1. This legal service is called flesh in Scripture, in opposition to the gospel, which is called spirit. The ordinances of the law, though of divine institution, are dignified by the apostle with no better a title than carnal ordinances,436 and a carnal command:437 but the gospel is called the ministration of the Spirit, as being attended with a special and spiritual efficacy on the minds of men.438 And when the degenerate Galatians, after having tasted of the pure streams of the gospel, turned about to drink of the thicker streams of the law, the apostle tells them, that they begun in the spirit and would now be made perfect in the flesh;439 they would leave the righteousness of faith for a justification by works. The moral law, which is in its own nature spiritual,440 in regard of the abuse of it, in expectation of justification by the outward works of it, is called flesh: much more may the ceremonial administration, which was never intended to run parallel with the moral, nor had any foundation in nature as the other had. That whole economy consisted in sensible and material things, which only touched the flesh: it is called the letter and the oldness of the letter;441 as letters, which are but empty sounds of themselves, but put together and formed into words, signify something to the mind of the hearer or reader: an old letter, a thing of no efficacy upon the spirit, but as a law written upon paper. The gospel hath an efficacious spirit attending it, strongly working upon the mind and will, and moulding the soul into a spiritual frame for God, according to the doctrine of the gospel; the one is old and decays, the other is new and increaseth daily. And as the law itself is called flesh, so the observers of it and resters in it are called Israel after the flesh;442 and the evangelical worshipper is called a Jew after the spirit (Rom. ii. 29). They were Israel after the flesh as born of Jacob, not Israel after the spirit as born of God; and therefore the apostle calls them Israel and not Israel;443 Israel after a carnal birth, not Israel after a spiritual; Israel in the circumcision of the flesh, not Israel by a regeneration of the heart.
2. The legal ceremonies were not a fit means to bring the heart into a spiritual frame. They had a spiritual intent; the rock and manna prefigured the salvation and spiritual nourishment by the Redeemer.444 The sacrifices were to point them to the justice of God in the punishment of sin, and the mercy of God in substituting them in their steads, as types of the Redeemer and the ransom by his blood. The circumcision of the flesh was to instruct them in the circumcision of the heart: they were flesh in regard of their matter, weakness and cloudiness, spiritual in regard of their intent and signification; they did instruct, but not efficaciously work strong spiritual affections in the soul of the worshipper. They were weak and beggarly elements;445 had neither wealth to enrich nor strength to nourish the soul: they could not perfect the comers to them, or put them into a frame agreeable to the nature of God,446 nor purge the conscience from those dead and dull dispositions which were by nature in them:447 being carnal they could not have an efficacy to purify the conscience of the offerer and work spiritual effects: had they continued without the exhibition of Christ, they could never have wrought any change in us or purchased any favor for us.448 At the best they were but shadows, and came inexpressibly short of the efficacy of that person and state whose shadows they were. The shadow of a man is too weak to perform what the man himself can do, because it wants the life, spirit, and activity of the substance: the whole pomp and scene was suited more to the sensitive than the intellectual nature; and, like pictures, pleased the fancy of children rather than improved their reason. The Jewish state was a state of childhood,449 and that administration a pedagogy.450 The law was a schoolmaster fitted for their weak and childish capacity, and could no more spiritualize the heart, than the teachings in a primer‑school can enable the mind, and make it fit for affairs of state; and because they could not better the spirit, they were instituted only for a time, as elements delivered to an infant age, which naturally lives a life of sense rather than a life of reason. It was also a servile state, which doth rather debase than elevate the mind; rather carnalize than spiritualize the heart: besides, it is a sense of mercy that both melts and elevates the heart into a spiritual frame: “There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared;”451 and they had, in that state, but some glimmerings of mercy in the daily bloody intimations of justice. There was no sacrifice for some sins, but a cutting off without the least hints of pardon; and in the yearly remembrance of sin there was as much to shiver them with fear, as to possess them with hopes; and such a state which always held them under the conscience of sin, could not produce a free spirit, which was necessary for a worship of God according to his nature.
3. In their use they rather hindered than furthered a spiritual worship. In their own nature they did not tend to the obstructing a spiritual worship, for then they had been contrary to the nature of religion, and the end of God who appointed them; nor did God cover the evangelical doctrine under the clouds of the legal administration, to hinder the people of Israel from perceiving it, but because they were not yet capable to bear the splendor of it, had it been clearly set before them. The shining of the face of Moses was too dazzling for their weak eyes, and therefore there was a necessity of a veil, not for the things themselves, but the “weakness of their eyes.”452 The carnal affections of that people sunk down into the things themselves; stuck in the outward pomp, and pierced not through the veil to the spiritual intent of them; and by the use of them without rational conceptions, they besotted their minds and became senseless of those spiritual motions required of them. Hence came all their expectations of a carnal Messiah; the veil of ceremonies was so thick, and the film upon their eyes so condensed, that they could not look through the veil to the Spirit of Christ; they beheld not the heavenly Canaan for the beauty of the earthly; nor minded the regeneration of the spirit, while they rested upon the purifications of the flesh; the prevalency of sense and sensitive affections diverted their minds from inquiring into the intent of them. Sense and matter are often clogs to the mind, and sensible objects are the same often to spiritual motions. Our souls are never more raised than when they are abstracted from the entanglements of them. A pompous worship, made up of many sensible objects, weakens the spirituality of religion. Those that are most zealous for outward, are usually most cold and indifferent in inward observances; and those that overdo in carnal modes, usually underdo in spiritual affections. This was the Jewish state.453 The nature of the ceremonies being pompous and earthly by their show and beauty, meeting with their weakness and childish affections, filled their eyes with an outward lustre, allured their minds and detained them from seeking things higher and more spiritual; the kernel of those rights lay concealed in a thick shell; the spiritual glory was little seen; and the spiritual sweetness little tasted. Unless the Scripture be diligently searched, it seems to transfer the worship of God from the true faith and the spiritual motions of the heart, and stake it down to outward observances, and the opus operatum. Besides, the voice of the law did only declare sacrifices, and invited the worshippers to them with a promise of the atonement of sin, turning away the wrath of God. It never plainly acquainted them that those things were types and shadows of something future; that they were only outward purifications of the flesh; it never plainly told them, at the time of appointing them, that those sacrifices could not abolish sin, and reconcile them to God. Indeed, we see more of them since their death and dissection, in that one Epistle to the Hebrews, than can be discerned in the five books of Moses. Besides, man naturally affects a carnal life, and therefore affects a carnal worship; he designs the gratifying his sense, and would have a religion of the same nature. Most men have no mind to busy their reasons about the things of sense, and are naturally unwilling to raise them up to those things which are allied to the spiritual nature of God; and therefore the more spiritual any ordinance is, the more averse is the heart of man to it. There is a simplicity of the gospel from which our minds are easily corrupted by things that pleasure the sense, as Eve was by the curiosity of her eyes, and the liquorishness of her palate.454 From this principle hath sprung all the idolatry in the world. The Jews knew they had a God who had delivered them, but they would have a sensible God to go before them;455 and the papacy at this day is a witness of the truth of this natural corruption.
4. Upon