the ceremony and shadow, and were not led to
use it as a means for such an end; and so, though they fancied that they
obeyed, and pleased God, yet really they wholly perverted his meaning and
intention in the command; therefore doth the Lord plead with them in this
place for their sacrificing, as if it had been murder. They used to object
his commands. What, says the Lord, did I command these things? Who
required them? Meaning certainly, who required them for such an end, to
take away your sin? Who required them but as a shadow of the substance to
come? Who required them but as signs of that Lamb and sacrifice to be
offered up in the fulness of time? And forasmuch as ye pass over all
these, and think to please me with the external ceremony, was that ever my
intent or meaning? Certainly ye have fancied a new law of your own, I
never gave such a law; therefore it is said, Psal. l. 13.--God pleads just
after this manner, "Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of
goats?" &c.; and Micah vi. 7, "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of
rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?" He who hath no pleasure in
sinful men, what pleasure can he have in beasts? Therefore, it was to
signify to them (who thought God would be pleased with them for their
offering) that he could not endure them; it was worse to him to offer him
such a recompense, than if they had done none at all. He is only well
pleased in his well-beloved Son; and when they separate a lamb or a
bullock from the well-beloved, what was it to him more than "a dog's neck"
or "swine's flesh?" It was his creature, as these are, and no more, Isa.
lxvi. 3. Now that they looked never beyond the ceremonies, is evident,
because they boasted in them; they used to find out these as a remedy of
their sins, and a mean to pacify God's wrath, Micah vi. 6. Paul bears
witness of it, 2 Cor. iii. 13-15. Moses had a vail of ceremonies over his
face, and the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of
that mystery, Christ Jesus, but their minds were blinded, and are so to
this day in the reading of the scriptures; and this vail of hardness of
heart shall be done away when Christ returns to them again. Now, I say, it
is just so with us. There was never a people liker other than we are like
the Jews. We have many external ordinances, preaching, hearing, baptism,
communion, reading, singing, praying in public, extraordinary solemnities
of fasting and thanksgiving,