SECTION II. 537 sin, discover that sin deserved death ? Andwhat did the death òf Christ do more than they ? When man had signed at first, did not God appoint sacrifices to be slain in the room of the sinner, not only to shew what sin deserved, but thereupon he granted the sinner a visible continu. ance in life, to shew that his guilt was transferred to the animal which was sacrificed ? Had not all the whole train of expiatory sacrifices from Adam down to Christ, this same signification ? And yet we are told, Heb. x. 4. It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should really take away sin, that is, remove the guilt of our sins from before God, who is judge and Lord of conscience. What did they do then ? Why, they did that typically and in a way of emblem, which the blood of the Son of God was to do really and effectually. It is very plain, that the sacrifice of Christ was to effect that which all theMosaical sacri- fices could not do : It was to remove from men such moral guilt as the Jewish sacrifices could not remove, and justify us from that guilt, fromwhich the law of Moses could not justify us; Acts xiii. 39. The Jewish sacrifices themselves did not only slimy the desert of sin, but, as I have said before, did make a real and proper atonement for civil or ceremonial faults and defile- ments in the sight of God as their political Lord and the king of the nation, and freed the sinner from civil punishment ; and they did also make a typical atonement for the moral guilt of the offender before God, as the Lord and judge of souls and con- sciences, that is, they were the types of such an atonement. And though these types were not much understood by the Jews of old, yet they were to be accomplished and fulfilled by the bloody sacrifice of the Son of God, or his offering up his own life in the room of sinners ; and it is by this bloody sacrifice of our Saviour, that the moral guilt of sin is really removed from the souls and consciences of true Christians, as the ceremonial defilements or political guilt of an Israelite was taken away by the blood of bulls and goats. All these meaner sacrifices would be sufficient to shew that sin deserved death ; but it requires such a dignity of person as was found only with the Son of God, to take away our sins, that is, to snake a real atonement for the moral guilt of the souls of men, of which all the former were but shadows and figures. Before Pauliuus had proceeded further with his several queries to Agrippa, Ferventio stopped hint with this speech : 'there is another erroneous sense put upon the strong and plain expressions of scripture, concerning Christ's making an atonement or propitiation forsin by his sufferings and death: Dr. Whitby calls it a Socinian gloss in his annotations on 1 Pet. ii. 25. and represents it in these words ; they say Christ took away our sins by his own body crucified upon the cross, procuring our
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