SECTION ÍI. 71 34: which is cited by the apostle Paul in his epistle to the He- brews, and to the Corinthians, as the language of the gospel, or the new covenant. Now it is manifest enough, that all these ex- pressions of glorious grace, and of the method ofour reconcilia.. tion to God, our sanctification and salvation could never be an- swered and accomplished without such a gospel of Christ as we have described. The rites and ceremonies of the Jewish church speak the same thing, if we consider them as types and figures of the gos- pel-state. I will grant, indeed, that many of those ceremonies had also some other intendments, viz, to distinguish the nation of Israel and their religion from the Gentile world, and the fantastical inventions of pagan worship : Tokeep them in sub- jection to God as their political head or king: Several of their sacrifices and methods of purification were appointed to cleanse them fromceremonial defilements, and to atone for civil or politi- cal crimes, whereby they were admitted to their civil rightsagain, and their place in the congregation, when they had done any thing to forfeit them. But it is evident, by the writings of the apostle Paul, in 2 Cor. chap. iii: Gal. chap. iv. Col, chap. ii. Heb. vii. viii. ix. x. that the great end of these Jewish ceremonial appointments, was to stand as types and figures of things, under the gospel, and emblems of the various offices andbenefits of our Lord Je- sus Christ. Now, in this figurative or emblematical sense, what did all the sacrifices and the blood mean, the burning beasts and the smooking altars whereby the Jews made a typical atonement for their sins ? What were they types of, what did they repre- sent, if not the sacrifice of Christ ? And what means the Sprink- ling all the people with the blood of animals, if these things did not typify and represent our being cleansed by the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is therefore called the blood of sprinkling, and which is the only real and substantial atonement for sin ? What meant their laying the hand upon the goat that was to bear their iniquities, and the confession of the sins of all Israel over his head, if they did not design to foretel the trans- ferring of the sins ofmen upon the head of our Lord Jesus Christ, the surety and the sacrifice for sinners ? What did the washings ofwater imply, but the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon sinful men, and the purification of their natures by divine grace? Why did that glorious and divine light dwell in the tabernacle and in the temple and between the cherubims in the holy of ho_ lies, if it were not an emblemof the "fulness of the godhead dwelling bodily in the man Christ Jesus," in and by whom God wasto converse visibly with the children of men ? Can any man be so absurd as to believe, in opposition to so many expressions of the apostle in his letters, that thesesprinklings of water and
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