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matter of express revelation, when it is declared, that the death of Christ was "a demonstration of the righteousness of God," of his righteous character and his just administration, and therefore allowed the honourable exercise of mercy without impeachment of justice, or any appeal or relaxation of his laws. If it be meant in this allegation of mystery, that it is not discoverable how the death of Christ is as adequate a display of the justice of God, as though offenders had been personally punished, this also is clearly in opposition to what the apostle has said, in the passage which has been so often referred to, "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness," εs Evdεiživ Tηs dikαioσvvns aurs, for a demonstration, or MANIFESTATION of his righteousness; nor surely can the particulars before stated, in explanation of this point, be well weighed, without our perceiving how gloriously the holiness and essential rectitude of God, as well as his rectoral justice, were illustrated by this proceeding; this, surely, is manifestation, not mystery.

For, generally speaking, it cannot be a matter of difficulty to conceive how the authority of a law may be upheld, and the justice of its administration made manifest, even when its penalty is exacted in some other way than the punishment of the party offending. When the Locrian legislator voluntarily suffered the loss of one of his eyes, to save that of his son, condemned by his own statutes to lose both, and did this that the law might neither be repealed nor exist without efficacy; who does not see that the authority of his laws was as much, nay more, impressively sanctioned than if his son had endured the full penalty? The case, it is true, has in it nothing parallel to the work of Christ, except in that particular which it is here adduced to illustrate; but it shows that it is not, in all cases, necessary for the upholding of a firm government, that the offender himself should be punished. This is the natural mode of maintaining authority; but not, in all cases, the only one; and, in that of the redemption of man, we see the wisdom of God in its brightest manifestation securing this end, and yet opening to man the door of hope. The strict justice of the case required that the righteous character of the Divine administration should be upheld; but, in fact, by the sufferings of our Lord being made the only means of pardon, it has received a stamp more legible and impressive than the extreme punishment of offenders, however awful, while it connects love with justice, and presents God to us at once exact in righteousness and affectingly gracious and merciful. "The judge himself bore the punishment of transgression, while he published an amnesty to the guilty, and thus asserted the authority, and importance, and worth of the law by that very act which beamed forth love unspeakable, and displayed a compassion which knew no obstacle but the unwillingness of the criminals to accept it. The eternal Word became flesh; and exhibited, in sufferings and in death, that combination of holiness and mercy which, believed, must excite love, and, if loved, must produce resemblance."(9) Mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other." Thus the vinculum, that which connects the death of Christ with our salvation, is simply the security which it gives to the righteous administration of the Divine government.

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often expose themselves to great personal risk of life, and even sometimes perish in the attempt; yet the claims of humanity are considered sufficient to justify such deeds, which are never blamed, but always applauded. No man's life, we grant, is at his own disposal; but in all cases where it is agreed that God, the only being who has a right to dispose of life, has left men at liberty to offer their lives for the benefit of others, no one questions the justice of their doing it. Thus, when a patriot army marches to almost certain destruction to defend its coasts from foreign invasion and violence, the established notion that the life of every man is placed by God at the disposal of his country, justifies the hazard. It is still a clearer instance, because matter of revelation, that there are cases in which we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren," that is, for the church and the interests of religion in the world. Christians are called to pursue their duty of instructing, and reforming, and saving others, though, in some cases, the active services into which they may be led will shorten life; and in times of persecution it is obligatory upon them not only to be ready to suffer but to die, rather than deny Christ. No one questions the justice of this, because all see that the Author and Lord of the lives of men has given to them the right of thus disposing of life; nor do we ever hear it urged, that it was unjust in him to require them to submit to the pain of racks, and fires, and other modes of violent death, which they certainly did not deserve, and when, as to any crime meriting public and ignominious death, they were, doubtless, innocent. These cases are not adduced as parallel to the death of Christ for sinners; but so far they agree with it that, in the ordinary course of Providence, and by express appointment of God, men suffer and even die for the benefit of others, and in some cases the morally worthy, the comparatively innocent, die for the instruction, and, instrumentally, for the salvation of the unworthy and vicious. There is a similarity in the two cases also in other particulars, as that the suffering danger or death is in both matter of choice, not of compulsion or necessity; and that there is a right in the parties to choose suffering and death, though, as we shall see, this right in benevolent men is of a different kind to that with which Christ was invested.

