[The Pentateuch]

¶ A prologue in to the third book of Moses, called Leviticus.

¶ A prologe in to the thirde boke of Moses, called Leuiticus.

The ceremonies which are described in the book following, were chiefly ordained off God, (as I said in the end of the prologue upon Exodi) to occupy the minds of that people the Israelites, and to keep them from serving of God after the imagination of their blind zeal and good intent: that their conscience• might be stablished and they sure that they pleased God therein, which were impossible, if a man did of his own heed that which was not commanded of God nor depended of any appointment made between him and God. Such ceremonies were unto them as an A. B .C. to learn to spell and read, and as a nurse to feed them with milk and pap, and to speak unto them after their own capacity and to lisp the words unto them according as the babes and children of that age might sound them again. For all that were before Christ were in the infancy and childhood of the world and saw that sun which we see openly, but through a cloud and had but feeble and ⟨image 176⟩weak imaginations of Christ, as children have of mens deeds, a few prophets excep •• which yet described him unto other in sacrifices and ceremonies, likenesses, riddles, proverbs, and dark and strange speaking until the full age were come that God would show him openly unto the whole world and deliver them from their shadows and cloud light and the heathen out of their dead sleep of stark blind ignorance. And as the shadow vanisheth away at the coming of the light, even so do the ceremonies and sacrifices at the coming of Christ, and are henceforth no more necessary then a token left in remembrance of a bargain is necessary when the bargain is fulfilled. And though they s• me plain childish, yet they be not altogether fruitless: as the poppets and .xx. manner of try fles which mothers permit unto their young children be not all in vain. For all be it that such fantasies be permitted to satisfy the childers lusts, yet in that they are the mothers gift and be done in place and time at her commandment, they keep the children in awe and make them know the mother and also make them more apt against a more stronger age to obey in things of greater rneste.