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vicarious punishment. Yet let it be remembered, as I have already remarked, that vicarious suffering is not to be considered as punishment in the same strict sense as that which is the precise penalty of the law, and is inflicted upon the sinner in his own person; and that it possesses not the same natural efficacy in cancelling guilt, but operates as a condition, designed and adapted to restore and preserve the authority of the violated law, and to obtain pardon for the sinner.

DISSERTATION II.

ON THE

SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.

CHAPTER I.

The general Business of Christ's Priesthood; the Order to which it belongs; and the Things by which he was especially consecrated to this Office.

THE subject of this Dissertation being the Sacrifice of Christ, I conceive it cannot be improper to make a few preliminary observations respecting his priesthood:-in the first place, on the general business of this office; secondly, on the order to which it belongs; and lastly, on the things by which he was especially consecrated to it.

The general business of his priesthood must be defined—an advocacy or mediation with God on the behalf of men. While his other offices, regal and prophetical, are exercised toward men, his priesthood is exercised toward God. For a king is God's vicegerent, and every prophet is his ambassador to men ; but a priest is an advocate for men with God. Hence we are said to "have Jesus Christ" as "an advocate "with the Father;"* Christ is said to "make inter"cession for us at the right hand of God," and "to

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appear in the presence of God for us." But, as these things will be more fully explained in another place, the mere mention of them is sufficient here.

I John ii. 1.

+ Rom. viii, 34.

+ Heb. ix. 24

II. The order of Christ's priesthood is explicitly declared in the scriptures, which describe him as

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priest after the order of Melchisedec," and specify two important points of difference between his priesthood and that of Aaron. First, the priesthood of Melchisedec, that great man of whom no history records the genealogy, or the birth, or the death, was confined to no particular family; but the priesthood of Aaron was committed exclusively to his family by a divine law. Secondly, the priesthood of Melchisedec was of such a nature, that the person invested with it would be a priest for ever, either in a shadowy figurative sense, in which Melchisedec, as we have before observed, is declared to be a priest for ever; or in a true and perfect sense, such as the eternity of the priesthood of Christ. He will exercise this office

in every age of the world; nor, as long as his advocacy or mediation shall be needed by his people, will he ever desert or discontinue it. In the priesthood of Aaron, on the contrary, those who died were succeeded by others in a continual series; and the office itself has long since been abolished in his family.

The opinion entertained by some,—that the sacrifices offered by Aaron were of a different kind from those which were offered by Melchisedec, that Aaron offered animals as well as inanimate things, and that Melchisedec offered nothing but bread and wine,appears to me to have no foundation. Melchisedec gave bread and wine to Abraham and his servants, on their return from a battle, in order to recruit their exhausted strength.* * And the sacred history contains plain intimations of the existence of a similar custom in that and the neighbouring countries on

* Gen. xiv, 18.

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such occasions.* Nor is Melchisedec called a priest, because he "brought forth bread and wine;" but to account for his solemn benediction of Abraham, which was part of the priestly office,† and also for Abraham's giving him a tenth of the spoils. He," says Moses, "was the priest of the most high God. "And he blessed him" (Abraham) " and said, Blessed "be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thine "hand. And he gave him tithes of all."

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There is no ground therefore, for the supposition that Melchisedec sacrificed nothing but bread and wine, or none but inanimate things; but sufficient reason for a contrary opinion. For, if his priesthood had nothing to do with bloody sacrifices, how came it to pass that Christ himself, whose priesthood is declared to be of the same kind as that of Melchisedec, offered his sacrifice by shedding his own blood?

Nor should we pay any attention to those who attribute to Christ a priesthood of the order of Aaron as well as of that of Melchisedec, and suppose that he offered a sacrifice by blood in the character of an Aaronic priest. The advocates of this opinion produce nothing sufficient to justify such a representation, It is repugnant to the express language of scripture ; which affirms that the priesthood of Christ was " NOT "after the order of Aaron,"§ and assigns this reason, that Christ descended from another family, and a different tribe, from that to which the Aaronic priesthood was confined by an inviolable law.

Jud. viii. 5, 6. 15.

Gen. xiv. 17-19.

* Deut. xxiii. 4, xxiii. 13. Num. vi. 23.

+ Deut, xxi. 5. I Chron. § Heb. vii. 11.

III. Our next inquiry respects those things by which the Son of God, the eternal Word, on his assumption of our nature, was initiated into his priesthood. It was in a very different way from that in which the Aaronie priests were consecrated to their office. They were consecrated by ablutions with purifying water, by cloathing with prescribed vestments, by an ointment composed of various perfumes, and by the blood of slaughtered beasts:* by which the virtues required in a priest were emblematically represented, but could not be conferred. But when God would have his Son to be a priest possessed of every qualification in absolute perfection, no one can doubt but he would initiate him into his priesthood by those very things which constitute such a priest. This being the case, let us examine,—first, wherein the absolute perfection of a priest consists; and in the next place, by what things Christ, as Mediator, attained that perfection: for it is evident that by those very things he must have been consecrated to the priesthood.

IV. To constitute a priest absolutely perfect, the three following things are indispensably necessary. First, he must have sufficient authority and favour with God, to be able effectually to commend all his people to him, and to render him propitious to them. Secondly, he must feel sufficient kindness and mercy towards men, to be inclined to a sedulous attention to these objects. Lastly, he must possess an immortal life, to be capable of the perpetual performance of them.. The necessity of the first of these requisites, in a perfect priest, appears from the design of the office itself. For as it is the business of a

See Diss. I. Chap. V.

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