And besides these papers which have been either publish'd or are ready for the Press , and were some of them begun and others finish'd during that time of my retirement from my former studies and to another end of the Town , there was another discourse which lay by me imperfect , being an exercitatation upon that Law of Moses , whereby the Brother or the next of kin was obliged to raise up seed to his deceased and childless Brother or Kinsman , a great part of which was written by me at Cambridge , as a preparatory to that other Treatise of the Marriage of Cousin Germans , which it is now a long time that my thoughts and studies have been conversant about , and being so much of it as was then done , transcribed in a very fair and legible hand , it was the greater temptation to me to send it to the Press , as I did , and have added so much to what I had written at the College , that it requires but very little to put a conclusion to it .

In this Discourse , as I have considered all the cases and circumstances of that Law , with much more exactness than any have done before me , so I have particularly levell'd a considerable part of it against one Chapter of Mr. Selden in his Book De Successionibus , and have very largely exposed the vanity of the Rabbinical Learning , and the manifest unskilfulness of that sort of men in the Antiquities of their own Nation ; and if I have not found out a new Key to open and interpret the Mosaick Law , yet thus much at least I have done , I have applied it to several Laws , to which it hath not been applied before , and have abundantly discovered the extreme impudence , as well as ignorance of the Aegyptian Moses and other celebrated Masters of the Jewish Learning .

I have likewise in an occasional Essay upon that subject demonstrated the Antiquity of Episcopal and Diocesan government in the Jewish Church , the dependence of the inferiour Clergy upon the Bishop of the Diocess , and the subjection of all the Bishops of the Province of Judaea to the Arch-Bishop , or High-Priest , at Jerusalem : I have shewn that this was the Government to which our Saviour and his Apostles , being members of the Jewish Church , submitted ; and not onely so , but that the Jews had among them a Patriarchal dignity likewise , that is , such Bishops as having their usual residence in Jerusalem or in Judaea , had the care and inspection of the Churches in the dispersion , which was likewise imitated by our Saviour in his modell of the Christian Church ; and certainly if their be no such harm in a Patriarch , that is , a foreign visitour or inspectour , if this were imitated and approved by our Saviour himself , then much ●●ss can there lie any exception against a domestick and residing Bishop , to whose authority likewise our Saviour submitted , and consequently approved of that sort of Government , which I will grant in its first original to have been of humane institution , if that will please our Dissenters , for all they will get by it will be this , that our Saviour himself did allow of humane institutions in the Christian Church , and did submit to them , and that this not being a part of the Mosaick Law , so far as that Law consisted of types and shadows which were to be done away , ( as being fulfilled and answered by their antitype in the person and dispensation and sacrifice of Christ ) the reasons of convenience upon which this government was founded , remain still the same , and therefore that there is no reason why it should be altered though it had not been recommended to us by our Saviour's example , which may justly be thought to give it a jus divinum , though it had none before , for he was by no means a Presbyterian , and much less an Independent .

And yet if this business be examined into the bottom , though the granting it to be of humane institution will doe the Separatists no manner of service , it will be found that this government was instituted by Moses , and establish'd by Joshua , both of which acted by divine appointment , and by consequence it having nothing which was properly Judaical , that is , which was of a Typical or Symbolical nature , nothing that had any necessary dependence upon or conexion with their Sacrifices and lustrations and other Ceremonies of that Vmbratick dispensation , there is the same reason why it should last after those shadows were done away , as well as when they were lookt upon to be in full force , and were esteemed the most indispensably sacred .

I have also in the same treatise demonstrated the antiquity and the reason of the Priestly maintenance by tithes , and I have shewn upon what account it was that the tenth of all the fruits of the Earth , and the encrease of Cattel was offered to God , and that the reason holds every whit as good to this day as it was either in the Levitical times or in those that went before them .

And upon this occasion I have considered very briefly the question so much controverted concerning usury , I have demonstrated its lawfulness to all but the ancient Jews , and by the same clue I have opened a way to a better understanding of the Chronology of the times before the Floud , and so long after it as the age of man was reckoned to be an hundred and twenty years , and have besides made it evidently appear what was the true meaning of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , in the computation of the ancient Chaldeans , and what it was that gave both name and notion to the Kalendae and the Idus among the Romans , things that are as yet a secret to the World .

But it being so ordered by divine providence that while I was employed in this kind of meditations , there fell a living void in this City , in the gift of the worshipfull Company of Salters , I laid my antiquities aside to try what interest I could make among them , for the obtaining their favour in the disposal of it , and I was so successfull , thanks to my good friends , who appeared very zealous , and very numerous for me , that had the business poceeded to a Poll when the first Court was called , which was a common hall consisting of the whole freedom , I have reason to believe my circumstances at that time would have carried it against any of my Competitours , although my merit were very short of some .

And now having laid aside my new designs , compell'd by a welcome necessity of my affairs , as I had done my old ones for another reason , I began , as I had leisure from that continual hurry in which my competition had engaged me to sit down and consider seriously with my self , which I could not doe without a mixture of pleasure and melancholy together , in what a labyrinth of different and disagreeing undertakings I had entangled my self ; and being returned again from a remote corner of the Town , into the neighbourhood of Decency and Order , I had , as it is usual with old friends , a very great desire notwithstanding the late unkindness that had past between us , to see them once more and renew our our old acquaintance , and try if it were possible , in the midst of such confusion , to reduce them to a better agreement with themselves , as well as with me , and make them answer to their own names , instead of those of Chaos , Rhapsodie and Cento , by which they now began to be much better known .

