came a rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple: he went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered. And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed (q):" and thus it appears that Christ was BURIED.

The article concludes with stating, that the object of Christ's passion was to RECONCILE

THE FATHER TO US, AND TO BE A SACRIFICE NOT ONLY FOR ORIGINAL GUILT, BUT ALSO

FOR ACTUAL SINS OF MEN. By original guilt is meant that guilt which was incurred by the disobedience of Adam, and transmitted to all his posterity; and by actual sins of men are meant, those sins which individuals actually commit, "for there is no man that sinneth not (r)." I shall transcribe bishop Burnet's excellent explanation and proof of this part of the article, to which it will be unnecessary to make any addition: "The notion of an expiatory sacrifice which was then, when the New Testament was written, well understood all the world over, both by Jew and Gentile, was this, that the sin of

one

(9) Matt. c. 27. v. 57-60. (7) 1 Kings, c. 8. v. 46.

one person was transferred on a man or beast, who was upon that devoted, and offered up to God, and suffered in the room of the offending person; and by this oblation the punishment of the sin being laid on the sacrifice, an expiation was made for sin, and the sinner was believed to be reconciled to God. This, as appears through the whole book of Leviticus, was the design and effect of the sin and trespass offerings among the Jews, and more particularly of the goat that was offered up for the sins of the whole people on the day of atonement. This was a piece of religion well known both to Jew and Gentile, that had a great many phrases belonging to it, such as the sacrifices being offered for, or instead of sin, and in the name, or on the account, of the sinner; its bearing of sin, and becoming sin, or the sinoffering; its being the reconciliation, the atonement, and the redemption of the sinner, by which the sin was no more imputed, but forgiven, and for which the sinner was accepted. When, therefore, this whole set of phrases in its utmost extent, is very often, and in a great variety, applied to the death of Christ, it is not possible for us to preserve any reverence for the New Testament, or the writers of it, so far as to think them even honest men, not to say inspired men, if we can imagine that in so sacred and important a matter

L 2

matter they could exceed so much as to represent that to be our sacrifice which is not truly so this is a point which will not bear figures and amplifications: it must be treated of strictly and with a just exactness of expression. Christ is called the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world (s);' he is said to have borne our sins in his own body (t);' to have been made sin for us (u); it is said that ' he gave his life a ransom for many (r); that

he was the propitiation for the sins of the whole world (y);' and that we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins (z); it is said, that he has reconciled us to his Father in his cross, and in the body of his flesh through death (a);' that he, by his own blood, entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us (b);' that ' once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin, by the sacrifice of himself (c);' that he was once offered to bear the sins of many (d);' that we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Christ, once for all (e) :'

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and that after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, he sat down for ever on the right hand of God (f). It is said, that ، we enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, that is, the blood of the new covenant, by which we are sanctified (g);' that he hath sanctified the people. with his own blood (h);' and was the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant (i);' that' we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot (k);' and that Christ suffered once for sin, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God (1).' In these, and in a great many more passages that lie spread in all the parts of the New Testament, it is as plain as words can make any thing, that the death of Christ is proposed to us as our sacrifice and reconciliation, our atonement and redemption. So it is not possible for any man, who considers all this, to imagine that Christ's death was only a confirmation of his Gospel, a pattern of a holy and patient suffering of death, and a necessary preparation to his resurrection, by which he gave us a clear proof of a resurrection, and by consequence of eternal life,

(f) Heb. c. 10. v. 12.
(h) Heb. c. 13. v. 12.
(k) 1 Pet. c. 1. v. 19.

as

(g) Heb. c. 10. v. 19. (i) Heb. c. 13. v. 20. (1) 1 Pet. c. 3. v. 18:

as by his doctrine he had showed us the way to it. By this all the high commendations of his death amount only to this, that he by dying has given a vast credit and authority to his Gospel, which was the powerfulest mean possible to redeem us from sin, and to reconcile us to God: but this is so contrary to the whole design of the New Testament, and to the true import of that great variety of phrases in which this matter is set out, that at this rate of expounding Scripture we can never know what we may build upon, especially when the great importance of this thing, and of our having right notions concerning it, is well considered. St. Paul does, in his Epistle to the Romans, state an opposition between the death of Christ and the sin of Adam, the ill effects of the one being removed by the other; but he plainly carries the death of Christ much farther, than that it had only healed the wound that was given by Adam's sin; for as the judgment was by one to condemnation, the free gift is of many offences to justification (m).' But in the other places of the New Testament Christ's death is set forth so fully as a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, that it is a very false way of arguing to infer, that because in one place that is set in opposition

(m) Rom. c. 5. v. 16.