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tous and unfounded assertions which has made it necessary to give this subject so full and so minute a consideration . We proceed briefly to shew , that there is no authority for using . such unnatural and fanciful interpretations ; and having described that which we conceive to have been the real
design and chief end of sacrifice under the Mosaic law , we go In the second placey to inquire whether there is any antecedent probability in the supposition that sacrifices under the Mosaic law were intended
to have a prospective reference to distant events , ( or in other words , ) do they appear to have been typical of Christ ? Our argument has hitherto been general , and to this effect : either to prove that there were other good and sufficient reasons for the institution of
Jewish sacrifices , or else that there was no vicarious import in any of the Jewish sacrifices , or any of their adjunct ceremonies * My object , now , is to shew that it could not be inferred from any part of the Mosaic record
that sacrifices were intended as types of future events , or that Christ was in any way expressed by them . I say inferred , for no one pretends to produce any positive declaration of this doctrine to be found in the books of
Moses , or indeed in any part of the Old Testament . A type , in the theological sense , is correctly defined , a divinely appointed symbol of any thing future ; or an example so given and provided
by God , as that by the nature of its institution it plainly prefigures that future thing . < c Futuri alicujus symbolum quoddam , aut exemplum ita k Deo comparatum , ut ipsius plank instituto futurum illud praefiguret . " Outram , lib . i . cap . 18 , § 1 .
Two things , then , are necessary to constitute a type : divine appointment of the thing as a symbol , and the futurity at the time or appointment of the thing typified . To apply this , sacrifice does not appear to have been a type of the death of Christ , or of the satisfaction of sins by his death j because we do not see that it was
originally appointed for that purpose . If it had been the main , nay the only real object of that rite when first appointed to be a type of Christ , it would have been of more consequence
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to record the divine institution of sacrir fice , and the end for which it was appointed , than any other circumstance whatever connected with the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations
But the institution of sacrifice is not on record , and we do not find it in any way combined with those passages in the Pentateuch , which are generally considered as having a prophetic reference to Christ .
If , as popular writers on theology assert , this rite of sacrifice was instituted immediately on the fall of man , to typify the future sacrifice which should be made as a satisfaction for sin by the death of Christ , why was not this expressed on that occasion when prophetic mention is made of Christ ? What could have been more
natural than for the Almighty , when he spoke of the " seed of the woman , " to have connected with this prophecy the mention of that visible symbol of his death , and the satisfaction thereby afforded for sins , which it is affirmed that sacrifice was intended to afford ?
Again , when Moses spoke of " the prophet like unto himself , whom God should raise up from the midst of Israel , " if he spoke of the same person whose sacrifice it was the chief object of his institutions to typify , how natural , obvious and proper for him to have pointed out the connexion between his oral declaration , and the
symbolical figures by which it was declared to the eye . Secondly , the Old Testament is unfavourable to the notion that sacrifice was typical of Christ , in another respect , that its importance and efficacy
are in various passages of Scripture studiously depreciated , and the strongest expressions used to shew its comparative insignificance . Now , as it is alleged that this Jewish ceremony occupied the precise place of the great sacrifice of Christ while the law lasted ,
it was to be expected that the holy writers under the law would have spoken of it with a portion of the same reverence and pious regard which is expressed by all who look upon the death of Christ as the proper orig inal
of sacrifice ; and that however they might have blamed the error of those who forgot the true end of sacrifice , and " placed its efficacy in the naked rite as if aught accrued to God thereby , " still they would have taken du £
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376 An * Essay on the Nature and Design of Sacrifices under the Mosaic Law .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1823, page 376, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1786/page/8/
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