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That Law which God delivered to His own people, and for which just returns of praise are here made to Him, shall be the subject of our present inquiries, particularly the end and design of it, and its perfections, and also some defects in it which the Christian revelation hath enabled us to discover.

1. From the Scriptures we learn that God chose the children of Israel, as He had promised to Abraham, to be His peculiar people; that He miraculously rescued them from slavery; that He gave them the quiet possession of a fruitful country; that He wrought many wonders for their preservation; that He delivered precepts to them, the observance of which necessarily separated them from other people; that He raised up a succession of prophets to instruct them or correct them; that He ruled over them Himself in a singular manner. After He had preserved them a distinct people for more than fourteen hundred years, He sent His Son to them, who was born amongst them, and came to make a new and a better covenant, to which both they and all other nations should be invited, and to teach a more pure and spiritual religion. This Messias was obscurely represented in their religious ceremonies, and promised in the Law and the prophets; and as the time of His coming approached, the predictions concerning Him were more full and clear. If We consider the Law as intended to instruct the Jews in moral truths, and to keep up the worship of God in the world, we may observe that these ends were sufficiently secured. From the Law and the prophets the Jews might learn that God did not so much delight in ceremonial observances, as in piety, justice, and charity; from many expressions in them they might suppose and hope that a quiet possession of the land of Canaan was not the only reward of well-doing, but that God reserved for these who loved Him a better recompense in a better world. In those books they might find descriptions of God's goodness and mercy proper to raise their trust in Him, and to encourage them to amendment and repentance, gracious promises of pardon, and a promise of future blessings, of which the Messias should be the author and dispenser; which may be said to belong rather to the Gospel than to the Law, and to be founded upon all that Christ did and suffered for mankind. And as good laws naturally tend to make good subjects, and a good religion to make good men, so the lives and behaviour of some worthies recorded in Scripture are witnesses to the excellence of the religion which they had received, and by which they were guided. They were remarkable for piety to God, and for a disinterested love of their country, they preferred their duty to all worldly advantages, and endured with patience cruel persecutions, even to death, for the sake of a good conscience. Another end of the Law was to preserve the people of Israel distinct and separated from all nations. Many precepts were appointed for this very purpose: "I am the Lord your God, who hath separated you from other people: ye shall therefore put difference between beasts clean and unclean." That having a diet peculiar to themselves, they might be restrained from eating with the Gentiles, and so from learning their idolatrous and vicious customs. Another end of the Law was to set up a form of government differing from all others, in which God Himself should be the King, and rule over the people in a most remarkable and wonderful manner. Another end for which we may suppose the Law to have been given was that it might be in some measure a light to enlighten the Gentiles, to spread the knowledge of one God, and so to preserve it that it might not be quite obliterated by idolatry.

2. I shall now make some remarks on the defects and imperfections of the Law. Though that part of the Law which was ceremonial served for good and wise purposes, yet, considered in itself, and compared with the Gospel, it was a weak and imperfect institution, fitted only for children in knowledge, and also a burthensome and severe ordinance, as the apostles testify. St. Paul hath represented the state of the Jews as a state of infants and slaves. He says that whilst they continued under the Law they were children, and that their rites and ceremonies were rudiments adapted to the low capacities of children, and designed to train them up and prepare them for the Gospel; he says also that they were slaves, that they had received the spirit of bondage to fear, because they were obliged to the performance of external services which in themselves had no goodness, and compelled to the observance of them chiefly by servile motives, by the fear of punishment. The Law was defective, also, in that it. was not a general revelation of God's will to mankind, nor indeed of its own nature fitted for universal use. It seems confined to the people to whom it was delivered, in its promises, in its threats, in its rewards and punishments, in several duties and conditions which it required, in the ceremonies, sacrifices, feasts, and customs which it appointed. It admitted proselytes indeed; but it could not have been the religion of any other nation; and the number of the proselytes, though considerable enough sometimes, when compared with the number of the Israelites, or Jews, yet when compared with the Gentile world, was so small, that the psalmist might well say in the text, God hath not so dealt with any nation, neither have the heathen knowledge of his laws. From the defects of the Law it seems reasonable to suppose that it was not designed to continue always. Therefore God, by the prophets, added from time to time new revelations to the Law, removing some of its obscurity, and allaying some of its severity, and also promised greater discoveries to be made in His appointed time. Thus was the Law a preceptor to the Jews, as the apostle speaks, to bring them to Christ; a dispensation appointed, in condescension to the weakness of that people, to train them up and fit them by degrees for the reception of the Gospel.

