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THE ATONEMENT
OF
CHRIST.
[SERM. xXXV.
and
the
obscure language
of
prophecy, must
have
their
true light
cast upon them
by
this
doctrine. This
is
the
clue
to
guide
us
into
the mysteries
and deep
things
of
God,
which lay hid
under
the vails
for
so
many
ages.'
The great
apostle
St.
Paul
shews us how
to
penetrate
and
unfold
all
the ancient
dispensations,
by
the
doctrine of
the
Son
of God
coming
into the
flesh, by
his
dying
as
a
sacrifice
for
sin, by
his
rising
and ascending to
heaven,
by
his
appearing there
as
a
priest
to
intercede for sinners
in the
virtue
of
his sacrifice,
and
by his
sitting there
as
a
king, to reign over all things
for the salvation
of
his
peo-
ple, whom
he
has
purchased
with
his
own
blood.
THE
RECOLLECTION.
What
a
variety
of
supports
has this blessed
doctrine of
our
reconciliation
to
God
by
the
atoning
death of
Christ?
What
a train of arguments
to
confirm it
are
drawn down
from the
very
first entrance
of
sin
into the
world?
Guilty
nature
urges
us on
to
enquire after
such
an
atonement,-
and
the bible reveals
it
to us
in
a
long
succession
of
types, promises,
and prophecies,
in
narratives and
plain instructions,
in
darker or brighter
discoveries from
the beginning
of
mankind.
If
I
forsake the gospel
of
Christ,
and
his
atonement
for
sin,
whither
shall
my
guilty conscience
fly
to
find
a
better
relief? This
is
the
doctrine
that
supplies
the
chiefest wants
of a
guilty creature, and the
chief
defects
of
natural
light and reason.
Nature
shews me
no
way
to
recompense the
justice of God
for
my
innumerable
sins.
Nature
shews me
nothing
which
God
will
accept
in
the
room
of
my own
perfect obedience, or
in
the room
of
my
everlasting punishment.
If
I
leave thee,
O
Jesus,
whither
should
I
go
?
Thy
sufferings
are the spring
of
my
hope
of pardon, and
my
eternal
life
depends
on thy
painful and
shameful death.
I
see
and
I
obtain
in this
gospel
of atonement
all
that
the
heathen
world
laboured
for
in
vain,
by
many
wild
in-
ventions,
and
painful superstitions.
The
anger
of
the
God
of heaven
is
pacified by
the
sufferings
of Jesus
his
Son.
O
my
God,
let
my soûl
never
run
back
to infidelity
and
heathenism, and
rove abroad
among
the
foolish in-
ventions
of
men, in
quest of
any
other
methods
of
atone-
ment. The blood
of Jesus
is
all
my
hope.
Here
I
see
the gracious promises
of ancient
times ful-