No one had ever been so foolish, among the Jews, as to believe that because their Bible said _clean_, (_katharei_) their priests had the miraculous and supernatural power of taking away and curing the leprosy: and we nowhere see that the Jewish priests ever had the audacity to try to persuade the people that they had ever received any supernatural and divine power to "cleanse" the leprosy, because their God through the Bible, had said of them: "They will cleanse the leper." Both priest and people were sufficiently intelligent and honest to understand and acknowledge that by that expression, if was only meant that the priests had the legal right to see if the leprosy was gone or not, they had only to look at certain marks indicated by God Himself, through Moses, to know whether, or not, God had cured the leper before he presented himself to his priest. The leper, cured by the mercy and power of God alone, before presenting himself to the priest, was only declared to be clean by that priest. Thus the priest was said, by the Bible, to "clean" the leper, or the leprosy;--and, in the opposite case, to "unclean." (Septuagint, Leviticus xiii. v. 3. 6.) Now, let us put what God has said, through Moses, to the priests of the old law, in reference to the bodily leprosy, face to face with what God has said, through his Son Jesus, to his apostles and his whole church, in reference to the spiritual leprosy from which Christ has delivered us on the cross. Septuagint Bible, Levit. xiii. | New Testament, John xx., 23. | "And the Priest shall look on the | "Whose soever sins ye remit, they plague, in the skin of the flesh, | are remitted unto them; and whose and when the hair in the plague is | soever sins ye retain, they are turned white, and the plague in | retained." sight be deeper than the skin of | his flesh, it is a plague of | leprosy: and the priest shall look | on him and UNCLEAN HIM (_mianei_). | | "And the Priest shall look on him | again the seventh day, and if the | plague is somewhat dark and does | not spread on the skin, the Priest | shall CLEAN HIM (_katharei_): and | he shall wash his clothes and BE | CLEAN," (katharos.) | The analogy of the diseases with which the Hebrew priests and the disciples of Christ had to deal, is striking: so the analogy of the expressions prescribing their respective duties is also striking.