions of their saints, and the traditions of the people. Its moral rule and its promised happiness, as stated in the traditions of the people, are quite ridiculous; but in the authentic traditions of their holy men, they are admirable. The basis of their religion is excellent. It is the most ancient, and the most authentic book in the world; and whilst Mahomet, to preserve his Scriptures from ruin, has forbidden them to be read; Moses, to establish his, ordered every one to read them. 11. The Jewish religion is altogether divine in its authority, its continuance, its perpetuity, in its morals, its practice, its doctrine, and its effects. It was framed as a type of the reality of the Messiah; and the truth of the Messiah was recognized by the religion of the Jews, which prefigured him. Among the Jews, the truth dwelt only typically. In heaven it exists unveiled. In the church, it is veiled, but made known by its symbolising with the figure. The type was framed according to the pattern of the truth, and the truth was disclosed by the type. 12. He who should estimate the Jewish religion by externals, would be in error. It may be seen in the Holy Scriptures; and in the traditions of their prophets, who have amply shown that they did not understand the law literally. Thus, our religion, seen in the gospels, the epistles, and in its traditions, is divine; but it is sadly distorted among the many who misuse it. 13. The Jews were divided into two classes. The dispositions of the one were only heathen; those of the other Christian. Messiah, according to the carnal Jews, should have been a great temporal prince. According to the carnal Christians, he is come to release us from the obligation to love God, and to give us sacraments effective without our concurrence. The one is not the Jewish religion; the other is not the Christian. True Jews and true Christians have equally recognized a Messiah, who inspires them with the love of God, and causes them by that love to overcome their enemies. 14. The veil that is upon the Scripture to the | those prophecies, in which both their continuance Jews, is there also to the false and faithless Chris-and their blindness is foretold. I see in their juditian, and to all who do not abhor themselves. But cial expulsion, that this religion is divine in its auhow well disposed are we to understand the record, thority, in its continuance, in its perpetuity, in its and to know Jesus Christ, when we do cordially morals, in its practice, in its effects. And hence I hate ourselves! stretch forth my hands to my deliverer, who, having been predicted for 4000 years, came at last to suffer and to die for me, at the time, and under all the circumstances that have been predicted; and, by his grace, I now wait for death in peace, hoping to be eternally with him. And I ever live rejoicing, either in the blessings which he is pleased to bestow, or in the sorrows which he sends for my profit, and which I learn from his own example to endure. 15. The carnal Jews occupy a middle place between Christians and heathens. The heathens know not God, and love this world only. The Jews know the true God, yet love this world only.Christians know the true God, and love not the world. The Jew and the heathen love the same object. The Jew and the Christian know the same God. By that fact, I refute all other religions. By that, I give an answer to all objections. It is just that a pure and holy God should not reveal himself, but to those whose hearts have been purified. 16. Evidently the Jews are a people formed expressly to be witnesses to the Messiah. They possess the Scriptures, and love them, but do not comprehend them. And all this has been expressly foretold; for it is written, that the oracles of God I find it satisfactory to my mind, that ever since are committed to them, but as a book that is sealed. the memory of man, here is a people that has subWhilst the prophets were continued for the pre-sisted longer than any other people; that this peoservation of the law, the people neglected it. But when the line of prophets failed, the zeal of the people arose in their stead. This is a wonderful providence. 17. When the creation of the world began to be a remote event, God raised up a cotemporary historian, and commissioned a whole nation to preserve his work; that this history might be the most authentic in the world; and that all men might learn a fact so necessary to be known, and which could be known in no other way. 18. Moses evidently was a man of talent. If then he had purposed to deceive, he would have adopted a course not likely to lead to detection. He has done just the reverse; for if he had put forth falsehoods, there was not a Jew that would not have discovered the imposture. Why, for example, has he described the lives of the first men so long, and their generations so few ? He might have veiled his fraud in a multitude of generations, but he could not in so few. It is not the number of years, but the frequent succession of generations, which gives obscurity to history. Truth suffers no change, but by a change of men. And yet Moses places two events as memorable as possible the creation and the flood-so near, that owing to the paucity of generations, they were almost tangible things. So that at the period when he wrote, the memory of these events must have been quite recent in the minds of all the Jews. Shem, who