Some writers of great eminence on the doctrine of atonement have urged also, in answer to the objection before us, the suffering of persons in consequence of the sins of others, as children on account of the crimes of their parents, both by the natural constitution of things and by the laws of many states; but the subject does not appear to derive any real illustration from these examples; for, as a modern writer well observes, "the principles upon which the Catholic opinion is defended destroy every kind of similarity between these cases and the sufferings of Christ. In all such instances of the extension of punishment, persons suffer for sing of which they are innocent, but without their consent, in consequence of a constitution under which they are born, and by a disposition of events which they probably lament; and their suffering is not supposed to have any effect in alleviating the evils incurred by those whose punishment they bear."(1)

In all the cases mentioned above, as most in point in this argument, we grant that there is no instance of satisfaction by vicarious punishment; no legal substiAn objection is made by the opponents of the doc- tution of one person for another. With respect to hutrine of atonement to the justice of laying the punish- man governments, they could not justly adopt this ment of the guilty upon the innocent, which it will be principle in any case. They could not oblige an inno necessary briefly to consider. The objection resolves cent person to suffer for the guilty, because that would itself into an inquiry how far such benevolent interpo-be unjust to him; they could not accept his offer, were sitions of one person for another, as involve sacrifice he ever so anxious to become the substitute of another, and suffering, may go without violating justice; and for that would be unjust to God, since they have no when the subject is followed in this direction, the ob- authority from him so to take away the life of one of jection will be found to be of no weight. his creatures, and the person himself has no authority to offer it. With respect to the Divine government, a parallel case is also impossible, because no guilty man could be the substitute for his fellows, his own life being forfeited; and no higher creature could be that substitute, of which we are fully assured by this, that if it was necessary that Christ, who is infinitely above all creatures, should suffer for us, in order that God might be just in justifying the guilty, then his justice could not have been manifested by the interposition of any creature whatever in our behalf, and, therefore, the legal

That it has always been held a virtue to endure inconveniences, to encounter danger, and even to suffer for the sake of others, in certain circumstances, cannot be denied, and no one has ever thought of controlling such acts by raising any questions as to their justice. Parents and friends not only endure labour and make sacrifices for their children and connexions, but often submit to positive pain in accomplishing that to which their affection prompts them. To save a fellowcreature perishing by water or fire, generous minds

(9) ERSKINE on Revealed Religion.

(1) HILL'S Lectures.

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obstacle to our pardon must have remained in full force. There can be no full parallel to this singular and only case: but yet, as to the question of justice, which is here the only point under consideration, it rests on the same principles as those before mentioned. In the case of St. Paul we see a willing sufferer; he chooses to suffer and to die" for the elect's sake," and that he might publish the Gospel to the world. He knew that this would be his lot, and he glories in the prospect. He gave up cheerfully what might have remained to him of life by the constitution of nature. Was it, then, unjust in God to accept this offering of generous devotedness for the good of mankind, when the offering was in obedience to his own will? Certainly not. Was it an unjust act towards God, that is, did it violate the right of God over his life, for St. Paul to choose to die for the Gospel? Certainly not. For God had given to him the right of thus disposing of his life, by making it his duty to die for the truth. The same considerations of choice and right unite in the sufferings of our Lord, though the case itself was one of an infinitely higher nature, a circumstance which strengthens but does not change the principle. He was a willing substitute, and choice was in him abundantly more free and unbiassed than it could be in a creature, and for this reason, that he was not a creature. His incarnation was voluntary; and, when incarnate, his sufferings were still a matter of choice; nor was he, in the same sense as his disciples, under the power of men. "No man taketh my life from me; but I lay it down of myself." He had the right of doing so in a sense that no creature could have. He died not only because the Father willed it; not because the right of living or dying had been conceded to him as a moral trust, as in the case of the apostles; but because, having himself the supreme power of life and death, from his boundless benevolence to man, he willed to die; and thus was there, in this substitution, a concurrence of the Lawgiver, and the consent of the substitute. To say that any thing is unjust, is to say that the rights of some one are invaded; but if, in this case, no right was invaded, than which nothing can be more clear, then was there in the case nothing of injustice as assumed in the objection. The whole resolves itself, therefore, into a question, not of justice, but of the wisdom of admitting a substitute to take the place of the guilty. In the circumstances, first of the willingness of the substitute to submit to the penalty, and secondly of his right thus to dispose of himself, the justice of the proceeding is fully cleared; and the question of wisdom is to be determined by this consideration, whether the end of punishment could be as well answered by this translation of the penalty to a substitute as if the principals themselves had personally been held to undergo it. This, when the whole evangelical scheme is taken into account, embracing the means and conditions by which that substitution is made available, and the concomitants by which it is attended, as before explained, is also obvious-the law of God is not repealed nor relaxed, but established; those who continue disobedient fall into aggravated condemnation, and those who avail themselves of the mercy of God thus conceded, are restored to the capacity and disposition of obedience, and that perfectly and eternally in a future state of existence; so that, as the end of punishment is the maintenance of the authority of law and the character of the Lawgiver, this end is even more abundantly accomplished by this glorious interposition of the compassion and adorable wisdom of GoD our Saviour.

