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may lawfully enter into that holy state, as well as what concerns the honourable protection of the ordinance, after its consummation. This Law has been given. It is moral in its principle and its restrictions, universal in its promulgation, and binding upon all the human family.

The positive laws of God which are PECULIAR, that is, which are binding upon a particular people alone, and in force for a limited period only, are those which were given to Israel, and were adapted to the dispensation of the Church under the Old Testament.

To separate the posterity of Jacob from all other nations, to preserve the knowledge of the promises and truths of religion inviolate, and to keep pure and distinct, a people from whom the Messiah was to spring, it pleased God to erect a THEOCRACY. In accomplishing this adorable and astonishing establishment, Jehovah, the Redeemer himself, who always was, and forever will be, the divine Head of his Church, condescended to become also, the civil ruler or King of Israel. In consequence of this, the visible Church and the civil state of that people, became

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united; and the laws which respected the Church were blended with those which were civil. ^*   The moral Law especially, which is the basis of all the ordinances, statutes and precepts, together with the promises established by the covenant of grace is necessarily interwoven with all these, and thus one perfect code is formed, comprehending whatever respected the Israelites as men, as professing believers, and as citizens of the Theocracy.

Agreeably to the particular relations in Israel to which the respective peculiar and positive laws refer, a distinction is made. One portion of them is called the Ceremonial, the other the Civil law. ^*

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*   The nature of the Theocracy, which necessarily involved the immediate interposition of God, and would be supported only by miraculous providences, fully refutes the argument of Bishop Warburton, in his essay to prove, and illustrate the union of the Church and state. Under the New-Testament dispensation there is no Theocracy, an union of the Church and state is therefore now, impracticable.

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*   The term law is variously used in the sacred scriptures. Sometimes it denotes, in a general sense, any binding power, as in Rom. vii. 21. 23. &c. but when employed to express a rule of conduct, it often comprises the whole divine revelation, comprehending all the doctrines, promises, and precepts: so Ps. i. Ps. xix. Ps. cxix. - It frequently designates more particularly the moral law, in which sense it chiefly occurs in the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians. - In other passages, it refers generally to the Mosaic system, in which the moral law is included with those precepts, which are denominated ceremonial and civil. - The term is usually thus introduced by the Prophets, and by the Apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews.