I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances. Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the LORD your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments; which if a man do, he shall live in them. I am the LORD." How emphatic and solemn the introduction! Was it not designed to call up the attention of Israel to something important and permanent? If the whole of what followed had been of a ceremonial or temporary character, would it have been introduced by language so impressive and august?
We may reason, too, in favor of the perpetuity of this law, (as Grotius, and many before and after him, have,) from the language of the great Lawgiver subsequent to the publication of it: "Defile not yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled, which I cast out before you: and the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it; and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation,
