Watts - BX5200 .W3 1813 v.4

SECTION II. 525 acknowled°,e these ceremonies to be proper types of the sacrifice of Christ and his blood, yet, I think, they generally allow thus much, that by the appointment of God, these sacrifices were to make a sort of political atonement or satisfaction to God their political Lord or King, as far as they were capable, for break- ing any of his statutes, and when this was done, the offenders stood right in his sight as king of the nation, and he did not execute his threatenings upon them. The lifeof the sacrifice was a ransom for their lives; and the blood which was the life or ani-, mal soul of the beast, was a ransom for their animal soul, that is, their bodily lifev. Now when this same sort of language in the various phrases of it, is used in the New Testament, and in a most express manner applied to the death of Christ, to the pouringout of his blood, which is called the blood of sprinkling, and the real atonement or propitiation which is made thereby in the sight of God, the Lord of conscience, and the Governor of the immortal souls or spirits of men, why should not we suppose that the words bear the same sense ? Why are we not to under- stand by these expressions, that Christ made his soul an ofering for sin, that Jesus Christ by his death became a true sacrifice of propitiation for sinful men, by dying in the room and stead of the offenders, and obtained the pardon of those sins, those real immoralities or impieties, from which they never could be justi- ed, or released, by the law of Moses; Acts xiii. 39. and for which there was nosacrifice appointed bythat law-giver? What? Must the blood' of bulls and goats snake a real atonement for the sins ofthe Jewishnation, that is, their political offenees or ceremo- nial defilements in the sight of God, as their peculiarKing and Governor, so as to restore them to temporal blessings ; and shall the blood of Christ be construed to make only a typical and figu- rative atonement for the sins of men, which deserve eternal death, in the sight of God, the universal Ruler of all nations, and the Lord of conscience? If any of these be typical and shadowy, good Agrippa, let the blood of bulls and goats be the type and shadow, as St. Paul, in the ninth chapter to the He brews, declares, and not the blood of the Son of God; nor let the expressions that relate to it be explained all away, and be made to vanish into type, and trope, and metaphor, when they are applied to the substance and antitype. The ninth and tenth chapters to the Hebrews, I think, might sufficiently convince any willing and unprejudiced reader, how much the apostle had his eye and heart fixed upon this doctfine of the real propitiation 01' Some have objected here, that the beasts wh'ch were brought to the priest for sacrifices, were mere mulcts or fines imposed on the offender. Rut I answer, What need was there then that the beast should immediately be tilled before the ford? What need-qf the handof the offender to be laid on the head of the sacrifice, that it might be accepted as anatonement for him f Lev. i. 4, 5. If the beast were not to die in the offender's stead, why is it said, without sledding of blood there is no remission; Heb, ix. 22. Itfine dolt not require blood.

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