tos THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST MANIFESTED. [DISC. yr 1st Illustration of this Remark. God would not deal thus with his beloved Son Jesus Christ, to make him a bloody sacrifice, for mean and ignoble purposes: This work of his death and atonement is by no means to be esteemed as acypher among the works of divine grace, or as a mere object of speculation and amusement. The blessed God has too much love for his Son Jesus, his only begotten, and his first beloved; to make him merely their talk of his church, or the matter ofentertainment for the. meditation, or their discourse; there must be something substantial, holy, divine and honourable, designed in and by the death of this Lamb of God ; whose sacrifice, in the view of it, is represented as beginning before the foundation ofthe world. 2d Illustration of this Remark. God would not deal thus with the fallen and miserable race of mankind, to appoint such a sacrifice, which had little or no efficacy in it. Our Saviour himself tells us, John vi. 33, 35. That he is the bread of life; and except we eat his flesh, and drink his blood, except the fallen and perishing race of mankind apply themselves to this way of salvation by Jesus Christ, they have no life in them ; that is, there is no salvation appointed anyother way ;" Acts v. 12. 3d Illustration of this Remark. The blessed God would not deal thus with his chief favourites among mankind, even the wisest, the best, and the holiest ofhis creatures, to be a sacrifice merely to entertain their rea- sonings and their meditations ; but it is designed as the food of their souls, as the life of their spirits, and their hope for eternity ; John vi. 21. 4th Illustration of.this Remark. Again, God would never have dealt thus with his chosen and favourite peo- ple the Jews, through all their generations, to have fed them and pleased them only with types and figures, sha- dows and emblems, if they had no substantial blessings contained in them. There were indeed some happy uses appointed concerning these types and shadows, in the national church of the Jews, but this was not the chief design of their institution, but it was to figure out and represent the solid blessings of the gospel, the spiritual and everlasting privilegeswhich God designed for all his chosen and saved ones. 5th Illustration of this Remark. I might add in the
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