Lex Dei moralis, ceremonialis, et politica, ex libris Mosis excerpta, et in certas classes distributa

Decorative headpiece featuring floral and foliate scrollwork.

THE LAW OF GOD, MORAL,
CEREMONIAL, AND
CIVIL,
EXCERPTED FROM THE BOOKS OF MOSES,
& Distributed into certain classes
BY
THÉODORE DE BÈZE OF VÉZELAY.

Decorative drop cap 'L'The law of the Lord our God, delivered by Moses to his people, is partly ēthikē moral, partly hieratikē ceremonial, and partly politikē civil.

Ēthikē shows how each person ought to be affected, first toward GOD, and then toward their neighbor. And because it adjudicates us as condemned in ourselves, due to the punishments attached against those who have transgressed it even in the smallest point: so it does not harm us in Christ, who was made righteousness for us, fulfilling it most fully on our behalf, and at the same time paying the penalties owed by us. On the contrary, in Christ apprehended by faith, we are absolved from its condemnation and are about to obtain the crown which He promises to its observers; and by the Spirit of the Gospel, it shows us, who have been sanctified, the path of a good and straight way.

Hieratikē is the worship of the interior which we owe to GOD, like a certain painting presented to the external senses. Besides the fact that it exercised the Israelites in the external profession of true religion, it exhibited to the people of GOD, established under his pedagogy, a true image of both the condemnation that all men deserve on account of the transgression of the ēthikē law, and of that liberation which was expected from the coming Messiah.

Politikē shows what the use of tēs ēthikēs the moral (law) is in the common society of men, and it arms the magistrate against its transgressors.

These laws, indeed, as they were given by GOD at various times and places, are described by Moses not in the same order. It seems to me they can be distributed into these chapters and composed into one body not inconveniently.