ii. As offered "through the Eternal tion of His Godhead in the CHRIST SO loved us that He " gave Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to GOD for a sweet smelling savour." Secondly, it was THE action in which our LORD'S Godhead had part; for while our LORD in His Human Spirit," the ac- Nature was both Priest and Victim, yet His Divine Personality had its part in the offering of this Sacrifice, since we are told of CHRIST that He " through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God.” * Here the Eternal Spirit" is not to be taken for the HOLY GHOST, the Third Person of the Ever-Blessed Trinity, but as the seat of His Divine Personality in His Human Nature; "+"His Godhead, which from before time acquiesced in and wrought with the redemptive purpose of the FATHER." I Socinus' view It is impossible, with Socinus, to refer the moment of this passage. of this offering to our LORD'S entry into Heaven, since, Thus every rite of the Old Tes tament is ful filled upon the Cross. III. Our LORD Victim in His Human as Delitzsch and others have rightly pointed out, the ritual word aucμov here shows that the Offering on the Cross, which corresponds to the slaying, and offering of the victim on the altar, is intended. We have now shown that every ceremony of the Old Testament sacrifice finds its counterpart in our LORD'S Sacrifice on the Cross; that is, He adequately fulfils all the conditions prescribed in the typical sacrifices of the Levitical Law. III. In treating of our LORD's Sacrifice upon the was Priest and Cross, we ought, perhaps, to touch upon the fact (about which, however, there is no controversy) that He was Priest and Victim in His Human Nature In His Divine alone, as the Son of Man. In His Divine Nature He is One with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST. As Nature alone. Nature He *Heb. ix. 14. † Westcott in loc., † Alford in loc. the Fathers have pointed out, it follows necessarily receives the S. from this that, as One with the FATHER and the HOLY offered. GHOST, He receives the Sacrifice which is offered to Them. He Who upon the Altar of the Cross offered the Sacrifice in His Human Nature, in His Divine Nature as One with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST received that Sacrifice. While no one who believes that by virtue of the Hypostatic Union CHRIST was perfect GOD and perfect Man can doubt this truth, yet the question has been asked by some, how one and the same person is able at the same time to offer and to receive sacrifice; since no one can offer sacrifice to himself. CHRIST the Incarnate Son of GOD, as a Priest, offered Sacrifice on the Altar of the Cross, not in His Divine, but in His Human Nature; and it is still more evident that the SON of GOD was offered as a Victim on the Altar of the Cross, only in His Human Nature. The Victim is in- Communicatio deed the Son of GOD, and therefore the Second Person idiomatum. of the Holy Trinity, but He is the Victim, uot in relation to that Nature in which He is consubstantial with the FATHER and the HOLY SPIRIT, but in relation to that Nature which He assumed, and in which He is consubstantial with us. And hence we find Holy Scripture speaking of the LORD of Glory as crucified, † of the Prince of Life as slain, of GOD as purchasing the Church with His own Blood. § Since that Human Nature in which CHRIST is the Victim was assumed by the SON of GOD, and therefore belongs to Him, we must believe the Victim in the Sacrifice of the Cross to have been the LORD of Glory, the Prince of Life, GOD Himself. * Theodoret, in Psalm cix. 4. † I Cor. ii. 8. If, however, the Priest + Acts iii. 15. ? Acts xx. 28. Our LORD is actively the Priest, passively the Victim. IV. A difficulty remains : In what precisely did our ficial action consist? Socinus claims and the Victim are not different, but absolutely one and the same, and that not according to different natures but according to the same nature, the relation of Priest can be distinguished from the relation of Victim in thought only, not in fact. So the CHRIST is the Priest in so far as He acts, but the Victim in so far as He suffers. IV. There remains, however, one further question to be treated, one serious difficulty to be met. The question is, In what precisely did the sacrificial action in our LORD'S sacri- LORD'S Offering on the Cross consist? The difficulty is the objection of Socinus, that, unless this sacrificial act can be clearly shown, our LORD'S Death was a martyrdom for truth, but not a Sacrifice. It is of great importance that we should both grasp and fully meet the objection of Socinus, for much that concerns our treatment of the Eucharistic Sacrifice later on must depend upon the elucidation of this question and our answer to this objection. that our LORD'S Death was a martyrdom, not a S. The argument of Socinus The works of Socinus are probably but little read by English