DISC. V.] THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST MANIFESTED. 193 ners : Did you never give yourselves leave to think haw great your guilt and destruction is, and how terrible your misery and danger : and do you never consider that it was in and by Jesus Christ, as the appointed sacrifice for our sins, that God made his first steps toward you in a way of restoration and recovery ? This should not be utterly neglected and forgotten by sinners. See how early was the love of God to fallen man. 3. It was in this viewofJesus Christ, as a propitiatory sacrifice, that God instituted sacrifices to be offered up by Adam, immediately after his fall, as it is recorded by Moses. God forbid that ever we should imagine, that the great God left this important affair of offering sacri- fices to reconcile and appease an angry God, to the mere invention of vain and foolish man : And how can we suppose that it should enter into the heart of man,' that God should be pleased with such sacrifices as the cutting and burning of his living creatures in the fire, in order to please him after their first sin ? It is very evident that God appointed the skins of beasts to be their first covering, but these very beasts werenot then appointed by God the Creator to be slain for the food of man, till the days. of Noah : and there- fore, it must be out of the beasts slain for sacrifice, that the Lord God made coats of skins, and cloathed Adam, andhis wife Eve. Arid it is highly probable that their clothing was made out of the skins ofthe beasts that were sacrificed, to guard them from the coldwinds, and storms, and_ from any of the inconveniences of the air and sky that might befal them, for want of sucli covering; Gen. iii. 21. And unto Adam and his wife did the Lord God make coats ofskin, and clothed them. . It is further evident, that these sacrifices were not." merely sacrifices of thanksgiving and acknowledgment tó.: Gad for his mercies, as men are too often ready to sup- pose. When Cain brought to God the first fruits of the ground ; Gen. iv. 3. if it was done merely as an offering of thankfulness, it is manifest that Abel also ; Gen.. iv. 4. brought ofthefirstlings ofhis flock, and'thefat thereof; and it is very plain that Abel found acceptance with Gad, but Cain did not; ver. .5. And as it is repeated Heb. xi. 4. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. And probably this was the differ- VOL. III. p
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