understood, may instruct us in the final end of his baptism; with the consideration of which I shall conclude this Dissertation on the ministry of John.

The answer was doubtless emphatic, or specially in reference to the time then present, and to some obligation incumbent, at that time, both on John and on himself in particular. He would not have said, Suffer it to be so now, could it have been as well suffered at any other time, before or after it, as at that-nor, For thus it behoveth us to fulfil all righteousness-had the same fulfilment, in that one respect, been equally incumbent on others, as on them in particular. I infer, therefore, that the obligation in question was to no moral duty, binding upon moral agents in general, but to some legal requisition, incumbent on these two more especially; the nature of which we must needs collect from the instance of its observance, which was our Lord's receiving from John, and John's administering on our Lord, one and the same form of baptism; but each, as part of a further, and a much more important, ceremonial, the consecration of our Lord to his ministerial office, preparatory to his entering upon it.

That the Levitical high-priest was always a type of the Christian, may be taken for granted; and that John, as the son of Zacharias and of Elizabeth, was competent to have sustained even the character of the Levitical highpriest is not less obvious. That there existed also, under the law, a high-priest, and one only not the high-priest, but, in other respects, superior in dignity, and in the sacredness of his character, to all besides, is proved by various authorities. Κἂν ἄρα τίς που, οὐ λέγω τῶν ἄλλων Ἰουδαίων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἱερέων, οὐχὶ τῶν ὑστάτων, ἀλλὰ τῶν, τὴν εὐθὺς μετὰ τὸν πρῶτ Tov, Tάživ eiλnxótwy S. Constituebatur ... sacerdos, qui dignitate proximus esset a summo sacerdote, sic tanquam in administratione regni est secundus a rege; is vicarius appellabatur; idem etiam dicebatur antistes. Is igitur ad dextram summi sacerdotis semper adstabat'. And even

• Philo De Legat. 1035. + Maimon. De Apparatu Templi. iv. 16.

this vicar had two subvicars ". Vide also the passages quoted in the margin v.

But,

In this relation may the Levitical high-priest be considered to have stood to the Christian, in general; and, certainly, John, the representative of the Levitical high-priesthood, the forerunner of the Messias, the paranymph of the spiritual bridegroom, and the greatest prophet among all, who had been born of women, to our Saviour, in particular. Now the consecration of the Levitical high-priest was a necessary ceremony before he could enter on his ministry: much more, then, the consecration of the Christian. if our Saviour was not so consecrated upon this occasion of his baptism, it would not be easy to say when he was. I regard his baptism, therefore, as the ceremony of his consecration. And that a priest, as such, could be consecrated only by a priest, and the high-priest himself so properly by none, as by the next in dignity to him, nor, consequently, our Saviour so properly by any, as by John, appears too obvious to require any proof. The true consecration of Jesus Christ might be the effusion of the Holy Ghost; but his previous baptism, as the event proved, was necessary even to that.

We may look upon this baptism, therefore, with all its circumstances and its effects, as constituting his true and his proper consecration; such as was naturally to be expected for the spiritual antitype of the legal prototype. Nor is there any particular, requisite to the integrity of the legal form w, which may not be seen, mutatis mutandis, to have held good in what now took place. The previous ablution of the body of the priest was supplied by the baptism itself, and the agency, which performed that part of the ceremony, was a competent agency; for it was the agency of John. The absence of the sacred chrism was compensated by its antitype, the gifts and graces of the spiritual

XX. 25. 2 Kings xxv. 18. Jos. Ant. xviii. i. 1. compared with xvii. xiii. 1. w Exod. xxix. 1-7. xl.12—15.

☐ Ibid. 17. ▼ 2 Sam. viii. 17. Jud. viii. i. 4. x. viii. 2. xviii. iv. 3. Vit. 38. B. ii. xii. 6. iv. iii. 9. 23-33.

x xxx.

unction y; and the medium by which these were effused was the medium of the Holy Ghost. The robes of beauty and of holiness, which adorned the person of the priest 2, were the essential innocence, and spotless purity, of the nature of Christ; a much more glorious garb, and much more becoming for the Christian high-priest, than the Aaronical vesture and always typified by that a. More than this I do not know to have been requisite to the inauguration even of the legal high-priest; and, if it answered to all this, the baptism of our Lord, regarded as his inauguration also, would be complete.

y Ps. xlv. 7.

z Exod. xxviii. 2.

a Ps. xlv. 8.

DISSERTATION VI.

On the order of the temptations.

THE order of the temptations is not the same throughout in each of the Evangelists; that is, the second temptation in St. Matthew is the third in St. Luke; and the second in St. Luke is the third in St. Matthew. The order of St. Matthew, too, appears, from the notes of sequence which he employs, to have been the true; nor does the arrangement in St. Luke, who no where affirms his order, militate against this conclusion: and hence it has been inferred that St. Luke does not write after a strict historical method.

But if this inference proceeds on the supposition that the several temptations, distinctly, are still only the particulars of one transaction, it is manifestly illogical; for, notwithstanding any difference in the disposal of the parts, the whole is related in its place-and, if it does not proceed on this supposition, but regards the several temptations as so many detached and independent events, it proceeds upon a false hypothesis, or a mistaken idea of the transaction itself.

I am ready to admit that the order of St. Matthew's narrative, in this instance, may be the real order; yet it would not follow on that account that St. Luke's contains a Trajection. The moral end proposed by the narrative in either, though it must have been partly the same, might have been partly so far distinct also, as to require St. Matthew to observe the actual order of the event, and to excuse St. Luke for making a corresponding change in it.

The temptation, regarded in any point of view, was unquestionably one of the most mysterious transactions in our Saviour's personal history; and, without pretending to unravel the mystery, or to be wise beyond what is written, I am content to profess my belief in the reality of the trans

it-of that being, who is called the Tempter, the Devil, or Satan, as much as of our Lord himself, whose personal existence no one will think of disputing. For the sake, however, of the present argument, which concerns, in some degree, the first principles of our Harmony, I shall lay, as concisely as possible, before the reader, what I consider to be the most general outline of its nature, and its purposes.

I. Not one of the temptations is to be contemplated by itself, as what it is in specie, but as what it is in genere; that is, each of them familiam ducit, or is the representative of a class. St. Luke himself has intimated this, when he says at the end of the account, iv. 13. ZUVTEλÉσαÇ жÚντα πειρασμὸν ὁ Διάβολος, not, πάντα ΤΟΝ πειρασμόν—Every kind of temptation, not, the whole temptation.

II. The first temptation, according to the order of St. Matthew, is addressed to a natural appetite; and, consequently, is a specimen of such temptations as may be addressed to the purely sensual principle: the second is addressed to the ostentatious display of superior worth, goodness, or estimation in the sight of God; that is, to the principle of pride; and, consequently, it is a specimen of temptations directed against the purely intellectual principle: the third is addressed to the love of honour, wealth, or power; and, therefore, is a specimen of temptations addressed to a mixed principle; or a principle partly intellectual and partly moral.

III. The order of the temptations is the order of their strength; that is, they begin with the weakest, and proceed to the strongest; for any other order would manifestly have been preposterous-and the end of the whole transaction is to represent our Lord tempted in all points, like unto ourselves, yet without sin; attacked in each vulnerable part of his human nature, yet superior to every art, and to all the subtlety, of the Devil.

IV. The proximate cause of the first temptation was our Lord's being an hungred at the time; the proximate cause of the second, we may reasonably conjecture, was the voice from heaven at his baptism: and the proximate cause of