18. This sacrifice of the passover, with its attendant feast of un- leavened bread, to be annually observed, on the fourteenth day of the month Abib unto the end of the twenty-first, was the second solemn ordinance of that people as the people and church of God; and the Jews observe, that no other positwe ordinances, but only circumcision and the passover, had that sanction of the m3, “excision,” or extermination, annexed unto them: “ Concerning cir- eumcision the words are plain, Gen. xvii. 14, ‘The uncircumcised man-child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, 12?)
462 STATE AND ORDINANCES OF THE CHURCH [EXERO. XIX.
NI WIN’—‘ that soul shall be cut off from his people, he hath broken my covenant.’ And with reference to the passover, Exod. xii, 15, ‘ Whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.’” Whereas they observe, as Aben Ezra upon this place, that it is annexed to above twenty negative precepts; intimating that there is a greater provocation and sin in doing any thing in the worship of God against his commandment than in omitting what he hath commanded, though both of them be evil, The observation, I acknowledge, in general is true, but the application of it to the passover is not so: for although we should suppose that the words of Exod. xii, 15 do relate unto the passover also, although they seem to respect only the seven days of the feast of unleavened bread, yet they do not require the observa- tion of the passover itself under that penalty; but upon a supposition | of the observation of the passover, they were to eat the lamb with
unleavened bread, which was a negative precept,—namely, that they
should have no leaven in their bread,—and so was justly attended in
its transgression with this cutting off. And this cutting off the Jews
generally interpret, when it is spoken indefinitely, without a preserip- - tion of the manner how it should be done, or by whom, to respect
own, “the hand of Heaven,” or the vindictive justice of God,
which in due time will find out the transgressor; but we know that
God long bare with them in the omission of this ordinance of the
passover itself,
19. What are the observations of the later Jews, in the imitation of their forefathers’ observance of this ordinance of God, the reader may see in Buxtorf’s Synagoga Judaica, and in part in the Annota- tions of Ainsworth, and so they need not here be repeated. This only I shall observe, that all of them, in their expositions of this institu- tion, do make the application of its several parts unto other acts of God in dealing with them; such as, indeed, the text of Moses plainly leads them to, And this perfectly overthrows their pretensions as to their other ceremonies and sacrifices,—namely, that they were instituted for their own sakes, and not as signs of things to come,—the figurative nature of this their greatest ordinance being manifest and acknowledged by themselves.
20. On occasion of this great solemn ordinance, there was given unto the people two additional institutions; the first concerning the writing of the law on their foreheads and hands; the other, of the dedication unto God of all that opened the matrix. The first of these is prescribed, chap. xiii. 9, “And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lorp’s law may be in thy mouth.” Verse 16, “ And it shall be for a token upon thine hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes.” Whereunto may be added Deut. vi. 6-9, ‘““ And these words, which I command
SECT. 19, 20. BEFORE THE GIVING OF THE LAW. 463 >
thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates” In the observation of sundry things supposed to relate unto these precepts consisteth the principal part of the super- stition of the present Jews; for they have mixed the observation of this duty, whatever be intended by it, with many foolish and noisome imaginations. It doth not, indeed, appear to me that any more is intended by these expressions, “ A sign upon thy hand,” and “A memorial” (or “ frontlet”) ‘between thine eyes,” but a continual remembrance and careful practice of the institution itself, and their ealling to mind thereby the mercy and goodness of God in their de- liverance; which they were to celebrate, when they came unto a settlement in their own land, by writing some passages of the law upon the door-posts of their houses. But they are otherwise minded. That which is prescribed unto them is called, Exod. xiii. 9, nix, “a sion,” as it was to be on their hand; and /i73!, “a memorial,” as between their eyes; both which are very capable of our interpre- tation. But, verse 16, they are called NBYID, as also Deut. vi. 8; from which word, as they know not what it signifies, they draw out all the mysteries of their present observances. The Chaldee renders it pen, “thephilin;’ which word seems to be taken from the He- brew md’an, “prayer,” or prayers, and to be so called from the prayers that they used in the consecration and wearing of those frontlets. But because they are rendered in the Greek guAaxrajpia, “phylacteria,” some would derive it from San, “to conjoin, keep, and bind ;” which hath some allusion, at least, to the sense of the Greek word: and this origination and denotation of the word the learned Fuller contends for, Miscellan. lib. v. cap, vii, The manner of their present observa- tion hereof to this purpose is, they write four sections of the law on parchment. And why four? That they gather from the signification of the word NBYID, “ totaphoth.” “Tot,” saith Rabbi Solomon, “ in Pontus, by the Caspian Sea somewhere, signifies ‘two;’ and poth signifies ‘ two’ in Egypt; both which make four undoubtedly, Or, as they say in the Talmud, “Tat in Casphe signifies ‘two;’ and pat in Africa.” So that four sections must be written. Scaliger supposeth the word to be Egyptian; which is not unlikely. But that it should signify an amulet or a charm, as Petitus supposeth, is not so probable. For to say that such amulets were in use among the heathen, with inscriptions either ridiculous or obscene, which God would not have his people to make use of, and therefore appointed them other things and inscriptions in their stead, which is the only reason produced