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    law died without mercy ; of kw much sorer punishment shall tie be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God , and counted the WtKwt of the covenant with which he was sanctified an unholy thing- ? Or that other , t € Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear , forasmuch as ye know that ve were not redeemed with

    corruptible things , but with the precious blood of Christ" ? Judging by my own feelings , I should say that nothing can impress the Christian with so deep a dread of sin as the spectacle of the cross of Christ : and if this be the

    case , how does it not maintain the Divine authority ? And why may not this tendency be among the chief reasons for its being appointed to introduce the dispensation of remission ? There appears to me an evident moral fitness in such an arrangement .

    There is one passage in my paper on which your correspondent has animadvertea , I think , not unjustly ; I mean my parable , if I may call it so , of the father forgiving his child . Due consideration would have led me to see that our Lord himself had done

    the same thing which I waa aiming at , infinitely better . The illustration I attempted was unsuitable , because the nature of the mediation of Jesus is not such as occasions a moment ' s delay or impediment in the reconciliation of a returning peninent , but on the

    contrary , has anticipated repentance , invited the sinner to return , declared the Father ' s love , and opened wide the gates of mercy . In this particular , therefore , I willingly stand corrected , and am happy thus to derive increase of light from friendly controversy .

    In the discussion of the present subject it is usual to agitate the question , in what sense our Lord ' s death was a sacrifice for sin ; whether literally , or only figuratively . Bishop

    Magee is of the former opinion . He says , " If the formal notion of a sacrifice for sin , that is , a life offered up in expiation , be adhered to , nothing more can be required to constitute it a , sacrifice / ' Here I think we meet

    something of that inaccuracy * if not sophistry , which is so common in this writer . A sacrifice , literally speaking , is essentially a religious rite . The writer could hardly have been unaware of this ; but to have noticed it would

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    have spoiled his argument . Now the death of Christ had no resemblance whatever ta a religions rite : it ' was a judicial proceeding , a punishment in , flicted by the civil magistrate for an alleged crime . To say , therefore , that it was a sacrifice strictly speaking , seems to mean abuse of language .

    Moreover , had it been literal iy a saerifiee , it would have been a human sacrifice , a thing which God abhors . But while I thus agree with those who say that the death of Christ was a

    sacrifice only in a figurative sense , I think that the force of the figure is not always justly apprehended . Any great expense is indeed sometimes called a sacrifice , as we say , * a sacrifice of time or labour : " , but the idea

    of expense or cost is not that , I conceive , which will satisfy the sense ef many passages of Scripture , ajad especially of the train of argument pursued in the Epistle to the Hebrews . A sacrifice for sins was literally a

    certain kind of rite , appointed by God to be performed as requisite for remission . Now in transferring the term to Christ , the leading ideas must still be retained : the death of Christ was not indeed a rite , but is yet said to have been a sacrifice because it was

    providentially appointed as requisite for -the forgiveness of sins . This I apprehend to be the true view o € the subject : but some have said that the sacrificial allusions of the New Testament were used merely in accommodation to Jewish ideas . This I shall

    not deny ; they were the form in which the common Christian doctrine was most conveniently inculcated on the Jewish believers . But what of this ? The truth was the same , howevdr expressed ; and why may we not guther that truth as well from expressions

    primarily addressed to the Jews as from any other parts of Scripture , if we only take care to interpret them correctly ? ' But especially , when we cite these passages merely in confirmation of evidence derived from , other parts , I can conceive no reasonable

    objection to their testimony . I wake these remarks principally witji a view to the Epistle to the Hebrews . The writer , exclusively addressing Jews , uses language which he would not have adoptea in writing to Greeks ; but still , if what he says be true , it mu&t be so to us as well as to them-

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    264 On tie Remission of Si * s ~

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1823, page 264, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1784/page/8/