EVIDENCE FROM DISREGARD OF A CENTRAL SANCTUARY.

It is argued that if the restrictive law in Deuteronomy had been known from the time of Moses onward, or if the law in Exodus had been understood as restricting sacrifice to one altar at a time, we should be able to find traces of this restriction between the time of Moses and the time of Josiah. But it is alleged that, on the contrary, even the best of men in that interval built altars and offered sacrifices without regard to such a law, and in direct opposition to it; and that they did this without apology or rebuke. Professor Driver, in the condensed style which is habitual with him, states the argument in the following words:

In these books (Joshua-I. Kings) sacrifices are frequently described as offered in different parts of the land, without any indication (and this is the important fact) on the part of either the actor or the narrator that such a law as that of Deuteronomy is being infringed. After the exclusion of all uncertain or exceptional cases, such as Judg. ii. 5; vi. 20-24, where the theophany may be held to justify the erection of an altar, there remain, as instances of either altars or local sanctuaries, Josh. xxiv. 26; I. Sam. vii. 9, 17; ix. 12-14; x. 3, 5, 8; xiii. 9; xi. 15; xiv. 35; xx. 6; II. Sam. xv. 12, 32.

The author properly recognizes in these instances two distinct groups, distinguished by the fact that the former were accompanied by theophanies, or visible appearances of divine messengers, under whose command or with whose approval the altars were erected. The instances referred to under this head are those of the people assembled at Bochim, and of Gideon at Ophrah. He might have added that of Manoah at Zorah (Judg. xiii. 15-20). Of these he speaks cautiously. He styles them "uncertain or exceptional cases." What he means by "uncertain" I do not know, unless he is uncertain whether they actually occurred; but they were undoubtedly exceptional. His admission that if they did occur as described "the theophany may be held to have justified the erection of an altar," renders it unnecessary for me to discuss them so far as Professor Driver' is concerned, but not so far as respects the great majority of his fellow critics; for they deny the reality of theophanies, and hold that these altars were erected, if at all, on the responsibility of the men themselves. For this reason we shall consider the bearing which these cases have on the main question as if no concession had been made.

As respects the sacrifice at Bochim, the facts revealed in the context (Judg. ii. 1-5) are these: The people of Israel were assembled at a place which, at the time of their assembling, bore no distinctive name. For what purpose they had assembled we are not informed. It may have been for some political purpose, or it may have been for public worship. The angel of Jehovah came from Gilgal to this place, and rebuked the people for having made peace with the Canaanites contrary to the command of Jehovah. The people wept under the rebuke, and offered sacrifices unto Jehovah. Because of the weeping, they gave the name Bochim (weepers) to the place. There is not a word said about erecting an altar, although no sacrifice could be offered without one. The natural inference is that the tabernacle, with its altar, was close by the place of assembly. A case of erecting an altar distinct from the one at Shiloh is therefore not made out. Critics who claim to be scientific should remember that to draw conclusions from facts which are assumed, and can not be proved, is anything else than scientific.

As respects Gideon's altar and sacrifice, the case is made out, and made out very plainly. When the angel of Jehovah had appeared to him, given him his commission to deliver Israel from the Midianites, had set fire to the stewed kid and bread by touching them with the point of his staff, and had disappeared, Gideon built an altar on the spot, and called it Jehovah-shalom; but he built it as a monument, and not for the purpose of offering sacrifice on it. He offered none. Within the same night, however, Jehovah commanded him, perhaps by the mouth of the same angel, to take his father's seven-year old bullock to the top of the hill where was an altar of Baal, to tear down the latter and build in its place an altar to Jehovah, and offer on it the bullock. All this Gideon did, and he did it, as the morning light revealed, at the imminent peril of his life. Does this prove that the Book of Deuteronomy, with its law against the erection of other altars than the one at the central sanctuary, was unknown to Gideon? Suppose that he had known a book which had this Law written on every page, would he have disobeyed Jehovah himself when he gave him this special command? I presume that when Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac, he knew very well that it was contrary to God's will that a man should kill his own son; yet I presume that later Bible writers and speakers, including Jesus and the apostles, have been right in admiring Abraham's obedience to the divine command. If Gideon had sense enough to know which was his father's seven-year-old bullock, he had sense enough to know that he who makes a law has the right to make exceptions to it. I wonder if our scientific critics do not know this.

