f any would, yet he cannot smooth or heal it with any
plaster.

20. But as known, impious, and unregenerate persons, have no right to the
holy table, so also ungodly persons, by reason of a grievous scandal, are
justly for a time deprived of it; for it is not lawful or allowable that
the comforts and promises which belong only to such as believe and repent,
should be sealed unto known unclean persons, and those who walk
inordinately, whether such as are not yet regenerate, or such as are
regenerate, but fallen, and not yet restored or risen from their fall. The
same discipline plainly was shadowed forth under the Old Testament, for
none of God's people, during their legal pollution, were permitted to
enter into the tabernacle, or to have access to the solemn sacrifices and
society of the church; and much more were wicked and notorious offenders
debarred from the temple, until, by an offering for sin, together with a
solemn confession thereof, being cleansed, they were reconciled unto God.
Num. v. 6-8; Lev. v. 1-7; vi. 1-8.

21. Yea that those who were polluted with sins and crimes were reckoned
among the unclean in the law, Maimonides (_in More Nevoch._, part. 3, ch.
47,) proveth out of Lev. xx. 3; xviii. 24; Num. xxxv. 33, 34. Therefore
seeing the shedding of man's blood was rightly esteemed the greatest
pollution of all, hence it was that as the society of the leprous was
shunned by the clean, so that the company of murderers by good men was
most religiously avoided, Lam. iv. 13-15. The same thing is witnessed by
Ananias the high priest, in Josephus, _Jewish War_, book 4, ch. 5, where
he saith that those false zealots of that time, bloody men, ought to have
been restrained from access to the temple, by reason of the pollution of
murder; yea, as Philo the Jew witnesseth (in his book of the _Offerers of
Sacrifices_), whosoever were found unworthy and wicked, were by edict
forbidden to approach the holy threshold.

22. Neither must that be passed by which was noted by Zonaras, book 4, of
his annals (whereof see also Scaliger agreeing with him, in _Elench.
Triheres. Nicserrar._, cap. 28), namely, that the Essenes were forbidden
the holy place, as being heinous and piacular transgressors, and such as
held other opinions, and did otherwise teach concerning sacrifices than
according to the law, and observed not the ordinances of Moses, whence it
proceeded that they sacrificed privately; yea, and also the Essenes
themselves