So unfounded is this objection to the doctrine of the vicarious sufferings of Christ; to which we may add, that the difficulty of reconciling those sufferings to the Divine justice does not, in truth, lie with us, but with the Socinians. Different opinions, as to the nature and end of those sufferings, neither lessen nor heighten them. The ext:ne and emphatic sufferings of our Lord is a fact which stands unalterably upon the record of the inspired history. We who regard Christ as suffering by virtue of a voluntary substitution of himself in our room and stead, can account for such agonies, and, by the foregoing arguments, can reconcile them to justice; but, as our Lord was perfectly and absolutely innocent, as "he did no sin," and was, in this respect, distinguished from all men who ever lived, and who have all sinned, by being entirely "holy and harmless,"

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suffering as he was in virtue, and when, according to them, he sustained a personal character only, and not a vicarious one? For this difficulty they have, and can have, no rational solution.

As to the passage in Ezekiel xviii. 20, which Soci nians sometimes urge against the doctrine of Christ's vicarious passion, it is briefly but satisfactorily an swered by Grotius. "Socinus objects from Ezekiel, The soul that sinneth it shall die; the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.' But in these words God does not teach us what he must necessarily do; but what [in a particular case] he had freely decreed to do. It no more, therefore, follows from hence, that it is unjust altogether for a son to bear any part of the punishment of his father's crime, than that it is unjust for a sinner not to die. The place itself evinces, that God does not here treat of perpetual and immutable right; but of that ordinary course of his providence which he was determined hereafter to pursue with respect to the Jews, that he might cut off all occasion of complaint."(2)

CHAPTER XXI.
REDEMPTION.-SACRIFICES OF THE LAW.

Ir has, then, been established, upon the testimony of various texts, in which the doctrine is laid down, not in the language of metaphor and allusion, but clearly and expressly, that the death of Christ was vicarious and propitiatory; and that by it a satisfaction was offered to the Divine justice for the transgressions of men; in consideration of which pardon and salvation are offered to them in the Gospel through faith; and I have preferred to adduce these clear and cogent proofs of this great principle of our religion, in the first place from those passages in the New Testament in which there are no sacrificial terms, no direct allusions to the atonements of the law, and other parts of the Levitical piacular system, to show, that independent of the latter class of texts, the doctrine may be established against the Socinians; and, also, that by having first settled the meaning of the leading passages, we may more satisfactorily determine the sense in which the evangelists and apostles use the sacrificial terms of the Old Testament, with reference to the death of Christ, a subject in which, from its nature, the opponents of the atonement find a freedom of remark and license of criticisin, by which they are apt to mislead and perplex the unwary. This second class of texts, however, when approached by the light of the argument already made good, and exhibited also in that of their own evidence, will afford the most triumphant refutation of the notions of those, who, to the denial of the Godhead of our Lord, add a proud and Pharisaic rejection of the sacrificial efficacy of his death.

We shall not, in the first instance, advert to the sacrifices under the patriarchal dispensation, as to the origin of which a difference of opinion exists, a subject on which some remarks will be offered in the sequel. Among the Jews, sacrifices were unquestionably of Divine original; and as terms taken from them ars found applied so frequently to Christ and to his sufferings in the New Testament, they serve farther to explain that peculiarity under which, as we have seen, the apostles regarded the death of Christ, and afford additional proof that it was considered by them as a sacrifice of expiation, as the grand universal sin-offering for the whole world.

