but the woman travails nine months with her burden, and produces a speechless infant long inefficient to society. So likewise the afflicted might be relieved at once; but they are left to the slow and precarious process of benevolence.

Again.-Reason is stated to be at variance with the plan of redemption on the score of the divine immutability. If God wills to pardon men on repentance, he will grant it without a mediator; and if not, a mediator cannot influence him, unless by impeaching his immutability. By this argument, in its extent, both prayer and repentance are idle; for these, too, are hypothetically supposed to influence the divine will.

Others cannot believe the nature of God so implacable, as to have required the prodigious ransom of his Son's crucifixion for the human race. But it is an error to suppose that the death of Christ MADE the divine nature placable: it being only the appointed means through which God being determined to be placable, extended mercy to mankind. "God so LOVED the world as to have GIVEN his only begotten Son." Herein is love, that God first loved us, and gave his Son. John, iii. 16. 1 John, iv. 10. Where, then, is the charge of implacability?

2. The doctrine of atonement being thus proved not to be adverse to reason, but perfectly consistent with it; we are in pain to be obliged to

superinduce the authority of Scripture, since no one but a determined garbler of Scripture could call in question a proof so obvious in detached passages, and in the general scope of the sacred

volume.

What can be more explicit than Hebrews, ix. 22: "Without shedding of blood there is no remission?" In this text reference is made to a passage in Leviticus (xvii. 11), "The life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make atonement for the soul." And from both we may conclude, that all the sacrifices and propitiations of the law were prefigurations of that one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, satisfaction, and oblation for the sins of the whole world, offered up on Calvary. This is the system of types, so obvious in Scripture, and so continually alluded to in the New Testament. Thus, the paschal lamb is declared, 1 Cor. v. 7, to be typical of that event, whereby those are passed over uncondemned who are sprinkled with the blood of Christ. "Christ,

our passover, is sacrificed for us." Thus (John, iii. 14, 15), "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

On the general doctrine of atonement, as contained in SCRIPTURE, we may quote the passages, Isaiah, liii. 10: "Thou shalt make his soul an

offering for sin." Dan. ix. 24, 26: "Seventy weeks are determined to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, and to make reconciliation for iniquity; and after these, the Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself." Matt. xx. 28: "The Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for many." John, vi. 51: "My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." Luke, xix. 6: "This is my body which is given for you. 1 John, ii. 2; and Rom. iii. 25: "He is the propitiation for our sins." 1 Cor. xv. 3: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." Ephes. i. 7: "Redemption through his blood; the forgiveness of sins *."

3. That a view of religions, ancient and modern, does not discover any thing like the doctrine of a proper atonement, is the next Socinian proposition to be controverted. We have just now adverted to the whole system of Jewish sacrifices, with the references to them in the New Testament. And here it is important to remark, with Bishop Magee †, that an erroneous practice has prevailed, of first examining the nature of sacrifice, as generally understood, antecedent to the death of Christ; and from that, explaining the sacrifice of Christ: whereas, in

See Magee, vol. i. p. 222, for the passages representing the death of Christ as a sacrifice: the direct meaning of all which passages must be refined away before the doctrine they establish can be impugned.

† On the Atonement, vol. i. p. 42.

fact, by THIS all former sacrifices are to be interpreted; and with reference to it only, can they be understood. Hence have arisen various errors for, while some have attributed the universal practice of sacrifice to a superstitious fear of an imagined sanguinary divinity, others have accounted for the Jewish sacrifices, and even that of Christ, as a mere accommodation to prevailing practice. Spencer, Sikes, and Warburton, have severally considered sacrifices as propitiatory gifts, federal rites and actions, symbolical of the death which a contrite offender owns himself to have incurred. But Magee represents the sacrifice of Abel as at variance with all these notions: its acceptance being grounded on faith (Heb. xi. 4): faith, of which the criterion was animal sacrifice; and the object, the promise of a Redeemer. In truth, immediately after the sin of Adam, the first discoveries of grace implied something of an atonement: "It shall bruise thy head; and thou shalt bruise his heel," said God to the serpent, concerning the seed of Adam. But if Christ be set forth as an expiation and sacrifice in the New Testament (Heb. x. 12); and if the Jewish sacrifices are types of that expiation, "shadows of things to come, the body being of Christ" (Col. ii. 17); it matters not what corrupt notions respecting sacrifices had crept into the Jewish faith. The obvious inference would be, that sacrifices were

originally understood by the Jews, as God intended them to be understood, in the light of expiations *.

And if this were the case with the sacrifices of the law, it may safely be asserted concerning sacrifices from the beginning, concerning those of Abel, Noah, and Abraham. There is no obvious connexion between the blood of an animal and atonement for sin; and therefore the general prevalence of sacrifice evinced that it was a rite taught to ALL people by God, with no other view than to prefigure the great sacrifice. That expiatory sacrifice existed among the Arabians in the time of Job is certain, since God prescribes sacrifice to the friends of that Patriarch; and Job himself (i. 5) offers a burnt-offering for his sons, lest they should have sinned. And that its universal prevalence in the heathen world was the result of an original divine appointment, seems manifest for the reason just now assigned; its want of obvious connexion with atonement. It matters not, then, with what superstitious or inadequate notions it came, in process of time, to be mixed. God designing it as prefiguring the great expiatory sacrifice, imparted it with notions of expiation.

4. That the influence of the doctrine of

* The scape-goat was a transference of the sins of the people to the head of the goat, and it was the continuation of a sacrifice.