had seen Lamech, who had seen Adam, lived at the least to see Abraham; and Abraham saw Jacob, who lived to see those who saw Moses. Then the deluge and the creation are facts. This is conclusive, to those who comprehend the nature of such testimony. The length of the patriarchial life, instead of operating to the loss of historic facts, served to preserve them. For the reason why we are not well versed in the history of our ancestors, is commonly that we have seldom lived with them; or that they died before we reached maturity. But when men lived so long, children lived a long while with their parents, and necessarily conversed much with them. Now, of what could they speak, but of the history of their ancestors? For this was all the history that they had to tell: and as to sciences, they had none, nor any of those arts which occupy so large a portion of human intercourse. We see also, that in those days, men took especial care to preserve their genealogies. 19. The more I examine the Jews, the more of truth I find in their case, and the more plainly I discover this Scriptural mark, that they are without prophets, and without a king; and, that as our enemies, they are the best witnesses to the truth of ple have constantly announced to man, that they are in a state of universal corruption, but that a deliverer will come; and it is not one man that has said this, but an infinite number: a whole people prophesying through a period of 4000 years. CHAPTER XIII. OF FIGURES. SOME figures are clear and demonstrative; others are less simple and natural, and tell only upon those who have been previously persuaded by other means. These last resemble the prophetic figures borrowed by some men from the Apocalypse, and, explained according to their own views. But between them and the true, there is this difference, they have no figures that are unquestionably established, by which to support their interpretation. It is very unjust, therefore, to pretend that theirs are as well sustained as ours, when they have no figures of established interpretation to refer to, as we have. The two cases are not parallel. Men should not parallelize and confound two things, because in one respect they appear similar, seeing that in another, they are so different. 2. One of the main reasons why the prophets have veiled the spiritual blessings, which they promised, under the type of temporal blessings, is that they had to deal with a carnal people, and to commit to their care a spiritual deposit. Jesus Christ was typically represented by Joseph, the beloved of his father, sent by his father to seek for his brethren; innocent, yet sold by his brethren, for twenty pieces of silver; and, by that means, constituted their Lord, their Saviour; the Saviour of strangers; the Saviour of the world; which he could not have been, but for the purpose to destroy him, and the sale, and the abandonment, of which his brethren were guilty. Joseph was innocent, and imprisoned with two criminals. Jesus was crucified between two robbers. Joseph foretold to men, in the same circumstances, the saving of the one, and the death of the other. Jesus saved one, and left the other to his fate, though both were guilty of the same crime. Joseph, however, could only foretell. Jesus fulfilled also. Joseph also requested him who was to be saved, to remember him when he was come to prosperity; and he whom Jesus Christ saved, prayed that he would remember him when he came to his kingdom. 3. Grace is the type of glory. It is not itself the ultimate end. Grace was typified by the law, and is itself typical of glory; but so as to be, at the same time, a means of obtaining that glory. 4. The synagogue is not altogether destroyed, be- | representation; for in a portrait we see the thing cause it was a type of the church; but because it presented typically. With this view, we have only was only a type, it has fallen into bondage. The to examine what they say. type was continued till the reality came, that the church might be always visible, either in the shadow or the substance. 5. To prove, at once, the authority of both Testaments, we need only inquire, if the prophecies of the one, are accomplished in the other. To examine the prophecies, we should understand them; for, if they have but one meaning, then certainly the Messiah is not come; but if they have a double sense, then as certainly he is come in Jesus Christ. The question then is, Have they a twofold meaning? Are they types, or literal realities? that is, are we to inquire for something more than at first appears, or must we, invariably, rest satisfied with the literal sense which they directly suggest? If the law and the sacrifices were the ultimate reality, they must be pleasing to God; they could not displease him. If they are typical, they must both please and displease him. Now, throughout the Scripture, they appear to do both. Then they can only be typical. 6. To discern clearly that the Old Testament is figurative, and that by temporal blessings, the prophets mean something further, we need only notice, First, That it would be beneath the Deity, to call men only to the enjoyment of temporal happiness. Secondly, That the language of the prophets most distinctly expresses the promise of temporal good, whilst they, at the same time declare, that their discourses are really obscure; that the ostensible meaning is not the real one, and that it would not be understood till the latter days. (Jeremiah xxiii. 