delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification ;" there do they all agree in this one principle, that man may himself, by costly, painful, or laborious means, make an atonement for the sins that are past, fortify the soul by rigid methods of mortification, against the incursion of sin for the future, and present a valuable offering of good and holy works, fragrant with meritorious excellence, and most acceptable to the good and holy God. That man is able to expiate for iniquity, and obliterate its pollution, and wholly and perfectly to sanctify himself, is the most valued and the highest doctrine of all false religions: this is the cherished mystery of the Brahminical Yogee, of the Budhistic contemplator, of the Mohammedan Faquier, of the Popish devotionist, of all the monks and nuns, and of all the hermits, eremites, stylites, and solitudinarians, whom the dread of the wrath to come, and the ignorance of the grace of God in Christ, have driven to the practices of a forlorn and horrid superstition. These deluded devotees have, indeed, arranged themselves under different banners of the Prince of Darkness; they follow different leaders; they believe in different names, and adopt different practices; but their object is one, and their grand moving principle is one; and hence, as the Gospel opposes their grand principle, and brings forward another and a greater power, which swallows up the rods of all the magicians, even the righteousness which is by faith; therefore is the Gospel of the grace of God hated by all the sects of darkness on the face of the earth, and is an utter abomination in their sight, to be destroyed by fire and sword, from the walls of Pekin to the utmost limits of the Papal diocese.

The extracts already given from the tracts of Maimonides have shown that the expatriated Israelites, though driven from altar, priest, and sacrifice, cannot be driven from the religion of the natural man; "for they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God."

Maimonides, indeed, makes a melancholy confession for his countrymen ;

"Since we have no temple nor altar," says he," there is no expiation now for our sins, but only penitence."

But even this is not left to the Jew; for, as the whole life of the law consisted in the sacrificial* atonement to be made by the priest, so

* “And if a soul sin, and commit any of these things which are forbidden to be done by the commandments of the Lord; though he wist it not, yet is he guilty, and shall bear his

that when the sacrifice ceased the law of Moses of necessity ceased also, we now behold the Jews in a predicament wholly without parallel,—we see them at liberty to practise the worship which Moses ordained; we see them, also, desiring its restoration above all things, and yet unable to fulfil their wishes, not because man prevents them, but because God forbids it. What should hinder the Jew from building temples or raising altars in England or in Poland? The same liberty of worship would be conceded to them as to the Roman Catholics; and it would be a matter of no moment, either to the British or Russian governments, that their Jewish subjects were amusing themselves with sacrificing sheep and oxen; but the decree of Jehovah has gone forth against them; their altar is irreparably ruined; Zion, the city of their solemnities, is become heaps; the tribe of the Levites is dissolved beyond recovery; and they, having forfeited the statutes of their great lawgiver, can no longer draw nigh to Him who dwelleth between the cherubim.

Maimonides, therefore, and the expatriated Jews, betake themselves, as a last resource, to another mode of expiation,-to naked repentance, unconnected with atonement, wholly unauthorised by the statutes given on Mount Sinai, and having no reference to the propitiation of the Just One, of whom the prophets speak, "who was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities; for the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed."

Penitence, however, is the totality of the religion of Maimonides, and of all others who, in their burning zeal for righteousness, understand neither the righteousness of God, nor their own inability to produce that which they supposed is required of them. The righteousness demanded unto justification before God is infinite; they suppose it to be something far less; and they know not that he who has violated but one of the commandments of the law has violated its integrity, and broken the whole of it; "for whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all," James ii. 10.

iniquity. And he shall bring a ram without blemish out of the flock, with thy estimation, for a trespass-offering, unto the priest: and the priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his ignorance wherein he erred and wist it not, and it shall be forgiven him. It is a trespass-offering: he hath certainly trespassed against the Lord." Lev. v. 17—19.

The atonement by blood extended even to the sins of ignorance; and so fully is the purging of all things by blood taught in the law, that even the acts of holiness could not be accepted without a mediator; and therefore the high priest entered, not without blood, into the sanctuary," bearing the iniquity of their holy things."

The Almighty will have perfect righteousness; and its perfection is to be judged by the whole scope and motive and limits of a man's life, past, present, and to come. The righteous man whom God accepts must never have committed any sin at all, be in sinless righteousness at this present hour; and, for the remainder of his life, commit no sin, either in thought, word, or deed.

Now, Maimonides supposes that good works will atone for past evil deeds, and that future watchfulness, and methods of mortification, will effectually subdue sin, and prevent it from gaining the mastery. He has, therefore, no adequate idea of the sinfulness of sin, or of the incorruptible integrity of the law: he does not understand the tyranny and the corruption of the body of death; he comprehends not the rebellion of Adam's flesh, which is not to be controlled by any discipline that man can devise; nor does he know the indomitable nature of that wild beast within the heart of man which he would curb with careful rules of will-worship, and cautious regulations of superstition.

And the ignorance of Maimonides is precisely that of the whole school of Popery, whether we meet with it in the decrees of the Council of Trent, or the miserable aberrations of the Oxford and the highchurch divinity. All ideas of repentance, separated from justification by faith, are of one origin, and tend to one and the same object,—to elaborate an elixir vitæ for the soul, one drop of which has never been produced in all the laboratories of Benares, Rome, or Oxford. They that are engaged in this hopeless occupation are ever, as a first step, contending earnestly against sin, but are wholly unable to achieve its mortification; and though they invent numerous methods to mortify the natural man, within the range of the natural life which we live, they never are able to mortify lust or corruption itself; for, in all their labour, and in all their work, and in all their warfare, they fall upon the natural body instead of the corrupt old man,-upon the body wherein we live, instead of the body of death.

