reason, every such method as this, and consequently all hope arising from it, will have but a very slender foundation. It cannot be pretended that the blood of animals is of any great value, so as to purchase the pardon of sin, or that there is any great efficacy in the act of shedding it towards appeasing the offended Deity. He surely does not want such oblations; he has not the organs, or the appetites of men, to delight in burnt-offerings, or the flesh of slain beasts; or, if so weak an imagination could be admitted, the sole property of all is his. Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. It is turning sacrifice into sin, to consider it as a bribe; and if the offerer looks upon it as a just equivalent for his own life, which the very action seems to import is forfeit, and a proper satisfaction to God for his offences, it is certain he has much higher notions of the matter than it will bear. It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sinsk, are words which, though read in scripture, derive not their authority from thence alone, but contain a clear principle of reason. And we may as well wash ourselves in the blood, and think that a proper cleansing from moral defilement, as imagine that it can take away sins in such a manner as to acquit our consciences from the guilt, and our persons from the punishment of them. If we should sacrifice men instead of beasts, and substitute one human person for another, there is no doubt but that we should highly enhance our guilt

by this practice, instead of its being effectual to save us from it. And indeed since the principle of reason is, that the soul that sinneth, it shall die1; all substitution of any kind is mere groundless folly and presumption, unless God himself will please to interpose, and institute something by his own appointment which he will promise to accept.

Upon this account, among others, judicious men have concluded, that this practice of sacrifices, which once so universally prevailed, was at first of divine original. There is so little in nature and reason to lead them to such a custom, that it is hard to say how they could so unanimously fall into it without some superior direction. How did it appear to them that they had any right to take away the lives of God's creatures? or, however, how could they imagine that an act of this nature would not offend the Deity rather than atone his displeasure? We, who know that the sins of the world are taken away by the sacrifice of the Son of God, cannot be induced to think that this was an irrational or needless institution, if it served for no other purpose than to prefigure and typically foretell this great event. But there might be, and doubtless were, some subordinate reasons; which were probably discovered to them at the first institution, or to which however considerate men would be led by the very nature of the rite itself. It was an acknowledgment of God's supreme dominion, and of that kingdom which ruleth over all; it kept up a kind of correspondence between man and his Maker; and it suggested, that though man himself deserved to die rather than the victim at the

1 Ezek. xviii. 20.

altar, yet God had not forgotten to be gracious, so as to refuse all terms of reconciliation. Some appointment of this sort might be highly expedient, immediately after the Fall, to answer such purposes as these; and when afterwards God selected a peculiar people to himself, the practice was become so universal, that if it had been proper, it was not practicable to leave it off. A religion without sacrifice would have appeared such a paradox to the Jews, that they would soon either have had none at all, or, what is more likely, have relapsed into the idolatrous religions of Egypt, or the nations round about them. God therefore gave them a ritual, which the inspired writers of the gospel-times plainly enough declare, contained ordinances in themselves of little value; but, however, for good and wise reasons, were imposed on them until the time of reformation. The result of this account is this, that whatever use or virtue there might be in sacrifice as a divine appointment, pointing to and terminating in the sacrifice of our great High Priest, the Son of God; (in which view no wise man need, and no good man will throw any contempt upon it;) yet as a method of salvation set up in opposition to that delivered in the gospel, the sense with which we are concerned at present, nothing little or low enough can be said of it. In that light it can be considered only as a human invention, contrived by those, who, owning no revelation, can pretend to no authority to make any substitution at all, and who therefore cannot have the least assurance that it will be of any service to themselves, or of any avail with God. The consideration of it came in amongst the other expedients; but the next to be mentioned is what they, who re

ject the Christian salvation, are much apter to confide in; viz.

IV. Fourthly, The free gracious mercy of God, pardoning sin, without any view either to atonement or repentance. Yet this is a thought so monstrously absurd, that it hardly needs a confutation. It cannot be supported but by destroying the whole idea of God, and the whole system of natural religion. Strictly speaking, it leaves neither God nor law in the world. For if God be not a moral Governor and Judge of mankind, in which capacity he will be led to reward or punish his subjects as they have behaved themselves here, he is in effect, and with regard to us, no God at all. And what law can that be which is perpetually transgressed with impunity; which has no sanctions, or none that will ever be put in force; and to the breakers and to the observers whereof every thing finally happeneth alike? Men may, with greater consistency, take refuge in absolute atheism, than pretend to own a God, and yet believe such things of him as are repugnant to the most essential perfections of his nature. A Being of infinite wisdom, and justice, and truth, and goodness, must see and regard both things and persons according to what they are; and though he is under the law of no superior, yet he is, in these cases, a law to himself; i. e. he owes it at least to his own perfections, not to let the wicked go free, or to treat in an undistinguishing manner those who truly repented of their sins, and such as till the last impenitently persisted in them. And if he must judge that this is in itself right and fit, to think that his mercy will incline him to act contrary to it, is not only to separate his mercy from, but to set it in opposition to every other at

tribute and perfection; and to imagine that it has such influence as to make an all-wise Being act unwisely, and an infinitely just one have no regard to justice. To allow likewise that we are here in a state of probation; that there are such things as law and transgression, and duty and sin; that there is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroyTM, and who, as moral Governor and Judge of the world, inspects men's actions and behaviour; and yet after all, at the conclusion of this great scene, to imagine that all things shall go well with all, and the wicked be pardoned by an arbitrary act of mercy, without any view either to atonement or repentance, is a thought so unworthy of God, and indeed so absurd and inconsistent with itself, that no man can require a confutation of, who has sense enough to understand it. Repentance is the proper object of mercy; but whether he who knows all things will accept it singly, exclusive of any atonement, or whether he may not see it proper to appoint some atonement in order to render it acceptable, are questions which he only is able to resolve. But surely men reason weakly when they argue against atonement, because God cannot be angry; and what cannot be angry needs not be appeased. This may be admitted; and what follows from it is, that the punishments which God is concerned to inflict are not the effects of anger. As indeed they are not, but the effects of wisdom, and justice, and goodness itself: they are, in certain cases, what is best upon the whole; and from which therefore his goodness, conducted always by infinite wisdom, will not permit him to recede. The proper question therefore is, not whether God can be angry,

m James iv. 12.