20.) Then evidently they speak of other sacrifices, and another Redeemer. Besides, their discourses are contradictory and suicidal, if by the words law and sacrifice, they understood only the law and sacrifices of Moses. There would be a manifest and gross contradiction in their writings, and sometimes even in the same chapter; whence, it follows, that they must mean something else. 7. It is said that the law shall be changed; that the sacrifice shall be changed; that they shall be without a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice; that a new covenant shall be established; that there shall be a new law; that the precepts which they had received were not good; that their sacrifices were an abomination; that God had not required them. On the other hand, it is said, that the law shall endure for ever; that this covenant is an everlasting covenant; that this sacrifice shall be perpetual; that the sceptre should never leave them, seeing that it could not depart till the arrival of the Everlasting King. Do these passages prove the then present system to be the substance? No! Do they prove it to be figurative? No! They only show that it is either a substance, or a figure; but as the former passages conclude against the reality, they show that the law is a figure. All these passages, taken together, cannot be predicated of the substance; all may be affirmed of the shadow. Then they do not relate to the substance, but to the shadow. 8. To ascertain whether the law and its sacrifices be the substance, or a figure, we should examine if the views and thoughts of the prophets terminated in these things, so that they contemplated only this original covenant; or whether they did not look for something beyond, of which these were a pictural That is according to the circumstances of different cases. When they speak of the covenant as everlasting, do they mean to speak of that covenant, of which they affirm, that it shall be changed? and so of the sacrifices, &c. 9. The prophets say distinctly, that Israel shall always be loved of God, and that the law shall be eternal. They say also, that their meaning in this is not comprehended, and that it is, in fact, hidden. A cypher, for secret correspondence, has frequently two meanings. If, then, we intercept an important letter, in which we find a plain meaning, and in which it is said, at the same time, that the sense is hidden, and obscured, and that it is so veiled purposely, that seeing we might not see, and perceiving, we might not understand; what would we think, but that it was written in a cypher of two-fold signification, and much more so, if we found in the literal sense some manifest contradictions? How thankful should we be then to those who would give us the key to the cypher, and teach us to discern the hidden meaning, especially when the principles on which they proceed are quite natural, and approved principles! Jesus Christ and his apostles have done precisely this. They have broken the seal: they have rent the veil: they have disclosed the meaning: they have taught us that man's enemies are his passions; that the Redeemer was a spiritual Redeemer; that he would have two advents-the one, in humiliation to abase the proud, the other, in glory to elevate the humble; that Jesus Christ was both God and man. 10. Jesus Christ taught men, that they were lovers of themselves; that they were enslaved, blinded, sick, miserable, and sinful; that they needed him to deliver, enlighten, sanctify, and heal them; and, that to obtain this, they must deny themselves, and take up the cross, and follow him through suffering and death. The letter killeth: the sense lies hidden in the cypher. A suffering Saviour; a God in humiliation; the circumcision of the heart; a true fast; a true sacrifice; a true temple; two laws; a twofold table of the law; two temples; two captivities;there is the key to the cypher, which Jesus Christ has given to us. Christ has at length taught us, that these things were but figures, and has explained the true freedom, the true Israelite, the true circumcision, the true bread from heaven, &c. 11. Each one finds in these promises, that which lies nearest to his heart, spiritual or temporal blessings, God or the creature; but with this difference, they who desire the creature, find it promised, bui with many apparent contradictions--with the pro hibition to love it, and with the command to love and worship God only; whilst they who seek God in the promises, find him without any contradiction and with the command to love him exclusively. 12. The origin of the contrarieties in Scripture, is found in a Deity humbled to the death of the cross; a Messiah, by means of death, triumphant over death; two natures in Jesus Christ; two advents; and two states of the nature of man. As we cannot ascertain a man's character, but by reconciling its contrarieties, and as it is not sufficient to infer from a train of congruous qualities, without taking the opposite qualities into the account, so to determine the meaning of an author, we must show the harmony of the apparently contradictory passages. So that to understand the Scripture, there must be a sense in which the seemingly contradictory passages agree. It is not enough to find a sense which is borne out by many analogous passages" |