DISCOURSE III. 569 special occasions." It was while Adam tarried in paradise after his fall, and before he was driven out of the garden of Eden, that he was doubtless taught and required to offer sacrifices Of beans ; for since flesh was not then appointed to be eaten, what could it be but the skins of beasts whichwere offered in sacrifice, out of which God made coats or garments for him and his wife? And hereby paradise itself, where the first sin was committed, was the appointed place for that sort of worship by sacrifice, by which the first typical atonement should be made for sin. But it does not appear that there was any continuance of that appoint- ment morethan for one season of worship : For our first parents were quickly driven out of that delightful garden. Noah, when he came out from the ark, at the order of God, upon mount Ararat, where the ark rested, there he offered sacrifices, and that doubtless by divine appointment; for the Lord swelled a sweet savour in them, and gave him a promise that he would not again curse the ground; Gen. siii. 20, 21. It was by the special appointment of God, in a certain spot of the land of Canaan, that Abraham sacrificed to Godá heifer, a goat, and a ram, a turtle dove, and a youngpigeon, and di- vided-them asunder; and there Godcondescended to pass between these pieces, "under the emblem of a snte/singfurnaceand a burn ing lamp, andmade a covenant with his servant; Gen. xv. 9-17. It was also upon mount Moriah that Abraham received orders from heaven to offer his own son Isaac as a burnto(fering, and there he received a further blessing from the Lord, and the pro- mise of the great Messiah to be derived from his seed, in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed; Gen. xxii. 2, 17, 18. It was at mount Sinai, that God ordered the nation of Israel to worship him, when he had brought them forth from Egyptian bondage ; Exod. iii. 12: and again he appointed the " young men of the seed of Israel, to sacrifice oxen unto him under the hill, with an altar and twelve pillars, and made a covenant with the people ;" Exod. xxiv. 5 -8. So in following times, Gideon, and Samuel, and David, under inspiration, were required some- times to offr particular sacrifices, and pay solemn worship Unto God, in places different from the general orders which were given to all Israel for the public worship of the nation ; other- wise, they would not have dared to have done it, nor would their sacrifices have been accepted, by such evident and illus. trious testimonies from heaven, as some of them received. These few instances make it evident, that God sometimes appointed a particular place for his own worship. II. " Though the great God prescribed to several persons the particular spot of ground on which he would be worshipped on single and special occasions ; yet when he appointed any spe- cial place for his own worship in the solemn returns of it at stated
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