But from the very terms in which the appointment of these sacrifices is conceived, and the minuteness of the directions concerning them, it might be suspected that they were not, like the burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, familiar to the people long before, and indeed common to them with other people", but were new appointments of the Mosaic Law. And with good reason; because, with some exceptions hereafter to be noticed, they do not appear (judging even by the terms of the Law itself, and without the assistance of St. Paul's commentary upon it) to have procured the forgiveness of moral offences at all, but of those ceremonial offences which were become sins only by the Law.

A wilful and obstinate, indeed, or presumptuous transgression even of a ritual law, appointed by competent authority, becomes an act of moral disobedience; and for presumptuous sins accordingly these sacrifices were not appointed; but chiefly for sins of ignorance'. “The priest shall make an atonement for the soul that sinneth ignorantly, when he sinneth by ignorance before the Lord, and it shall be forgiven him; but the soul that doeth aught presumptuously, the same reproacheth the Lord; and that soul shall be cut off from among his people; his iniquity

h See Gen. viii. xxii. Exod. x. xviii. Num. xxiii. Job. i. xlii. the sacrifices of Noah, Abraham, Jethro, Balaam, Job, &c., shewing a familiarity with the burnt-offering; and indeed with the peace-offering; for in Exod. x. 25. xviii. 12. the word rendered "sacrifices," ', means " peace-offerings." See Outram de Sacrificiis, lib. i. cap. x. §. 1.

i Not sins of infirmity, I apprehend, but rather, according to the authorized translation, sins of ignorance. See Abp. Magee on Atonement, No. 37. Cf. Levit. iv.

shall be upon him." Moral offences, indeed, can seldom be committed by ignorance; since the moral law is written on the tables of the heart, as well as the tables of stone. But offences against a ritual law, new, minute, and complicated, must, it is obvious, continually occur on the part of priests, and people, rulers, and private men, if not from unavoidable ignorance, yet still without any thing of wilful or presumptuous disrespect to the law-giver. And it seems reasonable and just, that the same law which constituted an offence of this description, should devise means, which might procure the forgiveness of the offender, whilst they evinced his desire of pardon, and his readiness to obey the law.

2. But, secondly, another and a distinct purpose of many of the Mosaic rites was to obtain not the forgiveness of sin, but purification; whether purification from uncleanness regarded as sin, or from sin regarded as uncleanness.

The Apostle alludes to one remarkable rite of this kind in those words of the text," the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean." In the minute directions for the use of the water of separation, as it was called, consecrated by the ashes of this heifer, the particular kind of uncleanness more especially mentioned as designed to be removed by it is the pollution contracted by touching the dead. It was uncleanness only through appointment, and sin only through the law; and yet this water of separation is termed "a purification for sin," or otherwise the ashes of the heifer are called "the ashes of the burnt sin-offering,"

k Cf. Num. xv. 27-31. Lev. iv. 2, 3, 13, &c.

which for my present purpose gives the same sense'. Still further to mark the religious and typical design of the legal purifications, the very instrument appointed in most cases was the last which could in any natural way effect purification at all: for "almost all things," as the Apostle remarks," are by the law purged with blood." And in all instances, the further object of this purification was declared to be sanctification; ́not of course sanctification in the usual sense of the word in the New Testament, but such sanctification as entitled the Israelite, without exposing himself to the penalty of death for his presumption, to approach the worship and the sanctuary of the pure and holy God. "The man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself," said the Law, "that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord." "I am the Lord your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy"."

It is needless to multiply instances in a matter so well known. But there is one of the most remarkable of the Mosaic institutions, which peculiarly demands our attention; not only because it is alluded to by the Apostle in the text, and indeed throughout his whole discussion of the Mosaic sacrifices, but also because an erroneous conception of the extent of the legal atonements is often derived probably from this very institution. For the ceremonies of the great day of atonement are usually supposed to have complete expiation or the actual remission of sins in view,

1 See Abp. Magee on Atonement, No. 37.

m Heb. ix. 22.

n Num. xix. 13, 20, &c. Lev. xi. 44. xii. 4. xiv. 14, 25, 52, &c.

whereas they do not seem to extend beyond purification in order to sanctification. The very occasion of this institution suggests this view of its design, and the record of its appointment, independently of the Apostle's commentary, seems to establish it.

The occasion selected for introducing the ceremonies of the great day of atonement was the awful punishment of Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, for presuming to offer strange fire upon the altar, and not heeding the declaration of the Lord, that "he would be sanctified in them that came nigh him"." But the appointments, whose primary object was thus to preserve the priest from death in the most sacred ministrations of the sanctuary, were extended to sacrificial atonements for all the priests, and for the whole people, and even for the sanctuary, the tabernacle, and the altar; atonements all of them evidently designed for a similar end, to cleanse, namely, to hallow, and sanctify them for the service of the Lord. It might be expected, that in the annual solemnities for this end some notice would be taken not of legal impurities or ceremonial offences alone, but much more of those sins against the moral law, which would render the worshipper far more unclean in the sight of Him" who is of purer eyes than to behold evil'." And accordingly, as was observed before, the very words employed in the account of this institution, "all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins," scarcely admit of a more restricted interpretation. But then it is to be observed

• Lev. xvi. xxiii. Num. xxix.

P Lev. x. 1-3. xvi. 1, 2. 13.

9 See Ezek. xliii. 18-27. (particularly 22, 23, 26, 27.) xlv. 15, 17—20. cf. xliv. 19. and xlvi. 20. r Hab. i. 13.

further, that there is not one word, throughout the whole account, of the actual forgiveness of these sins. And this is the more remarkable, because in every case of the sin and trespass offerings already noticed, the forgiveness of the sin is the expressed end of the atonements. But the sacrifices of the great day of atonement, with a wider range in the objects of the atonements, were more limited in their effects. They covered all sins, but did not procure their actual remission. The sins of the Israelites were here regarded as uncleannesses, which disqualified them and every thing of theirs for the service of the Lord. Therefore it is said, "atonement (or reconciliation) was to be made for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins; and for the tabernacle of the congregation that remained among them in the midst of their uncleanness'." And so again," atonement was to be made for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year; to cleanse them, that they might be clean from all their sins before the Lord." This was then their purification in order to their sanctification". They were so far cleansed and hallowed, that they might worship the Lord and not die. Their iniquities were removed as it were far off upon the head of the emissarygoat which bore them away; but there was here no promise, as in those other cases of sin-offering, of the actual remission of their guilt.

Lev. xvi. 16, 20, &c.

Verse 30, 34.

▾ Resembling, as it has been well observed, the absolution pronounced by the Christian church, which entitles the absolved person to Christian communion, but does not necessarily ensure to him pardon from God.