whom we acknowledge as God, must necessarily have the
whole of our fear, our love, and our obedience. And yet
there is perhaps a way of serving God more unreasonable
still, and that is by giving to sinful and fallible men the
honour that is due to God alone. The Cutheans falsely
thought that God was one amongst many; and if they
worshipped the many, it was under the impression that
they were really gods. But suppose a nation to acknowledge
the one true God, and then to fix upon a certain
number of men to be honoured and served with the same
degree of reverence and obedience; none can doubt that
this nation would be far more irrational than that of the
Cutheans, inasmuch as to pay Divine honours to a number
of our fellow-men is more extravagant still than to worship
a plurality of imaginary deities. Some may think that such
a degree of absurdity is impossible, but fact shows that it is
not only possible, but that it has actually occurred. When
men exalt the inventions of their teachers to a level with
the known and acknowledged laws of God, and make obedience
to these inventions an essential part of their religion,
they confer upon men the highest degree of honour and of
service that can be rendered to God. The unreserved submission
of the heart and conscience to the will of God is the
highest act of worship, and when it is given to the will of
men, in that degree men are made gods. Whether these
remarks apply to those who make the (
Hebrew characters)
i.e., "The constitutions concerning meat in milk" a part
of their religion, it is for the adherents of the oral law to
inquire.
The general principle of these constitutions is thus expressed—
(Hebrew characters)
"It is unlawful to boil meat in milk—according to the law, it is also unlawful to eat it; it is likewise unlawful to make any profit by it, and it is to be buried. Its ashes are also unlawful, like the ashes of other things that are buried. Whosoever boils together a quantity of these two things, equal to an olive, is to be flogged, for it is said, 'Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mothers milk.' (Exod. xxiii. 19.) In like manner, he that eats a quantity of the flesh and the milk, which have been boiled together, amounting in value to an
