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mixing with near relatives the same in one period of time as in another, the same in other people as in the Jews? When therefore the object of the law is moral; when it essentially applies to the whole world, and to every period of time; when it has nothing in its nature, form or scope - nothing in the connection in which it is introduced, or the language in which it is expressed, that has the most distant respect to any rites or ceremonies; with what propriety, or by what authority, will any contend that this law against incest is a ceremonial law? - And if the whole law against incest, in the aggregate, be not ceremonial, with what shadow of argument, can any particular precept, in that law, be separated from the rest and be pronounced ceremonial? Is the precept, verse 16, against marrying a sister in law any more ceremonial than the other prohibitions in this chapter? will any man, who understands what he reads, allow that the other precepts against incest, or those against sodomy are moral, and yet contend that the precept respecting a sister in law is ceremonial? has that any criterion of peculiarity or ceremony distinct from the others? does it not possess the same character, and is it not enjoined in the same connection, the same style, and by the same

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authority with all the other precepts? has it not the same internal marks, the same essential properties of a moral law? they who rashly attempt to degrade this precept from its true and exalted station, must beware lest they incur the awful threatening denounced, Revel. xxii. 19.

2. In the preceding section we have seen - that it was essential to a Theocracy, to have the doctrines of grace, together with the moral precepts, blended with the civil and ecclesiastical laws, that thus one complete code, exactly corresponding with the dispensation of the Old Testament, might be formed. - That in consequence of this arrangement, throughout all the books of the Old Testament, and especially in the Pentateuch, the promises and precepts appertaining to the invisible Church are mingled with topicks which are peculiar to the visible Church, and connected with the ecclesiastical and civil government of the Jews. - That as all the other commandments contained in the Decalogue, which is a summary of the moral law, are, in one place or other of the Mosaic system, distinctly illustrated; their principles established; and sanctions enforced; so we may confidently expect the same will be done,