to go out of it : if the avenger should at any time find him without the borders of the city, he was at liberty to kill him. This imprisonment continued during the life of the high-priest ; but at his death it ceased ; and the slayer was at liberty to return to his family and friends. This part of the ordinance was probably intended to put honour upon the high- priest, whose death was to be considered as a public calamity, in the lamenting of which all private re- sentments were to be swallowed up.
Such was the ordinance itself: — We now come to the intention of it. The shedding of human blood has ever been regarded by God with the utmost abhorrence. The first murderer indeed was spared in consequence of a divine mandate ; but not from clemency, but rather, that he might be to the newly- created world a living monument of God's wrath and indignation. The edict given to Noah says expressly, " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." But, as there must of course be different degrees of guilt, according to the circum- stances under which any person might be killed, God appointed this method of securing protection to the innocent, and punishment to the guilty. The accom- plishing of these two objects was, I say, the direct end which the Deity proposed. Provision was thus made that disinterested and experienced judges should have the cause brought before them, and determine it according to evidence : if the man were guilty, and declared to be so on the evidence of tzvo witnesses, he must die : whatever were his rank in life, he must die : no commutation of punishment could possibly be admitted. If the man were innocent, or were not convicted by the testimony of two witnesses, (for no man was to be put to death on the testimony of one witness only,) the whole congregation were bound to secure him from the effects of animosity and vindictive wrath. Yet even in the protection thus afforded to the man-slayer, there were many circumstances which were intended to mark God's abhorrence of murder : for though no blame attached to the man who had