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chooses to bestow eternal salvation, them he also commends to God the Father.

To conclude this argument, therefore: since Christ is expressly called a priest in the scriptures, and since nothing can be adduced to justify our denying him the real office which that term imports, the necessary conclusion is, that the priesthood of Christ is a priesthood properly so called.

If any person, relying upon new subtleties should say, that the priesthood of Christ is indeed immediately exercised towards God, and that Christ commends us and our prayers to God, but that this is no proof of his having a true and real priesthood; such a person, admitting the thing, would raise a dispute about a name, the most vain of all controversies; and would discover more subtlety than Crellius him. self: for to divest Christ of a true and real priesthood, is no other than to deny that he exercises immediately towards God any office at all. Having made these observations respecting the Priesthood of Christ, we now proceed to his Sacrifice.

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CHAPTER III.

To what Class of Sacrifices the Sacrifice of Christ belongs, and in what it consists.

THE sacrifices prescribed to the Jewish people were of various classes. Some were burnt offerings; others, piacular offerings; others, peace offerings; others, similar to the peace offerings, yet not precisely the same: there were also different kinds, both of piacular offerings, and of peace offerings: of all which we have treated in the first Dissertation. If it be inquired to which class the Sacrifice of Christ belongs, the scriptures will easily determine this question. He is declared to have put away sin by "the sacrifice of himself," to have " by himself

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purged our sins," to have "sanctified the people "with his own blood," and to have "offered" to God "one sacrifice for sins:"* whence it is evident that his sacrifice belongs to the piacular class. I appre hend, however, that we are indebted to his sacrifice, not only for pardon of sins, but also for the aids of the Holy Spirit, and all other things pertaining to our eternal salvation; these blessings having been procured by his blood. For as all the sacrifices of the Jews, accumulated together, were offered in order to obtain the benefits of the present life; so I consider the one sacrifice of Christ as having procured all things relating to eternal life, And I am confirmed in this opinion, because all the sacrifices of the Jews, though with various degrees of clearness or obscurity, prefigured the sacrifice of Christ. Nor is it to be wondered at if that sacrifice, which procures

*Heb. ix, 26. i. 3. xiii. 12. x, 19.

for us with God the grace connected with eternal life, should also procure every thing else necessary to our attainment of that life.

II. Having ascertained to what class the sacrifice of Christ must be referred, we proceed to show in what it consists. And never having seen this subject sufficiently explained, we shall be the more careful in discussing it. To this end it is necessary to remember, that the victims whose carcasses were burned without the camp typified the sacrifice of Christ more evidently than any others; and that among these victims, those whose blood was sprinkled in the holy of holies on the day of atonement, did this more clearly than those whose blood was only carried as occasion required, into the outer sanctuary: but on these things we have sufficiently enlarged in the first Dissertation.

Those victims, therefore, with which the sacrifice of Christ must be compared as its most eminent types, were the young bullock and he goat, the former offered in sacrifice for the high priest and the family of Aaron, the other for the whole congregation of the people, on the day of atonement. These victims were first brought by the high priest himself to the altar that stood in the court of the priests. In the next place, being thus offered to God, for the victim was offered at the time of its being placed before the altar; they were slain by him near the same altar. After this he carried their blood into the innermost sanctuary, and sprinkled it, as we have elsewhere stated, burned the entrails upon the altar, and took care that the bodies should be wholly consumed by fire without the camp, or without the city of Jerusalem. In imbruing the altar with the blood and entrails, the

high priest acted in his own pontifical character; but in offering and slaying the victims, he represented the whole nation. For in the sacrifices of individuals, every one was commanded to bring his own victim to the altar, to consecrate or devote it with his own hand, and then to slay it. Hence it is evident that those who performed these offices, which were performed, sometimes by some of the elders, sometimes by the high priest himself, respecting the sacrifices offered on behalf of the whole congregation, manifestly represented that congregation during their discharge of such services.

III. From the rites connected with those sacrifices, which beyond all others pre-eminently typified the sacrifice of Christ, it is plain that Christ accomplished his sacrifice. by three things:-By his voluntary oblation of himself to a bloody death, by his death itself,-and by his entrance into heaven as a victim that had been slain, and with a mind so disposed towards men, as to commend them to God.

The first of these things, in which his sacrifice consisted, the Son of God performed, when he voluntarily offered himself to the Father to undergo the death which awaited him. This we learn, both from his words and actions on that occasion. In the first place, when he was about to die, his language was;* "For their sakes I sanctify myself;" that is, as the word sanctify sometimes imports,† and as it must necessarily be understood here, according to the explanation of Chrysostom, I offer myself to thee

*John xvii. 19.

+ The word ayaw, like the Hebrew wp is sometimes equivalent to #goopigw. See Septuag. Levit. xxii. 2, 3. I Chron, xxiii. 13.

Ad loc. Homil. 72.

'as a sacrifice."* In the next place, it must be observed, that the prayers with which Christ consecrated or devoted himself to his death,† were in some respect similar to those with which we have shown in another place, that the Jewish high priest consecrated or offered the victims to God before the altar on the day of atonement. For as the high priest, when he offered those victims to God, prayed for salvation, first, on behalf of himself and his own family; secondly, for all the family of Aaron; and lastly, for the whole congregation: so Christ, when consecrating himself to death, commended to God in solemn prayers, first, himself; secondly, his apostles; and lastly, all who should afterwards believe on him. Hence it is inferred, that when our Lord uttered these prayers he then offered himself to God as a victim, typified by the victims already mentioned. In the last place he verified all this by his own act. For as soon as he had finished these prayers, he voluntarily went to the very place, whence he knew that he should immediately be led to judgment, and then to the cross, to be slain as an expiatory sacrifice: so that, beyond all doubt, the words "I sanctify "myself," were equivalent to saying: 'I offer myself 'to be slain as a piacular victim.'

The second of those things in which his sacrifice consisted, our Lord accomplished, when he suffered death for our sins without the city of Jerusalem, where those victims used to be burned, which were his most eminent types.

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*TR.—The same explanation is given by Cyril of Alexandria, who paraphrases the clause thus: I present and devote myself an offering with ' out spot to God even the Father.' De Adorat. L. x. et alibi. Apud Suicer. Thesaur. tom. 1, col. 56.

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