In the case of Manoah, no altar was erected, though the natural rock on which his offering was laid is called an altar. He proposed to prepare a kid for the angel of Jehovah to eat; but the latter said: "Though thou detain me, I will not eat of thy bread; and if thou wilt make ready a burnt-offering, thou must offer it unto Jehovah." This gave to Manoah express permission to offer a burnt offering; and consequently, when the kid and meal were brought, he offered both upon the rock to Jehovah. He set fire to his offering, and when the flame went up, the angel went up in it. By this Manoah knew that his visitor was the angel of Jehovah, and his offering had the angel's approval.

On presenting the facts with reference to these three offerings in a lecture, I was once asked how God could thus make exceptions to his law, consistently with Paul's warning to the Galatians, "Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any gospel other than that we preached, let him be anathema." I answered that making exceptions in laws which were made to be abolished is quite a different thing from perverting the everlasting gospel. This answer is sufficient.(1)

Let us now examine the second group of passages cited by Professor Driver in proof of his allegation. The first is Josh. xxiv. 1, 26. Here in verse 1 we learn that Joshua gathered the tribes together at Shechem, and called for the chief men, and, it is said, "they presented themselves before God." This last clause, taken in connection with the statement in verse 26 that Joshua took a great stone and set it up there, under the oak that was "by the sanctuary of Jehovah," is claimed as proof that there was a sanctuary at Shechem, at which the chief men presented themselves before God. It certainly proves this. But the thing to be proved is that an altar was erected there and sacrifices offered on it. Of this there is not a word in the text or the context. A sanctuary is any holy place; and, as Abraham had once sojourned here; as Jacob had once bought a piece of land here, on which he resided until the slaughter of the Shechemites by his sons; as Joseph's mummy was buried here, and as here Joshua himself had erected a monumental altar, on which were inscribed the Ten Commandments -- it is not surprising that some particular spot here, overshadowed by a magnificent oak, was known as a sanctuary. If Peter, even under the Christian dispensation, styled the Mount of Transfiguration "the holy mount," why may not a place at which so many solemn events had transpired have been called a sanctuary or holy place, though no sacrifice was offered there. It is clear, then, that Driver's first citation has no bearing whatever upon his proposition. Strange that so good a marksman made so wild a shot!

But three of the others are equally wild. One (I. Sam. xiv. 9-14) is the sacrifice offered by King Saul at Gilgal, which was condemned so severely by Samuel, that, in the name of Jehovah, he said, "Now, thy kingdom shall not continue." Another (I. Sam. xiv. 35) is the erection by Saul of an altar on the spot where the pursuit of the Philistines ended at the close of the day of his rash vow. But here he offered no sacrifice, and the altar was evidently intended as a monument. It is called in the text the first altar that Saul built; and this shows that the altar on which he had made offerings at Gilgal was not built by him, but was one that pre-existed. The third wild shot is the reference (II. Sam. xv. 12, 32) to the sacrifices offered by Absalom at Hebron, when inaugurating the rebellion against his father; and to the statement in connection with David's flight from Jerusalem, that he came to the top of the ascent of the Mount of Olives, "where God was worshiped." In the last instance nothing is said about an altar or a sacrifice; everybody knows, who knows David, that he could worship God without either; and the first instance was a piece of hypocrisy on the part of Absalom, which he would have perpetrated, in defiance of such a law as that in Deuteronomy, with as little hesitation as he perpetrated his other crimes. His father's assent to it was an act of weak indulgence toward a wayward son who seemed now to manifest some gratitude toward God.

There remain, then, out of the nine passages cited by Driver in support of his proposition only the five which speak mainly of sacrifices being offered in various places by the prophet Samuel. This reminds me to say that it is quite a custom with the destructive critics -- and not less so with Driver than with others -- to string out a long list of passages in support of a proposition, many of which, as in this instance, are totally irrelevant. The reader who is not familiar with the Scriptures, and is either too indolent or too busy to hunt up the passages, takes it for granted that the great scholar knows what is in his proof texts, and that the proof is doubtless there. This, whether intended so or not, is a kind of confidence game, by which careless and too confiding readers are deceived.

