enings and severities. And this is the account St. Paul gives of it, o voμos Taidaywyos the law was a schoolmaster; that is, had a temporary authority serving to other ends," (not temporary), "with no final concluding power. It could chastise and threaten, but it could not condemn: it had not power of eternal life and death; that was given by other measures1." "Some little it had of repentance; sacrifices and expiations were appointed for small sins, but nothing at all for greater. Every great sin brought death infallibly. And as it had a little image of repentance, so it had something of promises, to be as a grace and auxiliary to set forward obedience: but this would not do it. The promises were temporal, and that could not secure obedience in great instances; and there being for them no remedy appointed by repentance, the law could not justify; it did not promise life eternal, nor give sufficient security against the temporal; only it was brought in as a pædagogy for the present necessity. "But this pædagogy, or institution, was also a manuduction to the Gospel. For they were used to severe laws, that they might the more readily entertain the holy precepts of the Gospel, to which eternally they would have shut their ears, unless they had had some preparatory institution of severity and fear: and therefore St. Paul also calls it παιδαγωγίαν εις Χριστον, a pædagogue or institution leading to Christ?'" 1 Bishop Taylor, Vol. VIII. IV. The law, by promising a better covenant in which the forgiveness of sin was to be proclaimed, and the knowledge of God enlarged, made known its own imperfection, and disposed righteous men to the accepting of the Christian doctrine, as the completion of the covenant of mercy and justification, the revelation of the mystery or hidden wisdom of God. "It was this which made the world of the godly long for Christ, as having commission to open the κρυπτον άπο τῶν αἰώνων, the hidden mystery of justification by faith and repentance. For the law called for exact obedience, but ministered no grace but that of fear, which was not enough to the performance or the engagement of exact obedience. All, therefore, were here convinced of sin; but by this covenant they had no hopes, and therefore were to expect relief from another and a better: according to that saying of St. Paul," the Scripture concludes all under sin (that is, declares all the world to be sinners), that the promise by the faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe." This St. Bernard expresses in these words: 'Deus nobis hoc fecit ut nostram imperfectionem ostenderet, et Christi avidiores nos faceret.' Our imperfection was sufficiently manifest by the severity of the first covenant, that the world might long for salvation by Jesus Christ'' 4 Bishop Taylor, Vol. VIII. 3 1 Cor. ii. 7. V. Our Lord himself asserted that the Jewish law was to instruct its subjects in the nature of his dispensation, and be only preparatory to it. Our Saviour attributes to this connection between the law and the Gospel, the immense accessions to his cause that followed the ministry of John the Baptist to the time of his own ministry in which he noticed this circumstance: "from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent taketh it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophecied until Johns." His absolute authority over the institutions of Moses he declared to his disciples, when he called himself one or something greater than the temple, or Lord of the temple; which the Messiah would not have asserted, had there been no intimation in the law of one, who was the end of the law,' and the successor of Moses as well in his legislative as in his prophetic character. 6 The subserviency of the Mosaic Dispensation and law to the authority and religion of Christ, was prophetically typified upon Mount Tabor, when Moses and Elias appeared in glory, and spake of the death of Christ about to take place at Jerusalem'. These two representatives of the law and the prophets, testified to the divinity of our Lord's mission, and the duration of his glory and 5 Matt. xi. 12, 13. 6 Matt. xii. 6. 7 Matt. xvii. Mark ix. Luke ix. f religion, after the law and the prophets under the law should cease. Our Lord also after his resurrection referred his followers to Moses and the prophets as divine witnesses to the truth of his claims 8. VI. The disciples of Christ were with the Jewish nation ignorant of the spirituality of the Messiah's office and kingdom, even to the time of his ascension. But upon the descent of the Holy Spirit, they seem as it were translated into a new world. By the knowledge they then received, new hopes, ideas, motives and enjoyments took possession of them; and, inspired with an enthusiastic ardor, they were eager to compel their deluded countrymen to come into the same spiritual kingdom, and acknowledge the same spiritual deliverer with themselves. They taught that there was no difference between the Jew and Gentile in the sight of God, for that the privileges and distinctions of the Jewish law had been removed; and their renunciation of the law they justified by the assertion that the law was their pædagogue to lead them to Christ. They taught that the law by the mouth of Moses predicted another prophet like unto Moses, a lawgiver, or, at least, a reformer of the law, and a worker of miracles. They taught that all the principal events which marked the life of Jesus were foretold 8 Luke xxiv, 27. by the prophets as relating to Christ, so that Jesus was the Christ, and the prophet like unto Moses. They further taught the insufficiency of the law without the coming of Christ; that there were many things from which deliverance could be obtained only by Christ; and that no faith was acceptable to God but through the name of Christ, in other words, his mediation. They thus demonstrated the law and the gospel to be the parts of one system, not two separate and independent systems, and that the law was a pædagogy leading to Christ. In Peter's first sermon, prophecies under the law are referred for their consummation to the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, to the resurrection of Christ, and the manifestation of his dignity as Lord and Christ, the representative of the Father in the government both of the Church and of the world. Peter in his second discourse affirms that the sufferings of Christ were predicted by the prophets, and that Christ was the prophet like unto Moses, and the seed of Abraham, in whom all nations, and first of all, the Jews, were to be blessed. The second and sixteenth Psalms were frequently applied to our Lord by Peter, and by other Apostles. Stephen relating the history of Moses, pointedly alludes in the course of it to the ingratitude of his cotemporaries, as a silent reP upon the ingratitude of their posterity |