76 THE SUBSTANCE OF THE GOSPEL. when he instituted the holysupper ; Lukexxii. 19. He tookbread and brake it, saying, this is my body which is given for you. And as in St. Matthew'sgospel ; xxvi. 28. This cup is my blood ofthe New Testament, which is shedfor manyfor the remission ofsins. III. This doctrine of atonement for sin by his death, asa sacrifice, and the acceptance of it with God the Father, could not be so well preached in public, before those very facts were fulfilled, upon which this doctrine is foupded ; for his deathwas the foundation of this atonement ; his resurrection and ascension to heaven, were the proofs of its being accepted with God : Now it might have appeared preposterous to our Saviour, who was divinelywise, to preach these doctrines freely in public to the multitude, before these events appeared in the world. And even to his own disciples'he was not too free in the communication of them, because, as John xvi. 12. He told them, he had many things to teach them, but they couldnot bear them,yet. It might have been the means of raising some prejudices in the minds of his own disciples ; whereas he reserved some of these things to be taught in those forty clays, while he continued with them after his resurrection, and spoke with them of the things pertaining to thekingdom ofGod ; Acts i. 3. And thence we may infer, that if we would learn the plainest and fullest account of the gospel of Christ, it is not enough for us to consult, merely, his public sermons, or the his- tories ofhis life, which are called the four gospels, but we must read carefully the writings of the apostles, after he went to hea- ven; in which they taught these doctrines more completely, Which they had learned from the converse of Christ, after his resurrection, as well as by the pouring out of his own Spirit upon them in great abundance, as he had promised. But there is another objection, which is borrowed from the Socinian writings, which it maybe proper to give some reply to, viz. " That it does not agree to the moral perfectionsof God to punish sin in a surety ; nor does it become the great God, who is a being of infinite wisdom and goodness and equity, to appoint such a way of salvation of men," as would necessitate an inno- cent creature to be exposed to so many sharp sufferings as Christ underwent, while the guilty sinner suffers nothingof all these terrors, but is delivered from the severest of them by the deathof Christ. In answer to this, 1. 1 desire it may be considered, that this doctrine of the expiation and atonement for sin. by Christ, is so plainly andex- pressly revealed and declared in the New Testament, by the apostles Paul, Peter, and John, as has been already shewn, and is So frequently repeated in many forms of speech in the' sacred writings, that it seems a very bold imagination to suppose, that that could not be agreeable to themoral perfectionsof God, or that
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