theologians of the present day, and yet a certain class of modern theology is largely permeated with from Hebrews. his views of our LORD'S Sacrifice. Many of the argu drawn almost exclusively The system of ments drawn from the Epistle to the Hebrews, by which it is sought to establish a celestial Sacrifice in the strict acceptation of the term, are simply the arguments which Socinus first introduced to the world, the interpretation which he first put upon these passages of Holy Scripture. It is not necessary here to review the whole system of Socinus. It was not unlike that of the Channing School of Unitarianism in America in the present day, for, while denying the Divinity of our Blessed LORD, it allowed worship to be given to Him as the Representative and Viceroy of GOD. We must, however, draw attention to one special feature, which is the very Its kernel his kernel of the Socinian system, namely, his view of our LORD'S Priesthood. view of our LORD'S Priest hood. limited to Socinus limited the Priesthood of CHRIST strictly to heaven.* He denied that our LORD was in any sense This Socinus a Priest on earth, or that His Death was in any sense a Sacrifice. It was, he held, a martyrdom for truth. In the second volume of the works of Socinus is a Socinus treats treatise De Jesu Christo Servatore, in the form of a disputation with Covetus, in the Second Part of which the relation of our LORD's Offering on the Cross to the Jewish sacrifices, and to His Mediatorial work in heaven, is very fully treated. of the relation of the Cross to the Jewish sacrifices and to ial work in the Mediator heaven. He denies that all the Jewish typify the death of In the ninth chapter of the Second Part, he denies that all the sacrifices under the Law foreshadowed sacrifices the Death of CHRIST. This he confines to those offered. for the whole people, and especially to that CHRIST, but offered on the Great Day of Atonement. In the twelfth chapter he treats of the sacrifice offered on that Day; of the Day of and in the fifteenth he gives his interpretation of Hebrews, chapters xiii. and xiv. confines this chiefly to that Atonement. in Hebrews CHRIST'S Oblation refers work in Starting from the text, "Who through the Eternal He asserts that Spirit offered Himself without spot to GOD," he maintains that this is not to be referred only to the Death of the Cross, but to the entrance into the Holy place, that is, into heaven itself. He further asserts that throughout the whole Epistle to the Hebrews Oblation of CHRIST" is to be understood only of His presentation of Himself before GOD for us in heaven. He claims that the slaying of the victim was not the essential part of the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, but the presentation of the blood in the Holy of holies. He therefore asserts that the Death of CHRIST was * See Appendix B. He argues from the Day of Atonement that the Death of CHRIST was not a Sacrifice. He also denies that any "satisfaction" was made by our LORD. Alford and Bengel go beyond Socinus in teaching that our LORD'S Blood was pre sented by Him, separated from His Body, after the Ascension: Heb. xii. 24. in no real sense a Sacrifice, but that after GOD had raised Him from the dead and exalted Him to heaven, CHRIST presented in heaven the Blood which He had shed, and that this was His true Oblation or Sacrifice. He also denies that any satisfaction was made to the justice of GOD in our LORD's Atonement. This last point, however, does not affect the question before us, which is whether our LORD on the Cross "made there, by His one Oblation of Himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient Sacrifice, Oblation, and Satisfaction for the sins of the whole world," or whether, as Socinus says, no Sacrifice was made on the Cross, since our LORD was not then a Priest. For, as he rightly observes, "Priest and Oblation are relative terms, so that where there is not a true Priest there cannot be a true Oblation or Sacrifice." Alford, in his note on Heb. xii. 22-24, “Ye are come unto Mount Sion, and to JESUS the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the Blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel," says the writer of the Epistle "assigns to the Blood of sprinkling, by which we are redeemed unto GOD, a place in the heavenly City next to, but separate from, JESUS Himself in His glorified state." He goes on to contend that our LORD'S Resurrection Body was bloodless, and that the Blood which our LORD shed upon the Cross did not corrupt, but is mentioned separately from the LORD Himself as an item in the glories of the heavenly City, and as yet speaking. Alford refers to a long excursus on the point in Bengel's note in loco; indeed he takes his idea entirely from Bengel, who asserts that "at the time of the Ascension the Blood, separated from the Body, was carried into heaven." Dean Jackson seems to hold this view, and |