LECTURE 1.

GALATIANS iii. 19.

Wherefore then serveth the Law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.

THAT the Old Testament, so far from being contrary to the New, as some ancient heretics held, was designed to be a preparatory revelation, containing at the least a dim outline of the more perfect one that was to come, may be assumed as admitted by most of those who profess and call themselves Christians. Less than this indeed can hardly be maintained by those, who believe that both parts of the Canon proceeded from the same Divine Author, and come under the same category of inspiration; and who remember, that by Christ and His Apostles the writings of the old dispensation are constantly referred to, as furnishing testimony of various character, by allegory, by type, and by prophecy, to the facts and doctrines of the Gospel. Whatever differences may exist in the principles on which the economies

B

of Moses and of Christ were respectively constructed, or in the mode of instruction peculiar to each; whatever positive imperfections may have belonged to the earlier revelation as compared with the later; to whatever extent the temporary and provisional appointments of the one may have been superseded by the other; there must be a connexion, an essential harmony, between them, for they both testify of Christ, the scope, and central object, of all God's communications to fallen man. We may distinguish here, but we cannot separate; for the whole range of revelation is knit together, and made substantially one, by the unity of the keystone, upon which all depends, to which all, more or less directly, refers.

But while we may reckon upon an assent to these statements thus generally propounded, when we come to examine more minutely the views which have been taken by individual Christians, or by sections of the Christian body, of the relation of the Old Testament to the New, we find great diversity prevailing. By the heretics of ancient times already alluded to, the divine origin of the Old Testament was openly denied, its author being supposed to be a secondary evil principle or deity, by whom the world was created, and who was in perpetual warfare with the self-existent and eternal fountain of good". Proceeding from such a source, the Jewish system a See Faber, Hor. Mos. ii. §. 1.

was essentially evil; its ordinances were carnal and debasing; its morality defective; and the mission of Christ, in reference to the Law and the Prophets, was not to fulfil, but to destroy. The necessary consequence of these tenets was, a complete severance of the Jewish from the Christian Scriptures, as if the two, instead of being supplementary, were irreconcileably opposed, the one to the other. An error of exactly an opposite character prevailed amongst the first Jewish converts to Christianity. Unable to conceive how a system, which had been accredited by stupendous miracles, and with which their existence as a separate nation and their most hallowed associations were bound up, could ever outlive its purposes in the economy of redemption, and become needless, they insisted on the continued obligation of the law of Moses on Christians, not only of Jewish but of Gentile origin; so that submission to the rite of circumcision, not less than faith in Christ, became in their eyes essential to salvation. It required all the authority of the great Apostle of the Gentiles to arrest the progress of these erroneous views, which, had they become dominant in the Church, would not only have corrupted Christianity to its core, but rendered its diffusion throughout the world impossible. The struggle was severe and protracted; even Apostles found it difficult to overcome their Jewish prejudices, and enter into the universal spirit of Christianity; but

at length the question was decided against the zealots of the Law, and the Jewish element either separated itself from the Church, or lay apparently extinct until circumstances revived it under another form. It is seldom that Divine Providence fails in eliciting good from evil, and to this great controversy we owe the luminous expositions of the relation of the Law to the Gospel which abound in St. Paul's Epistles, and especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and to which, in our discussions on this subject, we must ever refer as furnishing the great landmarks by which our course is to be guided.

Between the two extremes, thus briefly alluded to, opinion has fluctuated in the Church, according as a higher or a lower view has been taken of the nature and objects of the Old Testament institutions, and the differences between the two dispensations have been either exaggerated or understated. Some, like Spencer and his followers, have been unable to see any thing in the Mosaic appointments but an imitation of heathen, especially Egyptian, religious rites, by the adoption of which, shorn of their impure and idolatrous accompaniments, the Israelites, who were incapable of a more spiritual worship, were to be retained in their allegiance to their Divine King, and acquiesce the more contentedly in the prohibitions of their law against the admixture of foreign elements of worship". According

b See Spencer's work, De Leg. Heb. passim.

to this view, the main, if not the sole, object of the Mosaic system was the prevention of idolatry; its symbolical and typical import being proportionably disregarded. Spencer's theory, as might be expected, has been taken up and carried further by the rationalistic writers of Germany and their followers in this country; by no means more effectually than by robbing the Old Testament of its Christianity, could Christianity itself, as exhibited in the New, be despoiled of its distinctive doctrines. The opponents of Spencer's school, who number among them many eminent names, have perhaps, in their well-meant endeavours to rescue the elder revelation from the inferior place assigned to it, been tempted to invest it with characters of perfection which do not properly belong to it. Not content with proving, that the Jewish system was so constructed as not merely to inculcate the unity and spirituality of the Divine Being, but to prefigure the great truths of the Gospel, they have insisted, that under the Law these truths were as clearly taught, and as clearly understood, as they are under our dispensation; so that if the writings of the Apostles and their fellow-helpers had perished, we should still be able to construct

See especially Witsius on the Covenants, b. iv. c. 11, 12. The Calvinistic writers generally betray an inclination to exaggerate the perfection of the law as a religious system. Calvin himself is not exempt from this tendency. See his Institutes, 1. ii. c. 10.