Chapter 16: The Second Foundation of Mosaic Theology — Justification

The second foundation of Mosaic Theology — The justification of the sinner before God is gratuitous — The defection of the Jewish church from it — Vain boasting about Abraham as father — The acknowledgment of natural misery rejected — The impious vow of dying Jews — The third foundation — On the coming and authority of the Messiah — The worst defection from it — A digression on the change and abolition of the Mosaic worship — Hebrews 7:12–15 — All Mosaic worship rested on the Aaronic priesthood — Its change foretold — The evangelical worship that follows — The Messiah is High Priest — Psalms 110:4 — What the priest is — The Mosaic laws subject to change — The final defection and destruction of the Jewish church.

I. We proceed to the second foundation of Mosaic Theology. The gracious justification of sinful man before God constitutes it. Its principal parts we have expounded above. That the Jewish church has wholly defected from it, the gospel itself plainly shows. For whereas they ought always to have openly professed, first from a deep and inward sense of natural misery and of their most abject condition in this world, "that a Syrian ready to perish was their father," and many other things to the same effect, they, puffed up with an excessive opinion of themselves, seized every opportunity to thunder forth with haughty lips that solemn declaration: "Abraham is our father." By this vain boasting they fortified themselves against all conviction of natural misery. Hence, at the beginning of his preparatory ministry, John the Baptist found it necessary to confront this prejudice (Matthew 3:9). "Do not presume," he says, "to say among yourselves, We have Abraham as our father." But stubborn pride resisted correction. For inflated with a vain conceit of this privilege, they boldly and obstinately opposed the truth itself — namely, the Lord Jesus — when He called them to repentance. There was no mention of "the Syrian ready to perish"; they never ceased to boast of themselves as "the seed of Abraham, the sons of Abraham," and therefore holy, righteous, and acceptable to God. By the chain of this same most pernicious error, very many in every age are held fast — those who, destitute of the inward form and power of religion, strive to fortify themselves against the light of truth and the reproaches of conscience by an opinion of external privileges and the empty pomp of ceremonies.

II. This foundation of Mosaic Theology taught, secondly, the free election of God, and the proper power (δύναμις) of the elect for rendering due obedience to God. But against no article of divine truth did the crowd of apostates set themselves with greater resolve. There was scarcely anything that they believed God had freely bestowed upon them. On the contrary, they constantly boasted that they were free, that they had never borne the yoke of bondage, but that they were naturally endowed with sufficient strength for rendering obedience to God. They accordingly complained that they suffered the gravest injustice when they suspected they were being numbered among the blind, the sick, and the guilty, who had need of a physician or of pardon. Now this error has another inseparable companion. For those who suppose themselves naturally endowed with strength for duly rendering obedience to God, conclude that such obedience is to be discharged by external observa-

tions and works. And those who think that the greatest or chief part of obedience and divine worship consists in external works and rites are undoubtedly confident that they are ready and fit to render it. By the bond of both errors together, the apostates were held fast against the doctrine of this foundation.

III. Thirdly, they so stubbornly repudiated reconciliation, the forgiveness of sins, peace with God, and the eternal righteousness to be obtained through the Messiah, that they openly professed that no one could be justified except by the works of the law; and they obstinately pursued that righteousness of the law which they had never been able to attain. Spiritual redemption and deliverance from the world, from death, from hell, and from sin they neither cared for nor expected. Concerning these things, in the true and genuine Jewish writers, there is the deepest silence. The entire expiation of sins they assigned partly to legal sacrifices and partly to their own merits and sufferings; as even now the dying cry out: "Let my death be the expiation of all my transgressions." All these things are so well known from the evangelical history that there is no need to dwell on proving them. Thus that church openly defected from the second foundation of Mosaic Theology — the justification of sinful man before God.

