divine truth, rather than in opposition to your humble

servant.

But, admitting that Christ was God as well as man, how was this infinite sacrifice made? Will any one admit that the divine nature suffered? This never has been, nor is it possible that it ever should be, admitted by any rational being. Then, who, or what, did suffer? Answer: The man Christ Jesus. And if it was the human nature only that suffered, then, after all, it was nothing more than a human suffering. These ideas must be so plain and clear to every one, that they need not be pursued any further. But

How was even this suffering necessary to enable God to forgive sin? How was any sacrifice to divine justice necessary? May God pardon my error, if it be one, when I say there was no necessity for the suffering of Christ, as a satisfaction to divine justice. For aught I can see, or aught I have been able to learn to the contrary, God could just as consistently forgive sin before, as since; neither does he now forgive sin, on account of, or with the least reference to, the sufferings of Christ; any more than he does on account of the sufferings of the apostles, or any one else who has suffered in the same cause. "As by man came death, so by man came the resurrection of the dead." If Jesus had not died, he could not have been raised from the dead. In this sense, his death was necessary. It was also necessary that his death should have been public; so there could be no dispute about its reality. He was therefore delivered, though by a traitor, according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God: and by wicked hands he was crucified and slain, though it was what God, by his hand, and by his counsel, had determined should be done. (See Acts, ii. 23. iv. 27, 28.)

These things were all necessary in the wisdom of God; as Jesus was to set an example which had never been before set by man, and which, I have reason to fear, has been but very rarely, if ever, fully followed by any ; i. e. of pure and perfect love to the chief of sinners. While we lament, therefore, the sufferings of Christ, viewed as such,

and lament that there is too much of the same spirit yet in the world, which caused those sufferings, and which has caused the suffering of many others; yet we rejoice at the exhibition of divine love which shone through his sufferings: believing, as we do, that nothing short of a perfect knowledge of the truth, for whose sake he suffered, could ever have enabled him thus to triumph in the hour of persecution and death.

The blessed Jesus, who could thus pray for his murderous enemies, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do, possessed LOVE which was stronger than death. The sufferings of Christ, therefore, hold a conspicuous place in the Christian system: but not to satisfy an infinite dissatisfaction; not to appease divine wrath; or to render God any more placable, merciful, or propitious to man. None of these things were ever necessary and if they had been necessary, ten thousand such sacrifices, admitting the Deity unchangeable, would not have accomplished them.

Now where is there a single example, in the scriptures of divine truth, to justify this scheme?-i. e. the scheme we have been refuting? Not one. While we

find abundant to the contrary.

When the man was found who had fell among thieves, in travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho, there is no account of any previous satisfaction's being made to the law against his travelling that road, or for any thing else, before the good Samaritan could pour in the oil and the wine into his wounds, and make all other necessary provisions concerning his cure. When the prodigal returned to his father's house, there is no account of any satisfaction, which was necessary first to be made to the father, on account of the loss of his services for so long a time; or that any satisfaction had been made, by the elder brother, or by any one else, on whose account he was now received. When the lost sheep was found, we have no account of any damage having been paid to the owner, on account of its having gone astray; but the owner takes it on his shoulder and goes home rejoicing. Whatever damage he had thought of before, while the

sheep was absent from the fold, and while he was in search after it, yet, having found it, he thinks no more of the damage; being fully satisfied with the recovery of his property.

The sacrifices most acceptable to God are, a contrite penitent heart, and a devotedness to his service. In this sense, the apostle exhorts his brethren, by the mercies of God, to present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which was their reasonable service. (Rom. xii. 1.) And in this sense, i. e. by being devoted wholly to the service of his God and Father, Jesus Christ, through the eternal spirit, offered himself without spot to God. (Heb. ix. 14.) And it is a knowledge of these things, and a compliance with this example, which alone can purge our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. In this way, and in this way only, viz. by being devoted to the service of God, can we be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless. (2 Pet. iii. 14.)

