time easily perverted by the false taste and luxuriant imagination of the oriental Christians. It would be frequently illustrated in the discourses of the Apostles, and applied to a variety of ceremonies and institutions in the law, where such an application could not be extended in this age, unless conjecture and fancy were made

our canons.

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St. Paul enumerating the vessels and ornaments of the tabernacle, concludes his enumeration of them in these words, "of which we cannot now speak particularly 1;" whence we may infer that the same analogy existed with respect to them as to those things which he had explained.

The High Priest entering into the Holy Place once a year to make reconciliation for sin, signified that Christ should, with his own blood, open the Holy of Holies to all mankind, even Heaven 20; so that there should be no need of any other offering in the Holy Place, after his death. At the crucifixion, the veil of the Holy of Holies was rent in twain, Christ having presented his sacrifice for the redemption of the world.

In the tenth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, sacrifices in general are considered as typical of a sacrifice more valuable in itself and in its effects, than those which only pertained to the purifying of the flesh. As legal purification was accompanied by sacrifices, and not

19 Heb. ix. 5.

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20 Heb. ix. 6. ad finem.

merely by a change of mind in the individual, it is probable that those sacrifices were signs of his allegiance to the law, and a kind of mulct by which he acknowledged his offence, and the lenity of the law in requiring no more of him. Christ dying to complete his perfect obedience, which made it fit that for his merits all the world should receive from God a covenant of mercy, was in fact required by the Divine providence to give up his life in order to the remission of sin, as a sacrifice, whose blood assures to the penitent the readiness of God to accept them.

The Priesthood under the law was not instituted merely in accommodation to the prejudices of the Jews; it was connected with a previous and a subsequent priesthood. In the patriarchal age, Abraham the greatest of the Patriarchs, received the blessing of Melchizedec, a priest of the most High God. Under the law, Christ was foretold as a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec. Whence the law acknowledged the imperfection of the Levitical priesthood, and the reality and perfection of the priesthood of Christ. Either this prophecy is intelligible, or it is not. There is something definite in the idea of a priest, or there is not. There is some resemblance between Christ and Melchizedec, or there is not. The law of Moses was either perfect with the Levitical priesthood, to all moral and religious uses, or it was not. Every High Priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices 21."

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21 Heb. viii. 3.

Melchizedec was a priest by divine appointment, and that, previously to the order of Aaron, and superior to it.

A priest was to arise of the order of Melchizedec, and that could not take place under the Law of Moses. With respect to ceremonial pollutions and trespasses, the Law of Moses was perfect. Still a priest and a sacrifice were wanted; these, therefore, had in them a moral and spiritual, and not a carnal intention 22, and no priesthood was to arise besides the Levitical, except that which was of the order of Melchizedec, and no priest was to arise of that order, except Jesus Christ; whose priesthood and sacrifice, we have seen, could only be of a moral and spiritual nature, and that for the reconciliation of God, and of sinful men23.

Those who do not believe the mediation of Christ, are silent in their popular discourses, and in their writings, upon the testimony of the law to Christ: they distrust the application of the prophecies to Christ as interspersed in the Acts and the Epistles; they deny that Moses prophesied of Christ, or that there was any typical reference in the Law of Moses to the religion of Christ.

Several of these persons are spotless in their lives, and have made temporal sacrifices for the sake of their opinions, and want neither learning nor ingenuity to support their tenets.

Their sceptical boldness and the violence of

22 Heb. ix. 10-14.

23 Heb. vii. 1.-viii. 3.

some who have advocated their cause has made their better traits to be overlooked, and involved them equally in the terms of reprobation, by which we must stigmatize their opinions, but not their lives.

It is now acknowledged that the early Christians too frequently adopted dishonorable means in the service of an excellent cause. Men are found who believe that God creates numbers of their race with a depravity that tends naturally and irresistibly to hell, and that God has a sovereign right to leave them to the consequences of their nature24, and to torment them in hell for ever for the sin of their birth. Yet the goodness of nature overrules their creed, and they love God, who represent him as a tyrant.

Both these extremes have been generally considered as pernicious heresies, and it is difficult to deny the justness of the charge. If it be uncharitableness, it is the uncharitableness of truth.

I have had occasion to advert, in the course of my enquiry, to persons included in one or other of these errors. In doing so, I could not properly forbear from stating their opinions in that repulsive form which they naturally wear, at least in the eyes of those who do not embrace them. I have, therefore, purposely borne witness to the excellent qualities of some, both of their ministers and laymen; and this was the more requisite, since I am now to notice those defects in one portion of them and in their me

24 See Mr. Belsham's Letters to Dr. J. P. Smith.

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thod of investigating truth, which seem to lead them and others to separate the Old from the New Testament, as two systems and not parts of the same, or but imperfectly so, and to explain away the apostolical interpretation of types and prophecies, and the doctrine of the mediation of Christ, to which they frequently relate.

This may be traced, first, to an immoderate esteem for simplicity, and an unjustifiable eagerness to simplify every thing connected with religion. Unitarianism is characterized by simplicity. Besides the admission of miracles and of the resurrection, it has no difficulties which are peculiarly Christian, none but those which are common to it and some part of natural religion, as the being and attributes of God. It was long, however, before it acquired this simplicity; it is not, therefore, the simplicity of truth which is coeval with truth. It did not appear, as far as historical evidence can carry us, like the simplicity that is found in the Scriptures, and the doctrine of the Church in the three first centuries, at once; but has been subjected to various modifications, and has changed with different times and countries. The father of the modern Unitarians was a professed philosopher, who dared to accommodate the Scriptures to his opinions 25, but was a firm believer in that part of Christianity which he retained. He wrote professedly in defence of Christianity. The difficulties which orthodoxy

25 See notes to Dr. Price's Sermon on the Pre-existence and dignity of Christ.