history, which on these subjects preserves profound silence, and speaks of him only in his public character, and in relation to his office. He is an insulated individual, like a man fallen from the clouds, who had no earthly connexions, except that, as he was a priest and a king, there must have been persons for whom he ministered, and over whom he reigned. The similitude between our Saviour and Melchisedec may be traced in the two following particulars.

First, He had no predecessor in office. He was indeed made a priest after the order of Melchisedec; but you are not to understand that he was a priest of the same order, because, on this supposition, the resemblance between them would be destroyed in an essential particular. Christ did not succeed Melchisedek, but he is like him; and like him in this respect, that none was before him. Aaron and his sons were not his predecessors; for he could not have succeeded them unless he had belonged to the family to which the legal priesthood was confined by the express commandment of God. "It is evident," says Paul," that our Lord sprang out of Judah, of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood." He succeeded them, indeed, as the antitype succeeds the type; but his priesthood was of a different kind. Theirs was a shadow, but his was the truth; theirs consisted in offering animals upon the altar, but his in offering himself; theirs averted temporal punishments from the Israelites, but his has delivered mankind from the guilt of sin, and from eternal perdition.

Secondly, Jesus Christ has no successor in the priesthood. It is in the perpetuity of his office that the resemblance between him and Melchisedek principally consists. When Aaron died, Eleazar his son stood up in his room; and all the high-priests of that family were succeeded by their sons and relations, till the second temple was destroyed; but no person will ever succeed our Saviour and this difference between him and the priests of the law, was founded on two important circumstances:

:

In the first place, "They truly were many priests," as Paul says, “because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death." Notwithstanding the great dignity of their office, and the solemnities with which they were installed in it, they were but men, subject to infirmity and dissolution, like the persons for whom they ministered. "But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood." He likewise died; but the cases were totally dissimilar. The legal priests died, if I may speak so, out of office; but he died in it. Death was no part of their work, whereas to die was the chief duty incumbent upon him. When they fell under the power of death, they could not extricate themselves from it, and return to life and the service of the sanctuary; but he had power to lay down his life and to take it again. Death was so far from putting an end to his priesthood, that it did not even interrupt the exercise of it.

In the second place, A succession of the legal priests was necessary, because the sacrifices which they offered could not expiate sin. Notwithstanding their mortality, if any of them could have appeased divine justice by his oblations, there would have been no necessity that another should rise up in his stead. But the legal sacrifices could not atone for past sins, and still less for those which were future; the blood of an irrational animal was not equivalent to the blood and life of the transgressor himself. Our Lord Jesus Christ "hath by one offering for ever perfected them that were sanctified."§ His sacrifice removed the sins of his people in one day; it established, upon a solid basis, peace between God and his offending creatures; it is the ground. of an everlasting dispensation of pardon and mercy. Hence it appears that † Ib. vii. 23. + Ib. vii. 24. § Ib. x. 14.

* Heb. vii. 14,

there was no reason why another priest should succeed him, and that no place was left for the ministrations of another, which could serve no valuable purpose, as the great design of the office had been already accomplished, namely, the expiation of sin.

The death of Christ was a sacrifice, not for one generation alone, but for men in every age. He ever lives to make intercession in the heavenly sanctuary; and hence he is "able to save to the uttermost all them that come unto God by him."* No other priest, therefore, can arise. There remains nothing for him to do. Christ has made sacrifice and oblation to cease, and has gone into heaven to appear in the presence of God for us.

It is derogatory to the honour of Christ, and subversive of the doctrine of the Scripture concerning his priesthood, to maintain that any person is now invested with the priestly office, and performs its proper work. It implies that he did not fully accomplish the design of his office, and destroys the resemblance between him and Melchizedec. Yet the church of Rome calls her ministers priests; (and so likewise does the church of England, from an imitation which is the more inexcusable, as she rejects the doctrine upon which alone an argument could be founded for giving them this title ;)—the church of Rome calls her ministers priests, and affirms that they perform the proper work of the priesthood by offering sacrifice. Jesus Christ, into whose body and blood the bread and wine in the eucharist are transubstantiated, is offered up in the mass by the officiating minister, as a sacrifice for the dead and the living. If this opinion were true, the ministers of antichrist would be more truly priests than Aaron and his sons; because the latter offered only typical sacrifices, while the former daily repeat the great sacrifice which procures eternal redemption. But this superstructure rests upon a foundation of sand. The sacred supper is merely a commemorative ordinance. "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." The Christian religion acknowledges only one priest, who was consecrated by God himself, and is exalted to heaven. Those who assume this character encroach upon his prerogative; and to suppose them to be what they pretend, would be to consider our Redeemer as a priest, not after the order of Melchizedec, but after the order of Aaron, which admitted successors.

