LECTURE XXIII.

Consideration of that part of the Hebrew law, which prohibited the use of certain meats, as unclean. Object and tendency of this prohibition.

THE Mosaic law accompanied the Jews not only

We

to their altars, but to their fire sides; it prescribed rules not only for their sacrifices, but for their diet. It banished from their tables, and even instructed them to abhor several kinds of animal food, which were used, and in some instances highly esteemed by other nations. These restrictions have drawn upon the Hebrew ritual and nation the most pointed ridicule both of pagans and deists. Indeed the greater part of Jewish and Christian writers have not satisfactorily defended or accounted for these restrictions. Some of these authors assert that the animals forbidden to the Jews as unclean were either dangerous, unwholsome, or unpleasant food. We We grant that most of them were such; yet some others, for instance, the hare afforded a delicate and nourishing meat. must remark however that some meats may be excellent in one region, which are not so in another. Accordingly Hasselquist, a learned modern traveller, tells us that the Egyptians and Arabians have no esteem, and make no use of the animal just named. Others suppose that this distinction of animals into clean and unclean was borrowed from the institutions and manners of the early ages. But we do not find among the antient nations any distinction of meats resembling that, which the law of Moses prescribed. It is true that some distinction of this kind is mentioned even before the flood; for God directs Noah to take into the ark of every clean beast seven pairs, and only two of those that were not clean. But by unclean

in this passage are probably meant such as nature itself pronounced unfit either for food or sacrifice, such as tygers, serpents, &c; and by clean the mild and useful animals, which were adapted both to the service of man and the worship of God. We add that as the difference of meats, prescribed by the statutes of Moses, was evidently intended to keep the Jews a distinct and holy people, it could not be a mere transcript of antient or existing usages, but must have been strikingly peculiar to that nation. Others have chosen to derive these statutes from the sole pleasure and authority of Jehovah, the king of Israel; who intended hereby to restrain a gross and licentious people, and to discipline them into a constant subjection to himself, by engaging them to remember and regard him even in their daily food, as well as in the solemn exercises of his worship. But, though these restrictions might be useful, as standing remembrances of God's sovereignty, and trials of their obedience; yet they did not emanate from the mere will of Deity, but from his perfect wisdom and goodness. For

Ye shall

1. The express words of the divine law on this subject hold up an important reason for these limitations"I am the Lord your God, who have separated you from other people, that ye should be mine. Ye shall therefore be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy. therefore put a difference between clean beasts and unclean. Ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by foul, or by creeping thing, which I have separated from you as unclean."* As if Jehovah had said, "I have selected you from, and exalted far above the ignorant and idolatrous world. Let it be your care to walk worthy of this distinction. Let the quality of your food, as well as the rites of your worship, display

you

your peculiar and holy character. Let even your manner of eating be so appropriate, so pure, so nicely adjusted by my law, as to convince yourselves and all the world that you are indeed separated from idolaters, and devoted to me alone." It was highly fit and necessary that a people so circumstanced, and so related to God, as the Jews, should constantly wear his name, if I may so speak, on their foreheads; that their common meals should declare what Deity they worshipped; that these should attest their dignified relation to Jehovah. Agreeably Moses tells them-+" The Lord hath chosen you to be a peculiar people unto himself. Ye shall not eat any abominable thing. Ye shall not eat any thing that dieth of itself; ye shall give it to the stranger, or sell it to an alien; for ye are a holy people ;" that is, "since God. has invested you with singular honor and favor, you ought to reverence yourselves; you ought to disdain the vile food of heathen idolaters; such food you may lawfully give or sell to foreigners; but a due selfrespect forbids you to eat it." It is a remarkable fact that all the animals, granted for food to the Jews, were and still are esteemed and used by the eastern nations; while most of those, which were forbidden to the Hebrews, have been constantly excluded from the tables of the more refined heathens. These statutes therefore continually enforced on the Israelites that singular purity and dignity of character, which suited their profession. They were likewise striking memorials of the transcendent purity and excellence of Israel's God. By obliging his subjects to abstain from the impure diet of pagan idolaters, he forcibly taught them his own superiority to the heathen deities. By enacting so many laws against every kind of * Lev. xx. 24, 25, 26. + Deut. xiv. 2, 3, 21.

uncleanness, whether of garments, of bodies, or of meats, he meant to impress on that gross people a constant sense of his own infinite purity, as the Holy One of Israel; he meant to habituate them to regard and honor him as such by the conspicuous purity both of their manners and worship. Not one of the pagan gods so much as pretended to purity of character, or claimed to be worshipped under their title of the Holy One. Far from this, even the worship of these gods was frequently performed by impure rites, and the use of vile and filthy animals; by which the worshippers proclaimed the foul character of their deities. On the contrary, the clean diet and pure ceremonies of the Hebrews were mirrors, which constantly reflected the immaculate purity of Jehovah. Hence

*

2. This nice distinction of meats was fitted to teach that puerile nation the rudiments of moral purity or true holiness. Agreeably the prohibition of unclean food is constantly enforced by this admonition-" Be ye holy, for I am holy;" which the apostle Peter interprets, not of ceremonial, but of practical universal holiness.† As the Israelites, on their first emerging from the darkness of Egyptian superstition, could not directly view the splendor of the divine holiness; God was pleased to set before them some images or emblems of it, in the purity of their food and their frequent ritual washings, in order to rouse and carry forward their minds to some just sense of his sanctity and their correspondent duty.

3. This legal distinction of animals into clean and unclean was intended to point out an answerable distinction between the Jews and Gentiles. The law expresses this idea "I have separated you from other people; you lxvi. 17. 1 Peter. i. 15, 16.

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• Isai. Ixv. 3, 4.

shall therefore separate clean beasts from unclean, and ye shall be holy"—that is, by this very act of distinguishing your food you declare and confirm your separation from the unclean Gentiles. Accordingly all the Jews have to this day understood the matter in this light. Agreeably when St. Peter had been taught by a vision, that all animals were lawful food to christians, he immediately inferred that the Gentiles and their fellowship were no longer unclean or defiling; which imports that the antient law respecting unclean beasts prohibited familiar intercourse with heathens. Which leads us to remark

4. This law was designed to bar the Israelites from a dangerous union with Gentiles either by consanguinity, by religion, or by intimate friendship. This statute, above all others, established not only a political and sacred, but a physical separation of the Jews from all other people. It made it next to impossible for the one to mix with the other either in meals, in marriage, or in any familiar connexion. Their opposite customs in the article of diet not only precluded a friendly and comfortable intimacy, but generated mutual contempt and abhorrence. The Jews religiously abhorred the society, manners, and institutions of the Gentiles, because they viewed their own abstinence from forbidden meats as a token of peculiar sanctity, and of course regarded other nations, who wanted this sanctity, as vile and detestable. They considered themselves as secluded by God himself from the profane world by a peculiar worship, government, law, dress, country, and mode of living. Though this separation from other people, on which the law respecting food was founded, created in the Jews a criminal pride and hatred of the Gentiles; yet it forcibly operated as a preservative from heathen idolatry by precluding all fa