He is announced by John, his forerunner, as "the LAMB OF GOD;" and that not with reference to meekness or any other moral virtue; but with an accompanying phrase, which would communicate to a Jew, the full sacrificial sense of the term employed-" the Lamb of GOD which TAKETH AWAY the sin of the world." He is called "our PASSOVER, sacrificed for us." He is said to have given " himself for us, AN OFFERING and A SACRIFICE to God, for a sweet smelling savour." As a Priest, it was necessary he should have somewhat to offer; and he offered himself, "his own blood," to which is ascribed the washing away

(2) De Satisfactione.

of sin, and our eternal redemption. He is declared to have" put away sin by the SACRIFICE OF HIMSELF," to have "BY HIMSELF purged our sins," to have "SANCTIFIED the people by his own blood," to have "offered to GOD one SACRIFICE FOR SINS." Add to these, and innumerable other similar expressions and allusions, the argument of the apostle in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which, by proving at length, that the sacrifice of Christ was superior in efficacy to the sacrifices of the law, he most unequivocally assumes, that the death of Christ was a sacrifice and sin-offering, for without that it would no more have been capable of comparison with the sacrifices of the law, than the death of John the Baptist, St. Stephen, or St. James, all martyrs and sufferers for the truth, who had recently sealed their testimony with their blood. This very comparison, we may boldly affirm, is utterly unaccountable and absurd on any hypothesis, which denies the sacrifice of Christ; for what relation could his death have to the Levitical immolations and offerings, if it had no sacrificial character? Nothing could, in fact, be more misleading, and even absurd, than to apply those terms, which, both among Jews and Gentiles, were in use to express the various processes and means of atonement and piacular propitiation, if the apostles and Christ himself did not intend to represent his death strictly as an expiation for sin-misleading, because such would be the natural and necessary inference from the terms themselves, which had acquired this as their established meaning; and absurd, because if, as Socinians say, they used them metaphorically, there was not even an ideal resemblance between the figure, and that which it was intended to illustrate. So totally irrelevant, indeed, will those terms appear to any notion entertained of the death of Christ which excludes its expiatory character, that to assume that our Lord and his apostles used them as metaphors is profanely to assume them to be such writers as would not in any other case be tolerated; writers wholly unacquainted with the commonest rules of elocution, and therefore wholly unfit to be teachers of others, not only in religion, but in things of inferior importance.

The use of such terms, we have said, would not only be wholly absurd, but criminally misleading to the Gentiles, as well as to the Jews, who were first converted to Christianity. To them the notion of propitiatory offerings, offerings to avert the displeasure of the gods, and which expiated the crimes of offenders, was most familiar, and the corresponding terms in constant use. The bold denial of this by Dr. Priestley might well bring upon him the reproof of Archbishop Magee, who, after establishing this point from the Greek and Latin writers, observes, "so clearly does their language announce the notion of a propitiatory atonement, that if we would avoid an imputation on Dr. Priestley's fairness, we are driven, of necessity, to question the extent of his acquaintance with those writers." The reader may consult the instances given by this writer, in No. 5 of his Illustrations appended to his Discourses on the Atonement; and particularly the tenth chapter of Grotius's De Satisfactione, whose learning has most amply illustrated and firmly settled this view of the heathen sacrifices. The use to be made of this in the argument is, that as the apostles found the very terms they used with reference to the nature and efficacy of the death of Christ, fixed in an expiatory signification among the Greeks, they could not in honesty use them in a distant figurative sense, much less in a contrary one, without due notice of their having invested them with a new import being given to their readers. From ayos, a pollution, an impurity, which was to be expiated by sacrifice, are derived ayvio and aytaw, which denote the act of expiation; kalatoo, too, to purify, cleanse, is applied to the effect of expiation; and a denotes the method of propitiating the gods by sacrifice. These and other words of similar import are used by the authors of the Septuagint, and by the evangelists and apostles; but they give no notice of using them in any strange and altered sense; and when they apply them to the death of Christ, they must, therefore, be understood to use them in their received meaning.

without warning, which unquestionably they never gave.

The force of this has been felt, and as, in order to avoid it, the two points, the expiatory nature of the Jewish sacrifices and their typical signature, have been questioned, it will be necessary to establish each.

