538 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, absolution from them by his sufferings; not Mat he underwent the punishment of our transgressions, but because his voluntary death prevailed with God to give him power to absolve his ser- vants at the last, and to reward them with eternal glory. And J am told, saith Ferventio, this o iniongrows much in vogue in our days, both in preaching, inWriting and conversation ; and some people are notashamed to pronounce and defend it as the truest and justest sense of these scriptural phrases, though they have not yet found out one single text in all the bible where this is the plain meaning of any of those expressions. Now, Sir, I would beglad to hear from your lips what are your best argu- ments to refute this Socinian gloss as Dr. Whitby calls it. I would say these three things, answered Paulinus : First, It is very strange that this must be the true sense of these sacri- ficial phrases, when this sense does not appear plainly in anyone scripture. However if it must be so, let it beso in the.Old Tes- tament as well as in the New ; let therebe some shadow of it found among the Levitical and typical sacrifices of atonement, as well as in Jesus the substantial one ; otherwise the types and the substance will have no likeness to one another in those very actions and circumstances, whereby atonement for sin is made and which are ascribed to both type and substance in the same phrases: Now let these interpreters tell me, which of the sheep or the goats, which of the rams or the bulls, that were sacrificed to atone for sin,- ever received power to absolve sinners, or ever were Made judges or rewarders in any sense. It is very evident that so far as this forced sense is introduced upon the expressions of Christ's bearing our sins on the cross, and his making atone- spent for sin, so far there is an utter departure from the true and obvious meaning of the same expressions, when applied to the typical sacrifices ; whereas in the sense which I have given, the saine ideas belong both to the typical and the substantial atonement. Dr. Whitby's expositions of the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses of this chapter sufficiently explain and con- firm the true meaning of St. Peter's language. Besides, let 4 be observed in the second place, that the scripture ascribes this atonement of Christ to the office of his priesthood, to his blood, andhis death as a sacrifice, whereas these mistaken interpreters ascribe his taking away sin, either to his doctrine as a prophet, which has been before answered, or in this present sense to his royal power of forgiveness as a king, without ever considering that the . beasts which were made atoning sacrificesafford us no shadow of Christ's taking away sin by his prophetical or his kingly office, but only by his priesthood and sacrifice : Nor is there any other way, besides that which I have maintained, to make the scriptures of truth abide in any happy harmony, or the type and the substance to agree.
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