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and worship God the Creator, who rested on the seventh day from the work of the creation of the earth on which we move, of the firmament on which we gaze, and of the heaven to which we aspire.-Raise our souls to the contemplation of the hour when Christ rose from the dead, to prove to us that the victory of the grave over our bodies shall be conquered, that the sting of death within our souls is removed, and that Christ the Lord is now, even now, the Prophet to teach us, the King to rule us, and the Priest who is at once the victim and the Intercessor at the right hand of His Father and our Father, of His God and our God.-No less also do we pray Thee to enable us on the Lord's day, to remember not only the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church of the living God, but enable us also, we pray Thee, to look back upon all the way that Thou hast led us through the wilderness of life; and to feel and know within ourselves, that the same Holy Spirit of God has been with us, has dwelt with us, has been and is now, even now, with us-to convince us of sin, to change our nature from the earthly to the spiritual, and to comfort us and to strengthen us in our warfare against evil, till we be more than conquerors through Christ who hath loved us. So may the rest of the Sabbath, the rest of the Lord's day on earth, be the anticipation and the beginning of the peace of God, which shall ever attend us in temptation and in trouble, in sickness and in death; and be with us for ever, as one part of the happiness and blessedness of the world. So be with us, we pray Thee, that Thy law shall be written on our hearts.-Make it our meat and our drink, our happiness and our delight, to do Thy will, trust in Thy mercy, believe in Thy Son, and live under the power, and influence, and comfort of Thy Holy Spirit-till life be ended and death be over, and the veil be passed through, which separates the soul which longs for its rest, from the more glorious manifestation of the presence of its God, than this fallen, tempting, sinful world affords us. Forgive our imperfections. Accept our prayers, which we offer not in our own name, but in the name of our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath taught and commanded us when we pray, to say,

Our Father, &c.

The grace of our Lord, &c.

NOTE.

NOTE. On the reasons for which Moses was not instructed to establish his laws on the sanction of a future state. Exod. xxxi. 15.

The work of the creation, the seventh day rest, and the hope of immortality, are subjects in which all mankind may be said to be equally interested. The Sabbath rest is made by St. Paul a type of the rest in heaven. The Hebrew in this verse of the expression translated 'a Sabbath of rest,' is in na The second word has an intensitive signification, implying that the seventh day is a day of perfect rest. It is, I think, very probable that St. Paul in Heb. iv. 29, alludes to this very intensitive, when he employs the unusual expression σαββατισμός, there remaineth a rest,' or a Sabbatism, a state of continual, spiritual rest, for the people of God. He may also, it is true, allude to the Septuagint translation of Exod. xiv. 30 : ἐσαββάτισεν ὁ λαὸς τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ ἑβδόμη, ' the people sabbatized

on the seventh day.'-The reflection then occurred to me, why was it, that, when an opportunity was thus presented to the Hebrew lawgiver of alluding to the better Sabbath, the rest that remaineth for the people of God, he was not instructed to assure the Israelites more explicitly than he has done, of the certainty of a future state-of the immortality of the soul-that there was a reward for the righteous, and a God who judgeth the earth? Bishop Warburton, it is well known, would assure us that the sanctions of the Hebrew laws were the immediate rewards or punishments in the present life; and that the doctrine of a particular Providence being constantly demonstrated to be true, confirmed the truth of the divine legation of Moses, more effectually, than the promises or threatenings of a future state. Now I have frequently shown that we have abundant reason to believe that the doctrine of a future state was

known to, believed, and taken for granted by the Jews'. But it is no less certain that the legation and laws of Moses do not rest upon that doctrine in the same manner as the legation and laws of our Blessed Saviour.

1 Pererii Comm. in Gen., Lugd. 1599, p. 425. "Non est dubitandum ex his paucis verbis quibus Moses creationem animæ rationalis indicavit demonstrari et probari posse animam hominis esse immortalem, quod etiam multifariam hoc libro et aliis suis libris Moses significavit."

L. Maji Comm. in Bibl., Col. 1621. p. 23. "Inspiravit," additur hoc speciatim post descriptam corporis formationem, ut indicetur animam humanam non educi ex materiâ instar aliarum formarum, sed extrinsecùs advenire a Deo, adeoque immortalem esse, et corpore independentem.

Gen xxiii. 1. § Crit. Sacr, tom. i. p. 36. Fagius. "Et flavil in nares, &c Tria ergo hic sunt quæ animæ immortalitem statuunt. 3. Vocabulum (Hajim) -ut quidam volunt-præsentis et futuri seculi vitam, quod solùm anima hominis competit, designat. igitur (Nistmath Hajim) flatus seu spiritus divinus, cœlestis immortalis, æternum durans; quibus vocibus pulchre discernit inter animam hominis immortalem, et animam brutorum animantium," &c.

Est

H. Maius, de Economia Temporum Vet. Test. 1706, p. 152. "Spiraculum vitarum dicitur quia omnem vitam conferebat, non tantùm temporalem et corporalem, qualem etiam bestiæ habent, sed etiam æternam; ut pridem multi vocis plurativæ vim exprimere sunt conati."

Lorinus in Act. Apost., p. 96. Act. iv. 28. Notas mihi fecisti semitas vitæ, &c. "De resurrectione

loquitur et glorificatione corporis et vitâ immortali, ad quam ante Christum nemo resurrexerat, nemo noverat, hoc est, expertus fuerat." Id in Psal., 1 vol., p. 207. "Christus autem multo magis sub personâ David significat demonstratas uni sibi vias a patre, rationesque quibus et ipse et sui obtinere immortalitatem beatam valerent tunc corporis, tum animæ,"

&c.

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Now I believe the causes of this difference are to be sought in the circumstances of the age in which Moses lived; and that these causes are to be found in the perversions which I have related in the Introduction to this Section, of the doctrine of a future state to the basest political and party purposes by the Egyptian priesthood.-I need not repeat here what I have said in the Introduction, but I refer the reader to the plates in Sir Gardner Wilkinson's last volume, and to Michaelis on the laws of Moses, Art. 14 and 272. The objection to Michaelis as a theological writer is, that he speaks of the laws of Moses as if they were merely institutions of human and not of divine origin.

ta, qui immolabat agnum, non in sanguine animalis spem salutis et fiduciam reponebat, sed cogitabat alium agnum, viz. Jesum Christum, qui sanguinem suum fusurus erat pro remissione peccatorum.'

Critici Sacri, Lond. 1660, p. 817. "Quâ re (effusione sanguinis super altare) adumbratus (inquiunt doctores) est verus usus sanguinis Domini ac Servatoris nostri Jesu Christi; viz. quod solus sanguis illius pro peccatis nostris effusus sit, placatio pro animabus nostris, et reconciliatio, et sanctificatio nostra." Sam. Clark, A. M. Annotations in the Old and New Testaments, 1690, note on Levit. xvii. 11. It is the blood, viz. of the sacrifice sacramentally and typically, and of Christ that makes atonement really. Rom. iii. 25. Col. i. 20. Heb. ix. 12. And Willet's 2nd vol. Hexapla on Lev., p. 409. § H. Maius, De Econ. Temp. Vet. Test., p. 387.

The declaration, "Man shall not live by bread alone," is said in the future tense. But bread will support the present life; therefore there is a life which bread will not support; and that life must of necessity be, either a spiritual or a future life, either of which proves that this text is a demonstration that Moses hath expressly mentioned a future state.

1 Smith's Translation, vol. i. p. 45, and vol. iv. p. 200.

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