As to the expiatory nature of the sacrifices of the law, it is not necessary to show that all the Levitical offerings were of this character. There were also offerings for persons and for things prescribed for puri fication, which were incidental; but even they grew out of the leading notion of expiatory sacrifice, and that legal purification which resulted from the forgiveness of sins. It is enough to show, that the grand and eminent sacrifices of the Jews were strictly expiatory, and that by them the offerers were released from punishment and death, for which ends they were appointed by the lawgiver.

When we speak, too, of vicarious sacrifice, we do not mean, either, on the one hand, such a substitution as that the victim should bear the same quantum of pain and suffering as the offender himself; or, on the other, that it was put in the place of the offender as a mere symbolical act, by which he confessed his desert of punishment; but a substitution made by Divine appointment, by which the victim was exposed to sufferings and death instead of the offender, in virtue of which the offender himself should be released. In this view, one can scarcely conceive why so able a writer as Archbishop Magee should prefer to use the term "vicarious import," rather than the simple and established term "vicarious;" since the Antinomian notion of substitution may be otherwise sufficiently guarded against, and the phrase "vicarious import" is certainly capable of being resolved into that figurative notion of mere symbolical action, which, however plausible, does in fact deprive the ancient sacrifices of their typical, and the oblation of Christ of its real efficacy. Vicarious acting is acting for another; vicarious suffering is suffering for another; but the nature and circumstances of that suffering in the case of Christ is to be determined by the doctrine of Scripture at large, and not wholly by the term itself; which is, however, useful for this purpose (and therefore to be preserved), that it indicates the sense in which those who use it understand the declaration of Scripture, that Christ "died FOR us," to be that he died not merely for our benefit, but in our stead; in other words, that but for his having died, those who believe in him would personally have suffered that death which is the penalty of every violation of the law of God.

That sacrifices under the law were expiatory and vicarious, admits of abundant proof.

The chief objections made to this doctrine are, first, that under the law, in all capital cases, the offender, upon legal proof or conviction, was doomed to die, and that no sacrifice could exempt him from the penalty. Secondly, that in all lower cases to which the law had not attached capital punishment, but pecuniary mulets, or personal labour or servitude, upon their non-payment, this penalty was to be strictly executed, and none could plead any privilege or exemption on account of sacrifice; and that when sacrifices were ordained with a pecuniary mulct, they are to be regarded in the light of fine, one part of which was paid to the state, the other to the church. This was the mode of argument adopted by the author of "The Moral Philosopher," and nothing of weight has been added to these objections since.

Now much of this may be granted, without any prejudice to the argument; and indeed, is no more than the most orthodox writers on this subject have often adverted to. The law under which the Jews were placed was at once, as to them, both a moral and a political law; and the Lawgiver excepted certain offences from the benefit of a pardon, which implied exemption from temporal death, which was the state penalty, and therefore would accept no atonement for such transgressions. Blasphemy, idolatry, murder, and adultery were those "presumptuous sins" which were thus exempted, and the reason will be seen in the In like manner the Jews had their expiatory sacri- political relation of the people to GOD. In refusing fices, and the terms and phrases used in them are, in this exemption from punishment in this world, in cerlike manner, employed by the apostles to characterize tain cases, respect was had to the order and benefit of the death of their Lord; and they would have been as society. Running parallel, however, with this poliguilty of misleading their Jewish as their Gentile tical application of the law to the Jews as subjects of readers, had they employed them in a new sense, and I the theocracy, we see the authority of the moral law

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kept over them as men and creatures; and if these presumptuous sins" of blasphemy and idolatry, of murder and adultery, and a few others, were the only capital crimes, considered politically, they were not the only capital crimes considered morally; that is, there were other crimes which would have subjected the offender to death, but for this provision of expiatory oblations. The true question then is, whether such sacrifices were appointed by God, and accepted instead of the personal punishment or LIFE of the offender, which otherwise would have been forfeited, as in the other cases; and if so, if the life of animal sacrifices was accepted instead of the life of man, then the notion that they were mere mulets and pecuniary penalties falls to the ground, and the vicarious nature of most of the Levitical oblations is established.

That other offences, besides those above mentioned, were capital, that is, exposed the offender to death, is clear from this, that all offences against the law had this capital character. As death was the sanction of the commandment given to Adam, so every one who transgressed any part of the law of Moses became guilty of death; every man was accursed, that is, devoted to die, who "continued not in all things written in the book of the law;" "the man only that doeth these things shall live by them," was the rule; and it was, therefore, to redeem the offenders from this penalty that sacrifices were appointed. So, with reference to the great day of expiation, we read, "For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your sins; and this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins, once a year." Levit. xvi. 30-34.

