528 THE SACRIFICE OP CnRIST. read in their own writings, when either beasts or men were devol:+ ed to death, in order to save a guilty person or a nation from punishment, and the supposed anger of their gods ? What can be the meaning of these phrases when they are used .upon this occasion, "' Averruncare maluco," or " deorum iras, lustrare populum aut exercitum, piaculmn fieri," or " errge.kbea áva&,oa, awesse&egyua, expiare crimina, scelus, reatum ;" I say, what does all this mean, but to make atonement for sin, to remove the pun- ishment from the offenders, by letting it fall on the surety or sacrifice ? So the two Decii, father and son, devoted themselves to death, and saved the Roman army from the supposed anger of the gods and destruction. So Menæceus is said to have devoted himself for thecityof Thebes, in danger of being destroy- ed by the Argives. So the Massilians were wont to expiate their city, by taking a person devoted, by imprecating on his head all the evil to which the city was liable, and casting him into the sea, with these words, ^Crft ni.Ase Naas «au, " Be thou our propitiatory sacrifice." So the Egyptians, as Herodotus testifies, laid their imprecations on the heads of those that were devoted to death, that all evil might be turned from the sacrificer, and from Egypt, and laid ou the head of the sacrifice. See many citations and instances of this kind in learned writers. Consult Grotius's little book " of the satisfaction of Christ," and let Agrippa answer those arguments better than any of the socinians have done before he renounce this doctrine. Consult another very short essay on this subject by the late learned Doctor Owen, at the end of his Treatise of the Trinity, where, as I remember, he shews the true meaning of " one person's dying for another" among the ancient heathens, and the doctrine of atonement for sin as practised among them, which may be easily reviewed with- out running to more large and learned volumes*. Now when this is the plain meaning of atonement for sin, or purging away sin by sacrifice, so well known among the Jews, and amongst prophet does not prove that sacrifices were utterly useless under that economy wherein they were prescribed; for at another time the very same prophet, as well as others, reproves the Jews for the neglect of the sacrifices and offerings which God had appointed; Is.. niet. 23. Mal. iii. 8. Such kind of language therefore, whether used by a Jewish or a Gentile prophet, only shews that a dependenceon sacrifice without real virtue or piety, is worth nothing in God's account. It will hegranted that theheathens speaking of their sacrifices and atone- ments for sin, use somesuch expressions, as " appeasing the wrath of their gods, by the blood of their sacrifices," &c. which cannot properly be applied to the sacrifice of Christ in their literal sense ; because in propriety of speech, God has no wrath awakened in him by sin, nor can any blood properly appease that wrath. But h t it be remembered, that the great God condescending to the weak- ness of men, sometimes speaks in their phrases, and kath been pleased to repre sent himself as angry on the account of sin, and as appeased by the sacrifices of aonement in several places of scripture, though the true and proper ideas of these things are evident and obvious enough, as they have beenexplained before.
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