What have we to say now about the fact, well known and never disputed, that during the public ministry of the prophet Samuel he offered sacrifices on altars erected at various places, and never offered any, so far as the history informs us, on the altar before the door of the tabernacle, where the law in Deuteronomy requires that they should be offered? Does it prove that he knew not the Book of Deuteronomy, and that, therefore, it had not yet been written?

I answer, first, that if Samuel was an inspired prophet, the fact that he was guided in all his official acts by the Spirit of God, even though some of these acts did infringe a ceremonial law, is his complete justification. They were instances, like those in connection with the theophanies mentioned above, in which God, not now by angels, but by his Holy Spirit, made exceptions to his own law. To the rationalists, who are the real authors of this argumentation, this answer amounts to nothing, because they deny the reality of such inspiration. But to men who believe in the divine inspiration of the prophets, this answer is conclusive. It shows that Samuel may have had the Book of Deuteronomy in his hand every day of his life, and may yet have done as he did. This consideration also justifies Samuel, though not a priest in performing priestly functions, as it afterward justified him in assuming military command and civil jurisdiction. (See I. Sam. vii. 5-17.)

But it must be admitted that such and so many exceptions to a divine law would be extremely improbable under ordinary circumstances. It is proper, then, in order to a complete understanding of the prophet's course, to inquire whether there were extraordinary circumstances then existing which furnished an occasion for these exceptional proceedings.

Samuel's first sacrifice was offered at Mizpah about twenty years after the capture of the ark by the Philistines. (I. Sam. vii. 5-9; cf. chap. ii.) This was when he was about twenty-five years of age. If any sacrifices had been offered anywhere within those twenty years, the record is silent with respect to them. At the beginning of this period, and for a considerable time previous to it, a state of things existed in Israel never known before, and never experienced afterward. The tabernacle, with the altar built by Moses in front of it, then stood at Shiloh. (I. Sam. i. 3.) Hophni and Phinehas were officiating as priests, their father, Eli, being high priest. The former appear to have been the only priests then officiating. Such was, and had been their sacrilegious conduct that "men abhorred the offering of Jehovah" (ii. 17;). If they abhorred it, they did not, of course, participate in it. This statement shows that at this time the men of Israel in general, but with exceptions to be mentioned presently, had ceased to bring offerings to the altar, and this best explains the fact that only two priests were officiating.

The crimes which had disgusted the people in general, and driven them away from the public worship of God, are specified. When a worshiper would slay his peace offering, and give the priests their legal portion of it, the latter would demand still more of the flesh while it was raw, and then, while the portion belonging to the offerer was boiling, they would send a servant with a three pronged flesh-hook in hand, and whatever flesh would be drawn up by this when thrust into the vessel, would be taken to the priests (ii, 12-17).(2) How many men of spirit, after being treated in this manner once, would ever return for another offering? The reader can best give an answer by saying how often he would return to a church in the present day if he was treated in any similar manner by the officials of the church. And who would return to church if even one of his neighbors or particular friends was dealt with in such a manner?

But this, though the most insulting to the offerers, was not the grossest crime which these abominable priests committed. We are told in the text that "they lay with the women that did service at the door of the tent of meeting" (ii. 22). Right there, in the sacred precincts where Jehovah should be adored, they committed this abomination, not even seeking, as all but brute beasts usually do, a secret place for such indulgence. What church in the whole of Christendom would be longer frequented should it be known that the priests or preachers, or church officers of any grade, who were the guardians of its sanctity, were making of it a house of shame? There is evidence that even the few who did attend the services at Shiloh under these circumstances were mostly a class not much better than the priests; for when Eli saw the pious Hannah praying earnestly with moving lips, but no audible sound, the sight of a woman at prayer was so unusual that he thought she was intoxicated. The only wonder is that the godly Elkanah still came to Shiloh once a year with his family. As to the three annual festivals which all the people were required by law to attend, it seems that they had fallen into total neglect.

The infamous conduct of these beastly men reached its climax, when, with unholy hands, they took the ark of the covenant into the battlefield, as if to force God to give Israel a victory in order to protect the symbol of his own earthly presence. Their own death in the battle, the death of their father and of the wife of one of them, the defeat of Israel, and the capture of the ark to be made a trophy in the temple of a heathen god were the terrific consequences. The removal of the ark was Jehovah's abandonment of the tabernacle which had been so grossly profaned, and of the people who had come to worship him. The dying wife of Phinehas, as if with prophetic voice, exclaimed, "The glory has departed from Israel." God protected the ark with ceaseless care, but he never returned to the deserted tent of meeting.

