Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: always the chiefest both in Egypt and Canaan, and his
father’s sons bowing unto him according to the tenor of Gen. xlix.8. Jacob’s blessing. And so from Adam to Moses we find a continual superiority of the father over his children, and the firstborn above his brethren, approved and established by God himself in the regiment of his church, and not any precept or precedent for equality0. CHAP. II. The Iirri!it-til and national regiment of the church under the late. V 7HEN it pleased the goodness of God to extend the true knowledge of himself to the whole seed of Jacob, and to bring a people out of Egypt to be his peculiar, he severed from the rest the tribe of Levi, to attend the ark and offerings which be commanded, and to teach their brethren the judgments and statutes of their God. For the church being enlarged and spread over the whole nation, the domestical discipline that was before the law, could not so well fit the government of a people as of an household j and therefore out of twelve tribes God chose one to retain the priesthood, and have the oversight of all holy things, and execution of all sacred service. In which tribe, according to the number and order of the first fathers and families descended from Levi the son of Jacob, God did proportion and establish divers superiorities and dignities as well in answering the sentence of the law to the people, as in serving him at his altar; and those not only of priests above Levites, but of priests above priests, and of Levites among themselves. The first distinction was of priests above Levites; that is, of Aaron and his sons above the rest of the same tribe: who were restrained from touching or seeing the holy things committed to the priests’ charge, and ministered in the sanctuary at the appointment and comm…
