of such offerings to make expiation, or from the repetition of them, which shewed that the work was not completed; we appeal to the testimony of God himself: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt-offerings of lambs, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats' (Isaiah, 1. 11). So he speaks by the Psalmist: "Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against thee: I am God, even thy God. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt-offerings, to have been continually before me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he-goats out of thy folds. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” (Ps. 1. 7, &c.) The same inspired penman introduces the Messiah speaking thns: "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt-offering and sin-offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God." (Ps. xl. 6.) To this we find the Apostle referring in the verses which follow my text, and arguing thus: "When he said, Sacrifice and offering and burntofferings for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure in them, which are offered by the law; then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (Heb. x. 8-10.)

III. We are naturally led by this argument to the third particular proposed for consideration: the efficacy

of the true sacrifice, which those ordained by the law shadowed forth.

The object was " to take away sins;" that is, to take away the dishonour which they had cast upon the law of God; the punishment due to those who had committed them; and the disposition to renew the offence in those whose guilt was to be pardoned. I have already endeavoured to shew that the justice of God, as the great Governor of the universe, required that the honour of his law should be established, and the penalty which it denounced against transgression enforced. Yet, at the same time, it was eminently desirable that means could be found to accomplish these objects, without involving the whole human race in that endless misery to which their sins had exposed them. But how to accomplish this was a problem which no finite intellect would have been able to solve. The wisdom and the love of God, however, provided the solution, which is thus stated by our Apostle, in the 3d chapter of his Epistle to the Romans :

By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe : for there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance

of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Here we find it asserted that the blood of Christ accomplishes that object for which the blood of bulls and of goats was wholly insufficient; it sets forth the justice of God, and takes away the guilt of man. But how does it possess this efficacy? If Jesus Christ had been only a man, like those for whom he died, how would he have been capable of accomplishing their redemption? Redemption signifies a price paid for the deliverance of a captive. How could the death of any single man have been a sufficient ransom for the whole human race? Even on the supposition of his perfect innocence, and complete performance of every part of God's law, still he could have possessed no superabundant merit. As a creature, he must have owed the most devoted service to his Creator. His obedience might justify himself; but it could never extend to justify others. And even if his punishment might have been fitly accepted on behalf of one that had transgressed (though it seems difficult to understand how such transient suffering should be put in the place of eternal misery), yet it could not avail for more than one; it could not be considered a sufficient compensation for the guilt of the whole human race.

In saying this, I am not intending to speak of the death of Christ as merely the payment of a debt, or as a satisfaction to the vindictive justice of God; as if so much sin required so much suffering, and that the substitution of his person was to take away the guilt of those for whom it could avail. Far otherwise; it was an

exhibition of the infinite love of God, as well as of his strict and inflexible justice. But I still maintain that the punishment of no one individual man, no, nor even of the highest of created beings, had one been found willing to endure it, would sufficiently have manifested the infinite evil of sin, or satisfied the demands of the law, which required full atonement. But Christ was not a creature, except as to his human nature; that certainly was created: but he was infinitely more than any creature; he was the eternal and only-begotten Son of God. He was God manifest in the flesh. He was that Word which was "in the beginning, which was with God, and was God." This divine "Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." He condescended to become the second head of the human race; that, as Adam, the first head, ruined all his posterity, so he, as the second head, might restore that ruin, and regain the happiness which was forfeited by the first transgression. In my discourse on 1 John, v. 20, I brought forward what I would hope were sufficient arguments to prove the Godhead of our Lord and Saviour. If, then, we believe him to be God as well as man, we must acknowledge that this union of Deity with humanity gave infinite value to the person of him in whom these two natures were combined. The blood of Christ was not the blood of a mere man, but of the man united to the Godhead. It was, therefore, a sufficient ransom for the whole of that race with whom he condescended to identify himself. By this union of his nature with ours, gathering us all, as it were, into one body, he made himself responsible for all. He consented to take upon himself

the guilt of all. As the husband becomes answerable for the debts of her to whom he is espoused, so did Christ become answerable for the debts of his spouse, the Church, and by his obedience and sufferings he completely discharged them.

In this mystery of godliness we see a manifestation of the infinite justice* of God, which is not less affecting than the punishment of the whole human race would have been. Surely, when the Son of God condescended to hang upon the cross, a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men, an exhibition was made of the infinite evil of sin, and of God's determination to punish it, surpassing any other that could have been devised. If God spared not his own Son, when found in the place of transgressors-if, when so found, it pleased the Lord to bruise him, and to put him to grief-how shall any hope to escape who hereafter are found rebellious? Here is an example which must strike terror into the hearts of all who consider it rightly,-an example sufficient to make them tremble at the thought of disobedience. But here also is a manifestation of the infinite love of God, which, rather than men should perish, provided so astonishing a remedy. Herein, indeed, "is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

* See Owen's Dissertation on Divine Justice, c. vii.; Grotius de Satisf. Christi, c. 4, 5.

+ Stillingfleet's Orig. Sac. b. ii. c. ix. § 16; b. iii, c. vi. § 4.