them, or expressed any delight in them; he despised the feasts of the wicked (Amos v. 21); and had no esteem for the material offerings of the godly (Psalm l. 13): “Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” which he speaks to his saints and people, before he comes to reprove the wicked; which he begins (ver. 16), “But to the wicked, God said,” &c. So slightly he esteems them, that he seems to disown them to be any part of his command, when he brought his people out of the land of Egypt (Jer. vii. 21): “I spake not to your fathers, nor commanded them concerning burnt‑offerings and sacrifices.” He did not value and regard them, in comparison with that inward frame which he had required by the moral law; that being given before the law of ceremonies, obliged them, in the first place, to an observance of those precepts. They seemed to be below the nature of God, and could not of themselves please him. None could in reason persuade themselves that the death of a beast was a proportionable offering for the sin of a man, or ever was intended for the expiation of transgression. In the same rank are all our bodily services under the gospel; a loud voice without spirit, bended bulrushes without inward affections, are no more delightful to God, than the sacrifices of animals; it is but a change of one brute for another of a higher species; a mere brute for that part of man which hath an agreement with brutes; such a service is a mere animal service, and not spiritual. 5. And therefore God never intended that sort of worship to be durable, and had often mentioned the change of it for one more spiritual. It was not good or evil in itself; whatsoever goodness it had was solely derived to it by institution, and therefore it was mutable. It had no conformity with the spiritual nature of God who was to be worshipped, nor with the rational nature of man who was to worship; and therefore he often speaks of taking away the new {a218} moons, and feasts, and sacrifices, and all the ceremonial worship, as things he took no pleasure in, to have a worship more suited to his excellent nature; but he never speaks of removing the gospel administration, and the worship prescribed there, as being more agreeable to the nature and perfections of God, and displaying them more illustriously to the world. The apostle tells us, it was to be “disannulled because of its weakness;”[458] a determinate time was fixed for its duration, till the accomplishment of the truth figured under that pedagogy.[459] Some of the modes of that worship being only typical, must naturally expire and be insignificant in their use, upon the finishing of that by the Redeemer, which they did prefigure: and other parts of it, though God suffered them so long, because of the weakness of the worshipper, yet because it became not God to be always worshipped in that manner, he would reject them, and introduce another more spiritual and elevated.