With these inadequate conceptions of the true work to be done, they are of course contented with inadequate remedies; and hence all those rules of austerity and watchfulness, hence those careful directions for sanctity, which they prescribe in ignorance, and recommend with confidence; which multitudes of miserable sinners have tried, in the vain hope of finding the peace they desire, but from which the corruption of nature continually repels them, because they have chosen a way which is not "the way, the truth, and the life:" for, though the Almighty has so framed the mind of man as that human conscience should entirely assent to the Divine law, and acknowledge that it is

holy, just, and good, yet this is only that man might understand the nature of sin and of righteousness, and discover his inability to perform that which his conscience enjoins, and thus have a capacity to receive the gratuitous justification which is in the blood and righteousness of the Redeemer, " for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all them that believe." And after men have done all they can, by most prudent and solicitous endeavours to restrain the motions of sin in their members, and have attempted every thing that a guilty conscience could suggest, to propitiate for the sins that are past, yet still this great eternal truth of God remains unaltered and unimpaired, that "to him who worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness."

We now proceed with further extracts from the treatise on Repentance.

Maimonides says,

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"There is a mixture of virtues and vices in every man. If the virtues of any man exceed his vices, he is esteemed just or righteous; but if his vices exceed his virtues, he is esteemed to be wicked; but if his vices and virtues are equal, then he is called a middling man. In the same way, if the virtues of the inhabitants of any city or province should be more than their vices, then that city or province is to be considered righteous; but if their vices are greater than their virtues, then the city or province is to be deemed wicked. And in this way the whole world is to be judged. If the vices of any man are greater than his virtues, he will forthwith die in his iniquity;* for it is said in Hosea ix. 6, ' On account of the greatness of thy wickedness.' And thus, if the vices of any city or province are greater than its virtues, it will be quickly destroyed; for it is written, Gen xviii., Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great,' &c. And thus, also, if the vices of the whole world should exceed its virtues, it would be forthwith destroyed; for it is written, Gen. vi. 5, When the Lord saw that the iniquity of men was increased on the earth,' &c. This estimation is to be made, not from the number, but from the magnitude of virtues and vices; for one virtue frequently preponderates over many vices; for it is written in the first Book of Kings (xiv. 13,) Because some good thing is found in him.' There is also a sin which preponderates over many virtues; for it is written, Eccles. ix. 18, One sinner destroyeth much good.' But this reckoning of the matter is only for the judgment of a man very deeply skilled in the science of morals, (or in moral things,) for he knows well how virtues ought to be compared and weighed with vices.

"Whosoever grieves that he has kept the commandments, and is angry that he has been righteous, and says within himself, What advantage to me is my obedience? I wish I had not kept the commandments,' this man loses all the benefit of his goodness, and his righteousness will never be imputed to him; for it is written in Ezek. xxxiii. 12, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver

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* i. e. if he does not repent. This explanation is requisite to keep harmony with the rest of the treatise.

him in the day of his transgression.' But this rule does not hold good, unless he has been grieved for some very great and excellent virtues."

"When they make comparison of any one's vices with his virtues, they do not impute to him [or reckon against him] his first or second sin, but only his third, and all the sins that come after the third: but if, by reckoning from his third sin, they find his vices greater than his virtues, then they add to them his two first sins, (Nos. 1 and 2,) and so pass judgment on him for them all : but if, on reckoning from the third sin, they find the virtues to be equal to the vices, and so on to the end, then they take no account of the first and the second sin, because, in that case, the third is reckoned for the first, and the two first (Nos. 1 and 2,) are pardoned; and the fourth again becomes the first, since the third is pardoned, and so on to the end. How is this to be understood? In one only way; for it is written, Job xxxiii. 29, ́ And all these things doth God twice and thrice with men.

"For the first, second, and third sin is not imputed to the congregation, [i. e. to the Jews;] for it is written in Amos i. 3, For three transgressions of Israel,' [in the Scripture text' Damascus,']' and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof.' And in this way they reckon his [i. e. the Jew's] sin, from the fourth, and so on to the end.

"But if this should be the greatest sin of one of the middling sinners, that he never had put on a phylactery, then they account him to be sin, and he shall have his portion in the life to come. In the same way they judge of wicked men, whose sins are great, and they shall have their part in the future life. For all Israelites shall have a portion in the world to come, though they be sinners; for it is written, in Isa. lx. 21, Thy people are righteous; they shall inherit the land for ever.'t In this passage' the earth' is taken parabolically, as if the prophet had said the land of life,' that is, the world to come. Also, amongst the Gentiles, the pious shall have their place in the world to come."

The view of sin given in this extract from the great Jewish doctor, is to be considered as applicable to the Jews only; for, in other passages, he cuts off the Christians by name from all hope of a portion in the world to come, and with them the Mohammedans, because they deny the law, and say that it has ceased, and that "another law has gone forth from God;"" they, therefore," he says, "are cut off for ever, are lost, and excommunicated."

For his countrymen he evidently wishes to make a law for the conscience as lenient as possible; hence his curious estimate of sin, taken from the Talmudists; and hence his weighing them in the scales, as it were, to let the sinning Jews escape, if possible; though, indeed, by assigning the worst sinners a portion in the life to come, he seems to render nugatory all his previous and subsequent declarations of the punishment of sin. The pride and presumption of the Hebrew theologues does not allow them to suppose the possibility of the final

* In the text of Job it is, "All these things will God do three times with a man;" which is, perhaps not improperly, rendered, in our authorised version, oftentimes.

+ In our version the reading is, " Thy people shall be all righteous ;" which is the mani. fest meaning of the Hebrew, though the verb is omitted.