Another consequence followed swiftly upon the preceding. The people having been driven from the worship of Jehovah by the sacrilege of the priests, and having now been abandoned in turn by Jehovah, rushed away, as their custom was, to the gods of the heathen (vii. 4). When the ark, guided by the almost visible hand of God, returned to Beth-shemesh, after an absence of seven months, the people of that town, with a burst of enthusiasm, offered burnt offerings and sacrifices before it on the same day (vi. 15, 16); but if any priest during the judgeship of Samuel, made an offering before the tabernacle, the fact is not recorded. That sacred structure had now become an empty shell; for all that had given it sanctity was gone.

This was the state of things in Israel when Samuel came to man's estate. How he had passed those twenty years of darkness we are not informed. But from the time that he predicted the coming fate of Eli's house, "all Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet" (I. Sam. iii. 20); If he was five years of age at that time, he was twenty-five when he found that all the house of Israel, wearied with idolatry, began to "lament after Jehovah" (vii. 2). Perhaps this change had been brought about by his own influence. He issued a proclamation to all Israel, saying, "If ye do return unto Jehovah with all your heart, then put away the strange gods and the Ashtaroth from you, and prepare your hearts unto Jehovah, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hands of the Philistines." They did this, and he called them together at Mizpah, where he offered for them his first burnt offering (vii. 3-9). He then assumed the office of judge, and from that day till Saul was fully established on the throne he continued to exercise it.

If Samuel had been so directed by the Spirit of God that was in him, he could have brought the ark from Kiriath-jearim, replaced it in the tabernacle, hunted up some of the apostate priests, and set the old form of worship on foot once more. The fact that he did not do this, but that, on the contrary, he set up an altar at Ramah, where he now resided, and occasionally built others as circumstances required, shows clearly that such was the will of God at the time. It might have been his will if Deuteronomy had not yet been written, and if the law in Deuteronomy restricting sacrifice to a single altar had been written, it might still have been his will as an exception to that law. In the latter case, indeed, it was the end of that law so far as the altar at the door of the tabernacle was concerned; for regular service at that was not afterward renewed till near the close of David's reign, and then for only a few months. Such a termination may have been thought wise, partly on account of the corruptions of the past, and partly on account of God's intended transfer of sacrificial rites to the temple yet to be built.

Before advancing to the next division of the subject, it is well to notice another remark made by Driver with reference to the altars erected by Samuel. He says: "The narrator betrays no consciousness of anything irregular or abnormal having occurred."

In this answer the learned author ignores all the recorded facts above recited. Was not the narrator conscious of something irregular and abnormal when he narrated with so many details the wickedness of Eli's sons; the consequent abhorrence for the service among the people; the solemn rebukes administered to Eli for not restraining his sons; the capture of the ark. and its lodgement far from the sanctuary in which it had been kept for four centuries? True, he does not say, in so many words, that Samuel's disregard of the altar at Shiloh was caused by this state of things; but when he related these irregular and. abnormal circumstances he had a right to assume that his readers would see that they account for the irregular and abnormal proceedings of the prophet. In fact, his readers did recognize this connection of cause and effect, until modern criticism arose with its passion for controverting all accepted truths, and called it in question.

Let us now turn to the sacrifices which were offered between the time of Samuel and the dedication of Solomon's temple. First of all, let us trace the history of the tabernacle and its altar during this period. When Eli died it was still standing at Shiloh, where it had stood since the days of Joshua. But Shiloh, as we learn from Jeremiah, was utterly destroyed; just when or by whom we are not informed (Jer. vii. 12-14; xxvi. 6-9). The tabernacle, however, was either saved from the wreck or removed before it occurred; for in the latter part of the reign of Saul we find it at Nob, where David obtained the shewbread and the sword of Goliath from Ahimelech, the priest (I. Sam. xxi. 1-9). Nob was in the territory of Benjamin, and close in the vicinity of Gibeon, where Saul resided. Ahimelech was a son of Ahitub, who was a son of Phinehas and a grandson of Eli (xxii. 19; xiv. 3). This shows that descendants of Eli to the third generation continued to keep guardianship of the tabernacle, and that they followed it from Shiloh to Nob. Doubtless Ahimelech was a better man than his grandfather, Phinehas; but the fact that he so readily consented to give the holy bread, which none but priests could lawfully eat to David and his servants, shows that the laws regulating the tabernacle service were still grossly violated. Shortly after this all the priests at Nob were slaughtered by Doeg, with the exception of Abiathar, son of Ahimelech, who fled to David in the cave of Adullam, and the town of Nob was depopulated (I. Sam. xxii. 18-23).

