Eleazar Lord

“ But the notion that the shedding of blood would procure the remission of sin, that the piacular sacrifices must be offered on an altar and burnt with fire, that the firstlings of the flock must be sacrificed, and that incense must be burned by consecrated priests, has prevailed among all pagan nations and tribes, with or without letters, in all climates, and in all ages, and if not derived from the descendants of Noah at the dispersion, we must, by ascribing the invention to each distinct community for itself, imagine a greater miracle than that of the inspiration of true prophets. ”

“ And Moses said unto the people, Fear not; for the Elohim is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not. And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where the Elohim was. And Jehovah said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. Ye shall not make with me Elohe of silver, neither shall ye make unto you Elohe of gold. An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings and thy peace offerings ... ”

“ But the heads and leaders of his visible partisans among men, whether in the abominations of heathenism, the enormities of idolatry, the wars and butcheries of nations, the tyrannies of government, the horrors of anarchy, the immolation of human victims, the persecution and slaughter of prophets and martyrs, or in the no less fatal systems of heresy, false theology, and false philosophy, have never scrupled or been backward to do the utmost he could wish in furtherance of his object. ”

“ The Gentile Gnostics, in distinction from Cerinthus and other Judaizers, in their attempts to subordinate Christianity to their system—which taught that all evil resided in and proceeded from matter, and therefore that the world could not have been created by a good being—ascribed the creation to a created evil being, the evil principle, Satan. They therefore rejected the Old Testament as irreconcilable with this system. ”

“ Now, on the supposition that all the angelic hosts were created simultaneously with the heavens and the earth, what was there to hinder the apostasy of Satan between the date of that creation and his assault upon Adam, which would not equally have hindered the apostasy of man so soon after his creation? Is it not, from the nature of the case, more probable that Satan revolted very soon after his creation, than at a remote period? ”

“ The patriarchs and prophets knew God, as manifested in him in his delegated, official, personal character. That they were enlightened in respect to the invisible Deity absolutely considered, and in respect to the distinction of Persons, is no more to be doubted than that they were enlightened as to the great Revealer. The sublime conceptions proper to this subject were undoubtedly so imparted, received, and cherished as to render the doctrine of mediation and of the delegated personal character of the Mediator an intelligible and practical doctrine. ”

“ Yearning for some relief from the unmitigated and intolerable miseries which they suffered in their warfare with their bodies, which, as matter, they deemed the seat of corruption, they hailed the appearance of the good principle in Christianity, supported as it was by demonstrations of resistless power, as likely to defeat the antagonist evil principle, the Devil, to whom they still ascribed the creation of the world. Instead of longer worshipping him, therefore, they now taught that the Supreme Deity, the Creator of the Devil, was to be worshipped. ”

“ The Lord is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting King.... The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens.... ”

“ It is presumed to be quite safe to say, that at every period of any considerable extent of the Jewish Church, after its establishment in Canaan, and more especially after the reign of Solomon, the majority, notwithstanding the writings of Moses and the instructions of the prophets, were under great delusion and error respecting the Messiah and his kingdom; and at the Advent, those who were in the right were few in number compared with the busy scribes, the ostentatious Pharisees, and those doctors of the law who, sitting in Moses’ seat, taught the traditions and commandments of men. ”

“ The great fabric of pagan idolatry, as a rival system to the true religion, and a counterfeit Theocracy, combining the civil with the religious administration, was the organism through which the Arch-usurper carried on his rivalship in all the heathen nations down to the age of Constantine. Then, to meet the exigences of his case, in opposition to Christianity in the Roman Empire, he made the ecclesiastical hierarchies in union with the civil government the medium of his rule. ”

“ Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God—misrepresented his invisible attributes, eternal power and Godhead, and the glory of his perfections, visibly displayed in his works of creation and providence—by an image made like to corruptible men, and to birds, and four-footed beasts and creeping things; and changed the truth concerning God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. ”

“ The earth as his footstool is yet to be the scene of the restitution of all things. His early footsteps on it are to be retraced in a renewed paradise, and the visible manifestations of the past to be resumed, when all that is recorded of Him in his offices and his administration, and his intercourse with the first Adam, and with the patriarchs and prophets, will be understood and heeded as of the scheme and fabric of his glory. ”

“ All the philosophers of the East, whose tenets, as we have seen, were, that the Deity had nothing at all to do with matter, the nature and qualities of which they considered to be malignant and poisonous; that the body was held in subjection by a being entirely distinct from Him to whom the dominion over the rational soul belonged; that the world, and all terrestrial bodies, were not the work of the Supreme Being, the Author of all good, but were formed out of matter by a nature either evil in its origin, or that had fallen into a state of depravity ”

