blood is neceflary in its place, fo is our faith in its place alto. For to the actual remiffion of fin, and peace of confcience, there must be a co-operation of all the caufes of remiffion and peace. As there is the grace and love of God for an efficient and impulfive caufe, and death of Chrift our facrifice, the meritorious caufe; fo of neceffity there must be faith, the inftrumental cause. And these concaufes do all fweetly meet in their influences, and activities, in our remiffion, and tranquility of confcience; and are all (fuo genere) in their kind and place abfolutely neceffary to the procuring and applying of it.

What is the need that the blood of Chrift is fhed, if I have no intereft in it, no faving influences from it? O be convinced, this is the end, the bufinefs of life. Faith is the Phenix-grace, as Chrift is the Phenix-mercy. He is the gift, John iv. 10. And this is "the work of God," John vi. 29. The death of Chrift, the offers and tenders of Christ, never saved one foul in themselves, without believing application. But, wo is me! how do I fee finners, either not at all touched with the sense of fin, and fo being whole, need not the phyfician; or if any be ftung and wounded with guilt, how do they lick themselves whole with their own duties and reformations! As phyficians fay of wounds, let them but be kept clean, and nature will find balfam of its own to heal them: If it be fo in fpiritual wounds, what need Chrift to have left the Father's bofom, and come down to die in the quality and nature of a facrifice for us? O if men can but have health, pleasure, riches, honours, and any way make a shift to still a brawling confcience, that it may not check or interrupt them in these enjoyments, Christ may go where he will for them.

And I am affured, till God fhew you the face of fin, in the glafs of the law, make the fcorpions and fiery ferpents, that lurk in the Law, and in your own confciences, to come hiffing about you, and fmiting you with their deadly ftings, till you have had fome fick nights, and forrowful days for fin, you will never go up and down feeking an intereft in the blood of his facrifice with tears.

But reader, if ever this be thy condition, then wilt thou know the worth of a Chrift; then wilt thou have a value for the blood of fprinkling. As I remember it's ftoried of our crockback'd Richard, when he was put to a rout in a field-battle, and flying on foot from his pursuing enemies; he cried out, O now, faith he, a kingdom for a horfe. So wilt thou cry, A kingdom

SERM. XI. for a Chrift; ten thousand worlds now, if I had them, for the blood of fprinkling.

Corollary 3. Is Chrift your High-priest, and is his priesthood fo indifpenfably neceffary to your falvation? Then freely acknowledge your utter impotency to reconcile yourselves to God by any thing you can do, or fuffer; and let Chrift have the whole glory of your recovery afcribed to him. 'Tis highly reasonable that he that laid down the whole price, fhould have the whole praife. If any man think, or fay, he could have made an atone. ment for himself, he doth therein caft no light reproach upon that profound wisdom which laid the defign of our redemption in the death of Chrift. But of this I have fpoken elsewhere. And therefore,

Corollary 4. In the laft place, I rather chufe to perfuade you to fee your neceffity of this priest, and his most excellent facrifice; and accordingly to make use of it. The best of you have polluted natures, poifoned in the womb with fin; thofe natures have need of this facrifice, they must have the benefit of this blood to pardon and cleanse them, or be eternally damned. Hear me, ye that never spent a tear for the fin of nature; if the blood of Christ be not fprinkled upon your natures, it had been better for you, that you had been the generation of beafts, the offspring of dragons or toads. They have a contemptible, but not a vitiated finful nature, as you have.

Your actual fins have need of the priest, and his facrifice to procure remiffion for them. If he take them not away by the blood of his crofs, they can never be taken away, they will lie down with you in the duft; they will rife with you and follow you to the judgment-feat, crying, We are thy works, and we will follow thee. All thy repentance and tears, would'st thou weep as many as there be drops in the ocean, can never take away fin. Thy duties, even the best of them, need this facrifice. It is in the virtue thereof that they are accepted of God. And were it not that God had refpect to Chrift's offering, he would not regard, or look towards thee, or any of thy duties. Thou could'st no more come near to God, than thou could'st approach a devouring fire, or dwell with everlasting burnings.

Well then, fay, I need fuch a price every way. Love him in all his offices. See the goodness of God in providing fuch a facrifice for thee. Meat, drink and air, are not more necef fary to maintain thy natural life, than the death of Chrift is to give and maintain thy fpiritual life.

O then, let thy foul grow big whilft meditating of the ufe Sulncis and excellency of Chrift, which is thus difplayed and

unfolded in every branch of the gospel:. And, with a deep fense upon thy heart, let thy lips fay, Bleffed be God for Jejus Chrift.

Opens the Excellency of our High-Prieft's Oblation, being the first Act or Part of his Prieftly Office.

HEB. X. 14. For by one offering, he hath perfected for ever them that are fanctified,

A

FTER this more general view and confideration of the priesthood of Chrift, method requires that we come to a nearer and more particular confideration of the parts thereof; which are his oblation and interceffion, aufwerable to the double office of the High Prieft, offering the blood of the facrifices without the holy place, which typed out Chrift's oblation; and then once a year bringing the blood before the Lord into the moft holy place, prefenting it before God, and with it fprinkling the mercy-feat, wherein the interceffion of Chrift (the other part or act of his priesthood) was in a lively manner typified

to us.

