priests of types and shadows, but when the Messiah comes, who is the substance, no more priests of shadows are wanted, therefore, they are disannulled, and the Messiah only, is priest. (As I promised Luke, so I promise Paul, he shall be attended to; but for the present, I must attend to Matthew.) : Exodus xxix. 9. "And thou shalt gird them with girdles, (Aaron and his sons,) and put the bonnets on them; and the priest's office shall be theirs for a perpetual statute." So says God to Moses, the priest's office shall be theirs for a perpetual statute. Yes, the God of the Hebrews, the Jews God said so, Matthew; he is not a changeable God he said it shall be perpetual, and it will never be taken from them, it will last as long as the world lasts. Again, Exodus xl. 13—14—15. “And thou shalt pnt upon Aaron the holy garments, and anoint him, and sanctify him; that he may minister unto me in the priest's office. And thou shalt bring his sons, and clothe them with coats and thou shalt anoint them, as thou didst anoint their father, that they may minister unto me in the priest's office for their anointing shall surely be an everlasting priesthood throughout their generations. This is spoken by the same unchangeable God, remember, Num. xxiii. 19. "God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" Once more, Matthew : Jeremiah xxxiii. 17-&c. “For thus saith the Lord, David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel. Neither shall the priests, the Levites, want a man before me, to offer burnt offerings and to kindle meat offerings, and to sacrifice continually-Thus saith the Lord, if ye can break my covenant of the. day, and my covenant of the night, that there should not be day and night in their seasons; then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon the throne; and with the Levites, the priests, my ministers. As the hosts of Heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me." So that it is impossible to break the covenant of Levi, it will last forever, it is a perpetual statute, it cannot be disannulled; their priesthood is an everlasting priesthood, throughout their generations; while there is any of them in the world, and while day and night lasts, that is, as long as the world lasts, (which is forever,) they will last, and the covenant will last and hold good. Here I must beg leave to notice the distinction made between the sons of David, and the sons of Aaron: the first are to sit on the throne, and the second are to offer sacrifices; one is to be king, and the other priest the offices are not confounded, but kept separate, in two different lines; the kingly office in the line of David, and the ministerial, and priests, in the line of the Levites, the priests my ministers. And therefore, it cannot be, that the Messiah shall be priest, or that he should exclude the sons of Aaron, as he has only the throne in the same covenant, wherein the Levite has the priesthood, and they are both to last alike forever; so that it is impossible, they should ever break in, one upon the other, or that either should cease, and be taken up by the other therefore, the Messiah cannot be a priest. I have then shown, and it must plainly appear, that the Messiah is to be a son of David; that the Messiah is to be a man, and not God; and that the Messiah is to be a king, and not a priest; that the Levites cannot be excluded from the priesthood. There now remains to be shown what the psalm does really mean; having first shown, (as ian preachers say, negatively,) what it does not mean; there yet remains to be shown what it does mean. The psalms, as I have before said, were written by different hands, as their titles plainly show; they are not all the psalms of David: the 77th psalm, for instance, is said to be a psalm of Assaph, addressed to Jeduthun, the chief musician; the 78th, is a maschil of Assaph; the 79th, is a psalm of Assaph, foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem, by the Romans; the 88th, is a maschil of Heman, the Ezrahite; so is the 89th; the 90th, claims Moses for its author. Many of the psalms were sung long before David's time, and several of them have been since composed; some, I believe, by Solomon: consequently, the psalms were composed at different periods, and treat of very different subjects; some of them were composed on a particular occasion, such as the 54th psalm was composed on the Zephim, giving information to Saul, that David was with them: the 51st, when David had sinned in the affair of Bethshebah, after Nathan came to him to reprove him another, when he ran away from Absalom. These occasions drew out, and as it were, caused these several psalms, and so of the psalms composed by others, for and in praise of, or concerning David, as is the 110th psalm, now under consi A psalm לדוד מזמור נאם ה : לאדני,deration, and its title is for David; the words of the (oath of the) Lord, concerning (king David,) my Lord, the allusion and 'occasion was this: II. Kings, (commonly called, II. Samuel,) xxi. 16-17 "Ishbi-benob, who was of the sons of the giant, (the weight of whose spear, weighed three hundred shekels of brass,) he being girded with a new sword, thought to have slain David. But Abishai, son of Zeruiah, succoured him, and smote the Philistine, and killed him. Then the men of David sware unto him, saying, thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that thou quench not the light of Israel." This is the words of the oath of the Lord. The word translated, said, in the Bible, is in the Hebrew DN NIUM, and in all other places in the Bible, is translated, saith; this word applies to the words of an oath, it is certainly not said, which should be AMAR, (he said) but DN applies to the words of certainty, or the true, and weigthy words of an oath. Is the holy incommunicable, ineffable name of God, called sometimes in the Bible, as it is supposed to sound in Hebrew, and at others, is translated the Lord, or O Lord, but it really has no such meaning, but rather, Eternal self Existant: ADON, answering to the word Lord, and means either God, or a man in authority; it means man as the Lord the King; and God אדון המלך ,the Lord THE LORD of hosts ; and the S LAMUD האדון ה צבעות as is a prefix, and signifies, to, the YOD, is an affix, and signifies, my, and when put together, thus, is, my Lord; SHEV, means on my right hand, the remainder rest, depend, or set down the Hebrew, The words the Lord hath sworn, are in and ought to be translated it hath, or has been sworn, by THE LORD. "The rod, of thy strength, shall the Lord send out of Zion," ought to have been rendered, when the Lord does send the rod of thy strength out of Zion, then go down in the midst of thine enemies; when the battle shall have been gained, and reinforcements, and provision shall be wanting out of the city, to follow up the victory, then go down in the midst of thine enemies." Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power;" means in the day when power is necessary to be raised, the people will be willing or volunteer, although thou goest not with them, and they will not complain because thou hast the dew of thy youth, when young you fought for them, now thou art old, they will remember the deeds thou didst when young. "In the beauty of holiness, from the womb of the morning" the beauty of holiness, means Jerusalem, which is by the psalmest, called the beauty of holiness; from the womb of the morning, means they, the people, will early when called on, volunteer from Jerusalem, the beauty of holiness. The 20th psalm is also called a psalm of David. Read it, and you are convinced it is not David's composing, but is a psalm composed by some one else, of, and concerning David, and treats of the same subject, in nearly the same language, as the 110th psalm, "When the Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion, then go down in the midst of thine enemies;" so the 20th says, "send the help from the holy place, (translated in the Bible the sanctuary), and support (translated, strengthen) thee out of Zion. Thus, I have shown what the 110th psalm does mean, and it appears not at all to treat of the Messiah, emphatically so called, it does not prove him not to be a son of David, it does not make him God, neither does it make him priest, to the exclusion of the sons or descendants of Aaron. CHAP. XXVI. Verse 17. "Now the first day of the feast of unlevened bread, the disciples came to Jesus saying unto him, where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover?" What is this? Matthew made a great blunder here! what did he mean? did Jesus not think of preparing to eat the passover until the first day of the feast? it was to late then to eat the passover, consequently, certainly too late to prepare it! Was Matthew a Jew? how can he talk about preparing the passover on the first day of the feast? He should have said, the day before the first day of the feast of unle vened bread, that was the time to prepare the passover! because eating the passover begins the feast. The passover must be killed on the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month, called which among us Jews, begins the fifteenth day, and which he certainly ought to have known is the first day of the feast; so that the day to make ready the passover, is not on the first day of the feast, but on the day before the first day of the feast. Hence, it is plain, that Matthew, was no Jew at all; for had he been a Jew, he must have known bet NISAN, ter. But we will for the present, pass it over, and suppose he meant the day before the first day of the feast. CHAP. XXVI. Verse 56. "But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fullfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled." Here St. Matthew takes a very large stride; all was fulfilled! the scriptures of the prophets! the writings of all the prophets were fulfilled! I must acknowledge my utter incompetency to follow him, only in his own way, that is, by assertion: as he brings no proof, I presume I need not seek for any against his assertion; but by merely asserting that none of the writings of any one of the prophets were fulfilled, and dare any one to the proof. "Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled." All, how many? Matthew tells us this was after supper, at which supper it appears he partook of the cups of wine according to the tradition of the Elders, and consequently I presume, as he thought it right to fulfill all righteousness, he no doubt recounted the history of the manumission from Egypt, in order to fulfill all righteousness; and it appears he took bread and break after saying grace, we also read of the cup, and gave thanks, although Matthew says nothing of the other cups, but some of the other evangelists tells us of another cup, and by another, it appears he was girded with a towel: there no doubt, was water present, after the manner of the Jews purification therefore, the whole proceeding was done according to the tradition of the Elders. Now all this must have taken considerable time, for he did not set down to supper until evening was come; after supper is the usual time, to go to sleep, and it appears his disciples could not keep awake in the open air, although the spirit was willing, it must have been very late now at so late an hour, it was not likely, that there were many disciples with him in the garden, it is possible, only the eleven, perhaps not so many; so that this all may not have been a great many at last, in other words, very few at most, and the dispersion of these few men, to their proper lodging places, for it was certainly time to go to rest, is by Matthew, said to be fulfilling all the scriptures of the prophets! how grand! how majestic! The prophet said, "Smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." The sheep, according to the Prophet, will be scattered when the shepherd is smit, but unfortunately, Matthew makes the sheep forsake their master first, and does not smite the shepherd, until after the sheep are scattered, for he says, "They forsook him, and fled." : One would naturally suppose, it would have been a very hard task, |