If, again, I were to make an assertion to divines, that Jesus Christ
came to put an end to the ceremonial parts of the Jewish law, and to the
types and shadows belonging to the Jewish dispensation, they would not
deny it. But baptism and the supper were both of them outward Jewish
ceremonies, connected with the Jewish religion. They were both of them
types and shadows, of which the antetypes and substances had been
realized at the death of Christ. And therefore a presumption arises
again, that these were not intended to be continued.
And that they were not intended to be continued, may be presumed from
another consideration. For what was baptism to any but a Jew? What could
a Gentile have understood by it? What notion could he have formed, by
means of it, of the necessity of the baptism of Christ? Unacquainted
with purifications by water as symbols of purification of heart, he
could never have entered, like a Jew, into the spiritual life of such an
ordinance. And similar observations may be made with respect to the
Passover-Supper. A Gentile could have known nothing, like a Jew, of the
meaning of this ceremony. He could never have seen in the Paschal Lamb
any type of Christ, or in the deliverance of the Israelites from
Egyptian bondage, any type of his own deliverance from sin, so clearly
or so feelingly as if the facts and customs had related to his own
history, or as if he had been trained to the connexion by a long series
of prophecies.
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