should be sacrifices only in the figurative sense of the word. It is true, that no man who is a sinner (and all men have sinned) can be justified by his works. We all stand in need of, and must have recourse to, free grace and mercy; but it is a great dishonour to God to suppose that this mercy and grace takes its rise from anything but his own essential goodness; and that he is not of himself, and independent of all foreign considerations whatever, what he solemnly declared himself to Moses, at the time of the giving of the law, to be, namely, "a God merciful and gracious, long suffering, abundant in goodness and in truth," Exod. xxxiv. 6. or that he requires any other sacrifices but "the sacrifices of a broken spirit, and a contrite heart, which he will never despise." Psal. li. 17. Can we wish for a more distinct and perfect representation of the manner in which God forgives the sins of his offspring of mankind, than our Saviour has exhibited to us in that most excellent parable of the prodigal son? in which the good father no sooner sees his child, who had abandoned him, and wasted his substance in riotous living, returning to him and to his duty; but without waiting for any atonement or propitiation, even "while he was yet a great way off, he ran to him, fell upon his neck, and kissed him," Luke xv. 20. The same representation we see in the parable of the creditor, who who freely forgave his servant, because he humbly desired him. Let us not then, my brethren, deprive the ever-blessed God of the most glorious and honourable of all his attributes, and leave him nothing but justice, or rather vengeance, which is expressly said to be "his strange work." Isaiah xxviii. 21. It is impossible to reconcile the doctrine of the satisfaction for sin by the death of Christ, with the doctrine of free grace, which, according to the uniform tenor of the Scriptures, is so fully displayed in the pardon of sin, and the justification of sinners. When, therefore, the apostle Paul says, Rom. iii. 24. "that we are justified freely by the grace of God, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus," the meaning of the latter clause must be interpreted in such a manner as to make it consistent with the former; and it is far from requiring any force or straining of the text to do it. For it is only necessary to suppose that our redemption (or, as the word properly signifies, and is indeed frequently rendered by our translators, our deliverance) from the power of sin, i. e. our repentance and reformation, without which there is no promise of pardon, is effected by the gospel of Jesus Christ, who came to call sinners to repentance. But still God is to be considered as the giver, and not the receiver, with respect to our redemption; for we read that that "he spared not his own son, for us all," Rom. viii. 32. but gave him up To say that God the Father provided an atonement for his own offended justice is, in fact, to give up the doctrine. If a person owe me a sum of money, and I choose to have the debt discharged, is it not the same thing, whether I remit the debt at once, or supply another person with money wherewith to pay me in the debtor's name? If satisfaction be made to any purpose, it must be in some manner in which the offender may be a sufferer, and the offended person a gainer; but it can never be reconciled to equity, or answer any good purpose whatever, to make the innocent suffer the punishment of the guilty. If, as Abraham. says, it be "far from God to slay the righteous with the wicked, and that the righteous should be as the wicked," Gen. xviii. 25. much further must it be from him to slay the righteous instead of the wicked. I wish the zealous advocates for this doctrine would consider, that if it be necessary, in the nature of things, that the justice of God be satisfied before any sin can be pardoned, and Christ be God as well as the Father, whether the justice of Christ ought not to have been satisfied in the first place. If so, what other infinite being has made satisfaction to him? But if the divine nature of the Son re-. quired quired no satisfaction, why should the divine nature of the Father require any? If it had been inconsistent with the divine justice to pardon sin upon repentance only, without some further satisfaction, we might have expected to have found it expressly said to be so in the Scriptures; but no such declaration can be produced either from the Old or the New Testament. All that can be pretended is, that it may be inferred from it. Though good works are recommended to us in the strongest manner, it is never with any salvo or caution, as if they were not of themselves acceptable to God. The declarations of the divine mercy to the penitent are all absolute, without the most distant hint of their having a reference to any consideration on which they are made. "Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive," Psalm lxxxiv. 5. "To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against him," Dan. ix. 3. When David and other penitents confess their sins, and entreat for pardon, they refer themselves to the divine mercy only, without seeming to have the least idea of any thing further. "Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; according to thy mercy remember thou me, for thy goodness' sake, O Lord," Psalm It is particularly remarkable, that when sacrifices under the law are expressly said not to be sufficient for the pardon of sin, we are never referred to any more availing sacrifice; but to good works only. "Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of the Lord are a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." Psalm li. 16, 17. If any of the Jews had had the least notion of the necessity of any atonement for the sins of mankind, they could not but have expected a suffering Messiah; and yet it is plain that the very best of them had no such idea. our Saviour frequently explains the coming, and the necessity of his suffering, it is never on any such account. If he had done it any where, it might have been expected in those discourses by which he endeavoured to reconcile his disciples to his death, in his solemn prayer before his sufferings, at the time of his agony in the garden, or when he was upon the cross; yet nothing of this kind drops from him on any of these occasions. And though reason of his When our Lord describes the proceedings of the day of judgement, he doth not represent the righteous as referring themselves to the sufferings or merit of their judge for their justification; and the judge himself expressly grounds it on their good works only. Though Peter, in his discourse to the Jews on the day of Pentecost, speaks of their sin in murdering Christ as of a heinous nature, he says not |