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    particular are excellent interpreters ' - of the pettal code . * Some of these crimes , ' * says he , " are of such & nature , that they seem to

    include others which are not ex . pressly rnentioned , but which the gobd sense of offenders , and espe - cially the priests , would evidently see to ) be comprehended in them . ft is neither necessary nor prudent

    to spetify every possible breach of general laws / ' Had my worthy friend lived in the golden days of thfeTudors or the Stuarts , when byulty had no harm in it , and Hgh-chtirch politics were in fahis

    shit ^ courtly doctrine could hartH y haVe failed to be rewarded with a mitre . Happily we live in Other times ; and under the mild sw&y of the House of Brunswick , priests have long ceased to be the

    official expounders of the laws . Nor can this be regarded as a just subject 6 f regret . I declare , for my own part ^ that I would much rathfef that the Blasphemy Act shoiild be expounded by the sound

    Icgalknowledge of Lord Ellenborough , than by the good sense of Bishop Burgess , who is evidently Very much disposed to include Wider it , many offences which are

    not expressly mentioned in it . That the good sense of the offenders should , as my worthy friend conceives , be employed in extending the limits and increasing the severities of a penal statute ,

    would , I'believe , be quite an anomaly in the history of criminal law ; but that the priests , in the case supposed , should be willing to extend the operation of the law

    to cases not expressly mentioned 10 it , and likewise to increase the value of the penalties , is far from kirig improbable , because the atonements or fines provided by

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    the law , were chiefly the perdtiisites of the priesthood , and applied the table of the cJaSs Whose turn it was to be in attencJMhce .

    And this consideration may possibly account ^ or the ex jpetisi ^ e nature of some of-the sacrifices , which it appears from the history were offered in after times , tfiougli not required by positive law .

    Upon the whole , atonement under the M 6 saic institute , is generally used to express the rite by which things or persons are transferred from an unconsecrated to a

    consecrated or holy state . Irl the two instances in which atonement is required for voluntary offences , it is to be regarded as an addltfbn to the civil penalty , which the defender must submit to , previously to his being restored to his state

    in civil society , and has no respect whatever to the moral quality of the offence . Expiation for moral offences is never required in the Jewish scriptures , and the very idea ot it is rejected with indignation and abhorrence .

    Under the law things unconsecratfcd were atoned , i . em brought into & consecrated state , by being sprinkled with the blood of ari animal victim . In the New

    Testament believers in Christ are , in allusion to this rite , said to be reconciled by the blood of Christ , which is called the blood * of

    sprinkling , with which belidver » are figuratively said . to be consecrated , i . e . transferred from ah unholy to a holy , from a heathen to a Christian state * In a sense

    analogous to this , Christ is sitid to have died for his own sins , as well as those of the peop le ^ Heb . vii . 27 * for being of the tribe of Judah , he was not qualified to officiate as a priest , till he

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    Mr * Belsham on " Jewish Sin-offerings . " 755

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1814, page 755, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2447/page/27/