Robert Hunter on the three-fold division of the law

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Reformed Covenanter

Cancelled Commissioner
It is hard to resist the conclusion that the inspired writers meant to convey the idea that the legislation at Sinai might be resolved into several codes. We believe that there were three, all differing in their predestined term of endurance. The ceremonial law is universally admitted to have fulfilled its function when Christ made his atoning sacrifice. The ordinary civil and criminal code of the Jews required to be adapted, like the corresponding laws in other countries, to the exact state of intellectual and moral development which the Hebrew nation had reached at the time of its promulgation, and necessarily became, in some particulars, antiquated whenever they rose above that position.

It is only in regard to the moral law, as summed up in the decalogue, that any dispute exists. It in several respects stood on a different footing from the remaining parts of the Mosaic law. While the other precepts were given to the people through the instrumentality of Moses, it was proclaimed from the top of Sinai by the voice of Jehovah himself, amid lightning, and thunder, and tempest, and every accompaniment fitted to inspire awe. While the other precepts were committed to whatever materials were then used for writing on, skins of animals perhaps, and were preserved, no one knows where, the decalogue was traced by the finger of God on two tables of stone, cut doubtless from the enduring granite of the mountain peak, and then laid up in the ark of the covenant in the holiest part of the tabernacle.

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