To prove that this was the intention and effect of the annual sacrifices of the Jews, we need do little more than refer to Lev. xvii. 10, 11, "I will set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for YOUR SOUL: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for THE SOUL." Here the blood, which is said to make atonement for the soul, is the blood of the victims, and to make an atonement for the soul is the same as to be a ransom for the soul, as will appear by referring to Exodus xxx. 1216, and to be a ransom for the soul is to avert death. "They shall give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord, that there be no plague among them," by which their lives might be suddenly taken away. The "soul" is also here used obviously for the life; the blood, or the life, of the victims in all the sacrifices, was substituted for the life of man, to preserve him from death, and the victims were therefore vicarious.(3) The Hebrew word, rendered atonement, DD, signifying primarily to cover, overspread, has been the subject of some evasive criticisms. It comes, however, in the secondary sense, to signify atonement, or propitiation, because the effect of that is to cover, or, in Scripture meaning, to obtain the forgiveness of offences. The Septuagint also renders it by εžiλaokоμai, to appease, to make propitious. It is used, indeed, where the means of atonement are not of the sacrificial kind, but these "instances equally serve to evince the Scripture sense of the term, in cases of transgression, to be that of reconciling the offended Deity, by averting his displeasure; so that when the atonement for sin is said to be made by sacrifice, no doubt can remain that the sacrifice was strictly a sacrifice of propitiation. Agreeably to this conclusion, we find it expressly declared in the several cases of piacular oblations for transgression of the Divine commands, that the sin for which atonement was made by those oblations should be forgiven."(4)

As the notion that the sacrifices of the law were not vicarious, but mere mulcts and fines, is overturned by the general appointment of the blood to be an atonement for the souls, the forfeited lives of men, so also is it contradicted by particular instances. Let us refer to Levit. v. 15, 16, "If a soul commit a trespass, and sin through ignorance, in the holy things of the Lord, he shall make amends for the harm that he hath done in the holy thing, and shall add a fifth part thereto, and whall give it to the priest." Here, indeed, is the proper

(3) Vide OUTRAM de Sacrif. lib. i. c. xxii.
(4), MAGEE'S Discourses, vol. i. p. 332.

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"fine" for the trespass; but it is added, "he shall bring for his trespass unto the Lord a ram without blemish, and the priest shall make atonement for him, with the ram of the trespass-offering, and it shall be forgiven him." Thus, then, so far from the sacrifice being the fine, the fine is distinguished from it, and with the ram only was the atonement made to the Lord for his trespass. Nor can the ceremonies with which the trespass and sin-offerings were accompanied agree with any notion but that of their vicarious character. The worshipper, conscious of his trespass, brought an animal, his own property, to the door of the tabernacle. was not an eucharistical act, not a memorial of mercies received, but of sins committed. He laid his hands upon the head of the animal, the symbolical act of transfer of punishment, then slew it with his own hand, and delivered it to the priest, who burnt the fat and part of the animal upon the altar; and having sprinkled part of the blood upon the altar, and in some cases upon the offerer himself, poured the rest at the bottom of the altar. And thus, we are told, "the priest shall make an atonement for him as concerning his sin, and it shall be forgiven him." So clearly is it made manifest by these actions, and by the description of their nature and end, that the animal bore the punishment of the offender, and that by this appointment he was reconciled to God, and obtained the forgiveness of his offences.

An equally strong proof that the life of the animal sacrifice was accepted in place of the life of man, is afforded by the fact, that atonement was required by the law to be made, by sin-offerings and burnt-offerings, for even bodily distempers and disorders. It is not necessary to the argument to explain the distinctions between these various oblations;(5) nor yet to inquire into the reason which required propitiation to be made for corporal infirmities, which, in many cases, could not be avoided. They were, however, thus connected with sin as the cause of all these disorders, and God, who had placed his residence among the Israelites, insisted upon a perfect ceremonial purity, to impress upon them a sense of his moral purity, and the necessity of purification of mind. Whether these were the reasons, or whatever other reason there might be in the case, and whether it is at all discoverable by us, all such unclean persons were liable to death, and were exempted from it only by animal sacrifices. This appears from the conclusion to all the Levitical directions concerning the ceremonial to be followed in all such cases. Lev. xv. 31, "Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness, THAT THEY DIE NOT in (or by) their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle which is among them." that by virtue of the sin-offerings, the children of Israel were saved from a death, which otherwise they would have suffered for their uncleanness, and that by substituting the life of the animal for the life of the offerer. Nor can it be urged that death is, in these instances, threatened only as a punishment of not observing these laws of purification, for the reason given in the passage just quoted; for the threatening of death is not hypothetical upon their not bringing the prescribed atonement, but is grounded upon the fact of "defiling the tabernacle of the Lord which was among them," which is supposed to be done by all uncleanness as such, in the first instance.

