was to be sprinkled by the finger of the priest seven times before or towards the sanctuary.

VII. We must now revert to another point which we have before treated more at large; namely, that all the piacular victims whose carcasses were burned without the camp, and which in a more eminent degree than any others prefigured Christ as a piacular victim, were so contaminated with the sins of the whole congregation symbolically transferred to them, that they were required to be carried forth without the camp as polluted things; and those who carried them forth were not permitted to return to the camp, without having first been purified with water.

And it is a circumstance of divine arrangement not to be passed over, that the more clearly any victim prefigured Christ as a victim, it exhibited the clearer representation of the sins of the offerer being transferred to it. This served to indicate that the punishment of our sins was inflicted upon Christ, and that he expiated our sins by his blood, in the same manner in which among the Jews the sins of the offerers were expiated by the blood of the piacular victims. If this was not the case, for what purpose have the scriptures represented Christ as a piacular victim, his blood as the blood of a piacular victim, and the atonement made by his blood, as made by the blood of a piacular victim? For what purpose, I ask, have all these representations been given, if the piacular victims of the Jews expiated sins in one way, and Christ, whom nevertheless the Jewish victims prefigured as a piacular victim, in another way; the Jewish victims by a vicarious punishment, but Christ without any such punishment?

*D. I. c. vii. § 1, 2. c. xxi. § 3.

It forms no sufficient objection, that Christ devoted and offered himself to God without the solemn rites practised in the sacrifices of the Jews, such as imposition of hands on a victim about to be slain, performed before the consecrated altar, and the sprinkling of the blood upon the altar. For it was the divine will, that those things which under the old covenant were prefigured by external rites, should under the new covenant be exhibited in their truth and simplicity, divested of all ritual shadows. Thus the sacrifice of Christ was unattended with that sacrificial pomp which accompanied the sacrifices of the Jews. Yet the things prefigured by the Jewish rites were, as the nature of the antitype required, far more fully and effectually displayed in the sacrifice of Christ than in their sacrifices. Wherefore none of those things which were prefigured by the sacrificial rites among the Jews, and least of all, the proper nature of vicarious punishment, must be abstracted from the sacrifice of Christ. This would be contrary to the perfection of his sacrifice, to the design and appointment of God himself, to the authority of scripture, and to the nature of an antitype, the efficacy of which is invariably similar, and likewise invariably superior, to that of its types.

VIII. But these points have been argued more at large in another place. Let us now return to Isaiah, whose declaration* that "Surely he hath borne our "griefs and carried our sorrows," I understand to contain the same sentiment which is conveyed in the passages already adduced, as well as the other idea mentioned by St. Matthew:† who states these words of the prophet to have been fulfilled when Christ + Matt. viii. 17.

Isaiah liii. 4.

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restored the sick to bodily health.* For Grotius on this passage correctly remarks: As the transactions ' of ancient events prefigured Christ, so some of the 'actions of Christ himself served to signify others. 'It cannot be doubted that the benefit of health restored to the body exhibited a figure of remission of sins, and health restored to the mind. The prophecy, therefore, was twice fulfilled; first, when 'Christ laboured till evening, employing himself in healing the maladies of others, as Matthew here 'shews and afterwards, when by enduring the pu'nishment of the cross he obtained remission of sins ' for us.'

And, indeed, unless the prophet had contemplated the Messiah's death, when he said, Surely he hath "borne our griefs and carried our sorrows," there could have been no reason for his immediately adding, "Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, "and afflicted:" that is, smitten on account of his own sins; for such was the supposition of those whom the prophet here personated. For it was not because he healed bodily diseases, how diligent soever he may have been in this work, but because he suffered the punishment of the cross, and was given up to death, that he could be " esteemed smitten of God." Whoever will consider these things, I think must be convinced that the words, "Surely he hath borne

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* TR.---Dr. Magee suggests that all apparent dissonance between the prophet and evangelist will be removed, if we understand 1 and adeveras of bodily pains and distempers, and 18 and vocous of diseases and torments of the mind. Dr. M. has adduced many examples of the use of these words to justify these interpretations; and he accordingly refers the former clause to Christ's removing the sicknesses of men by miraculous cures, and the latter to his bearing their sins upon the Discourses and Dissertations, vol. I. p. 412---431. Z

cross.

our griefs and carried our sorrows," contain the same sentiment as the declarations which follow them. "But he was wounded for our transgressions, The Lord hath

"he was bruised for our iniquities. "laid on him the iniquity of us all. "make his soul an offering for sin,

When he shall he shall see his

"seed, he shall prolong his days. He bare the sin of "many." And the import of all these declarations, I trust, has been satisfactorily ascertained.

IX. But whatever was intended in these passages of Isaiah, is also intended by St. Peter, when, in allusion to the language of the prophet, he says of Jesus Christ:* "Who his own self bare our sins in "his own body on the tree." If this passage be rendered, according to Crellius,† carried our sins up to the tree, it is equally in favour of our doctrine. For those evils which Christ bore upon the tree, or, carried up to the tree, were in his body, in which he is said to have borne them upon the tree, or to have carried them up to the tree. The evils which were in his body were not his own vices or sins properly so called, but were the punishments of our sins, which throughout the scriptures are commonly designated as sins. And these punishments could in no sense be in the body of Christ, without being endured by him. But if Christ endured in his body the punishment of our sins, he clearly suffered a vicarious punishment. And forasmuch as he voluntarily took upon himself the punishments appointed and proposed to him for our sins, it was for this end, as is expressed in the next clause," that we being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness," and devote all our efforts to the pursuit of it. For nothing is more calculated to

* I Peter ii. 24.

Contra Grot. c. i. p. 34.

excite and inflame our love to Christ than that infinite love of Christ to us, which is manifested in his voluntary submission to a most cruel death on our account: and true love to Christ is the most powerful motive to evangelical obedience. Hence that declaration of St. Paul:*"For the love of Christ constraineth us; “because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then

were all dead and that he died for all, that they “which live should not henceforth live unto them"selves, but unto him that died for them, and rose "again."

X. But it is urged, that any one may well be said to bear sins, who on the account of sins sus'tains a heavy burden of calamities, tortures, and death, although there be no real punishment or vengeance in the case.' This is the language of Crellius, but evidently without reason. For when we affirm that the phrase, to bear sins, signifies some punishment, we rely not upon the mere force of the phrase itself, but form our opinion on a consideration of the passages in which it is found, and the nature of the subject. The scope of the passages already quoted, in which this phrase occurs, fixes its meaning, as we have already shown, to vicarious punishment; and the subject itself rejects every other interpretation of it. In these passages Christ is introduced as a piacular victim. So Isaiah has introduced him in express terms, and he is followed by St. Peter. The proper nature and design of a piacular victim is exhibited, as we have elsewhere proved at large, in vicarious punishment: which, although according to the opinion of Crellius it may want the character of vindictive, not being inflicted for the demerit of + Contra Grot. c. i. p. 32.

II Cor. v. 14, 15.