But may I not be permitted to ask, without either alarming any one, or giving offence, how can the blood of Christ, in any possible supposed literal sense, either now, or at any future time, cleanse our conscience from dead works? It may do it, to be sure, in a similar sense as the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctified to the purifying of the flesh: (Heb. ix. 13:) for this never could have been understood only in a figurative sense: and the blood of Christ, in my humble opinion, ought to be understood in a similar figurative sense. And whoever undertakes to prove from the scriptures, that Jesus was made a sacrifice for sin, in any other sense, will find, or else I am altogether mistaken, that they have undertaken a very difficult task.*

"Because the word atonement" (says Dr. Priestley)" frequently occurs in the Old Testament, and in some cases atonements are said to have been made for sin by sacrifices, this whole business has, on this account more particularly, been thought to refer to the death of Christ, as the only atoning sacrifice. But this notion must

But, before I dismiss this article, I must take notice of another system of atonement, which has been called, for the sake of distinction, especially in Eng

be given up, if we consider the meaning of atonement under the Jewish dispensation.

"From comparing all the passages in which atonement is mentioned, it is evident that it signifies the making of any thing clean, or holy, so as to be fit to be used in the service of God, or, when applied to a person, fit to come into the presence of God; God being considered as, in a peculiar manner, the king and sovereign of the Israelitish nation, and, as it were, keeping a court among them. Thus atonement was said to be made for the altar, Exod. xxix. 36, and for a house after having been infected with leprosy, Lev. xiv. 58. Aaron made atonement for the Levites, Num. viii. 12, when they were dedicated to their office and ministry, when no sin or offence is said to have been done away by it. Atonement was also made at the purification of a leper, Lev. xiv. 18. Burnt offerings that were wholly voluntary are said to be accepted to make atonement for the offerer, Lev. i. 3. Atonements were also appointed after involuntary uncleanness, and sins of ignorance, as well as in some cases of wilful transgression, upon repentance and restitution; but in this case it had no relation to the pardon of sin in the sight of God, but only to the decency and propriety of public worship, for which a man who had so offended was considered as disqualified. Guilt, in a moral sense, is never said to be atoned for by any sacrifice, but the contrary is strongly expressed by David and others.

"The English word atonement occurs but once in the New Testament, and in other places the same word in the original xaraλλ¤ɣn, is rendered reconciliation; and this word is never used by the Se venty in any passage relating to legal atonements.

"Had the death of Christ been the proper atoning sacrifice for the sins of men, and as such, been prefigured by the atonements in the Jewish dispensation, we might have expected not only to have been expressly told so, (if not from the first, at least after the fulfilment of the prophetic type,) but also that the time, and other circumstances of the death of Christ, should have corresponded to those of the types of it. Christ being put to death at the feast of passover, might lead us to imagine that his death had some reference to that business; but if he had died as a proper expiatory sacrifice, it might have been expected that he would have died on the day of expiation, and at the time when the high priest was entering into the holy of holies. Had this been the case, I much doubt whether it would have been in the power of any reasons, though ever so solid, to have prevented men from considering the one as a proper type of the other. Now the want of this coincidence should lead our minds off from making such a comparison." See Hist. Corrup vol. i. p. 192-195, Birm. edit. 1782.

land, (i. e. by its enemies,) the Antinomian system; but which has been, and by some still is, considered the only pure system of Universalism; that is to say, the only system of the gospel.

There were Antinomians, it is true, who were not Universalists, extending the system only to the elect: of course, it will be seen that this system differs from Antinomianism, in the same sense as the system of Universalism, by Mr. Huntington, differs from Calvinism: and as Mr. H. called his system Calvinism improved; so this system might be styled, not very improperly, Antinomianism improved.

This system agrees with Calvinism, as well as with many others, in admitting the infinity of sin, or the demerits of sin, and also in the vicarious sufferings of Christ, as a sacrifice for sin, &c. and pleads for the salvation of the church, which, according to the original system, is only an elected number, but, according to the improved system, which is now best known by the Rellyan system, is the whole human family, (all being considered as elected and chosen in Christ,) on the principle that Christ, our vicar, has fully discharged and cancelled the debt due to divine justice, by his vicarious sufferings and all atoning death.

This system agrees also with Sabellianism, in supposing that Christ had no human soul, but that, instead thereof, the eternal God-the great JEHOVAH-animated his body, so that in reality (as it respects his being) he was very God, as well as the Head of every man.

But here is the summum bonum of the system-in Christ, God was so united to the human nature, that all their acts became his; in a direct and proper sense, so as to render him answerable for them all; and all his acts became theirs, in equally a full and perfect sense. So, he becoming liable for the sins of the whole world, suffered the full demands of the law, not as an innocent person for the guilty, but as being the guilty, in virtue of the union which subsisted between him and the members of his mystical body, human nature; while, at the same