DISCOURSE XVII.

ON THE PURIFICATION.

LUKE II. 22.

And when the days of her purification, according to the law of Mofes, were accomplished, they brought bim to Jerufalem, to prefent him to the Lord.

A

MONG the many advantages we DISC.

enjoy in these feats of learning and XVII. religion, it may furely be deemed one, that an honourable respect is paid to those facred feftivals, which the church of England, in her wifdom, has thought proper to retain. They are few, and they are important: fo few, that the neceffary profecution of fecular bufinefs is not too much

broken

DISC. broken in upon; fo important, that nothing XVII. seems to have been appointed in vain.

They compofe a celeftial circle, of which Chrift is the centre: his firft and faithful friends form the circumference, reflecting back on him the glory received from him. They vifit us in their annual course, with meffages from above, each teaching us fomething to believe, and, in confequence, fomething to do. They bring repeatedly to our remembrance truths, which we are apt to forget: they fecure to us little intervals of reft from worldly cares, that our hearts with our hands. may be lifted up to God in the heavens: they revive our zeal and fervour in performing the offices of religion: they cheer the heart with sentiments of gratitude and thankfulness: they confirm us in habits of obedience to the institutions of the church and the injunctions of our fuperiors: they ftir us up to an imitation of those who have gone before us in the way of holiness: they minister an occafion to our children, of enquiring into the meaning of their inftitution; and afford

XVII.

afford us an opportunity of explaining the DISC. several doctrines and duties of Christianity, to which they refer: in fhort, to use the words of the excellent Hooker, they are "the fplendor and outward dignity of our "religion, forcible witneffes of ancient "truth, provocations to the exercises of "all piety, shadows of our endless felicity "in heaven, on earth everlasting records " and memorials; wherein they who can"not be drawn to hearken unto that we "teach, may, only by looking upon that "we do, in a manner read whatever we "believe. Well to celebrate these religious " and facred days, is to spend the flower of "our time happily "."

Let us therefore arreft the festival of the day, and detain it, while we learn from it those useful leffons it is prepared to teach, concerning the purification of the bleffed virgin; the presentation of the child Jefus in the temple; the facrifice offered upon

a Ecclefiaftical Polity, v. 71.

VOL. III.

B b

the

DISC. the occafion; and the behaviour of Simeon

If we look into the law of Mofes, we find it ordained, that the woman who had borne a male child, for forty days thence enfuing (a period, for whatever reason, often fixed on, in cafes of humiliation), was to be accounted impure, to touch no hallowed thing, nor to approach the fanctuary. At the expiration of that term, she was to repair, for the first time, to the temple, and there to have an atonement made for her by the priest.

With respect to the whole class of those incidents and maladies to which the body is fubject, thus regarded in the eye of the divine law as unclean; from the nature of the ordinance itself, as well as from numberless paffages in the writings of the

pro

phets, and more efpecially in the New Teftament, it should feem evident, that fomething farther was intended than may at first fight appear. "The law ftood,"

among

XVII.

among other things, "in divers outward DISC. "washings and cleanfings." But may it not be here asked, as in another inftance, "Doth God take care for these? Or faith

he it not for our fake?" Hath he not enjoined fuch external rites, for the fake of conveying by them to future ages and generations, no less than to those then present, some truths of universal use and importance ?

Of one thing we are all well affured. That alone which renders man and the creation otherwise than acceptable in the fight of their Maker, is fin. That alone which can reinftate them in his favour, is the redemption by Chrift. By means of the former we are affirmed to have become

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corrupted, polluted, defiled, unclean;” by the inftrumentality of the latter we are faid to be "purged, purified, washed, cleanfed" - terms all borrowed from the legal ceremonies, at once explaining them, and being explained by them.