tliey were assured of, in any case, was, rather an exemption from punishment by the civil magistrate, than an everhisting remission of their sins by God himself: so dark, even in this respect, was the dispensation under which they lived.]
3. The real blessedness of his people could not be duly estimated by them —
[They possessed indeed many privileges above the heathen ; but yet they were kept at an awful distance from God. The people at large could not enter into the court of the more privileged orders, the priests and Levites : nor could any but the high-priest alone enter into the most holy place; and he only on one day in the year, and in the way that was particularly prescribed. Their services consisted altogether in burthensome rites and ceremonies, which, instead of calling forth a sublime exercise of spiritual devotion, were " a yoke which none of them were able to bear." They went in and out before God as servants actuated by fear, and not as children under the influence of love.]
4. Not even the future state of rewards and punish- ments was clearly known to them —
[Some light indeed was thrown upon the eternal world ; but it was faint and glimmering. Little was seen throughout the Mosaic writings but a prospect of temporal rewards and punishments, of an enjoyment of Canaan with much earthly felicity, or of an ejection from it with the attendant miseries of captivity and bondage.
Thus the whole of the Jewish state was at best only as an intermediate state between the darkness of heathenism and the light of the Gospel : it was as the early dawn to usher in the brighter day.]
To elucidate the infinite superiority of the Gospel, we must proceed to shew,
III. How full and rich a manifestation of it we enjoy —
" The darkness is now passed, and the true light now shineth^ ;" —
1. God himself is now fully revealed to us —
[We see not only his unity, but his subsistence in Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; all in glory equal, and in majesty co-eternal. All his perfections also have been made, as it were, to shine both in their separate, and united, splendour before our eyes ; — justice harmonizing with mercy, and right- eousness combining with truth, in the salvation of fallen man :
f 2 John, ver. 8.