after."-Again, in Homily xxv, or, the second Sermon on the Passion, they say, "if we have the same faith as they" (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,) "had, it shall be as truly imputed unto us for righteousness, as it was unto them. For it is one faith that must save both them and us, even a sure and stedfast faith in Christ Jesus, who, as ye have heard, came into the world for this end, that whosoever believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

St. Paul in Gal. iii. 8, has told us that "the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the Gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed." And he adds, "So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham." The Gospel which was preached to Abraham related to the doctrine of Justification; and the faith which Abraham had in that Gospel was the same which Christians exercised in the time of St. Paul. But how this can be, if the faith of Abraham had no respect to the doctrine of atonement for sin, it is not easy to conceive. Indeed, the reasoning of the Apostle in the following verses (10-14) appears to me to imply that this doctrine was the principal object of Abraham's faith. What can "the blessing of Abraham," which was to come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ" mean, but the redemption from "the curse of the law," which was to be effected by the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Lord?

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If no revelation was made to the patriarchs Who the promised "Seed of the woman" was to be,-If they were left in total ignorance of the all important doctrine of atonement ;-it must follow that their hope of pardon and salvation must have been built on one who, they must have inferred from his origin, would be not only a mere creature but also a sinner like themselves;-it must follow that all

who were saved, from Adam to Moses, obtained pardon and hope towards God without any information how the curse of the paradisiacal law, which transgression had entailed on mankind, could be removed from them consistently with the claims of Divine Justice,—how the Divine threatening could fail of being fulfilled in its utmost extent, and yet the truth of God in that threatening be preserved inviolate. If true repentance be inseparably connected with faith in an atoning Saviour, and if love to God in the heart of a fallen creature be the effect of a revelation that God hath first loved us; it is difficult to discover how true repentance for sin, or love to a reconciled God, could have had any existence among the antediluvian patriarchs, on the supposition that they knew nothing of the great truth, that the Son of God was to be the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. Were the reasoning powers of the patriarchs so feeble and imperfect, that they discovered no difficulties in the justification of the ungodly which needed a Divine solution ? could they be satisfied, so as to live in peace and die in hope, without even a hint that the pardon of their sins and their acceptance with God were to be provided for in a way that would be honourable to all the perfections of Deity, and adapted to their own state of guilt and helplessness?

The Scripture speaks of knowledge as being the root of all comfort, hope and holiness-"By his knowledge" or by the knowledge of Himself, "shall my Righteous Servant justify many." Isa. liii. 11;-"This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." John xvii. 3.—And St. Paul tells us that the Gospel of Christ is "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth;" and he assigns the reason why it is so, for "therein is the righteousness

Can we then suppose

of God revealed." Rom. i. 16. 17. that justification, under a former dispensation, was enjoyed without any knowledge of the justifying or atoning Saviour; or that life eternal could be vouchsafed without any knowledge of the method by which it was to be restored to man? Was there an instrument employed as "the power of God unto salvation," in the early ages of that salvation, different from that which is now employed? Did the Spirit of Christ bear a testimony then varying essentially from that which he now bears; and did He lead mankind to hope for mercy without any discovery of the necessity or prospect of a satisfaction being made to Divine justice for the original offence and personal transgressions committed against God? Is it not easier and safer to infer even if it were true that no intimations are given in the Scriptures of the typical intent of sacrifice before the Sinaitic revelation, that Moses, whether he wrote his book of Genesis before or after his other books, intended that an omission on this subject should be supplied from his other books; than that God left his fallen but conscious creatures, for almost two thousand years, without any specific acquaintance with the method which his wisdom and mercy had devised, and determined to take, for the vindication of his own righteousness and the manifestation of his own glory, in the justification and salvation of believing and repentant sinners ?

The argument derived from the defect of provision for the expiation of moral transgression in the Levitical sacrifices,* does not appear to me to have any weight. The guilt of sin, as an offence against the moral law of God, could only find an atonement in that sacrifice of which the Levitical offerings were types. They "could not put

Origin and intent of primitive sacrifice." P. 86, &c.

away sin as pertaining to the conscience." But will it follow from this admission that they were not intended to point the offerer to the future sacrifice of the Divine Redeemer, that they were not means of pacifying the guilty conscience, as the doctrine of Christ crucified is at the present time? Their efficacy in removing ceremonial uncleanness, was representative of that which removes the guilt of moral transgression. They were seals and pledges, on the part of God, that atonement for sin should be provided, as circumcision was "a seal of the righteousness which is by faith. We attribute no atoning efficacy to the blood of bulls or of goats;-we ascribe no virtue to the opus operatum of offering such sacrifices: Faith in the great atoning sacrifice has been the instrument of pardon under every dispensation, whether faith have come by seeing or by hearing, by prefigurative rites or verbal description.

If we allow that man has been justified and saved, at any time, and under any circumstances, without an atonement for sin, as the object of faith in prospect or in retrospect; will not the Socinian fairly infer from this concession, that what was at one time unnecessary is always unnecessary? The necessity of atonement I consider to be founded in the unvarying righteousness of the Divine character; and the Scripture leads me to connect not only the pardon of sin, but all the exercises of the renewed heart,-all that prepares the soul for heaven, as well as that which entitles to it, with the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

other."

"There is salvation in none

In concluding these hasty remarks I shall only observe further, that there appears to me such a repugnance in the doctrine of animal sacrifice to any thing which the uninstructed mind of man would be likely to adopt in the

worship of God, and such an exact adaptation to the thing signified, the atoning sacrifice of Christ; that I find it impossible to bring my mind to believe the human invention of the awful rite. Besides,-that God should have adopted what man had devised, and should, through the long period of the Levitical era, have laid so great a stress on a merely human invention, is to me incredible, unless positive testimony can be produced in proof of the fact. Such positive testimony appears more necessary, considering the comparative degree of probability in the two schemes, to demonstrate the human than the Divine. origination of animal sacrifice.