CHAPTER IV. 397 31. Q. What was the religion of the Jews or Israelites ? A. The same with the religion of Aelam after his fall, of Noah, and Abraham, in Chap. II. Q. 50. with these additions given by Moses.' Note, This is called the Jewish, Mosaical, or Levitical dispensation. And herein God may be considered under three characters : 1. As the universal Creator of all men, and as the Lord God and ruler of the soul and consciences of all, and of the Jews as a part of mankind : and under this character he re- quired of the Jews all the duties of the light of nature, or the moral law, which obliged all mankind as well as them, and that under every dispensation. 2. He maybeconsidered as the God of Israel, or the Jews, as a church outward and visible, whom he had separated from the rest of the nations to be a peculiar people to himself, and so he prescribed to them peculiar forms of worship, and special cere- monies and rites of religion, as tokens of their duty and his grace. 3. He may beconsidered as the proper king of the Israelites as a nation, and as they were his subjects, and so he gase them judicial or political laws which relate to their government, and the common affairs of the civil law. But these three sorts of laws are not kept so entirely dis- tinct, as not to be intermingled with each other. It is indeed but one body of laws, and given properly to that one people un- der different considerations : and on this account it is sometimes bard to say under which head some of these commands of God must be reduced. Some commands relating to their houses and garments, their plowing and sowing, and the prohibitionof particular sorts of food, are naturally ranked under their politi- cal laws ; and yet there is plainly something ceremonial or reli- gious designed or included in them. Again, that which we call the moral law, or the ten commands, is for the most part the law of nature, but it has something of a positive institution, ceremo- nial or ritual in it. This is very plain in the fourth command of the seventh-day sabbath : but in this catechism it was not proper to enter into too nice enquiries on this subject. The three branches of this distinction of the Jewish laws in the main are evident enough, though they happen to-be intermingled in some instances. CHAP. IV. Of the Moral Law. I. QUESTION. WHICHwas themoral lawgiven to the Jews ? A. All those commands which relate to their behaviour considered as men, and which lie scattered up and down in the books of Moses ; but they are as it were reduced into a small compass in th.: ten com- mandments. c c 3
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