3. I shall now proceed to vindicate the Law of Moses and the Jewish religion from some objections which have been raised against them, both in ancient and in modern times. First, sacrifices were disliked by some learned and respectable philosophers; and for this and other reasons Judaism appeared to them an injudicious and a superstitious religion. We must therefore observe that sacrifices were not appointed as the most excellent way of serving God, or even as a practice good in itself, but partly in condescension to the weakness of a stubborn people, partly by way of fine and punishment for their transgressions, partly as emblematic ceremonies showing the heinous and dangerous nature of sin which deserved death, and partly as a figurative representation of the atonement to be made by the Lamb of God who should take away the sins of the world. Secondly, God never commanded sacrifice as a thing of its own nature right and fit, but only as useful or necessary by way of consequence. It was usually a rite by which men renewed a covenant with God, and it supposed some transgression, so that if men had never sinned it would have had no place. When God accepted it, He approved it only as it was a testimony of contrition, a humble acknowledgment of unworthiness, a desire to honour Him with a present, and to be received again into favour and alliance with Him. Another objection to the Jewish religion is taken from the bloody wars which the Israelites waged with some nations, and with some cities, by Divine command, and in which they were directed to give no quarter to their enemies, but to put them all to the sword. But it is strange that any one who believes in God should think this to be an insuperable objection, a difficulty not to be removed, and a full confutation of the Jewish religion, because such sort of reasoning will overset natural as much as revealed religion. It will prove, if it proves anything, that God cannot suffer diseases and calamities to destroy so many of His creatures every day; for diseases and calamities are in some sense of His appointment, and arise from the constitution and the nature of the things which He hath created. Another objection to the Old Testament is that Moses and the Prophets had not just notions of the Divine perfections, and ascribe to God things unworthy of Him. Thus, for example, they represent God as punishing the children for the faults of the parents, as being the author of evil, and as obnoxious to human infirmities, and to the passions of grief, anger, and jealousy. As to God's visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children — First, this threatening being annexed to the commandment against idolatry, is not properly personal, but rather national. Secondly, God still reserved to Himself a power, by a particular providence, to show favour to particular persons who should distinguish themselves by their good behaviour, and carefully avoid the vices and iniquities of their forefathers. Thirdly, when the nation was degenerated, and was punished for it, and the righteous and the wicked were involved in the same public calamities, God was able to make a compensation to the least guilty and the more innocent, partly in this world, and fully in another world. As to the objection that they represent God as the Author of evil — by this way of speaking they never meant to remove the guilt of wicked actions from men and to lay it upon God; they only intended to acknowledge the superintending providence of God, and to declare that no event took place without His knowledge and permission. In this sense they held that He created both good and evil, and that there were not two Gods, two Principles, or First Causes, but only one Author of all, of all those powers and qualities which the righteous employ to good purposes, and of which sinners make a bad use. As to those passages of Scripture in which God is clothed with human infirmities, and subject to human passions, these things are spoken in condescension to our capacities, and arise from the imperfection of human language, and the necessity of representing things spiritual in a way suitable to our conceptions. Another and a common objection to the Old Testament is taken from the behaviour of those illustrious persons who are represented as holy men and servants of God, and some of whose actions are not condemned in Scripture, and yet are not justifiable. First, we must remember that the doctrines of morality in those ancient times were not so perfect as those of the Gospel; and, therefore, proper allowances must be made upon that account. Secondly, the history of the Old Testament is often vary short and concise; and as we know not all the circumstances, we should rather incline to judge too favour-ably than too severely of the actions of good men which are of an ambiguous nature, and to admit of any candid apology which may be suggested for them; at least, we should suspend our judgment in such eases, and not decide too hastily.

(J. Jortin, D. D.).

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KJV: He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel.

WEB: He shows his word to Jacob; his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.