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his neighbour, and is it touched with the hallowed flame of piety and devotion towards his Maker? When he can truly say, that this is a genuine picture of his soul, he may then, if he thinks fit, reject a crucified Redeemer. But till then, he will do well not to lean too confidently on repentance as his only stay.

If, then, neither Scripture nor experience teach us, that repentance alone will avail for our pardon with God, does the light of nature assure us that it will? To know what are the genuine dictates of nature, you must not look for them in a land enlightened by Revelation; you must go back to those ages and those countries, where nature was, indeed, the only guide that men had to direct their ways. And what was then their opinion of the efficacy of repentance? Did the ancient Pagans entertain such high notions of it, as some theologians, in the present times, seem to have taken up? By no means: we scarce ever hear them talking of repentance. When they had offended their gods, they thought of nothing but oblations, expiations, lustrations, and animal

sacrifices. These were the expedients to which they always had recourse to regain the forfeited favour of their deities. This universal practice of shedding blood to obtain the pardon of guilt, most clearly shows what the common apprehensions of mankind were on this subject, when under the sole direction of their own understanding: it shows, they thought that something else was necessary, besides their own repentance and reformation, to appease the anger of their gods. They thought that, after all they could do for themselves, something must be done or suffered by some other being, before they could be restored to the condition they would have been in, if they had never forfeited their innocence. Nay, some of the greatest, and wisest, and best among them, declared, in express terms, "that "there was wanting some universal method "of delivering men's souls, which no sect of philosophy had ever yet found out.”*

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This universal method of delivering men's souls (as it is here most properly and most

* Porphyry, as quoted by Austin, de Civitate Dei. 1. 10.

emphatically called) was at length made known to mankind by the Christian Revelation which we have been here considering. Our blessed Lord was himself the great, the all-atoning Victim, offered up for the whole world upon the cross. "He was wounded "for our transgressions, and on him the “Lord hath laid the iniquity of us all.”* "He bore our sins in his own body on the "tree, that we being dead to sin should live "unto righteousness." He was, in short, the very Paschal Lamb, which was slain for us from the foundation of the world. He was the great universal Sacrifice to which all the prophets, from the fall of Adam to the birth of Christ, uniformly directed their views and their predictions, and of which all the sacrifices under the Jewish law were only types and emblems.

They were the substance.

shadow: Christ was the And, as the writer to the Hebrews justly observes, "if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the "ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean, "sanctified to the purifying of the flesh;" (that is, released the offender from legal un

* Isaiah liii. 5, 6.

† 1 Peter ii. 24.

cleanness and temporal punishment,) "how "much more shall the blood of Christ, "who, through the eternal Spirit, offered ❝ himself without spot to God, purge your "consciences from dead works, to serve "the living God?" *

This is, in a few words, the sum and substance of the great mystery of our Redemption. That it is a mystery, a great and astonishing mystery, we readily acknowledge. But this was naturally to be expected in a work of such infinite difficulty, as that of rendering the mercy of God, in pardoning mankind, consistent with the exercise of his justice, and the support of his authority, as the moral Governor of the world. Whatever could effect this, must necessarily be something far beyond the comprehension of our limited understandings; that is, must necessarily be mysteri

*Heb. ix. 13, 14. The Socinians say, that the expressions in Scripture, which seem to prove the death of Christ to be a real sacrifice for sin, are nothing more than figurative allusions to the animal sacrifices of the Mosaical law. But it has been well observed, that the very reverse of this is the truth of the case. For these Mosaical sacrifices were themselves allusions to the great all-sufficient Sacrifice, which was to be made by our Saviour on the cross.

ous. And, therefore, this very circumstance, instead of shocking our reason and staggering our faith, ought to satisfy the one, and confirm the other.

What remains further to be said on this interesting and important subject, I shall reserve for a separate discourse.

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