It was sepa

candlestick, the table of shew-bread, and the altar of incense, approached daily by the priests in their courses. rated by a great veil from the inner apartment, which held the ark of the covenant, covered with the wings of angels, as the mercy-seat, and contained, in the first temple, the two tables of stone, a pot of manna, and Aaron's rod that budded. Into this latter chamber the high priest only was permitted to enter; and that but once a-year- —on the great day of expiation. See Heb. ix. 1-9, Exod. xxv. 26, 27, &c. The temple was formed on the model of the tabernacle.

70. In proselytism, did the Jews make any difference between children born before, and those born after the baptism of their parents?

When the Jews received a proselyte to their religion, they both circumcised and baptised him. They considered this baptism as a kind of regeneration, whereby he became a new man. His male children, however, were commanded to be circumcised as well as himself; agreeably to Exodus xii. 48, When a stranger will sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover unto the Lord, let all his males be circumcised; and he shall be as one that is born in the land. But as this baptism was conceived to be a cleansing from the pollutions of idolatry, it was not required of his children subsequently born; for it was a maxim with the rabbis, "Natus baptizati habetur pro baptizato" (Godwin and Jennings); the branches were esteemed holy, as springing from a holy root.

71. The Pharisees.

The Pharisees derive their name from divisit, Mic. iii. 3, Lament. xliv.; for they separated themselves from others, as pretending to greater sanctity. They are, in Acts xxvi. 5, styled by St. Paul," the straitest sect" of the Jewish religion; and by Josephus accounted εὐσεβέστερον εἶναι τῶν ἄλλων. They plumed themselves on their skill in interpreting the law; to which they added many unwritten traditions, which they said were an oral law, delivered by God to Moses on the mount.

It is not certain at what period this sect arose; but its origin was probably subsequent to the time of Malachi, the last of the prophets, B. c. 397. The words of Isaiah (lxv. 5), Stand by thyself, come not near me; for I am holier than thou, though justly applied to them, only shew that there were proud hypocrites before they existed as a sect. The Pharisees acknowledged the immortality of the soul, and the existence of angels and spirits, Acts xxiii. 8; in this matter being opposed to the Sadducees, who denied both. But such of them as had been taught in the school of Alexandria believed in a transmigration of the souls of good men into other bodies; as, that Christ was John the Baptist, or Elias, or one of the prophets, Matt. xvi. 14; while the wicked were kept in chains of darkness for ever. They held the resurrection of the dead, with all its consequences, against the Sadducees, Matt. xxii. 23, Acts xxiii. 8. They strained some observances, good in themselves, to an unreasonable pitch; as, thinking it unlawful to heal and do good, or to take up one's couch or mattress, on the Sabbath-day; and added, as traditions, an intolerable yoke of their own inventions. Our Saviour, however, did not discountenance all traditions, but referred to some, as washings, saying that the evil consisted in substituting them, with the duties of almsgiving, fasting, and paying tithes, in the stead of the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, Matt. xxiii. 23. These, said he, you ought to have done, and not to leave the other observances undone.

The Pharisees, in short, made long prayers for a show, and coveted salutations in the markets, while they vitiated even their prayers, and what good they did, by the motive, which was, to be seen of men; making broad their phylacteries — Hebrew or rolls of parchment inscribed with Scriptural texts, on the authority of Prov. iii. 1, 3, vi. 21, Deut. vi. 8, and worn on their wrists and foreheads; and, under this veil of pride and ostentation, devouring the houses of widows. All their religion was show; like a platter, of which the outside was burnished, and the inside neglected; and they themselves were as whited sepulchres, beautiful in aspect, but within full of uncleanness, Matt. xxiii.

The traditions were collected and published, 150 years before Christ, by Rabbi Judah Hakkodesh, who called his book the Mishna, or Second Law.

Nicodemus and St. Paul were Pharisees. While the Sadducees denied all future being, the Essenes affirmed the future life of the soul without any body; and the Pharisees stood between both. On the authority of Deut. xxii. 12, the modern Jews wear veils, having four strings and tassels, each string having five knots, to signify the five books of Moses; each string has eight threads, which, added to five and to the numeral value of the letters in Л, make 613, the number of precepts in the law: for,

In doctrinal

See Godwin's Moses and Aaron; Jennings' Jewish Antiquities; Allen's Modern Judaism; Cruden, art. Pharisee. points, and in many observances, the great body of the modern Jews are ostensibly Pharisees; and Sadduceeism is only the private belief of the licentious. Maimonides (1131) and Mendelsohn (1729) have done much to encourage the principles of the latter sect: they are the Jewish rationalists.

