versa. It is essential to the subjects of such relations mutually to illustrate one another. There can be no type without an antitype; nor an antitype without a type; and if the former is naturally prior in point of time, and the latter posterior, the existence of the type at one time presupposes the existence of the antitype at another, and vice The Law might necessarily precede the Gospel, and the Gospel might naturally succeed to the Law; but if the Gospel has thrown light in a variety of important respects on the meaning of the Law, the Law in its turn has contributed to ascertain the true sense of the Gospel; and this, by virtue of the relation necessarily existing between schemes and dispensations, which both in the general and in particulars, were the counterparts of each other. The most important result, indeed, of an undertaking like the present, if duly executed, is the confirmation which it has a tendency to supply, of those most peculiar and characteristic doctrines of our holy religion, which concern the Christian scheme of atonement, of justification, of sanctification, and in one word the whole Gospel method of salvation. With that sect or party among Christians, by whom the very idea of an ulterior or typical reference of the ceremonial ordinances of the Old Testament to the facts or doctrines of the New, is rejected as a chimerical and unfounded notion, the author of this work is of opinion that much more direct arguments than those which are derivable from the analogies of types and antitypes, in the two dispensations, would be of little avail; and therefore he will not be surprised, if what he has himself written on this subject, produces no more effect upon them, than the reasoning of those, who have gone before him in the same line of argument. He trusts, however, that the sound and orthodox believer may find his faith in the Creed, which he has already accepted from the conviction of its truth, still more effectually fortified and secured, by the well-grounded assurance that there is nothing openly revealed in the scheme of Christianity, the outline of which may not be traced in the Levitical dispensation that a Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Divine nature is discernible in both revelations-a Trinity of Persons, each with his proper part and office in the common work of human redemption-and that if Christianity, properly so called, as adumbrated under the Law, was mysterious before, it is not less mysterious still, in its most characteristic respects, even with the full light of the Gospel. : The benefit and assistance which the author experienced in the course of his inquiries from the learned and valuable work of Dr. Outram, De Sacrificiis Hebræorum, have laid him under an obligation, which he is anxious publicly to acknowledge. Yet whatever aids or facilities he may have met with in other quarters, he has endeavoured as much as possible to make the Bible alone his instructor and director; the Bible, as consulted, compared, and collated for himself by every one who wishes to go to the fountain head of his information, whether on the subject of the mutual references of the Old and New Testament to each other, or for any other purpose connected with the study of the word of God. If the view which he has taken of his subject, or the method which he has adopted in treating of it, possesses any claim to the character of originality, it is due to the fact of his having confined himself almost exclusively to the direction of this single guide. Nor in following where it appeared to him to lead the way, is he conscious of having designedly strained the application of any part of the Levitical scheme beyond the limits of that just and reasonable analogy, within which the authority of scripture had circumscribed it. The nature of his undertaking opened a wide field to conjectural explanation, in which an unbridled imagination might have expatiated at will, had not the author laboured to guard himself against this temptation, and carefully endeavoured to make St. Paul, and the other inspired writers of the New Testament, his sole interpreters and authorities in decyphering the symbols, and spiritualizing the institutes, of Moses. The reader will perceive that the two first of the ensuing Discourses are preliminary to the remainder, and that the proper discussion of the subject begins only with the third. The general argument of those two Discourses, which is the antecedent probability that the Jewish dispensation must have had a reference to some scheme of things beyond itself, is so far the same with what the reader may know to be discussed in a certain part of Dr. Graves's work on the Pentateuch. The introduction of the same topic into these Discourses, the author hopes will be attributed to the necessity of the case, and not to any wish of his own to trespass upon ground, preoccupied by an earlier and an abler writer, much less to repeat or appropriate his arguments. To conclude. If what he has written in elucidation of his proper subject, the harmony and correspondency of God's dispensations with themselves, whether under the Law or under the Gospel, should, by the Divine blessing, conduce to strengthen the faith, enlighten the understanding, quicken the piety, or in any way contribute to the spiritual benefit of one of his Christian brethren, into whose hands his work may fall, the author's end will be answered, and he will be abundantly rewarded by the consciousness of having been an humble instrument in the production of so happy an effect-little solicitous about the reception which his Discourses may experience from the mere literary public. DISCOURSE THE FIRST. Division of the subject-Antecedent probability that the Jewish dispensation had an ulterior reference to something else. AMONG the causes which contributed to oppose the reception of Christianity by the Jews, there is nothing, perhaps, which had this effect to a greater degree, than their own deep-rooted attachment to their Law. Its high antiquity, its divine original, the wonderful circumstances that attended its delivery, but especially the splendour and magnificence of its external ritual, were all calculated to excite in the mind of the Hebrew worshipper a strong feeling of predilection in its favour. It has been the object of the Apostle St. Paul, in several of his epistles, to counteract this violent and bigoted attachment to their Law, by informing them what its proper end and purpose was; viz. to serve as a preliminary dispensation to the Gospel; all whose leading and characteristic doctrines it should prefigure and shadow forth in its principal rites and ceremonies in other words, that the two covenants, when properly understood, B |