IV. The third remains. This theology expounded the coming and office of the Messiah. It taught that the Messiah, the Son of God, the Lord of the church, the greatest prophet, was to be invested by God the Father with authority and dominion, so that it would be His right and prerogative to institute new forms of worship and ceremonies, abolishing the old ones. All Mosaic theologians were bound to be obedient to Him in all things, under penalty of eternal excommunication. But after they had awaited His coming through so many centuries, already weighed down by their defection, they showed themselves so hostile to that truth that, for no other reason than that they suspected He would put an end to the ancient rites, they put the Messiah Himself to the most cruel death. From that time until this present day, the dogma that the ceremonial law is absolutely eternal and subject to no change has become the primary foundation of apostate theology. And the nearer those carnal ordinances approached their appointed end, and the more the season of reformation hastened on, with all the greater madness and obstinacy did they champion their immovable adherence to them. This most pernicious error the apostle sets before the eyes of all by many arguments drawn from their own principles in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Now since we are dealing with the chief head of present-day Judaism, it will not be alien to our purpose to weigh one of those arguments here — namely, the one the apostle pursues in chapter seven, verses 12–15, and elsewhere: "For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity a change of law comes about as well. For He of whom these things are said belongs to another tribe, from which no one has ever officiated at the altar; for it is evident that our Lord arose from Judah, a tribe about which Moses said nothing concerning priests. And what we say is even more evident, if another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek." Now the sum of this apostolic argument is as follows. The entire ceremonial law, all the administrations of the solemn worship and Mosaic institutions, rested on the supreme priesthood. The whole law always turned on this one hinge. For this reason, in the midst of calamities, destructions, and public ruin, God preserved the Aaronic or priestly family to this extent — that there was never lacking from it one who would discharge the priesthood according to the prescription of the law. For He had strictly forbidden that anyone who was not of the natural seed of Aaron should ever dare to undertake that office (Numbers 16:40). Moreover, He gave authority to that law by setting forth dreadful examples against those who had dared to intrude upon the priestly administrations — as in the case of the Levites (Numbers 18:7), and of King Uzziah (2 Chronicles 26:18–21). The connection between the legal worship and the priesthood was such that the same fate threatened both; so that when the priesthood was changed, it was impossible that the legal worship should not also undergo a change. Furthermore, God designated a special place for the performance of His solemn worship. Outside that place, no sacred rites that were common to the whole church and that expressed its unity could be performed, no offerings or sacrifices could be made. Mount Moriah in the city of Jerusalem was that place. But with all these institutions in place, God Himself foretold that a time would come when He would raise up another priest, from another family and tribe, and therefore of another order. For He foreshadowed that the Messiah — a king from the tribe of Judah — would also be high priest or supreme priest. Now since God appointed a high priest neither from the seed nor from the order of Aaron, it was necessary that all those Mosaic institutions whose administration rested solely on the Aaronic priesthood should immediately dissolve and vanish. All these things, says the apostle, cannot but be most well known to the Hebrews everywhere. You all believe that the Messiah is descended from the tribe of Judah. This, he says, is evident. And you also acknowledge that God never said anything about a priesthood — one that would oversee the Mosaic worship — being raised up or established in the tribe of Judah. It remains therefore only for me to prove that the Messiah will be the supreme priest. This is established from the words of the Psalmist irrefutably (Psalm 110:4): "The LORD has sworn and will not repent: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." That this psalm is prophetic and has the Messiah in view, not one of the Jews at that time doubted. The Targumists agree; nor does any one of the ancient masters deny it. And even when our Lord Jesus Christ had exposed the shameful ignorance of the scribes and Pharisees before all the people by a question drawn from this psalm concerning the person of the Messiah, though they were covered with shame, they did not dare to deny that He was the Messiah whom David in that place called his Lord. He is said to be not merely a future priest, but — so that the ineffable prerogative of that priest might be made known — God solemnly

swears that He will discharge the priesthood immutably forever. But here the apostates of today resort to a most wretched subterfuge. The word kohen, they say, signifies not only a priest but also a prince; and they would most gladly admit that the Messiah will be a prince. And this is indeed a finding most worthy of the rabbis — because it is plainly frivolous and nugatory. Melchizedek is called the king of Salem, and "priest of God Most High"; is this a prince or a priest of God Most High? Why, I ask, would one call him a prince when one had just called him a king, since kohen never denotes a prince except one who is lesser and inferior to a king? Furthermore, it was the role of the priest, not the prince, to bless others in the name of God — which Melchizedek is recorded as having done here (Genesis 14:18). Nor was Melchizedek a prince of any particular order, but a priest. Nor, as we have said, does Cohenim, when that word is transferred to the civil sphere, ever signify kings or those endowed with supreme power, but only those who occupy secondary or tertiary positions — the kind of minor prince that the Jews are unwilling to admit their Messiah will be.

