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If Maimonides was bold enough to pull the sacrificial system down from its glorious pedestal in Jewish tradition and admit that being inherently nothing but a superstition, it was nevertheless instituted with such great pomp and ceremony, with a priestly family, a levitical tribe and a host of prescriptions and regulations, merely as a concession to the habits and prejudices of the people, why could he not apply the same method of explanation to the few prohibitions mentioned above?
Some no better than they should be, had plotted to put him to death by the Levitical law, for the lives of Robinson and Emry, pretending that the fault was his, that led them to their ends; but he quickly took such order with such Lawyers, that he laid them by the heels till he sent some of them prisoners to England." Clearly Captain Smith had no authority to send anybody prisoner to England.
In his absence Ratcliffe, the president, admitted Gabriel Archer, Smith's deadly enemy, into the council; and immediately upon his arrival these two arrested him and tried him under the Levitical law for the loss of the two men killed by the Indians.
It was not until the days of Julius Cæsar that this computation of time was adopted in the Roman calendar; and fifteen centuries from that time had elapsed before the yearly celebration of the Christian paschal festivals, founded upon the Passover of the Levitical law, revealed the fact that the annual revolution of the earth in her orbit round the sun is not precisely of three hundred and sixty-five days and one quarter, but of between eleven and twelve minutes less; and thus the duration of the year was ascertained, as a measure of time, to an accuracy of three or four seconds, more or less a mistake which would scarcely amount to one day in twenty thousand years.
I could find no proof that any of the sacrifices under the law were intended to direct the minds of those who offered them to the sacrifice of Jesus. There is nothing in the law, and there is nothing in the prophets to that effect. There is no passage of Scripture which says that any one ever did look through the old Levitical sacrifices to Christ.
As learning and the several professions connected with the knowledge of letters were confined almost exclusively the tribe of Levi, the distribution of its members throughout the whole of the Hebrew commonwealth was attended with many advantages. Every Levitical city became at once a school and a seat of justice.
They discover that "the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ:" "That Jesus Christ was set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God;" that "he tasted death for every man;" that he was "delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification;" that "he is set down at the right hand of the throne of God;" "and ever liveth to make intercession for us; and, that he is the substance of all the types and figures under the Levitical priesthood, being the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth."
Hence, among other inferences, the sacred Personage who is a priest for ever after Melchizedek's order, wholly independent of Levitical limits, must dominate and must supersede the order of the sons of Aaron with their inferior status and with their transitory lives.
He had bought, on purpose for them, a kitchen slave, himself a strict Jew and familiar with the requirements of the Levitical law as to food, who during their stay was to preside over the mysteries of the hearth, instead of the Greek cook who usually served him, so that none but clean meat should be prepared according to the Jewish ritual.
All John's preaching, therefore, led up to the demand for repentance. The word which was oftenest on his lips was "Repent ye!" It was not enough to plead direct descent from Abraham, or outward conformity with the Levitical and Temple rites. God could raise up children to Abraham from the stones of the river bank.
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