being meritorious, that it is a question, which revelation only can satisfactorily decide, whether it will be accepted. And as it must be left to the mercy or the wisdom of the Lawgiver, whether, and how far, he will acquit from punishment, or exact it; it evidently follows, that there can be no merit, no title to reward, in the offender. If it should be alleged that repentance is the best thing in our power, the allegation may be allowed, and retorted; that since the best thing in our power is not meritorious, it is plainly not in our power to deserve salvation by our own personal merits.

II. A second expedient, before mentioned, arises from the superfluous good works of persons eminently holy; the merit of which, it is supposed, may be applied to the salvation of others. But this point will need the less enlargement, since the very ground on which it stands is already removed; for if there are no works meritorious, there can be no works of supererogation. This doctrine implies three things in it the first of which is utterly false; and the other two, at best, are utterly precarious. It implies, first, that men may accumulate such a stock of merit as is not only sufficient for themselves, but will also supply the deficiencies of others: a supposition which will appear, from what has been offered, to be utterly false. It implies further, that there is some method, which may be depended upon, of conveying this merit from one to another, and ascertaining at least so much of it as is necessary to the person who wants it. But nothing of this kind appears. We cannot personally transact this affair, in a visible manner, with saints departed; and any other application to them will at last leave us in the

dark with regard to our success. Call now, if there be any that will answer thee; and to which of the saints wilt thou turns? If the church should take the disposal of this treasure into her own hands, it will become her to shew that she has authority to do so; but as she cannot prove that any such power belongs to her, her saying that it does, is only saying what we are not obliged to believe. However, should both the church and the saint agree to confer this benefit upon a sinner, yet the principal thing of all is still unprovided for; for unless Almighty God will confirm the agreement, and accept this imputed merit in lieu of the sinner's own, he is not at all better than he was before. And if no promise or declaration can be produced to this purpose, all dependance upon such a method as this must be precarious, and may be vain. No man may deliver his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him; for it cost more to redeem their souls, so that he must let that alone for ever. Indeed the whole contexture of this expedient is so absurd in every view, that we should be at a loss to account for the credit it has gained in the world, if we did not consider that weak and superstitious people in distress, are willing to lay hold of any thing which artful men, for their own ends, are ready to invent and impose upon them.

III. Some vicarious satisfaction, such as sacrifice, or substitution of some sort or other, was mentioned as a third method, by which, as distinct from the Christian scheme, men may hope to be saved. But it is evident, that from the bare light of nature and

g Job v. 1. VOL. I. HORBERY.

h Psalm xlix. 7, S.

F

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