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believers, to encourage their patience and verance, is really describing their own sufferings: "Women received their dead by a resurrection; but others were tortured, and did not accept deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of scoffs and scourgings, and of bonds also and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were pierced with stakes, they were slain with the sword: they went about in sheepskins and goat-skins, destitute, afflicted, and cruelly treated*, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though they obtained a good witness through faith, yet received not the promise, God having provided a better thing for us, that they might not be made perfect without us." Heb. xi. 35--40.

The Gnostics were Jews, risen in the school of John the Baptist; but their most offensive tenets, such as the blaspheming of God, and the divinity of Christ, were copied from heathenism. These notions were indeed most repugnant to the ideas and feelings of every well-disposed disciple of Moses; but the deceivers endeavoured to recommend, by blending them with other things more agreeable to the Jews. Such as the necessity of persevering in the rites or, as

* See Eccles. Resear. p. 334, 335, where you will perceive a remarkable resemblance between the calamities here enumerated, and those described by Philo, as inflicted on the Esseans in Egypt.

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they called them, in the works of the law, and the inutility of virtue, as the means of accept ance with God. Christ himself had lived among them, and Jerusalem was the great centre, in which his Apostles assembled, asserted, defended, and propagated their doctrine. For these reasons, the system of the Gnostics appears to have met, for some years, with less success in Judea than in other places. When, however, the calamities which awaited that nation began to increase, and the Apostles were most of them dispersed in foreign countries, then as our Lord had predicted, the false prophets arose, and met with lamentable success in deluding not only the Jews in general, but even the believers in Christ. The corruption of the Gospel, and the apostacy of its votaries among the Jews, were the leading circumstances which occasioned the epistle to the Hebrews, and which account for the many earnest exhortations contained in it, against falling from the faith.

This being the general object of the writer, the doctrine of the impostors that God was an inferior evil being, and that the Christ was not the man Jesus, but a God within him, is clearly discernible in various parts of it.

The

The propriety of the marriage institution was called in question by some among the Esseans; and this led the Apostle to remark that marriage, and the bed undefiled by adultery, were honourable in every respect. Heb. xiii. 4. Gnostic teachers denied that the Jewish had any connexion with the Christian dispensation, and affirmed that they were delivered even by two different beings. Their language on this

subject was peculiar *: Christ they said, who delivered the New Covenant, was not the same with the Christ who delivered the Old. Against this tenet the following words of the Apostle are levelled. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day and for ever." xiii. 8. That the author had the deceivers in view is evident from what

he subjoins. "Be not carried away by cunning and foreign doctrines.

To prevent the converts from being seduced by the Gnostics, from Jehovah, as the only living and true God, Panl sets before them the example of their ancestors, who having relapsed into Pagan idolatry, perished in the wilderness. Heb. iii. 7. Wherefore, as the Holy Spirit saith, To-day if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of trial in the wilderness; where your fathers tried me, proved me, and saw my works forty years: wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They always err in heart, and they have not known my ways: upon which I sware in my anger, they shall not enter into my rest. Do you also, brethren, take heed, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God, but exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day, lest

* Δυσι θεοις προσάπτουσι αμφοτέρας τας διαθήκας δι Tegodoo. Origen. Commen. Vol. ii. p. 14. The same writer says, in his Philocalia, p. 38, at the bottom-"They adopt the New Testament, and reprobate the Old." See Iren. p. 19, 21, 22.

any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."

The Apostle argues, that, as Christ came to deliver mankind, it was necessary that he should be a human being, resembling in all things those whom he came to save. "Since then the children are partakers of flesh and blood, Christ himself also partook of them, that, through death, he might destroy him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to slavery. For Christ hath espoused the cause not indeed of angels, but of the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it behoveth him to be like his brethren in all things; that he might be a compassionate and faithful highpriest, to purify the sins of the people, and thus introduce them to God." Heb. ii. 14.-Here the doctrine of the impostors is set aside in very clear terms. Christ was not of a divine or angelic nature, because he did not engage in the cause of angels: he was a man, because his object was to save men from sin and death. Having intimated that the Christ was a man, and not a super-human being, the writer thus proceeds: " Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider JESUS the apostle and high-priest of our profession; who was faithful to him that appointed him, as Moses was also faithful in all the household of God." Observe, the Apostle does not say, "Consider Christ or Christ Jesus," but simply, "consider Jesus, the apostle and high-priest of our profession." His object was to preclude the opinion of the Gnostics, that the Christ was not the

man Jesus, but a God within him. In opposition to it, Paul holds forth as the Christ him whom all knew to be a mere man, and whom the impostors blasphemed and rejected, because he was no other than a man.

The Jews gloried in their temple, their priesthood, and the ordinances of their law; and regarded them as no less permanent than essential parts of their religion. These, however, were already pronounced by the mild spirit of the Gospel as null and void; and the time was fast approaching, when they were totally to disappear by the destruction of the Jewish state. The wisest among the disciples of Moses could hardly contemplate this event, without painful anxiety; and it required great fortitude and wisdom, even in the followers of Christ, to meet and improve it. The author had this catastrophe before his eyes*, when writing to the Hebrew believers, and one leading object he had in view was to prepare them for its reception. The Jewish Gnostics maintained the perpetual obligation of the Levitical code; and their charge against God, of being capricious and imperfect, might appear to many to be too well founded, when they saw him cancelling the law, which he had himself solemnly enacted, and destroying the very people who were most zealous in its support.

Now what mode of reasoning, consistent with fairness and truth, was likely to reconcile the

In chap. viii. 13, the writer says, "Now that which is declared void, and groweth old, is nigh disappearing."

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