fathers, and, in due time, brought them, by leaders chosen from amongst themselves, to the land he had appointed for them.

In compliance with the religious notions of those times, he condescended, when he communicated himself as the Maker and Governor of the Universe, to adopt them for his peculiar people, under the idea of their tutelar Deity, or the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And, the better to secure the great end of their separation, assumed likewise the title and office of their King, or Civil Governor.

Hence their Religion came under the idea of a Law; and was so considered and denominated. And their Law was, in the strictest sense, Religion, as having all the sanctions of a divine command.

In a word, those two great rules of human conduct, which are, elsewhere, kept so distinct by their different originals, and different administrations, were, here, by the sameness in both, specifically lost in a perfect incorporation. And the whole economy (as every thing in this dispensation was relative to the Jews as a body) went under the common name of Law.

From this account of the Jewish constitution, it follows, That Religion, which, elsewhere, hath only particulars for its subjects, had, Here, the nation or community: And what, elsewhere, as far as concerns the divine origin of religion, is only a private matter, was, Here, a public: For the Deity being both their tutelary God and civil Governor, the proper object of his care, in each capacity, was the collective body: and, whether we consider the observance due to him under the idea of Law or Religion, it was still the body which was the proper subject of it. Not but that religion had there a private part, or particulars for its subject: But then it was that religion we call natural;

D 2

natural; founded in what reason discovers of the relation between the Creator and the creature; an aid, which revelation is so far from rejecting, that we find it constitutes the ground of every extraordinary dispensation vouchsafed by God to mankind. For, he that cometh to God [i.e. by revelation] must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seck him*.

From this account of the Hebrew Government, one natural consequence ariseth, That the principal rites of their religion and law were to be performed and celebrated in some determined place. This, the object and subject of their ceremonial seemed equally to require. For, the ideas of tutelary God and King implied a local residence: and a national act, created by the relations arising from these things, required a fixed and certain place for its celebration: and both together seemed to mark out the capital of the country for that purpose.

This consequent practice, which the nature and reason of things so evidently point out, the institutes of the Hebrew constitution expressly order and enjoin. During the early and unsettled times of the Jewish state, the sacrifices, prescribed by their ritual, were directed to be offered up before the door of an ambulatory tabernacle: but when they had gained the establishment decreed for them, and a magnificent temple was erected for religious worship, then all their sacrifices were to be offered at Jerusalem only.

Now, sacrifices constituting the substance of their national worship, their religion could not be said to subsist longer than the continuance of that celebration. But sacrifices could be performed only in one appointed temple: so that when this was finally destroyed, ac

*Heb. xi. 6.

cording

cording to the predictions of the prophets, the institution itself became abolished.

Nor was any thing more consonant to the nature of this religion, than the assigning such a celebration of its rites. The temple would, exist while they remained a people, and continued sovereign: and when they ceased to be such, they would indeed lose their temple, but then they had no further use for it; because the rites there celebrated were relative to them, only as a civil policied nation.

These consequences are all so necessarily connected, and were so clearly understood, that when Jesus informs the woman of Samaria of the approaching abolition of the law of Moses, he expresses himself by this circumstance, that men should no longer worship at the Temple of Jerusalem*.

As on the other hand, when the false witnesses against Stephen deposed that they heard him say, that Jesus of Nazareth would destroy the holy place, the Temple, they drew their own inference from it, that he would change the law and customs which Moses had delivered them †.

If, from the nature of this religion, we go on to consider its end, we shall find, in it, all the marks of a religion, preparatory and introductory to another more complete and perfect; of which it contains the rudiments, and presents the shadow. Such as the confining its fundamental doctrine, the worship of the true God, within the limits of one small country. Such again, as its multifarious and enigmatic ritual; of

*John iv. 21.

+ Acts vi. 13, 14. And in this the falshood of their testimony seemed to consist. For Stephen could never have spoken so crudely of the destruction of the Law, when his Master had said, he was not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it. Matt. v. 17.

which no reasonable account can be had, but that part was instituted to oppose the reigning superstitions, in order to preserve the separation; and part to prefigure, by types or symbols, the essential circumstances of some future dispensation. And part again, by the admirable contrivance of divine Wisdom, both opposed the reigning superstitions, and prefigured the future dispensation.

But Christianity, which established its pretensions by the power of miracles and the purity of doctrine, doth in fact support these conclusions, by representing Judaism as only the rudiments and shadow of its own more complete œconomy.

This being premised, we say, that the more perfect dispensation could not take place till the less perfect, which prefigured it, and prepared its way, was set aside and abolished.

But now, if the mere voluntary adherence to a religion, or men's calling themselves of it, were enough to prevent its abolition, the perverseness and obstinacy of our nature are such, that they might, and, in fact, would lie in the way, and obstruct the purposes of Providence.

Therefore has the great Disposer of all things so divinely constituted this preparatory religion, as to put it out of the power of human perversity even to delay or retard its destined abolition; by so constituting the natures, and disposing the order of his dispensations, that those essential rites, which made the Jewish religion to be what it was, should of necessity require a fixed local celebration, which it was not possible to perform longer than while the Jewish people continued a nation, and in possession of the sovereignty of Palestine. St. Chrysostom has an elegant observation to this purpose: "From the necessity (says he) of a 23

"local

"local worship, God covertly withdrew the Jews "from the rage of ritual observances. For as a Phy

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sician, by breaking the cup, prevents his patient "from indulging his appetite in a hurtful draught; so "God withheld them from their sacrifices, by de"stroying the city itself, and making the place inac"cessible to all of them *."

It may not be improper, in this place, to take notice of an objection, though indeed it be already obviated. It is," that the sacrificing at Jerusalem being a mere ceremony, we can hardly conceive how the want of it should annihilate the whole system of a religious institution. The objection goes upon ideas foreign to the subject. The essence of the Jewish religion was ceremonial. Hence it is that there is no word in the Hebrew language that signifies what we mean by ceremonies: nor, if what we have delivered, concerning the nature and genius of the Jewish religion, be true, could there be any such. The same is observable in the Greek language. And the reason is the same. It hath been shewn elsewhere †, that this nature was common both to the Jewish and Greek religions; rat onal indeed, in the former; but altogether absurd i the other. Yet it will be said, the Romans ha word to express ceremonies. It is true, they had. And the reason of their having it will shew Jews and Greeks had it not. Their lawgiver, Now instituted a kind of system of natural religion national use; which, time and craft so with gross idolatries. So that as super