The tabernacle now disappears from the history till the latter part of David's reign, when we find it in Gibeon. This place was some seven or eight miles northwest of Jerusalem, and about the same distance due west of Nob. The ark in the meantime had remained at Kiriath-jearim. This place was nearer to Gibeon than the latter was to Jerusalem; but though the two sacred symbols were now within five or six miles of each other, they were not brought together. David, after reigning seven years at Hebron, took possession of Jerusalem, strengthened its fortifications and moved the ark into it, placing it in a tent specially constructed for its reception. It would have cost him as little labor to have moved it into its old resting place in the tabernacle. He not only avoids this, and puts it into a new tent but he leaves the old structure outside the city on the hill of Gibeon. He does not, however, totally neglect the old structure and its altar; for he appoints Zadok and other priests to minister before it and to offer burnt offerings on its altar "according to all that is written in the law of Jehovah which he commanded Israel." At the same time he appointed sixty-eight priests, with Obed-Edom at their head, to minister before the ark in Jerusalem, "as every day's work required" (I. Chron. xvi. 37-42).

Here now were two altars in use almost in sight of each other, and each was served by a regularly appointed priesthood. A more open disregard of the Deuteronomic law restricting sacrifice to a single altar could not exist. If that law was in existence at the time, then David, instead of restoring the ark to the tabernacle, and requiring all sacrifices to be offered there, as the law required, deliberately and intentionally set the law aside. But as David was constantly attended by prophets, such as Nathan and Gad, besides being himself inspired in the latter part of his reign, he must have been guided in all this by inspiration. Indeed, the very fact that the ark had always stood in the tabernacle until it was captured by the Philistines, would have been a controlling reason for replacing it there, had this reason not been overruled by some superior consideration. What could this superior consideration have been, unless it was that God, having formed the purpose of a settled place of worship in Jerusalem, chose to gradually bring the tabernacle into neglect, so that the transition from it to the temple should not be so abrupt as to shock the devotional feelings of the godly among the people? David had already conceived the idea of building a temple, and the actual construction of it only awaited in God's purpose the peaceful reign of Solomon.  If Deuteronomy, with its restrictive law, was already in existence, its relaxation was justified by the circumstances, and therefore it can furnish no ground for denying the existence of that book. The argument, then, by which the non-existence of the Book of Deuteronomy is inferred from the sacrifices offered on various altars during the judgeship of Samuel and the reign of David, is a sophism which has plausibility only in the absence of a careful consideration of the facts in the case. It is an example of historical criticism which misinterprets history.

After Solomon's temple was consecrated, it must be admitted, by all who give credit to the Book of Kings, that offerings on any other altar than the one before the temple were held to be illegal. In the account of the reign of every good king down to that of Hezekiah, it is mentioned as a defect of his government that the "high places" were not taken away. This is said of Asa, of Jehoshaphat, of Jehoash, of Amaziah, of Azariah, of Jotham; but when the author comes to Hezekiah, the best of the kings down to his day, he says: "He did that, which was right in the eyes of Jehovah, according to all that. his father David had done. He removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah." The writer has two refrains running through his historical song -- one through the story of the good kings who reigned in Jerusalem, the other running through the story of the successors of Jeroboam. In the former he sings, "Howbeit the high places were not taken away: the people still sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places." In the other, "He departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, wherewith he made Israel to sin." The sins of Jeroboam, thus referred to, were those of setting up an altar and image for calf-worship, and of forbidding his subjects to go to Jerusalem to worship God. They were sins against the single sanctuary to which worship was restricted by the law in Deuteronomy. The sin of omission on the part of the comparatively good kings of Judah was that of not removing the altars and images which the disobedient people were constantly setting up "on every high hill and under every green tree." When, in addition, the historian comes to the reign of a king of whom he could say, "He removed the high places, and broke down the pillars, and cut down the Asherah," what stronger assurance could he give that worship at these places was unlawful, and that it had been tolerated only by a dereliction on the part of the kings? It was a case much like that of the liquor saloons in our own country, which are in many places prohibited by law, but are kept up in spite of law, through the unfaithfulness of executive officers. The force of this evidence is so great that our destructive critics are able to evade it only by the device to which they always resort when all others fail them -- that of denying the statements of the historian. They tell us that these expressions of opposition to the high places were interpolated by a Deuteronomic writer who wrote back into the past the sentiments of his own day, his day being after the Book of Deuteronomy had been discovered by Hilkiah. They were intended to deceive the people into the belief that Deuteronomy was, as it claims to be, a book of Moses. Thus must the history go down to make room for the theory. And this is "scientific" criticism!

