The Baptist Catechism

    A Commentary on the Shorter Catechism (1883), Alexander Whyte

    Question 41

    summarily comprehended—We have in the text and context first the moral law, then the summary of that law in the ten commandments, and then the ten commandments again summarized.

    Now where was the moral law published in extenso before it was summarized in the Decalogue? Moses received the two tables containing a summary of the moral law at Sinai, and we accordingly call it the Law of Moses, and we do not speak misleadingly if we know what we say. The moral law then became the law of Moses, but it was the law of God to all mankind long before Moses was born. The moral law was first published, not when the tables of stone were graven at Sinai, but when the Holy Ghost wrote the law of God on the tables of Adam’s heart. The moral law is the “light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” and that light burned its brightest when it was first kindled in the soul of man. Moses was not that light, but he came to bear witness of that light. Moses was merely commissioned to refurbish the tarnished lamp of the moral law, and to feed its dying flame with fresh oil. He did not kindle the light, he only set it in a candlestick, so that it might give light to all that were in the house of Israel. It was the moral law of human nature, the law of conscience, the law of creation that was summarized and republished in the ten commandments.

    the ten commandments. The oldest form of the ten commandments is found in the twentieth chapter of the book of Exodus; another form is found in the fifth of Deuteronomy. There are some slight differences between the two forms, but the differences do not touch anything essential or important. The Scriptures repeatedly tell us that the commandments are ten in number, but the commandments are nowhere tabulated or numbered so as to fix for us where each and every separate commandment begins and ends. And thus it is, that while all schools of interpretation accept the same number of commandments, they have not all classified the commandments in the same way. Thus the Jewish doctors took what we call the preface to the commandments and reckoned it a commandment, making it the first of the ten. And then, in order to keep the proper number, they ran our first and second commandments into one. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, the authoritative symbol of the Church of Rome, omits the second commandment, and then divides the tenth commandment into two. The classification that obtains in the Shorter Catechism is as old as the days of our Lord, it was adopted by many of the Fathers, it is the classification accepted by the Greek Church, and it has the approval of nearly all the Reformed divines. “The four first commandments contain our duty to God, and the other six our duty to man” (Larger Catechism). (See Macpherson’s Confession, chap. xix.)

    Questions

    1. Master, and then without the book write out an abstract of the eight rules supplied in the Larger Catechism for the right understanding of the ten commandments.
    2. Explain and illustrate the exception to the fifth rule: Yet every particular duty is not to be done at all times.
    3. Explain and illustrate Bengel’s analysis: The dispensation of law respecting the human race is threefold:—1. Before the law; 2. Under the law; 3. Under grace. Men severally experience the power of that dispensation (Rom. vii.).