For the better administration of this state and nationall Covenant, it pleased God to ordaine sutable Ordinances for the teaching and applying of this Covenant, scil. of Ministery and Priesthood. The first of these the Apostle openeth, setting down the state of the Gentile and Jew before Christ came, compared both together, and how both stood in comparison to the Church after Christ, in regard of this Ordinance of teaching. Gal. 3.23,24,25.As the Gentile before Christ was a man constrained to live without a shelter: the Jew at the same time is better provided for: for he had the Law taught to cover his head in a storme, that it be not too violent. But we after Christ dwell in well-grounded, yea, seiled roomes, that we need not to feare the blowing, beating, or flowing in of the Sea, raine, or wind, for we have the Ordinances of the Gospell. The Gentiles before Christ ran wild like beggarly bruits without all schooling; The Lord did thinke it good to set forth the state of minority in such kind of attires & habiliments as might best suit with the fansie of minority: and so to teach and clothe his Church with types and Ceremonies, which is a kind of Imagerie, and therefore of the two the Jewes had more liberty in that kind, then Christians in times of the Gospell. the Jew a great deale better for the time being, he had a Schoole-master to teach and nourture him, even, the Law to bring him unto Christ. But happy Christians after Christ living in the University of the Church under the free Tutors of new Ordinances. The Schoolemastership of Moses was a good Ordinance for the body of the people under Covenant with God, as we find this calling needfull and profitable in a Common-weale, though inferiour to the honour and worth of an University. There was not a man of them undiscovenanted who took not benefit some way or other by this pedagogie. For some were kept thereby from notorious evils, as children that learne little at Schoole, get good in this, that they are kept from shrewd turnes. Others get much ability of knowledge, though they never looked at Christ; as some at Schoole learn to write and read, cast account and make a bond, though they never intend any better use of their learning. But the spirituall Jew got some true measure of grace to Salvation, though they reached not to that pitch and measure which is attaineable under the Ordinances of the New Testament; as in some good Grammar Schooles those grounds of learning may be obtained, whereby men may be serviceable to the Church or Common-weale in some measure, though they come not to that ripenesse and maturity, which may be gotten in the University.
For the manner of this pedagogie under Moses, we are not to conceive, that he taught his Schollers in things too hard fortheir
