this is not a just interpretation of the passage in Deuteronomy? shall we say that this is the language of unbelief or of sin? or, rather, shall we not confess that it is in accordance with God’s word, and holy, and faithful, and true?  And yet this most just language led those who used it to reject one of Christ’s greatest miracles, and to refuse the salvation of the Holy One of God.  Can God’s truth be contrary to itself? or can truth and goodness lead so directly to error and to evil?

Now, then, where is the solution to be found? for some solution there must be, unless we will either condemn a most true principle, or defend a most false conclusion.  The error lies in confounding God’s moral law with his law of ordinances; precisely the same error which led the Jews to stone Stephen.  The law had undoubtedly commanded that he who blasphemed God should be stoned; the Jews called Stephen’s speaking against the holy place and against the law blasphemy against God, and they murdered God’s faithful servant and Christ’s blessed martyr.  Even so the law had said, Let no miracle be so great as to tempt you to forsake God:  the Jews considered the forsaking the law of the Sabbath to be a forsaking of God, and they said that Christ’s miracle was a work of Satan.  There is no blasphemy into which we may not fall, no crime from which we shall be safe, if we do not separate in our minds most clearly such laws as relate to moral and eternal duties, and such as relate to outward or positive ordinances, even when commanded or instituted by God himself.  It is most false to say that the fact of their being commanded sets them on a level with each other.  So long as they are commanded to us, it is no doubt our duty to obey them equally:  but the difference between them is this, that whereas the first are commanded to us and to our children for ever, and no possible evidence can be so great as to persuade us that God has repealed them; (for the utmost conceivable amount of external testimony, such as that of miracles, could only lead to madness;—­the human mind might, conceivably, be overwhelmed by the conflict, but should never and could never be tempted to renounce its very being, and lie against its Maker;) the others, that is, the commands to observe certain forms and ordinances, are in their nature essentially temporary and changeable:  we have no right to assume that they will be continued, and therefore a miracle at any time might justly require us to forsake them; and not only an outward miracle, but the changed circumstances of the times may speak God’s will no less clearly than a miracle, and may absolutely make it our duty to lay aside those ordinances, which to us hitherto, and to our fathers before us, were indeed the commands of God.