Jesus Christ excelled all that were before him in respect of the order of his priesthood. There are other points of difference, from which it appears that, according to the words of an apostle, "he has obtained a more excellent ministry," and of which I shall briefly take notice in the sequel of this lecture. First, He was superior to all other priests in personal dignity. They were "men having infirmity," subject to disease and death, and not to these alone, but also to error and sin; and therefore they needed to offer for themselves as well as for the people. How much superior is our High-priest! Considered as a man, he is distinguished from all other men, not only by his miraculous conception, his sublime wisdom, and his stupendous works, but by his immaculate purity, which he retained amidst the strongest temptations. But besides his pre-eminence in moral worth, he was still more exalted above all who might be compared with him, by the dignity of his nature, for in consequence of his mysterious union to the second person of the Trinity, he was truly the Son of God. While he is said to have "purged our sins," he is described as "the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person, and as upholding all things by the word of his power."§ Surely, he is the most glorious of all the ministers of God! and the office derives a lustre from him who sustained it.

Secondly, the manner in which he was invested with his office was pecu

Heb. vii. 25.

† Ibid. ix. 28.

Ibid. viii. 6.

§ Ibid. i. 3.

liar; and it is expressly mentioned in order to demonstrate his superiority. "And inasmuch as not without an oath he was made a priest, (for those priests were made without an oath, but this with an oath, by him that said unto him, The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec,) by so much was Jesus made a surety of a better covenant." This circumstance alone is sufficient to prove the pre-eminence of his priesthood. It is not upon slight occasions that God interposes by an oath; and if he did not swear when Aaron and his sons were set apart to the service of the altar, but observed this unusual solemnity in the consecration of his Son, may we not conclude that there were interests of far greater importance depending upon his ministry? The design of the priesthood of Aaron was to prevent the dissolution of the covenant, which God had made with the Israelites. The design of the priesthood of Christ was the establishment of a better covenant, by which God would be glorified, and our lost world redeemed. The oath was intended to assure us that God himself invested him with the office; that as a priest he is the object of his highest approbation; that he will never take the priesthood from him, nor cease to be pleased with the atonement which he made by the effusion of his blood. "The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent."

Thirdly, The oblation which he presented was far more valuable than the ancient sacrifices. He offered not the firstlings of the flock, and the choicest of the herd, but himself. He was at once the priest and the sacrifice. What raised the worth of his sacrifice above all calculation was his personal dignity, of which we have already spoken. He who was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem was the Lord of glory, although the princes of this world did not recognise him in such profound humiliation; the blood with which the church was redeemed was the blood of God, although the priests and rulers of the Jews, who saw it streaming from his wounds, despised it as the blood of an impious malefactor. The Godhead, it is acknowledged, is impassible; but from the union of the two natures of Christ, there resulted a communication of properties, in consequence of which the acts of both belonged to the same person, and are predicated of each other. That nature died which alone could die; but it was the nature of him who was higher than the kings of the earth and the angels of heaven, because he and his Father are one. Compared with this oblation, those which were offered with such pomp in the temple of Jerusalem were weak and childish things, and would be altogether unworthy of notice, were it not that God himself appointed them, and that they derived a borrowed importance from their typical relation to the sacrifice of Christ, the only sacrifice which God ever accepted for its own sake, and which satisfied the demands of his justice. Accordingly, the legal sacrifices are declared to be inefficient, and are laid aside, while the sacrifice of Christ is substituted in their room. "Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me in burntofferings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo! I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first," says the apostle, "that he may establish the second."t

Fourthly, Let us observe for whom Jesus Christ officiated as a priest. The sacrifices of the Mosaic law were appointed for the Israelites; the annual atonement was made for none but the twelve tribes, and their names alone were engraven on the breastplate which the High-priest wore when he went into the holy of holies. Jesus Christ is the High-priest of the human race, and his blood was shed for the Gentiles as well as the Jews. "He is a pro

pitiation for the sins of the whole world."* He suffered, therefore, not in the temple which was the sanctuary of the Jews, nor within the precincts of Jerusalem, the capital of their country, lest it should be imagined that they were the sole objects of redemption, but without the gates of the city, to signify that he was the Saviour of mankind, and that there was salvation through his cross to those who should turn their eyes to him from the ends of the earth. We do not affirm that he died for every individual of the human race. This extent some have assigned to his atonement; but, although it is their design to give a magnificent idea of its efficacy, their doctrine is really derogatory to its excellence. For upon this supposition it will follow, that as every individual is not saved, his sacrifice has failed of its end in the case of those who perish in guilt, and his blood has been shed in vain. He died for those whom Lis Father gave to him; but how great their number is, no man can tell. All ages have experienced the benefit of his death, the influence of which was retrospective and prospective, extending backward to the beginning of time, and forward to its close. For his sake God was merciful to those who lived before his coming in the flesh, pardoning them in the view of the satisfaction to be afterwards made; and now we know that there is salvation in no other, and that there is not another name under heaven given among men, by which they can be saved.

