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relatives-bearing in mind that we contemplate the incarnate God, in his assumed nature, as first-born among many brethren." For thus he is become their Redeemer in right of blood, and is found ready, as their need shall require, to discharge the several duties of a Redeemer towards them.

First, He is their Ransomer. Many, indeed, are the passages of Scripture that assert this fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith-that, considered as the prisoners of divine justice, apprehended, and about to receive the just recompense of their evil deeds, Christ has redeemed or bought off, his people, by the payment of a ransom for them.

I select a passage from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, as sufficient to illustrate this important point. Explaining the method of a sinner's justification in the sight of God, the Apostle asserts, that he is "justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Jesus Christ." This justification, as received by the creature from the hand of his God, is free and gratuitous; yet still, in regard to what has been transacted between the Father and the Son, it has been obtained by a redemption.

So the Apostle explains this "redemption which is in Jesus Christ"--" whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to de. clare his righteousness." In the setting forth or appointment of Christ to be an inaongo, therefore,

is this redemption accomplished. Ἱλαστηριον sig nifies, literally, propitiatory. It is by some explained of the mercy-seat in the Jewish tabernacle: but by our translators, more justly, of the propi tiatory victim itself; at least, of the propitiation effected by its vicarious sacrifice. And from this slaughtered victim, the master-type, so to call it, I conceive the mercy-seat itself obtained its epithet of propitiatory, л, and not from the i rcumstance merely of its forming a covering for the ark of the covenant. Indeed, in the passage before us, the meaning of propitiatory seems necessarily restricted to the victim; for in the following clause we read of the blood of what is called a propitiatory, "In his blood to declare his righteousness *.

What was spoken of, therefore, in the former verse, under the notion of a ransom price paid for the liberation of a captive or prisoner, the proper meaning of απολυτρωσις, is here represented as a sacrificed victim; which, by means of its unde-. served and vicarious sufferings-according to a notion so carefully inculcated in the ancient rites of religion-rendered the Deity propitious to the real offender.

It was obvious, indeed, in the case before us, that the ransom price could be no other than an atonement offered to divine Justice, which, in

See the manner of pointing this passage in Griesbach's Greek Testament.

sparing the guilty, and much more in justifying the ungodly, must necessarily have been violated; and. something widely differing from silver and gold was requisite to this end.

Now it is worthy of remark, that the same word which supplies the term л, propitiatory, is equally used for the ransoming of a prisoner out of captivity, as for the atonement made by the priest upon the altar; and, what will appear, to some of my readers, still more extraordinary, the same word is used for a bribe given to an unjust judge to induce him to screen the guilty from deserved punishment.

The meaning of this word, which applies in common to these three cases, is that of covering: as in our own language we speak of covering a loss, or damage, when something equivalent is supplied to make good the deficiency which had been created. In the case of the captive, the price paid for his ransom, or as a commutation for his crimes, might, by an easy figure, be supposed to cover the loss, which the conqueror, or aggrieved party sustained in the personal services of his prisoner: or, it was what his adversary deemed an equivalent for his forfeited life. So, when the term is applied to the sacrifice offered to the Almighty, the same idea is evident; only in this case that which covers the offence, instead of being the payment of a sum of money, is the substitution of an innocent victim to suffer, in the place and stead of the guilty.

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Lastly, in regard to the unjust action of the venal judge, we perceive the same notion in the effects of the proffered bribe. It covers the offender and the defects of his cause; it is, in the eyes of the wicked magistrate, an equivalent for the violation of justice. "Of whose hands," says Samuel, "have I received a bribe, to blind mine eyes therewith'."

The second application of this idea, as we have already seen, bears the strictest affinity of the three, to the manner in which our gracious Redeemer delivers us from the wrath to come. It was in truth a practice, purposely invented, to prefigure and represent the mode in which the promised Messiah should ransom his people from the punishment of their transgressions.

The notion of a vicarious sacrifice must in itself be acknowledged to be the most extravagant and unlikely means of procuring the pardon of sin, that could have entered into the mind of man-to suppose that the sufferings and slaughter of any innocent animal could render the just God propitious to the real offender, while he beheld him besprinkled with its blood, or eating its mangled limbs, or when he perceived the savour of its roasting fat ascending up to heaven! And yet this very notion has prevailed in all ages and nations; and for some great purpose or other was inculcated by Revelation itself.

5-1 Sam. xii. 3.

Abel offered his acceptable offering from the firstlings of his flock. It was the grateful smell of a burning sacrifice, which is represented as inducing the Almighty to promise Noah that he would not again punish the wickedness of mankind by a general deluge.

The Patriarchs worshipped with sacrifice.

When the Gentiles had lost the knowledge of the true God, and adored in his stead their abominable idols, still they almost universally retained the notion, that the anger of their gods was to be appeased by bloody sacrifice. Nay, playing the fool· in their imaginations", and supposing the more excellent the victim the more acceptable the sacrifice, they not unfrequently immolated human beings, and sometimes even their own children, in their horrid rites.

Among the Jews, whose religious institutions and ceremonies were appointed and ordered, in their minutest circumstances, by immediate Revelation, we still find the expiatory sacrifice to be the leading and most essential object in their external and public worship. From all these facts we argue, that the sacrificing of animals, as a religious ceremony, was a divine appointment, destined to prefigure to fallen man the mode of his redemption through a crucified Saviour.

We may easily conceive, that it would soon have been understood among mankind, that a 5, a

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τα Εματαιώθησαν εν τοις διαλογισμοις. Rom. i. 21.

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