is frequently permitted to fall into spiritual temptations; which is effected by evil spirits infesting him with evils and falses that tend to destroy the life of good and truth which he has received from the Lord. This is perceived by the person as an interior pain and agony, and is called the sting of conscience.

AGREEMENT, the union of the internal and external man, also of charity and faith; and in the opposite sense, of evils and falses. To agree with the adversary, means to remove evils and falses, whereby a perception of peace will take place in the mind, and the internal and external man act in union and agreement.

AGUE, or cold fever, is a disorder occasioned by evil spirits of the most malignant class, whenever it is permitted them to infuse their sphere in the impure substances of the human body. See FEVER.

All diseases whatever originate in the lusts and passions of the mind, and thus take their rise from hell. In general the following evils are the origins of diseases, viz. intemperance, luxuries of various kinds, and pleasures of a merely corporeal nature; also envy, hatred, revenge, lasciviousness, &c. &c. These vices destroy first the interiors of man, then his exteriors, and thus gradually bring on diseases, which at last terminate in death. evil spirits have the power of inducing diseases, but with a difference according to the malignity of their disposition, and the degrees of evil in which they are principled. Yet it is not permitted them to flow into the solid parts of the body, such as the viscera, organs, and members of man, but only into his lusts and falsities, and thereby into such filthy and unclean things in him as belong to the disease.

Although diseases are occasioned by man's evils and falses, it is nevertheless proper that external remedies should be made use of for their cure; for with such means the divine providence of the Lord concurs.

AH! a term of lamentation for the destruction of good and truth in the church, and for fear of impending damnation. It is also used by way of reproach and derision, as in Mark xv. 29: "Ah! "Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days; save thyself, and come down from the cross."

AHA, a word of contempt and derision, implying a rejection

of the interior things of the WORD and of the church.

AHAB, a wicked king of Israel, signifies the false from evil, which perverts and profanes the worship of the true God. [To be Continued.]

ANSWER FOR CONSTANTIUS,

Who wishes to know in what sense we are said to be redeemed by the Blood of Christ. Also, the reason and necessity of Christ suffering the Jews to do unto him what they had done unto the woRD.

Those texts of Holy Writ, which have been relied upon to establish the doctrine of atonement, or vicarious sacrifice, have been drawn from the epistles of St. Paul, who being himself a Jew, intimately acquainted with the laws of his nation, falls readily into the practice of illustrating his new faith, by the rites of the old. In his epistle to his brethren the Hebrews, this practice is still more conspicuous, and in the ninth chapter particularly, the typical nature of the Mosaic law, is made manifest.

It is then evident that before we can accurately determine the meaning affixed to the words of the eminent apostle; we must, in the first place, cast a look at the Jewish law, on the sense of which the apostle so frequently rests the structure of his Christian Creed.

The JEWISH LAW may be divided into three parts, each exeelling in importance according to its degree of dignity. First, the LAW OF GOD, given immediately to the people, or decalogue. Second, the CIVIL LAW, or as it may be termed literally, the Law of Moses, being given by the command of God, to the people, intermediately by Moses. And third, the RITUAL or ceremonial law, which was to be constantly in the view of the Israelites, merely to fix their attention.

The decalogue, being pure spiritual laws, applicable to all times and places, from everlasting to everlasting, in time and in eternity, were the supreme law of all, having prevalence over the others; and the breach of them punished eternally. The civil laws, which regarded the temporal estate of this nation, were not of so strict an obligation, temporal punishments being prescribed for the breaches thereof. The ceremonial law, was the symbol or type of the others, intended to fix the minds of a people, naturally idolatrous, on holy things. From hence we may easily conceive, how little value there was in these rituals, when the weightier matters themselves were left unperformed by the Jews; as the case was, at the coming of our Lord.

The rite of circumcision, the rite of the passover, the rite of the scape-goat, were in themselves, considered exclusively, but vain and dead works, and as such derided by our Lord and his apostles; but as representing the repentance for sin, the vow of

future obedience, and the promised mercy in consequence, by Jehovah God, these rites became altogether important parts of the Jewish institutions. Nor were sacrifices of any account in atonement for sin, without previous repentance and reformation of life; for the Jewish prophets constantly urge the people to do the divine law, in order to avert impending judgments from their nation; but the people, unfortunately for themselves, preferred a reliance on the blood of bulls and of goats.

The blood, in the Leviticals, is called the life; hence it is with peculiar propriety, that St. Paul, holding to his national idioms, saith that "the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin;" that is, as St. Paul would have expressed the sentiment in our time, the life of Christ cleanseth from all sin; the same principles of life, consisting in the same charity and faith, received into the understanding, and adopted by the will of man, as the only sure and infallible rule of life is, as this apostle saith, the certain means of cleansing from sin; but it is not the mere belief in the death of the Lord, the arbitrary imputation of his merits through that belief, and that he died as a vicarious offering for the sins of men, without repentance and reformation on their part. It is thus we find that the Jews, at his first coming, and the old Christian Church, at the second coming of our Lord, are exactly in the same predicament-trusting in the external rite for their eternal salvation; renouncing all belief in the saving influence of the divine life, founded on obedience to the precepts of the divine law!!

