hath enjoined unto you:-moreover, adds the sacred writer, he sprinkled likewise with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry, and ALMOST ALL THINGS ARE BY THE LAW PURGED WITH BLOOD; which Blood was typical of the precious Blood of Christ; who is not (like the Jewish High-Priest,) entered into the Holy Places made with hands, the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.

In turning from the Patriarchal & Mosaic dispensations, to the Gentile world, it were easy to demonstrate most convincingly, by a variety of facts, that some of the most benighted nations on the face of the earth,―nations, on whose "moral gloom

profound," not one ray of express revelation was ever known to shine, have immemorially sought to propitiate their divinities by certain vicarious sacrifices; and although these always were, and in many cases, still are, accompanied by the most cruel, obscene, and even diabolical rites; yet their existence clearly establishes the fact, that there has always rested on the minds of the Sacrificers, however it might be produced, the mysterious and operative conviction, that without shedding of blood there is no remission. Nor is the force of this circumstance diminished by the consideration, that many of these nations, from their respective geographical positions, eould not possibly derive from each other

the

the principle and practice of propitiatory sacrifice; and that these therefore must have been derived by all from one common origin, and so perpetuated, through the lapse of numerous ages, by successive generations of men.

VICTIM OF THE ATONEMENT.

33

CHAP. II.

OF THE MANHOOD OF CHRIST, AS CONNECTED WITH THE ATONEMENT.

EVERY expiatory Sacrifice necessarily implies a Victim; for without this, there could be no Offering, and consequently, no Propitiation: and, as the doctrine of Atonement for Sin is evidently founded in the principle of Restitution, which is an eternal rule of Righteousness; so it was indispensably necessary, that the Sacrifice in question should be effected IN THE NATURE D 3

IMPLICATED