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and drinking together (there being no fuch thing) could not be a fymbol of friendship, or a fœderal rite, by which they engaged in, renewed, or kept up friendship with one another. This difficulty comes often in our Author's way; and, it being a dead weight upon his whole fyftem, he uses several shifts to get rid of it. I fhall here exhibit and confider the chief of them.

First. Our Author, in order to fhew, that his notion of the fymbolical use and defign of facrifices, is applicable to these facrifices of which the owners had no fhare to eat or drink, argues in a pretty strange and uncommon manner. He fays, "When

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a burnt-offering was brought, the perfon "that offered it, looked upon himself as in "a ftate of offence.-He could not then, "under thefe circumftances, prefume to "eat as a friend with God, till he had "made confeffion, and had declared him"felf a fincere penitent. Here then an "holocauft was to be offered, and a meat "and drink-offering accompanied it but "the offender, confidering himfelf as guilty, "acted as under a fenfe of guilt. He only

applied to be restored to favour, and did not partake of the offering'. And to the "fame purpose, speaking of all piacular "facrifices in general, he faith, no facrifice "that

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"that was offered on account of guilt for "offences actually committed; nor no fa"crifice offered for offences which men

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imagined or thought themselves guilty of, "could be eaten of by the owner. The "offender was too much a criminal in his

own opinion, to be admitted to God's "table immediately. What, therefore, he "offered to God was the beginning of re"conciliation. He laid his hands upon "the facrifice; he confeffed his fin; he promised and profeffed repentance; but "till all this was done and over, he was "an improper perfon to partake of the "table of God, who was juftly conceived "to be displeased, or, at least, to have a right to fhew displeasure "."

ANSWER.

The Author here acknowledgeth, that. the owners of piacular facrifices did not eat or drink any share of them; confequently, piacular facrifices were not fymbols of friendfhip in his fenfe, or foederal rites, by which God and the offerers engaged in, renewed, or kept up friendship, by eating or drinking together. But the Author fays, thefe facrifices were an application to be restored to favour, and the beginning of reconciliation. T 3

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Be it fo; but ftill God and the offerers of them did not eat or drink together; confequently, thefe facrifices were not, in his fenfe, fymbols of friendship, or fœderal rites: and, therefore, therefore, his notion of the fymbolical nature and ufe of facrifices doth not, cannot, agree to them.

But to enter more thoroughly into this affair with the Author, I would fain know how, or in what fenfe, piacular facrifices were an application to be restored to favour, and the beginning of reconciliation. Can it be thought that these facrifices had a natural tendency or fitness to effect a reconciliation betwixt God and the offerers; and might, on that account, be deemed an application to be reftored to favour, and the beginning of reconciliation? This is what the Author himself will, by no means, admit of; for he fays, " repentance would

always cover fins, and make them not to "be remembred or imputed to the finner " and a facrifice attended with repentance "would always produce the fame effect;

and, without repentance, ten thousand "facrifices would never cause that fin fhould

"not be remembred". Accordingly he fays, " pardon was never obtained by facri"fice alone, but as it was attended with a right difpofition of mind; and pardon << may

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may be, and has been, obtained by a right difpofition of mind alone, without "the concurrence of any facrifice.-The "victim therefore, or the blood of the "victim, or millions of hecatombs, or ten "thousands of rivers of oil, can never, of "themselves make atonement "." And agreeably to all this, he faith, "When a "finner, at any time, repented, and con"feffed his fin, and offered his proper fa"crifice, he was then admitted to eat at "God's table, (this, we have feen before, was feldom, if ever, true,) as being in

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a ftate of friendship with God; that is, "he was taken into favour, and the fin " which he had been guilty of, was par"doned: not because he had offered up "his facrifice, but because he had returned "to his duty, and had declared his return

by this open teftimony of forrow for fin. "The imputing to facrifices, and to exter"nal rites, what was wholly owing to the "moral difpofition of the mind, is so much "inconfiftent with the reafon of the thing, "that we find, in fcripture, facrifices fome"times treated as if they had never been

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required or commanded by God. The people imagined that they had done their dutys, when they had brought their facrifices to the altar, and had there prefented

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"fented them to God; and never thought

of that rectitude of mind, — without "which facrifices were an empty, ground"less ceremony","-According to this doctrine of the Author, facrifices, confidered in themselves, were an empty, groundless ceremony, could make no atonement, had no natural fitness or tendency towards effecting a reconciliation between God and a finner and therefore, confidered in this view, they could not be accounted an application to be reftored to favour, or the beginning of reconciliation, or, indeed any thing but an empty, groundless ceremony. -In what fenfe then were piacular facrifices, an application to be reftored to favour, and the beginning of reconciliation ?-truly, we had beft confult the Author himself, for an anfwer to this knotty question.-He puts the queftion thus, what then was the ufe or defign of facrifice? and then fubjoins, "The

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true answer to this, is, that facrifice was "defigned as a mode of engaging in friend"fhip, or as a defire of being reinstated in "friendship." And, a few pages below, he explains himself further upon this head, in the following words, "Sacrifice was the "cuftomary, external, vifible mode, by "which the internal acts of the mind were expreffed; hence that was imputed to facrifice,

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Page 304, 305.

↑ p. 306, 307.

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