My prefent bufinefs is to open and apply the oblation of Chrift; the efficacy and excellency whereof is excellently illustrated, by a comparison with all other oblations, in the precedent context, and with a fingular encomium commended to us in these words, from the fingularity of it. It is but one offering; one not only fpecifically, but one numerically confidered; but once offered, and never more to be repeated: for Chrift dieth no more, Rom. vi. 9. He alfo commends it from the efficacy of it; by it he hath perfected, i. e. not only purchafed a poffibility of falvation, but all that we need to our full perfection. It brings in a most intire, compleat and perfect righteoufnefs: all that remains to make us perfectly happy, is but the full application of the benefits procured by this oblation for us. Moreover, it is here commended from the extenfiveness of it; not being re

*Chrift's offering is not only one in kind, but in number, because there can be no other offering of him but by means of death, and therefore the diftinction between a bloody and unbloody facrifice is falfe. Trelcat. Infiit. p. 79.

ftrained to a few, but applicable to all the faints, in all the ages and places of the world: for this indefinite, them that are Janctified, is equivalent to an univerfal, and is as much as if he had faid, To all and every faint, from the beginning to the end of the world. Laftly, He commends it from its perpetuity, it perfects for ever; that is, it is of everlasting efficacy: it shall abide as fresh, vigorous and powerful to the end of the world, as it was the first moment it was offered up. All runs into this sweet truth:

Doct. That the oblation made unto God by Jefus Chrift, is of unfpeakable value, and everlasting efficacy, to perfect all then that are, or shall be fanctified, to the end of the world.

Out of this fountain flow all the excellent bleffings that be. lievers either have, or hope for. Had it not been for this, there had been no fuch things in rerum natura, as juftification, adopti on, falvation, &c. peace with God and hopes of glory, pardon of fin, and divine acceptation: these, and all other our best mercies, had been but fo many entia rationis, mere conceits. A man, as one faith, might have haply imagined fuch things as thefe, as he may golden mountains, and rivers of liquid gold, and rocks of dia. monds: but these things could never have had any real existence extra mentem, had not Chrift offered up himself a facrifice to God for us. It is "the blood of Chrift, who through the eter"nal Spirit offered up himfelf without fpot to God, that pur ges the confcience from dead works," Heb. ix. 14.; that is, from the sentence of condemnation and death, as it is reflected by confcience, for our works fake,

His appearing before God as our prieft, with fuch an offering for us, is that which removes our guilt and fear together "He appeared to put away fin by the facrifice of himself," Heb. ix. 29. Now forafmuch as the point before us is of fo great weight in itself, and fo fundamental to our fafety and comfort, I shall endeavour to give you as diftinct and clear account of it, as can confift with that brevity which I muft neceffarily use. And therefore, reader, apply thy mind attentively to the confi deration of this excellent Priest that apears before God, and the facrifices he offers, with the properties and adjuncts there. of; the perfon before whom he brings, and to whom he offers it; the perfons for whom he offers; and the end for which this oblation is made.

Firft, The Pricft that appears before God with an oblation for

vii. 2.3.

*

us, is Jefus Chrift, God-man: the dignity of whofe perfon dignified, and derived an ineftimable worth to the offering he made. There were many priests before him, but none like unto him, either for the purity of his perfon, or the perpetuity of his priesthood: they were finful men, and offered for their own fins, as well as the fins of the people, Heb. v. 3. "but he "was holy, harmlefs, undefiled, feparate from finners," Heb. vii. 2. He could stand before God, even in the eye of his justice, as a Lamb without fpot. Tho' he made his foul an offering for fin, yet he had done no iniquity, nor was any guile found in "his mouth," Ifa. liii. 9. And indeed his offering had done us no good, if the least taint of fin had been found on him. They were mortal men, that "continued not by reason of death," Heb. but Chrift is " a Prieft for ever," Pfal. cx. 4. Secondly, The oblation or offering he made, was not the blood of beafts, but his own blood, Heb. ix. 12. And herein he tranfcended all other priests, that he had fomething of his own to offer; he had a body given him to be at his own difpose, to this ufe and purpose, Heb. x. 10. "He offered his "body" yea, not only his + body, but "his foul was made an "offering for fin," Ifa. liii 10. We had made a forfeiture of our fouls and bodies by fin, and it was neceflary the facrifice of Chrift fhould be anfwerable to the debt we owed. And when: Chrift came to offer his facrifice, he ftood not only in the city of a priest, but alfo in that of a furety: and fo his foul ftood in the ftead of ours, and his body in the ftead of our bodies. Now the excellency of this oblation will appear in the following adjuncts and properties of it. This oblation being for the matter of it, the foul and body of Jefus Chrift, is therefore,

capa

1. Invaluably precious. So the apoftle ftiles it, 1 Pet. i. 19.

* So oblations were offered up in a pure veffel, Ifa. Ixvi. 20. Raven.

+ Bilfon and Feverdentius affirm, that Chrift only offered up his body, not his foul, upon this weak ground, that if he had not offered both, he had not offered one, but two facrifices. Against whom the learned Parker, in his excellent book de defcenfu, urgeth my text, and thus frees it from that corrupt glofs. He fays, fine reasoning this; as if the whole burnt offering had not been one facrifice, because it was made up of many parts Chrift's facrifice

is called one, not by oppofing his body to his foul, but by oppofing his once offering of both body and foul, to thefe many facrifices, which, by the law of Mofes, were offered up,, not once, but tres quently. Parker de defcenfa, lib. 111. p. 146.