V. Furthermore: the Messiah was appointed heir not of the kingdom of Melchizedek but of the kingdom of David; and in David the type of His royal office was preeminent, since David reigned in the church — Ps. 2 — while He, the other, reigns among the nations. It was therefore necessary that the coming of the Messiah should be met with the dissolution and abrogation of the Mosaic institutions. To what has been said there is added no small weight of argument from the following. The city of Jerusalem was established by God's command as the seat of all solemn worship. The apostates do not deny this. But when the Messiah came, the last of the prophets foretold that a pure offering would be made to God everywhere, throughout the whole world (Malachi 1:11). And lest anything should be lacking to the establishment of this truth — which brings the most present destruction upon Judaism — God foretells that in the days of the Messiah He will take priests and Levites for Himself from the Gentiles themselves (Isaiah 66:21). But this can no more be consistent with Judaism than light with darkness. The more perceptive among the Jews, compelled at last by the force of truth, yield the point. The author of Sepher Ikkarim not only expressly affirms that the law is mutable, but also replies to the arguments by which Maimonides, in his book on the foundations of the law, endeavors to prove it is eternal. For after reciting the arguments of R. M. B. M., he adds in book 3, chapter 13: "If anyone considers arguments of this kind more carefully, he will find that they do not prove the divine law to be immutable" — and he replies to them individually. And in chapter 20 he expressly teaches that the Messiah will be a prophet greater than Moses, and one who will have the right to change his institutions. R. Moses Nachmanides teaches similar things in his commentary on Deuteronomy, section Nitzavim. But these things are mentioned here in passing and by the way.

VI. Such was the fatal apostasy of the Jewish church, openly departing from all the principles and foundations of Mosaic Theology. This defection was attended by the ultimate corruption of morals. The efficacy of heavenly truth having been rejected — the only thing capable of setting a limit and measure to human crimes — nearly the whole people, utterly given over to every wickedness and ruined by vices, hastened their own final destruction. Moreover, the Son of God having been repudiated and wickedly put to death — He who is the soul and life of Mosaic Theology, without whose saving and life-giving influence that theology was a useless body, or rather a corpse not unlike (perhaps the very one) the body over which the dispute between Michael and the devil arose — since it can no longer lead any of its theologians to God, it does not appear worthy of the name of theology. For Jewish theology is, as Antonius Hulsius rightly defines it in his preface to his book on the Messiah, "a doctrine handed down by men in the Talmud, comprising a series of civil and ecclesiastical ordinances once observed in the Jewish polity, and to be restored therein through the Messiah, so that the Jews may live happily in the world" — how far this is from the nature and end of all true theology, anyone may easily judge.

VII. There were two reasons why this apostate theological world — long destined for fire — was not destroyed by that fire until several years had elapsed after the rejection of the promised Messiah. For, first, the apostates themselves had to render an accounting. It was therefore necessary, as Paul testifies everywhere, that the gospel be proclaimed to them — not only throughout all Judea, but among all the dispersed among the nations — before the nation was destroyed by inescapable ruin. Then, besides, there still lay hidden in that people the remnant of election by grace, which had to be called out before the wrath to the uttermost came upon them. For these reasons, I say, that church was continued in God's forbearance and longsuffering for some years after the apostates had put the finishing hand to their fatal apostasy. Concerning this destruction, let the reader consult the most celebrated historian Josephus, Preface to the book on the Jewish War, and book 6, chapter 9, §§12, 26; book 7, chapter 9, §§11, 12, 15, 16, 24, 28. He recounts not men but monsters; he records not a disaster or the destruction of a nation, but an inexhaustible abyss of all the miseries that the human race has ever endured. And such was the end of the apostate Jewish church, after God had tolerated it with much longsuffering for 527 years from the Ezraitic reformation.