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of its branches, and in none more than in that of Religion, we seem to be busied in shaking the leaves of the tree of knowledge, and making a stir among them, instead of reposing beneath its shade, or gathering its fruit; which last are the satisfactions of other and better studies, such as bring the substance of Divine Truth and its Use more nearly together.

16th April, 1825.

AN INQUIRY,

&c. &c. &c.

THE First Ages of the world have left much of their History under a veil, and transmitted to us the difficulty, and the desire, of exploring it. The earliest act of Religious Worship, offered by man to his Creator, of which we have any record, was by Sacrifice. And yet, in this great Institution of Religion, which begins the piety of the Old World; which afterwards obtained so wide a prevalence, and became the one chief ordinance in the systems both of True Religion and of False; which seems to involve so much of mystery in its use, and is full of vanity in Paganism, and yet is the image of the prime Truth of Christianity, and the counterpart of the real grace of Redemption; in this Institution, we are at this day at a loss, and obliged to discuss it as matter of doubtful inquiry, whether it came originally by Command or by Choice, and bore on its primitive usage the sanction of God, or of Man.

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Learned writers, fully competent to the argument, have passed different judgments upon it; in which they have had their respective followers, impressed with the confidence of an opposite conviction. And this diversity of opinion has disjoined those who might have been expected to agree. For in this case the first Fathers of the Christian Church have not been able to recommend their notions to those, who, in later times, have professed the greatest zeal for rectitude and piety of belief. Thus, in one instance more, have we been made to feel the uncertainties of our knowledge; of which indeed we have a very constant experience for our monitor; and to discover, by our inquiries, nothing so much as the change which has befallen our Primæval condition; a change to a state of some unhappiness, in our precarious attainment, or our imperfect and unsuccessful communication, of Truth.

Nor can this question, concerning the Origin of Sacrifice, be treated as an immaterial one, to be dismissed at our option. It derives an importance from relations which we cannot disregard; inasmuch as the Rite itself of Sacrifice is connected with the History of Prophecy, with the constitution of the Mosaic Law, and with that which it was the office of Prophecy to disclose, and of the Mosaic Law to prefigure, the doctrine of the Christian Atonement.

Let me state briefly how the Rite of Sacrifice is so connected, in each of those points.

Connexion of subject with history of Revealed Religion. 3

If

1. First, as to the History of Prophecy. Sacrifice, from the earliest use of that mode of worship, was of Divine Institution, one inference to be deduced from that Origin of it would be, that it was appointed for a Prophetic Type; that is to say, it was an authentic preparatory Ordinance, and at the same time a symbolical Representation, adapted to the future Expiatory Sacrifice, to be accomplished by the Death of the Redeemer, in the dispensation of the Gospel.

If, on the contrary, its Divine Institution be taken away, the rite thereby forfeits its Prophetic Character. It becomes simply a branch of the Primitive Religion. In which reduced idea of it, however it might express the piety of the worshipper, it cannot be reckoned among the Typical Signatures of Christianity. For though the action of Sacrifice was in either case the same, not so the force of it. What God had not ordained, could not, under its institution merely human, serve afterwards to attest the design, or confirm the truth, or explicate the sense, of any of His Appointments so far removed from the reach of all human cognizance, as that of the Evangelical Atonement. In a word, it would speak

the mind of man, not of God.

So far, therefore, the Divine, or the human Origin of Sacrifice, will make a difference in our view of the character and import of that Rite.

2. But what I have here stated perhaps is not

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