aithful 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persuade us that God has repealed them; (for the utmost conceivable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.

Now let us take the other question,--which may indeed be called a
question as to the allowableness of resting confidently in truth already
gained, without consenting to examine the claims of something asserting
itself to be a new truth, yet which seems to interfere with the old. Is
nothing within us to be safe from possible doubt, or is everything? Or
is it here, as in the former case, that there are truths so tried and so
sacred that it were blasphemy to question them; while there are others,
often closely intermixed with these, which are not so sacred, because
they are not eternal; which may and ought to be examined when occasion
requires; and which may be laid aside, or exchanged