vain, if the desires were not regulated, or the passions subdued. The sacrifices of the oppressour, or extortioner, were not an atonement, but an abomination. Forgiveness was obtained, not by incense, but by repentance; the offender was required to rend his heart, and not his garment; a contrite and a broken heart was the oblation which the supreme Judge did not despise.
So much was the moral law exalted above all ceremonial institutions, even in that dispensation by which so many ceremonies were commanded, that those two parts of duty were distinguished by the appellations of body and spirit. As the body, separated from the spirit, is a mass, lifeless, motionless, and useless; so the external practice of ritual observances was ineffectual and vain, an action without a meaning, a labour by which nothing was produced. As the spirit puts the limbs into motion, and directs their action to an end, so justice and mercy gave energy to ceremonies, made the oblation grateful, and the worshipper accepted.
The professors of Christianity have few ceremonies indispensably enjoined them. Their religion teaches them to worship God, not with local or temporary ceremonies, but in spirit and in truth; that is, with internal purity, and moral righteousness. For spirit, in this sense, seems to be opposed to the body of external rites, and truth is known to signify, in the biblical language, the sum of those duties which we owe to one another.
Yet such are the temptations of interest, and pleasure, and so prevalent is the desire of enjoying at once the pleasures of sin for a season, and the hopes of happiness to eternity; that even the Christian religion has been depraved by artificial modes of piety, and succedaneous practices of reconciliation. Men have been ever persuaded, that by doing something, to which they think themselves not obliged, they may purchase an exemption from such duties as they find themselves inclined to violate: that they may commute with heaven for a temporal fine, and make rigour atone for relaxity.
