Watts - BX5200 .W3 1813 v.3

600 FORMS Or WORSHIP. tare compared together. The holy of holies, was the place appointed for the high-priest, once ayear, to enter into with the blood of the sacrifice; but this was a type of heaven, into which our Lord Jesus Christ, our great High-priest, is entered with his own blood, to appear before Godfor us; Heh. ix. 24. I might instance in many other parts 6f the Jewish worship. It is no wonder then that places and times, and 'partienlar circumstantials of worship and order, in the church of the New Testament, are not so particularly prescribed, as under the Old Testament, because they were types and shadows which could be appointed only by God, who knew the antitypes : and these shadows are now fled away, and we have the substances themselves set in view by the gospel of Christ. Thirdly, Another reason why the Jewish dispensation was confined to such nice rules of exactness and uniformity, might be, because it was ordained for the men of one nation only, who sprung all from a single family, whose manners, tempers, and customs were near akin to each other, and who were all under the same government, and their governors bound to the same forms of worship with themselves. And indeed the whole form of their government was inwronght with their reli- gion, and their political laws were designed to correspond with all the rites and ceremonies of their worship, and to sup- port them. Besides, as they lived in a country of no large extent, and their males as representatives of their whole church and ,nation, were required to meet three times a year at Je- rusalem ; they were more easily reduced and confined to pre- cise and uniform modes and rituals of worship. But the re- ligion of Christ, was brought into the world quite in another manner ; not to one nation only, but to be propagated among all nations, and to be practised by men of most various and distant climates ; men of contrary customs, manners, and laws; men that lived under governors of different religions, and such as hated the name of Christ. These could not so easily be reduced to a precise uniformity in any public worship, nor be maintained and kept in it ; therefore though our Lord, by his apostles, has drawn the great outlines and boundaries of worship, and the, master-strokes of discipline, partly in pre- cepts, and partly in examples, yet many lesser incidences and appendices, which were necessary to be determined, in order to the actual support and practice of social worship, he left to be agreed uponby churches or christian societies, as was suited' best to attain the great end ofedification in knowledge, holiness, and peace. Fourthly, When we survey the religion of the Jews, we lutist distinguish between the worship of the synagogue, and

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