“Incense and a pure offering” should be offered everywhere unto his name.[460] He often told them he would make a “new covenant by the Messiah,” and the old should be rejected;[461] that the “former things should not be remembered, and the things of old no more considered,” when he should do “a new thing in the earth.”[462] Even the ark of the covenant, the symbol of his presence, and the glory of the Lord in that nation, should not any more be remembered and visited;[463] that the temple and sacrifices should be rejected, and others established; that the order of the Aaronical priesthood should be abolished, and that of Melchizedek set up in the stead of it, in the person of the Messiah, to endure forever;[464] that Jerusalem should be changed; a new heaven and earth created; a worship more conformable to heaven, more advantageous to earth. God had proceeded in the removal of some parts of it, before the time of taking down the whole furniture of this house; the pot of manna was lost; Urim and Thummim ceased; the glory of the temple was diminished; and the ignorant people wept at the sight of the one, without raising their faith and hope in the consideration of the other, which was promised to be filled with a spiritual glory. And as soon as ever the gospel was spread in the world, God thundered out his judgments upon that place in which he had fixed all those legal observances; so that the Jews, in the letter and flesh, could never practise the main part of their worship, since they were expelled from that place where it was only to be celebrated. It is one thousand six hundred years since they have been deprived of their altar, which was the foundation of all the Levitical worship, and have wandered in the world without a sacrifice, a prince, or priest, an ephod or teraphim.[465] And God fully put an end to it in the command he gave to the apostles, and in them to us, in the presence of Moses and Elias, to hear his Son only (Matt. xvii. 5): “Behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” And at the death of our Saviour, testified it to that whole nation and the world, by the rending in twain the veil of the temple. The whole frame of that service, {a219} which was carnal, and, by reason of the corruption of man, weakened, is nulled; and a spiritual worship is made known to the world, that we might now serve God in a more spiritual manner, and with more spiritual frames.