90 THE SACRED AND SECULAR
hood. Heb. 7:11. But the ten commandments were
received before that priesthood had been appointed.
Compare Ex. 20 with Ex. 28; Lev. 8 and 9.
2. This was a law relating to priesthood, tithes, and
offerings. Heb. 7:5, 12, 28. But the ten command-
ments said nothing concerning this.
3. It was a law which required that the priesthood
should be of the tribe of Levi, and which had to be
changed in order to have a priest arise out of the tribe
of Judah. Meb. 7:12-14. But the ten command-
ments kad no precept that related to the subject, or
that needed to be changed for that reason.
Finally, with one further proof of the distinction be-
tween the moral law and the first covenant, this part of
the argument shall be closed. The first covenant hav-
ing waxed old and vanished away, the new covenant is
made by God in its place. Jer. 31:31-34; Ileb. 8:
8-13. And now observe the grand promise of the new
covenant: But this shall be the covenant that T will
make with the house of Israel: After those days, saith
the Lord, I will put my law in their tnward parts, and
write © tn their hearts” Jer. 31:33. It is, therefore,
certain that the dissolution of the first covenant is not
the abrogation of the law of God. That which was the
law of God in the days of Jeremiah, six hundred years
before Christ, is the subject of this prediction. This
law was not only to survive the dissolution of the first
covenant, but it was to continue to exist under the new
covenant, and to sustain even a more sacred relation to
the people of God under the new, than under the old,
covenant. Here the argument on this part of the sub-
ject is rested. It has been shown,
1. That the first, or old, covenant was not the law of
God, but the contract between God and Israel concern-
dng that law.
2. That the law of God is a covenant only in a sec-
ondary sense; viz., in that it constituted the condition
of that agreement, or contract, by which God became a
husband to Tsracl.