Lastly, The effect of his sacrifice demonstrates its transcendent excellence. No person, who has just notions of the evil and demerit of sin, can believe that the sacrifices of the law could appease the justice of God, and obtain his favour to the guilty. Reason gives a ready assent to the declaration of an apostle, that "it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." Their sole effect was to deliver the offerer from temporal punishment, whether to be inflicted by the civil magistrate or by the hand of God himself. He was permitted to live, and to enjoy his privileges, although he deserved to be cut off for his transgression from among his people. But he had no security against eternal condemnation, and fell under it at death, if he had not an interest by faith in that better sacrifice, of which those which he had presented were merely shadows. The oblation of Christ satisfied every demand of justice, and cancelled the sentence pronounced by the moral law upon all who have violated its precepts: "He finished the transgression, and made an end of sins, and made reconciliation for iniquity, and brought in everlasting righteousness." Hence forgiveness is preached through him; and those who believe" are justified from all things, from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses."§ Nothing is necessary to our full pardon, but faith in the great propitiation; no supplementary penances of our own, no kind of satisfactory works. A foundation is thus laid for perfect peace of mind; and the only reason that believers do not always enjoy it, is the weakness and unsteadiness of their faith. No purpose of vengeance against them ever arises in the mind of God, however great are their provocations. He may frown upon them; but it is the frown of a father, who will not cast off his son, although he is displeased with his conduct; he may chasten, but it is the hand of love which wields the rod, and the design of every stroke is the good of the sufferer.

It appears from what has been said, that the priesthood of Christ is not a speculative point, but a doctrine intimately connected with our duties and our hopes. It is the foundation of all acceptable religion; and had he not sustained this office, intercourse between heaven and earth would have been for ever suspended, and God and men would have been separated by irreconcilable hostility. The religion of man in a state of innocence was founded on the + Dan. ix. 24. § Acts xiii. 39.

• 1 John ii. 2. † Heb. x. 4.

natural relations subsisting between him and his Creator, to whom, as the author of his being, he owed obedience, and from whose goodness he was authorized to hope for felicity continued through an endless duration. But when sin had introduced mutual alienation, the interposition of a third party was necessary to adjust their opposing interests, and to unite them in the bond of friendship. As God can thus be merciful without ceasing to be just, so the way is prepared for the acceptance of our duties, notwithstanding the imperfections with which they are attended. Coming from us, who are so polluted that every thing is tainted which we touch, they are unworthy of the divine regard; but they are purified by passing through the hands of "the Minister of the true tabernacle, which the Lord hath pitched, and not men."* This is an unspeakable advantage which Christians derive from the priesthood of Christ; for, although they should multiply their services, and perform them with assiduity and earnestness, they would not be pleasing to God, if he did not recommend them. As, while the sword of the cherubim waved dreadfully before the gate of paradise, our first parents could not have forced their way to the tree of life, the seat of immortality; so, the curse of the broken law rendered access to the throne of grace equally impossible to us their descendants; but Christ is "the way, the truth, and the life," or the true and living way; and "having him as our High-priest over the house of God, we may draw near with true hearts in the full assurance of faith."

LECTURE LVII.

ON THE PRIESTLY OFFICE OF CHRIST.

Death of Christ, a propitiatory Sacrifice-Socinian View of his Death; Its Defects-The middle Scheme: Objections to it-Proof of the catholic Doctrine-The Idea of sacrificial Atonement prevalent among the Heathen-Sacrifices of Atonement, a Part of the Jewish Worship-Import of the Language of Scripture respecting the Death of Christ.

THE death of Christ is one of the most remarkable events recorded in history. Many ages before it happened, it was foretold by those men whom God raised up to uphold the authority of his law among his chosen people, and to direct their thoughts and expectations to a future and more perfect dispensation. David, Isaiah, and Daniel described the Messiah not only as a person of high dignity, and the Author of the most glorious works, but also as one who should lead a lowly and afflicted life, and terminate his labours and sorrows by a painful and violent death. The cause or occasion of it was singular; for it was not the effect of accident, or disease, or the decay of nature, but was inflicted by a judicial sentence pronounced upon him for the supposed crimes of imposture and blasphemy. The obscuration of the sun at mid-day without any natural cause, the earthquake which clove asunder the rocks and laid open the graves, and the rending of the veil of the temple from top to bottom, proclaimed that he who was hanging on the cross was no ordinary sufferer. He had not lain three full days in the grave, when he was restored to life by the power of God; and, after an interval of a few weeks, he ascended to heaven in presence of his disciples. Ten days after, he poured out the Holy Ghost, by whom they were enabled to publish to men of every nation,

Heb. viii. 2.