and the tabernacle. In allusion to the ceremonial uncleanness contracted by touching a dead body, St. Paul, that infallible interpreter of the import of the Mosaic law, styles evil dispositions "dead works."-" For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"* To every instance of ceremonial defilement, there are two circumstances attached. 1. The forfeiture of certain privileges, especially that of approaching God in his sanctuary. 2. A representation of the defiling nature of sin. But of all the various sorts of ceremonial uncleanness, there is none which appears to have had so much a typical import as the case of leprosy, which, accordingly, occupies more room in the enactments of the Levitical law than all the others put together; and is treated of with a niceness of distinction, and a particularity of detail, peculiar to itself. Not less than two very long chapters of this book+ are devoted to the ascertaining of the signs of this disease, and prescribing the methods of legal purification; so that no one, who believes there is any thing whatever of a typical nature in the laws of Moses, can doubt of the regulations respecting *Heb. ix. 13, 14. + Lev. xiii. xiv. leprosy being emphatically so. It is my full conviction of this which has induced me to make it the ground of this discourse. If we set ourselves to inquire for what reason the leprosy was selected in the Mosaic ritual, as the most eminent representation of moral defilement, we shall perceive there was something very singular in this affair. Besides its being fitted for this purpose as it was a very dreadful and loathsome disease, there is the utmost reason to believe it was supernatural. Those who have travelled into eastern countries make mention indeed of a distemper under the name of leprosy; but there is much room to doubt of its being the same which is treated of in the books of Moses. If you read the rules prescribed there for ascertaining its existence, you will find certain circumstances to which there is nothing parallel in any disease now existing in the world: for it attached itself not only to the bodies of men, but to garments and to houses; it affected the very stones of buildings, fretting and consuming them. A considerable part of the laws on this subject respect its subsistence in houses, which in certain cases were ordered to be completely demolished, and the materials cast into an unclean place without the city. It seems to have been inflicted by the immediate hand of God: * Read carefully Lev. xiv. 34-45. Michaelis, and others, have endeavoured to prove that the leprosy of the Old Testament is, in no case, supernatural; but their reasonings are, in my judgement, far from satisfactory.-ED. "When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession," the Lord is introduced as saying, " and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession; and he that owneth the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, It seemeth to me there is as it were a plague in the house.”* In various periods of the Old Testament history, we find it inflicted as an immediate judgement of God, as in the case of Moses, Miriam, Gehazi, and Uzziah. After it was cured, it was suffered sometimes to spread again. By this awful visitation, the inhabitants of the house were forcibly reminded and admonished of their sins and is it possible to conceive of a ceremony more adapted to strike a stupid and insensible people with awe? The typical import of this kind of ceremonial defilement leads us to consider sin in the following lights: I. As an alarming, dreadful disease, for such the leprosy unquestionably was. There are spiritual diseases, as well as bodily, and the former much more to be dreaded. These diseases may all be resolved into sin. As the human frame consists not merely in a number of parts put together in the same place, but of parts vitally united, all with their separate functions and due subserviency to each other, which gives us the idea of a system; so the mind consists of faculties and powers designed to act under due subordination to each *Lev. xiv. 34, 35. other. Sin disturbs this harmony, confounds this order, and consequently is truly and properly in the mind what disease is in the body. In the Holy Scriptures it is compared to the most afflicting disorders;-to blindness, deafness, lethargy; and the removal of it is expressed by healing. "Lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them."* Sin is a fretting leprosy; it spreads itself throughout all the principles and powers; and [wherever it spreads imparts its own malignity.] 66 II. It defiles as well as disorders. Like the leprosy it is a most loathsome disease; it is filthiness of flesh and of spirit. Cleanse thou me from secret faults."+ "Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin."‡ III. It cuts off those in whom it prevails from communion with God, both penally and naturally; that is, by the force of judicial sentence, and by its natural influence. IV. To those who have just apprehensions of it, it will be productive of that sorrowful sense of guilt and unworthiness, so forcibly expressed in the words of the text. *Isaiah vi. 10. John xii. 40. † Psalm xix. 12. 174 XVIII. ON SPIRITUAL LEPROSY. Lev. xiii. 45.—And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean.* In this discourse, we propose to make an improvement of the two former, which treated of the spiritual import of the Mosaical law concerning lepers. Having shewn that the ceremonial defilement, incurred by leprosy, was designed as a standing representation of the polluting nature of sin, and the legal method of purification,-a type of the manner in which the power and pollution of sin are removed under the gospel,—I shall proceed to attempt applying the whole doctrine to the character and circumstances of my hearers. I. Let the doctrine be improved into an occasion of inquiring whether we are healed, or are yet under the leprosy of sin. When we hear of the ravages of so dreadful a disorder, supposing we give any sort of credit to the report, it is natural to inquire into our own situation, and to consider how far we are in danger of being overtaken with it. During the prevalence of an epidemic disorder, accompanied especially with symptoms of danger, prudent men are wont to manifest great solicitude to avoid the places and occasions of infection. In the case before us there is ground for much serious *Preached at Leicester, December, 1810. |
