CONCERNING THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE JEWISH CHURCH GENERAL PREFACE. IT has been matter of thankfulness for many generations of the Christian church, that Dr Owen was led to concentrate all his rare endowments and vast resources on the exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Wisdom and prudence of the highest order were required for the task, besides no common measure of learning and ability. The Epistle proves the higher glory of the new dispensation, from the superiority of Christ its founder, in virtue of his divine nature, to angels, to Moses, and to Aaron,-sheds light upon all the offices of Christ, as prophet, and priest, and king,-is designed to conciliate the Jewish mind to the abrogation of the Mosaic ritual, by detailing the superior privileges of the present dispensation,-supplies fuller evidence of the typical and temporary nature of the former than is elsewhere to be found in the word of God,-affords a key to passages in Scripture which are indeed "hard to be understood," as when the 8th Psalm is made unexpectedly radiant with prophetic allusion to the Messiah, and Melchizedek is summoned from the obscurity of ages to illustrate the honours of his priesthood, -and partially withdraws even the curtain which screens from us the scenes of heaven, by its description of the official functions of our great High Priest within the veil. Of an Epistle bearing such characteristics, and having such objects in view, the highest principles of the Christian system necessarily form the chief contents; while its practical warnings against the sin and danger of apostasy from the church of Christ, under any lingering prejudice in favour of an effete and lifeless Judaism, as they derive a peculiar energy from the fearful doom which the apostate is represented as incurring, from the thrilling recital of the triumphs achieved by faith in all ages of the world, and from the sublime reference to the joys and glories of the heavenly Zion in the closing portion of it, present a befitting conclusion to an argument as lofty and momentous as the entire compass of revelation exhibits. The very language of the Epistle rises, in the original, to a corresponding elevation with the themes which it is employed to discuss; and the weightiest argument against its Pauline origin rests upon its purity of style and dignity of tone, which are held to be superior to the ordinary composition of the apostle of the Gentiles. It is on all hands admitted that the practical object for which the Epistle seems to have been written was, to preserve Jewish converts from relapsing into Judaism. Its divine origin, the imposing grandeur of its ritual, and the cherished associations connected with its whole history, might influence the mind of a Jew, in some moment of temptation and weakness, to betake himself afresh to a system re |