(3.) Things are instanced in that are nowhere written in the law, nor ever were; as that, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy;" which is so remote from the law as that the contrary is directly commanded, Lev. xix. 18; Exod. xxiii. 4, 5; Pro v. xx. 22. To them who gave this rule, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy," doth Christ oppose himself. But those were the scribes and Pharisees in their corrupt glosses, from which God's law is vindicated, not in itself before corrupted.
(4.) Whose sayings Christ rejects, their sayings he did not come to fulfil; but he came to fulfil and accomplish the laiu: and therefore it is not the law and the sentence thereof that he rejects in that form of speech, " But I say unto you."
Before I come to the consideration of the particular instances given by Mr B., a brief consideration of what is offered to this purpose by
364 VINDICI^ EVANGELICiE.
Smalcius, in his Racovian Catechism, may be premised. His first chap- ter, about the prophetical ofifice of Christ, is " De prseceptis Christi, quse legi addidit;" — "Of the precepts of Christ, which he added to the law/' And therein this is his first question and answer: —
Q. What are the perfect commands of God revealed by Christ 9
A. Part of them is contained in the precepts given by Moses, with those which
are added thereunto in the new covenant ; part is contained in those things which
Christ himself prescribed.'
The commands of God revealed by Jesus Christ are here referred to three heads: — 1. The ten commandments given by Moses; for so that part is explained in the next question, where they are said to be the decalogue. 2. The additions made by Christ thereunto. 3. His own peculiar institutions.
1. As to the first, I desire only to know how the ten command- ments were revealed by Jesus Christ. The catechist confesseth that they were given to Moses, and revealed by that means; how are they, then, said to be revealed by Christ? If they shall say that he may be said to reveal them because he promulged them anew, with new motives, reasons, and encouragements, I hope he will give us leave to say also that what he calls " a new commandment " is not so termed in respect of the matter of it, but its new enforcement by Christ. We grant Christ revealed that law of Moses, with its new covenant ends, as he was the great prophet of his church, by his Spirit, from the foundation of the world; but this Smalcius denies.
2. That Christ made no new additions to the moral law hath been partly evidenced from what hath been spoken concerning the perfection thereof, with the intention of our Saviour in that place, and those things wherein they say these additions are found and do consist, and shall yet farther be evinced from the consideration of the particulars by them instanced in.
3. It is granted that our blessed Saviour did, for the times of the new testament, institute the two ordinances of baptism and the Lord's supper, in the room of them which, together with their re- presentation of the benefits which believers receive by him, did also prefigure him as to come. But, — (1.) These are no new law, nor part of a new law, with a law design in them. (2.) Though there is an obedience in their performance yielded to God and Christ, yet they belong rather to the jyromises than the prece'pts of Christ ; to our privilege, — before, unto our duty.
In the progress of that catechist, after some discourse about the ceremonial and judicial law, with their abolition, and his allowance of magistrates among Christians notwithstanding (which they do
' " Quaenam sunt perfecta mandata Dei per Christum patefacta ? — Pars eorum con- tinetiu- in pvajceptis a Mose traditis, una cum iis quae sunt eis in novo fcedere addita; pars vero continetur in lis quje peculiariter ipse Christus proescripsit."
OF CHRIST S PROPHETICAL OFFICE. S6'5
upon condition they shed no blood, for any cause whatever), he at- tempts in particular to show what Christ added to the moral law in the several precepts of it. And to the first he says that Christ added two things: — 1. In that he prescribed us a certain form of prayer; of which afterward, in the chapter designed to the consideration of what Mr B. speaks to the same purpose. 2. That we acknowledge himself for God, and worship him; of which also in our discourse of the kingly office of Christ. To the second, he says, is added in the New Testament, not only that we should not worship images, but avoid them also ; which is so notoriously false, the avoiding of images of our own making being no less commanded in the Old Testament than in the New, that I shall not insist thereon. The residue of his plea is the same with Mr B.'s from Matt, v., where what they pretend shall be considered in order.
To consider, then, briefly the particular instances. 1. The first is in reference to the sixth commandment, " Thou shalt not kill." This the Pharisees so interpreted as that if a man kept himself from blood and from causing the death of another, he was righteous as to the keeping of this commandment. Our Saviour lets his disciples know that there is a closer and nearer sense of this law : " I say unto you, in the exposition of this commandment, that any rash anger, anger without a cause, all offence given proceeding from thence, in light, vilifying expressions, such as ' Baca,' much more all provoking taunts and reproaches, as ' Thou fool,' are forbidden therein, so as to render a man obnoxious to the judgment of God, and condemnation in their several degrees of sinfulness;"^ as there were amongst them- selves several councils, according to several offences, — the judgment, the council, and utter cutting off as a child of hell. Hence, then, having manifested the least breach of love or charity towards our brother to be a breach of the sixth commandment, and so to render a man obnoxious to the judgment of God in several degrees of sin, according as the eruptions of it are, he proceeds in the following verses to exhort his disciples to patience, forbearance, and brotherly love, with readiness to agreement and forgiveness, verses 23-26.