The second part of the query is to be explained by observing, that the Jewish law had, as to them, a literal relation only. The coming of the Lord was a part of THE PROMISE made to Abraham, and afterwards renewed to his posterity. At his coming the essential, or divine part of that law, was neglected, nay, contemned, so that HE who was himself all truth, was crucified by them, thus committing and consummating, by an overt act, their rebellion and treason aforethought against the Divine Majesty, which act becomes the legal justification of that dreadful sentence of condemnation, pronounced on the Jews, of the faithful execution of which the records of history give us ample information. Thus did our Lord fulfil all righteousness, or, as more truly expressed, all justice, and all that the scriptures had said concerning HIM; equally affording to the Jews, and to the Christians, VOL. I.

16

No. 11

the highest evidence of the sacred nature of the truths of the Old Testament, and also of the New, thereunto added by his own special revelation.

"Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea-coasts, the nation of the Cherethites! The WORD of the Lord is against you: O, Canaan, the land of the Philistines, I shall even destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant." Zephaniah, ii. 5. T.

The doctrine of Christ's atonement, as it is generally understood by the Christian world, necessarily implics a plurality of persons in the Godhead, and that Jesus Christ is not the only God; but that there is a Father distinct from and superior to him, who breathes out vengeance against the whole human race, and cannot be reconciled to them without the unmerited sufferings and cruel death of an innocent person, even of his own Son! This, we will be bold to say, is representing the God of mercy and compassion as worse than MOLOCH himself, who was content with the sacrifice which his devotees made of their children, without having recourse to the offspring of his own loins to gratify his insatiate lust of blood. Yet, (horrid thought!) such is the God that modern Christians worship, and such the grand principle of their false theology.

It is the plain doctrine of scripture that Christianity is founded on an acknowledgment of one God, on faith in Jesus Christ, who is that one God, and on REPENTANCE, or a life according to his commandments. These are the fundamental constituents of the Christian religion, into which the idea of vicarious sacrifice and atonement, as generally understood, cannot possibly enter, and with which it cannot by any means be reconciled. For if it be once admitted, that redemption consists mercly in the sacrifice and atonement of Christ, as a mean whereby the wrath of the Father was appeased; and if, in order to be justified and saved, man needs only to have faith in the merits and righteousness of the Son of God; how natural is it to conclude, that actual repentance is a vain, unnecessary, if not a dangerous work; seeing that redemption is already finished by the passion of the cross, and man's salvation already accomplished, without the necessity of his co-operation! The danger that naturally arises from such a doctrine as this, is too evident to need pointing out to any person of sober reflection; for thus all the precepts in the woRD,

relating to love and charity, to newness of life, repentance, and regeneration, would be of no more real use to man, than so many

pages of blank paper.

"But," our objector will say, " what then is meant by the suf❝ferings and death of Jesus Christ? If they were not to satisfy "the vindictive justice of the Father, by bearing in his person "the punishment due to our offences; what was their end and "design?" To this we answer, His sufferings and death were the necessary means of effecting the work of redemption, which consisted, not in any atonement for the offences of others, for it is neither agreeable to the laws of God or man that the innocent should suffer for the crimes of the guilty; nor in the appeasing of any wrath which God the Father entertained against the human race, for no such wrath ever existed; but in a real subjection of the powers of darkness, those evil spirits of hell which began to predominate over the whole universe, and which, if not checked by the omnipotence of the Lord's divine arm, would not only have prevented the future salvation of mankind, but would also have so far gained an ascendency over the very angels in heaven, as to deprive them, first of their integrity, and then of their supreme felicity; for all evil is of a contagious nature, and can be resisted by none in the universe, but the Lord alone. Wherefore it became absolutely necessary, in order to preserve the heavens in their state of purity and happiness, and to deliver the church on carth from the assaults of hell, for Jehovah God himself to conie down among men, to clothe himself with human nature, and in his own divine person work out redemption. This he effected by permitting that Humanity, which he received from the Virgin Mary, to be assaulted with temptations from evil spirits, in which he fought against them, and by his own power conquered and put them to flight. Every external suffering in his body corresponded with some internal temptation from hell, and was in fact a consequence thereof; for ail the stripes, buffetings, and contempt he endured, and which were inflicted upon him by the Jews, did not solely originate with them, but they treated him in that manner in consequence of being instigated thereto by evil spirits, with whom they were in spirit associated. Hence we find him sometimes rebuking the devils, and sometimes their associates, the Jews.

But the manner of fighting in spirit, is different from the mode practised by men in the natural world. When our Lord was buffetted, he did not return a similar assault, and in that manner con