“ If blindness of heart hath befallen Israel, it is only till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and then all Israel will be saved. “As it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for the Gentiles’ sake; but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. ”

“ It is not unlikely that, at the date of the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds, there were many who at length joined in adopting them, who from ignorance, or from the sway of heretical influences, were greatly confused upon these subjects; many, more or less perverted by Gnostic and Judaizing dogmas; many who saw no possibility of maintaining the doctrines which they held concerning the Father, as the Father of Christ the Son by eternal generation, and as the fountain of all authority and power, without specifically ascribing to him the works of creation and providence ”

“ The primary ground or reason of that mediation, in the economy of the universe, which is affirmed of the one Mediator in all the relations of God to the World, is the infinite difference between the Deity and creatures in nature, attributes, and mode of existence and action. The relations implied in the existence and agency of creatures are such as cannot be conceived to subsist between beings so diverse in all respects as the infinite and finite, except through an intermediate agent, in the constitution of whose person and office the opposite extremes are united. ”

“ Hence the origin, popularity, and influence of the geological doctrines concerning the antiquity of the earth, successive creations or developments, diversity of origin of different families of the human race, and various kindred matters. The excited minds of scientific men, unsatisfied, unestablished, and misled by the results of Rabbinical and neological study and criticism, have appealed from the Scripture records to the fossil relics of what they fancy to have been a world of immeasurably higher antiquity than that of whose creation Moses is the historian. ”

“ The theory of religion then, combining elements from Judaism, Oriental philosophy, Paganism, and Christianity, was practically accommodated to the heart of man in his natural state. Modes of interpretation were introduced, by which truth, so far as it was admitted, was made to serve all the ends and purposes of error. The Popish system, for example, while it retains, in terms, the doctrine of the Trinity, denies all those collateral and dependent truths which render that doctrine of any value in the affair of man’s salvation. ”

“ Thus saith the Lord, Write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous BRANCH, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely ”

“ They knew, it may well be believed, from and after the first appearance or announcement of the Messiah in Eden, that human nature and the human form were appointed and essential conditions of his complex official person and [109] his sacerdotal work. Every typical sacrifice, the piacular shedding of blood, the altar typifying the cross, the burnt offering, the paschal lamb, every net of worship founded on the revealed doctrine of mediation, implied this distinctive apprehension of his person as Mediator. ”

“ The great peculiarity in the history of the human race took its rise in the apostasy of man, and is exhibited in the antagonism between the rightful Sovereign of the world and the instigator of that apostasy, and in the agency, relations and destiny of their respective followers. ”

“ The circumstances, like those which attended Moses at the commencement and throughout his official life, required an assured and unwavering faith in the declared purposes, the promises, the presence and power of Jehovah the Elohe of Israel, the king, preserver, teacher, and guide of his people.
There was, no doubt, a degree of mysteriousness connected with the personal and local manifestations of Jehovah, which rendered an unwavering faith constantly requisite. The minds of men, no less at that than at other periods, were most readily and strongly affected by visible and familiar objects. ”

“ An attempt to reform the reigning fashion of Hebrew study in relation to this subject would probably be as hopeful a task as an attempt to disabuse the minds of theologians and religious teachers of the empirical, fanciful, and puerile system of figurative exposition which was rendered popular by Origen, and has reigned triumphant from his to the present time; being propagated from age to age by education, and by the example and influence of the learned. ”

“ In the progress of the conflict between the righteous and the wicked, holiness and sin, happiness and misery, light and darkness, truth and falsehood, the desperate malevolence of the Evil One, and the guilt and ruin of his followers, are made manifest to all observers; and on the other hand, the infinite riches of the wisdom, goodness, righteousness and mercy of the great Deliverer towards his followers, in their renewed allegiance and recovery to holiness and happiness, are equally made public. ”

“ An expectation of this kind even continues to be cherished by their descendants of the present day. Some of these philosophers, then, being struck with astonishment at the magnitude and splendor of the miracles wrought by Christ and his apostles, and perceiving that it was the object of our Lord’s ministry both to abrogate the Jewish law—a law which they conceived to have been promulgated by the Architect or Founder of the world himself, or by the chief of his agents—and also to overthrow those gods of the nations whom they regarded as genii, placed over mankind by the same evil spirit ”

“ The Shekina, and all visible Divine appearances, having long been discontinued, the Jews seem not to have expected any recurrence of the like, or of analogous interpositions. Their religion consisted in a formal observance of rites and traditions, and a blind reliance on their being descendants of Abraham; and in the Messiah, whom they desired and expected, they looked only for a human chieftain, a temporal deliverer from the Roman yoke. Their notions of the Divine Being, the invisible Deity, do not appear to have differed essentially from those common to their descendants ever since. ”