And the best expedient I could think of to save my self harmless from the censures of men , with as little injury to the Book-seller as might be , ( for I would have no man suffer upon my account if I could help it ) was after a retrenchment of several sheets , which are now wholly lost , and indeed were very unfit to see the light , to divide the remainder into two several parts , not such parts as had a mutual connexion and dependence , but such as are wholly what they are , by themselves , without any manner of relation or affinity to each other .

The first of them is that with which I now present Your Lordship , which all but the last six or seven pages hath lain by as it is , for at least eighteen months last past , and is , if I do not very much mistake my self and it , not onely a very pertinent discourse upon the subject it pretends to treat about , but a very unanswerable one too , if any thing may be thought unanswerable in an age where noise and faction supply the room of argument and reason , and where instead of being yielded to as it ought to be by honest and unprejudic'd minds , the more convincing any argument is , with so much the greater violence and fury it is opposed , and they that are able to speak the least good sense will always be sure to make the loudest noise .

That other part which is likewise finished from the Press and shall immediately come abroad by it self , consists of these two Philological dissertations , the first concerning the true time of our Saviour's Passover , an enquiry that hath of a long time baffled the endeavours of learned men , but will now cease to be a question any longer ; the second concerning the true pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton , in which likewise , though it be not a probleme of such moment as the other , several very famous antiquaries and men of the most considerable remark for learning have gone before me ; but it will appear , I hope , by my discourse upon that curious , though minute , subject , that they have all been mistaken , and that the true secret hath been reserved for me , a man by no means to be compared with any of them , to interpret and explain ; but so it often happens that chance finds out what art and industry have in vain sought after , and an accidental thought that wanders in the brain with all the undesigning carelesness of a dream , may carry us directly to the discovery of some truth , which hath been courted in vain by the profess'd addresses of more ingenious and diligent inquirers .

In what I have said upon the first of these , I have demonstrated the onely true signification of that which St. Luke calls the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , or as we translate it , the second Sabbath after the first , contrary to the several disagreeing conjectures and accounts , disagreeing with the truth and inconsistent with themselves , as well as with one another , which have been sent abroad by Joseph Scaliger , Johannes Cloppenburge , Ludovic●s Capellus and Hugo Grotius , all very great names , and all in this respect very widely mistaken , and by the account which I have given , there is some light afforded to the ancient Jewish Calendar , which was certainly quite another thing than the Kalendarium Hebraicum of Sebastian Munster , and much ancienter than the Talmudical Canons for the observation of the Jewish feasts , which are but a modern invention of the ignorant Rabbins who make new antiquities to supply the room of the old ones which they have lost , notwithstanding the authority which that Imposture hath m●t with from several very eminent scholars and very excellent persons .

In my discourse of the Tetragrammaton I have considered very largely the Tetractys of the Pythagorean School , and I think have shewn sufficiently what a fondness it hath been in almost all the learned writers that have written upon the subject , to derive the latter of them from the former , and though in this I will not be so positive as in my other conjectures , yet thus much I will say of it , that I have bid very fairly for the discovery of the Tetractys ; and whether I have or no , I make my humble appeal to Your Lordship and other learned and judicious men that have a palate in matters of this nature , but to Your Lordship in the first place , whose patronage it begs , and humbly implores the powerfull protection of so great a name against the rude assaults of ignorance and envy .

That which made me the more willing to publish the former of these exercitations was , that I was under an engagement to the publick for a discourse of that nature , it being no more than what I did expresly promise in the Epistle Dedicatory before the Sermon concerning Transubstantiation , which it is now near four years ago that I preach'd before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of this famous City , and it was in obedience to that wise and venerable Court that it was afterwards printed ; and it is a farther service which I now pretend to doe to the Protestant Religion , by setling the exact time of our Saviour's last Supper , which was a night before the legal Passeover was killed , and consequently was in imitation not of the real , which could not be killed before the usual time , but of the Mnemoneutical or commemorative Passeover , as Grotius calls it , wherefore the body of Christ , which is our Christian Passeover , was not at that time truly eaten by the Disciples , but onely a remembrance of it , a Proleptical remembrance it was , as it must needs be , being instituted by our Saviour himself , then present among his Disciples , as the Mnemoneutical Passeover among the Jews was a Postliminious commemoration . But of this notion of the true time of our Saviour's last Supper , so far as concerns the application of it , which in the papers I now speak of , I have not medled with , I shall speak more largely in some other papers , written ex professo against that blasphemous and absurd tenet in another Language , which shall shortly be communicated to the World , and I hope will find a favourable acceptance in it .

But however wide a discourse of this nature may seem to be from the subject of my Text , the occasion of it was pertinent enough , for I was speaking of our blessed Lord's submitting himself , as became the Preacher and the Prince of peace , to humane institutions in religious matters , which is an undeniable argument that such like institutions are not in themselves unlawfull to be complied with ; for he preaches by his example as well as by his doctrine , and the occurrences of his most innocent and spotless life , are in many cases , as clear testimonies of the divine will , as the express declarations of his Gospel ; wherefore this Mnemoneutical or commemorative Passeover among the Jews , with all the peculiar rites and usages belonging to it , being a matter perfectly of humane institution the Law having onely enjoined the real one , or that which Grotius calls the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 , the sacrificial Passeover , upon the 14th day of the first , or in some cases of the second month , this alone , if there had been nothing else , would have been sufficient in the way of instance , besides what I have urged from the nature and necessity of the thing it self , to prove that humane institutions for the better ordering and government of religious duties are not onely lawfull in themselves , but that they ought to be obeyed by us , if there be no particular reason from the quality of the thing enjoyned to the contrary , as they were by Christ , who gave in this an example of obedience , and we cannot be his Disciples if we do not follow it .