Let it also he distinctly noted that from the consecration of Solomon's temple onward, no good king or priest or prophet ever offered sacrifice at any other altar than the one in front of the temple; and that while the majority of the good kings are censured for permitting some of the people to sacrifice in the high places, the best two of them, Hezekiah and Josiah, broke down that practice to the best of their ability. So far as Judah is concerned, then, the law in Deuteronomy was recognized, and this is sufficient proof in the absence of conflicting evidence that Deuteronomy was known and its authority recognized in that kingdom.

Let us now turn to the northern kingdom. We learn incidentally, from Elijah's answer to the Lord at Mt. Horeb, that altars had been erected by the worshipers of Jehovah in Israel. He says: "The children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword." This was spoken during the prevalence of Baal worship under the reign of Ahab. How many of these altars had been in use we have no means of knowing; but the one on which Elijah called down fire from heaven on Mt Carmel was one of them; for it is said, "He repaired the altar of Jehovah that was thrown down." It was made of twelve stones, according to the twelve tribes of Israel, showing that worshipers of Jehovah among the ten tribes still recognized the unity of Israel, notwithstanding the division which had taken place. This may have been the reason why their altars were east down. We are to answer the question, Does the fact of these altars, whether many or few, at which sacrifices were offered by the pious people in Israel, prove that these godly people were not acquainted with the restrictive law in Deuteronomy? To reach an answer, we must remember that Jeroboam, the first king of the ten tribes, prohibited his subjects from going to Jerusalem to worship and that every succeeding king "departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin." What, then, could the godly in Israel do when they wished to make atonement for their sins? They must either erect altars in their own country, and make the prescribed offerings there, or live and die without the atonement which was necessary to their peace with God. Fortunately for them, their forefathers, previous to the bringing in of the Mosaic ritual, had erected altars wherever they had pitched their tents, and God had accepted their sacrifices. To this practice, in their extremity, they returned. Moreover, when Jeroboam issued his famous and infamous decree, all the priests and Levites in his kingdom abandoned their homes and retired into the kingdom of Judah, where the true priesthood officiated at the one legal altar; and Jeroboam appointed a new order of priests for his calf-worship (II. Chron. xi. 13-16). This compelled the people in Israel who clung to Jehovah, to resort to prophets to act as priests, or to present, after patriarchal custom, their own offerings.

It is not necessary to decide whether, in all this, the pious in Israel did right. Whether they did right or wrong, these considerations amply explain their non-observance of the Deuteronomic law of a single altar; and they show that the argument against the existence of that law, drawn from this non observance, is a very thin sophism.(3)

FOOTNOTES  

1.  For other grounds of justification in this case, see J. J. Lias, Lex M., 263f., 266; Principal Douglas, Lex M., 266; Bissell, O. and S. of Pent., 356ff.

2. "It Is difficult to understand, if the provisions of the Mosaic law were not yet in existence, (1) what was the precise sin of Hophni and Phinehas-supposing them to have existed and to have committed any sin-which called for so severe a punishment; and (2) if they were fabulous characters, what could have induced a historian who desired to recommend the regulations which had lately been introduced, to represent the priests themselves as having so grossly violated those regulations" (J J. Lias, Lex M., 262, note).

3. This view of the subject is admirably presented by Dr. J. Sharpe, Lex M, 345f.