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As a farther proof of the vicarious character of the principal sacrifices of the Mosaic economy, we may instance those statedly offered for the whole congregation. Every day were offered two lambs, one in the morning and the other in the evening, " for a continual burntoffering." To these daily victims were to be added, weekly, two other lambs for the burnt-offering of every Sabbath. None of these could be considered in the light of fines for offences, since they were offered for no particular persons, and must be considered, therefore, unless resolved into an unmeaning ceremony, piacular and vicarious. To pass over, however, the monthly sacrifices, and those offered at the great feasts, it is sufficient to fix upon those which are so often alluded to in the Epistle to the Hebrews, offered on the solemn anniversary of expiation. On that day, to other prescribed sacrifices were to be added another ram for a burnt-offering, and another goat, the most eminent of all the sacrifices, for a sin-offering, whose

(5) On this subject, see OUTRAM De Sacrificiis.

blood was to be carried by the high priest into the inner offerer, teaching him moral lessons, and calling forth sanctuary, which was not done by the blood of any moral dispositions? we answer, that this hypothesis other victim except the bullock, which was offered the leaves many of the essential circumstances of the cesame day as a sin-offering for the family of Aaron.remonial wholly unaccounted for. The tabernacle and "The circumstances of this ceremony, whereby atone- temple were erected for the residence of God by his ment was to be made for all the sins' of the whole own command. There it was his will to be approached, Jewish people, are so strikingly significant, that they and to these sacred places the victims were required to deserve a particular detail. On the day appointed for be brought. Any where else they might as well have this general expiation, the priest is commanded to offer been offered, if they had had respect only to the offerer; a bullock and a goat as sin-offerings, the one for him- but they were required to be brought to God, to be offered self and the other for the people; and having sprinkled according to a prescribed ritual, and by an order of men the blood of these in due form before the mercy-seat, appointed for that purpose. "But there is no other to lead forth a second goat, denominated the scape- reason why they should be offered in the sanctuary goat; and after laying both his hands upon the head of than this, that they were offered to the inhabitant of the scape-goat, and confessing over him all the iniqui- the sanctuary; nor could they be offered to him withties of the people to put them upon the head of the out having respect to him, or without his being the obgoat, and to send the animal, thus bearing the sins of ject of their efficacy, as in the case of solemn prayers the people, away into the wilderness; in this manner addressed to him. There were some victims whose expressing, by an action which cannot be misunder- blood, on the day of atonement, was to be carried into stood, that the atonement, which it is affirmed was to the inner sanctuary; but for what purpose can we be effected by the sacrifice of the sin-offering, consisted suppose the blood to have been carried into the most in removing from the people their iniquities by this sacred part of the Divine residence, and that on the translation of them to the animal. For it is to be re- day of atonement, except to obtain the favour of him marked, that the ceremony of the scape-goat is not a in whose presence it was sprinkled?"(9) To this we distinct one; it is a continuation of the process, and is may add, that the reason given for these sacred serevidently the concluding part and symbolical consum- vices is not in any case a mere moral effect to be promation of the sin-offering. So that the transfer of the duced upon the minds of the worshippers; they were iniquities of the people upon the head of the scape-goat, to make atonement, that is, to avert God's displeasure, and the bearing thein away into the wilderness, mani- that the people might not "DIE." festly imply, that the atonement effected by the sacrifice of the sin-offering consisted in the transfer, and consequent removal, of those iniquities."(6)

