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burned with fire." The "voice of love and mercy" that "sounds from Calvary," charms away the dread of the thunders of Sinai. But still, to such a display of the divine purity, and majesty, and avenging righteousness, it becomes us to approach with solemn awe. For, although Calvary teaches a lesson of grace, which could not be learned from Sinai, yet it teaches, at the same time, and that even more impressively, the lesson of God's immaculate holiness, and unbending rectitude and truth:"Wherefore we, receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear: for even our God is a consuming fire." *

It is not to be denied, that in some of the statements and reasonings of the apostle Paul, one of the principal difficulties arises from the more comprehensive and the more restricted acceptations in which, on different occasions, he uses the term "LAW." A general consideration of this subject, however important, would lead us into too wide a digression. We must restrict our present discussion entirely to the Decalogue,-the law of the two tables,the ten commandments. That these commandments were remarkably distinguished, first by their being uttered from Sinai by the voice of God, and afterwards by their being written with his finger on the tables of stone, is matter of fact, which cannot be questioned. It has been questioned, however, whether this distinction was not more accidental than designed. It has been conceived to have arisen rather from circumstances which happened to occur at the time, than from divine intention on account of any peculiar

*Heb. xii. 28, 29.

excellence or comprehensiveness in the precepts themselves. The origin of the distinction, according to one very acute and intelligent writer,* was the circumstance of Jehovah's having been interrupted by the fears of the people, which brought them to Moses, with the earnest entreaty, that God might not thus speak unto them any more. He imagines, that, but for this, other parts of the law would have been delivered in the same way, and that the distinc tion was thus circumstantial only, and accidental. It does not appear to me, that this view of the matter accords well with the terms of the narrative, as already quoted-" These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly, in the Mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice; AND HE ADDED NO MORE." This mode of expression appears to me clearly to indicate, that at the close of the ten commandments, there was a cessation of the voice by which they were uttered. Each of the ten must, of course, have been separated from the succeeding one, by an intervening But after the tenth, there was evidently somepause. thing more, a cessation of the voice,-indicating, that these commandments contained the substance of the law, or of the people's part of the divine covenant. This receives striking confirmation from the language of Moses, in the preceding chapter of Deuteronomy, verses 12, 13. "And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice. And he declared unto you

* Mr. Hallet, in his work entitled, A Free and Impartial Study of the Holy Scriptures recommended: being Notes on some peculiar texts, with Discourses and Observations on various subjects. Disc. iii.

his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone." Nothing can well be more explicit than this :+++ "he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments." No wonder, then, that on the utterance of the tenth, the voice ceased, and "he added no more. His "covenant had been declared, which he commanded them to perform." It was not a mere specimen of his law, which had chanced to be distinguished from the rest in the way mentioned; it was a summary of its moral requirements.

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The evidence being so unsatisfactory, of the accidental nature of the distinction between these commandments and others, there is, of course, equally little ground for the further allegation, that the sole reason of these Commandments being committed to the tables of stone, was the fact of their having been thus accidentally distinguished; this fact alone being supposed to have given them their peculiar eminence, as a select specimen of the pre cepts of the God of Israel; and the honour of being recorded in stone having been added, in consequence of the previous accidental honour of having been exclusively uttered by the divine voice. It appears to me sufficiently clear, that they were both uttered from heaven, and inscribed on stone, as being precepts of primary and comprehensive importance, containing the great essential articles of the people's obedience; and that, on this account, they are denominated so repeatedly "the covenant," and the tables containing them, the “tables of the covenant.”

Yet on these grounds, and others to which the discussion will immediately lead, it has been argued, that the Deca

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logue is no more of permanent and universal obligation, than any other parts of the Mosaic institutes; that its obligation was limited to the Jews, and came to a close with the Old Testament dispensation; and that it forms no part of the law of Christian duty. In support of this conclusion, apostolic authority has been adduced. Paul, it has been alleged, evidently declares the law of the ten commandments abrogated, when he writes of it in the following terms 2 Cor. iii. 7, 8, 11. "But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away; how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious? For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious." It ought, however, to be carefully observed, that the subject of which the apostle is treating, when he thus writes, is the superior spirituality of the new covenant dispensation to that of the old. The distinction which he makes between the one and the other, is that between writing on stone, and writing on the heart. And what is it, then, that is written on the heart? What if we shall find, that it is the very law which, of old, was written on stone? To decide this, let us look to the prophetic description of the new covenant, as contrasted with the old. Jer. xxxi. 31-34. "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand, to bring them out of the land of Egypt (which my covenant they brake, al

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though I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord;) But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my peo ple. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."—It is with the first of these new covenant promises we have at present to do-"I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts." It will not surely be questioned, that in the terms of this promise, there is an allusion to the writing of the law, under the former covenant, upon stone. The contrast, therefore, in the prophet, is the same as that in the apostle. The very law that of old, written on the tables of stone is, under the new dispensation, written on the fleshy tables of the heart. I ask, then, is this abrogation? Is the transference of the law from stone to the heart the disannulling of it? And if not, must not the apostle, when he speaks of that which was written and engraven in stones being "done away," be understood as referring, not to the moral substance of the law, but to the comparative externality of that economy under which it was "written and engraven on stones?" Surely that law was not abolished, which, in the full spirituality of its import, was written by "the Spirit of the living God," upon the renewed heart. This certainly was retaining the substance, and parting only with what was outward and transitory. The tables of stone are

was,

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