fact, both priests and temple, on the very point of being swept away; as the apostle to the Hebrews [viii. 13.] not obscurely intimates, rò nαλαιούμενον καὶ γηράσκον ἐγγὺς ἀφανισμοῦ. Accordingly, those rites of baptism and the holy eucharist, which our Lord himself directed to be perpetually observed in his church, were borrowed not from any positive institutions of the Mosaic law, but from certain customs which had been established in the Jewish church on the authority of their elders, and by a confederate discipline amongst themselves; and thus too the ordination of the apostles, with that one striking and necessary exception of our Lord's imparting spiritual power by direct afflation, was conformed to the existing practice of the synagogue. (6) The opinions of Grotius on this subject are well known ; and Selden, in his learned treatise "De Syne"driis," has fully proved, that during the apostolic age the Jewish Christians adhered to all the customs of their fathers. This truth will be acknowledged by all who have carefully studied the Acts and apostolical Epistles. That "salva❝tion is of the Jews," was, in fact, a principle to which they so tenaciously adhered, that even the apostles themselves, though they received a commission to admit all nations into the church by baptism, and to instruct all mankind in the doctrines and duties of Christianity, did not, for the space of seven years at least from our Lord's ascension, baptize a single convert, unless he were previously of the Jewish religion; and it required

a farther and an especial revelation to teach St. Peter that it was lawful for him to baptize the uncircumcised Cornelius, or even so much as to enter into his house. "Ye know," said he, " how "that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a "Jew to keep company, or to come unto one of "another nation; but God hath shewed me that "I should not call any man common or unclean." [Acts x. 28.] That men who were so obstinately attached to all the prejudices and customs of their country, even where the observance of them was not compatible with an enlightened knowledge of the comprehensive scheme of the Christian dispensation; a knowledge, be it observed, which was not imparted to the apostles at once by the plenary inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but was conveyed gradually to their minds, as the exigencies of the growing church required that they should possess it, and, perhaps, was chiefly communicated to them indirectly through the ampler revelations that were given to St. Paul; that men who were so zealously attached even to those institutions of their fathers which were at variance with the catholic spirit of the gospel, should not have framed their religious societies on the unexceptionable model of the synagogue, is in itself a thing so totally incredible, that it would require the strongest possible evidence to prove it. The evidence, however, lies wholly on the other side, as the following observations will shew.

1. St. James, the apostle, and first bishop of Jerusalem, writing to the Jewish Christians of

the dispersion, calls their religious assemblies by the name of synagogue; Ἐὰν γὰρ εἰσέλθῃ εἰς τὴν συναγωγὴν ὑμῶν ἀνὴρ χρυσοδακτύλιος, [James ii. 2.] In the speech of the same apostle, in the great synod which was held at Jerusalem, A. D. 51, (so long was the point unsettled,) to determine the question concerning the necessity of circumcision to salvation, it is evident from the context,

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that where he says, "Moses hath in every city "them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day," by the word synagogues he means Christian churches, or assemblies for he gives this as a reason why the Gentile Christians, who certainly would not have been allowed to enter a Jewish synagogue, should perceive the necessity of abstaining " from pol"lutions of idols, from fornication, from things "strangled, and from blood." [Acts xv. 20, 21.]

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2. In promulgating the gospel, we find, that the apostles invariably addressed themselves, in the first instance, to the members of the Jewish synagogue, in every city where they found one established; that the ruling presbyters permitted them without any scruple freely to exhort, and preach, and expound the scriptures to the people; and that on such occasions they asserted their claim to the rank of presbyters and doctors in the synagogue. [Vid. Act. xiii. 14. et alibi passim. On the word exábioe, Luke iv. 20. Grotius remarks, "Munus doctoris suo sibi jure vindi"cans." Comp. Matt. xxvi. 55. "I sat daily with

of the earlier Christian converts by far the greater part were gathered out of the religious assemblies of the Jews; and in many places, it is not improbable, that entire synagogues at once were brought to acknowledge their Messiah in the crucified Jesus.

3. There is no circumstance by which men are more strongly marked, and separated from each other, than by the pointed difference of their religious rites and ceremonies, which strikes the senses, and is far more obvious to ordinary observers than any discrepancies in their modes of faith. Now the peculiar observances of the synagogue formed the most prominent feature by which the Jews at Rome, and in other great cities remote from Jerusalem, were distinguished from the professors of all other religions: but it is certain, that, in respect to these observances, there was no discernible difference between the unbelieving Jews and their Christian brethren. For in that edict of Claudius, the purport of which is given by Suetonius, [Claud. 25.] "Ju"dæos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes "Roma expulit;" it is certain, that Christians were included under the general name of Jews. In the same manner, when St. Paul was brought by the unbelieving Jews before Gallio, the proconsul of Asia, that magistrate considered the points in dispute between them as merely relating to words and names, and flatly refused to hear the matter: [Acts xviii. 12-16. Comp. Acts xxv. 19, 20.] for though the name of Christians

had very early been appropriated at Antioch to those who acknowledged Jesus as the Christ; by men of other religions the professors of this faith were regarded merely as a Jewish sect, like the Pharisees, or Sadducees, or Essenes; and it was not till the other Jews, who every where pursued the followers of Jesus with the foulest calumnies, had, by the tumults which they excited, and the gross imputations which they cast on them, awakened the suspicions of the civil magistrate, that the Christians began to be considered as men professing a peculiar religion, hateful in itself, and hostile to all other modes of worship. Hence, from the odium that was attached to the Christian name, except in that passage of the Acts, xi. 26. where the fact is recorded, that the disciples of Jesus were called Christians first at Antioch, the word Christian occurs but twice more in all the sacred writings; once in the reply of king Agrippa to St. Paul, [Acts xxvi. 28.] where it is used with no small mixture of contempt; and once more in the first Epistle of St. Peter, where it is mentioned as a name which subjected to persecution those by whom it was borne. [1 Pet. iv. 16.] Now the Epistles of St. Peter were written but a very short time prior to his martyrdom. The second Epistle contains, indeed, internal evidence of a distinct revelation then made to the apostle concerning his approaching death. [ch. i. 14.] Every one is familiar with the memorable

passage in Taci

tus, [Annal. xv. 44.] where he speaks expressly