The works of the Reverend and learned John Lightfoot D. D., late Master of Katherine Hall in Cambridge such as were, and such as never before were printed : in two volumes : with the authors life and large and useful tables to each volume : also three maps : one of the temple drawn by the author himself, the others of Jervsalem and the Holy Land drawn according to the author's chorography, with a description collected out of his writings.

SECTION XXVIII.

The Covenant made with Israel: They not sworn by it to the ten Command∣ments, Exod. 24.

WHEN Israel cannot indure to hear the ten Commandments given, it was ready to conclude, that they could much less keep them. Therefore God giveth Moses privately fifty seven precepts besides, namely Ceremonial and Judicial: to all which the people are the next morning after the giving of the ten Commandments, sworn and entred into Covenant, and these made them a Ceremonial and singular people. A∣bout which these things are observable.

• 1. That they entred into Covenant to a written Law, Chap. 24. 4. And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, &c. Against traditions.
• 2. That here was a book written forty days before the writing of the two Tables: Against them that hold that the first letters that were seen in the world, were the wri∣ting of God in those Tables. And we have seen before also two pieces of writing be∣fore this of Moses, viz. the eighty eighth, and eighty ninth Psalms: And of equal An∣tiquity with them, or not much less was the penning of the book of Job, most pro∣bably written by Eli••u one of the Speakers in it, as may be conjectured from Chap. 32. 15, 16, 17. and some other probability.
• 3. That this first Covenant was made with water, and blood, and figurative lan∣guage: For the twelve pillars that represented the people are called the people, Exod. 24. 4. 8. As the words in the second Covenant, this my Body, are to be understood in such another sense.
• 4. That the ten Commandments were not written in the book of that Covenant, but only those 57. precepts mentioned before.

• For 1. The Lord giveth the other precepts, because the people could not receive the ten: for could they have received and observed those as they ought, they must ne∣ver have had any parcel of a Law more: as if Adam had kept the Moral Law, he had never needed to have heard of the promise; and so if we could but receive the same Law as we should, we had never needed the Gospel. Now it is most unlike, that since God gave them those other commands, because they could not receive the ten, that he would mingle the ten and them together in the Covenant.
• 2. It is not imaginable that God would ever cause a people to swear to the perfor∣mance of a Law which they could not indure so much as to hear.
• 3. The ten Commandments needed not to be read by Moses to the people, seeing they had all heard them from the mouth of the Lord but the day before.
• ...

• 4. Had they been written and laid up in this book, what necessity had there been of their writing and laying up in the Tables of stone?
• 5. Had Moses read the ten Commandments in the beginning of his book, why should he repeat some of them again at the latter end, as Exod. 23. 12.

Let such ruminate upon this, which hold and maintain that the Sabbath as it standeth in the fourth Commandment, is only the Jewish Sabbath, and consequently Ceremonial. And let those good men that have stood for the day of the Lord against the other, con∣sider, whether they have not lost ground, in granting that the fourth Commandment in∣stituted the Jewish Sabbath. For,

First, The Jews were not sworn to the Decalogue at all, and so not the Sabbath as it standeth there, but only to the fifty seven precepts written in Moses his book, and to the Sabbath as it was there, Exod. 23. 12.

Secondly, The end of the Ceremonial Sabbath of the Jews was in remembrance of their delivery out of Aegypt, Deut. 5. 15. but the moral Sabbath of the two Tables is in com∣memoration of Gods resting from the works of Creation. Exod. 20. 10, 11.