We may find also another most explicit illustration in the sacrifice of the Passover. The sacrificial character of this offering is strongly marked; for it was, How, then, is this impressive and singular ceremo- CORBAN, an offering brought to the tabernacle; it was nial to be explained? Shall we resort to the notion of slain in the sanctuary, and the blood sprinkled upon mulcts and fines? but if so, then this and other stated the altar by the priests. It derives its name from the sacrifices must be considered in the light of penal passing over, and sparing the houses of the Israelites, enactments. But this cannot agree with the appoint-on the door-posts of which the blood of the immolated ment of such sacrifices annually in succeeding genera-lamb was sprinkled, when the first-born in the houses tions-" this shall be a statute for ever unto you." The of the Egyptians were slain; and thus we have another law appoints a certain day in the year for expiating the instance of life being spared by the instituted means of sins both of the high priest himself and of the whole animal sacrifice. Nor need we confine ourselves to congregation, and that for all high priests, and all ge- particular instances-"almost all things," says an aunerations of the congregation. Now, could a law be thority who surely knew his subject, "are by the law enacted, inflicting a certain penalty at a certain time, purged with blood, and without shedding of blood there upon a whole people, as well as upon their high priest, is no remission." thus presuming upon their actual trangression of it? The sacrifice was also for sins in general, and yet the penalty, if it were one, is not greater than individual persons were often obliged to undergo for single trespasses. Nothing, certainly, can be more absurd than this hypothesis.(7)

Shall we account for it by saying that sacrifices were offered for the benefit of the worshipper, but exclude the notion of expiation? But here we are obliged to confine the benefit to reconciliation and the taking away of sins, and that by the appointed means of the shedding of blood, and the presentation of blood in the holy place, accompanied by the expressive ceremony of imposition of hands upon the head of the victim, the import of which act is fixed beyond all controversy, by the priest's confessing, at the same time, over that victim, the sins of all the people, and imprecating upon its head the vengeance due to them.(8)

By their very law and by constant usage, then, were the Jews familiarized to the notion of expiatory sacrifice, as well as by the history contained in their sacred books, especially in Genesis, which speaks of the vicarious sacrifices offered by the patriarchs, and the book of Job, in which that patriarch is recorded to have offered sacrifices for the supposed sins of his sons, and Eliphaz is commanded by a Divine oracle to offer a burntoffering for himself and his friends, "lest God should deal with them after their folly."

On the sentiments of the uninspired Jewish writers on this point, the substitution of the life of the animal for that of the offerer, and, consequently, the expiatory nature of their sacrifices, Outram has given many quotations from their writings, which the reader may consult in his work on Sacrifices. Two or three only need be adduced by way of specimen. R. Levi Ben Gerson says, "the imposition of the hands of the offerShall we content ourselves with merely saying that ers was designed to indicate, that their sins were rethis was a symbol; but the question remains, of what moved from themselves, and transferred to the animal." was it a symbol? To determine that, let the several Isaac Ben Arama-" he transfers his sins from himself, parts of the symbolic action be enumerated. Here is con- and lays them upon the head of his victim." R. Moses fession of sin-confession before God, at the door of his Ben Nachman says, with respect to a sinner offering a tabernacle-the substitution of a victim-the figurative victim, "It was just that his blood should be shed, and transfer of sins to that victim-the shedding of blood, that his body should be burned; but the Creator, of his which God appointed to make atonement for the soul-mercy, accepted this victim from him as his substitute the carrying the blood into the holiest place, the very and ransom; that the blood of the animal might be shed permission of which clearly marked the Divine accept-instead of his blood; that is, that the blood of the aniance-the bearing away of iniquity-and the actual reconciliation of the people to God. If, then, this is symbolical, it has nothing correspondent with it; it never had or can have any thing correspondent to it but the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, and the communication of the benefits of his passion in the forgiveness of sins to those that believe in him, and their reconciliation with God.

Shall we, finally, say that those sacrifices had respect, not to God to obtain pardon by expiation, but to the

(6) MAGEE'S Discourses.
(7) Vide CHAPMAN'S Eusebius.
(8) Leviticus xvi. 21.

mal might be given for his life."

Full of these ideas of vicarious expiation, then, the apostles wrote and spoke, and the Jews of their time and in subsequent ages heard and read the books of the New Testament. The Socinian pretence is, that the inspired penmen used the sacrificial terms which occur in their writings figuratively; but we not only reply, as before, that they could not do this honestly, unless they had given notice of this new application of the established terms of the Jewish theology; but that if this be assumed, their writings leave us wholly at a loss to discover what it really was which they intended

(9) OUTRAM De Sacrificiis,

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