72. The Trinity.

The Trinity is the unity of three Persons in one Godhead, viz. the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Here we must neither confound the Persons, nor divide the substance or essence. We must not confound the Persons, by saying the Son and Holy Ghost are only influences of the Father, or different modes of his operating; which is the error of the Sabellians. The Son is a distinct Person, for he prays to the Father, and goes to the Father (John xvii., xvi. 28); and the Holy Ghost is a distinct person, for he is the Comforter whom the Son sends from the Father. Neither may we divide the substance,

G

by saying they are three Gods; for, Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord, Deut. vi. 4; or by saying there is one God with two inferior beings, as the Arians affirm. The Son is God; for he declares, I and the Father are one, John x. 30. The Holy Ghost is God; for Peter tells Ananias and Sapphira, that they had lied to the Holy Ghost, or to God, Acts v. 3, 4.

Admit the Divinity of the Second Person, and at his baptism the Third Person hovered over him, and the voice of the First Person said, This is my beloved Son, Matt. iii. 16, 17.

73. Reasoning à priori and à posteriori exemplified in the proofs of the existence of God.

Reasoning à priori proves the effect by its necessary cause; reasoning à posteriori proves the cause by its necessary effect. A robbery is committed, and a man taken up on suspicion; his notoriously bad character is a presumption à priori against him; at the trial a long chain of evidence brings the charge home, and this is à posteriori reasoning. The Pharisees accused Christ of working miracles by Beelzebub: he replies, I work miracles through a good and not an evil cause, for I practise and promote good, and the prince of evil would not give me power to oppose himself: à priori, your charge must be false. Admit benevolence and omnipotence in God, and there is both the will and the power to suspend a law of nature for an important purpose; an à priori proof of the probability of miracles. But when we say, that the miracles were wrought in open day, at public feasts, and before numbers of watchful enemies; that they could not happen by any natural means or juggle; that they convinced multitudes; and that the fact of their occurrence was never denied; while, at the same time, he who wrought them could ask confidently, "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" we reason à posteriori, that the miracles happened, and happened by the power of God. That the miracles happened,

is called the demonstratio τοῦ ὅτι,

that they happened by the power of God, is the demonstratio rov dióri,-shewing not only the occurrence, but the cause of the occurrence.

In proving the existence of the Deity à priori, certain metaphysical propositions are assumed as axioms. Space and

time are certainties, and force on us the ideas of immensity and eternity; but as immensity and eternity are not substances, they are the attributes of a Being who is necessarily immense and eternal: "Non est æternitas et infinitas, sed æternus et infinitus; non est duratio et spatium, sed durat et adest. Durat semper et adest ubique; existendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium constituit."-NEWTON's Principia, Scholium generale; Clarke; D. Stewart.

The argument à posteriori rests on two premises: the one is, that every thing which begins to exist must have a cause ; the other, that a combination of means, conspiring to a particular end, implies an intelligent cause.

The first branch of the argument is thus stated by Grotius: “It is clear, from the consent and confession of all, that certain things exist which began to be. These things were not themselves the cause of their being; for that which is not cannot act, nor could any thing be before its existence. It follows, that they have their origin from elsewhere; and this must be allowed not only respecting the things we see or have seen, but likewise respecting those things whence they derive their origin, donec tandem ad aliquam causam perveniamus, quæ esse nunquam cœperit; quæque sit, ut loqui solemus, non contingenter, sed necessario. Hoc autem, qualecunque tandem sit, idipsum est quod Numinis aut Dei voce significatur."-De Veritate Relig. Christ. lib. i. § 2.

And his commentator Le Clerc adds: "There must be some first cause of the things which began to be, or none: if a first cause, it is God. If a first cause is denied, then there must have been no cause of the things which began to be; that is, they either existed of themselves, or were produced by and out of nothing; quod est absurdum.

Beattie states the argument in another form: "We exist, and infer that something must have always existed; for if ever there was a time when nothing existed, there must have been a time when something began to be; and that something must have come into being without a cause, since by the supposition there was nothing before it. But that a thing should begin to exist, and yet proceed from no cause, is both absurd and incon