remain upon our minds, let us bring the matter home to ourselves in actual practice.

Why do we never offer sacrifice in the present day? Why do we instinctively feel conscious, that any sober person, who beheld us thus singularly occupied, would forthwith bless our simplicity for imagining that God could be thus gratified or propitiated?

Clearly the reason is, because we are well aware, that any sacrifice, now offered up by us, would be a matter of such rank superstition, that it were even childishly hopeless to expect to purchase, through its instrumentality, the favour of the Almighty.

If then such be the case in the present day, simply because the rite of sacrifice is now no longer commanded of God: it must equally have been the case during the patriarchal ages, had the rite of sacrifice, during those ages, been a mere unauthorised human institution. Custom might have reconciled the early religionists to it, and desuetude may increase the strangeness of its appearance in our eyes: but the rite, if uncommanded of God, must still, under each aspect, have really possessed the very same. essential character.

5. It may be said, that sacrifice is now abro

gated, because Christ, the great end of sacrifice, has accomplished the ancient types by his voluntary devotement of himself, the alone meritorious and efficacious antitype. Hence it does not follow, that, what would be superstition now, would have been superstition at an earlier period.

In every point of view, such an answer, should it be given, is altogether unsatisfactory. In the first place, it meets only the case of expiatory sacrifice; for this species of sacrifice alone was typical of the sacrifice of Christ: it leaves wholly untouched the several cases of deprecatory or homologetic or eucharistic oblations. And, in the second place, it travels quite wide of the hypothesis, upon which the whole of the present discussion avowedly reposes: for, in the very nature of things, no uncommanded sacrifice, if such were the sacrifice of the patriarchal ages, can have been a prophetic type of the sacrifice of Christ.

6. On these grounds, I think it clear and indisputable, that sacrifice of whatsoever description, if not commanded of God, can only have been an act of that precise gratuitous superstition, which the Apostle censures under the name of Will-worship, and which evidently is represented as unpleasing to God.

IV. The genuine moral argument, therefore, in favour of the primeval divine institution of sacrifice, will now, I apprehend, stand in manner following.

Sacrifice, when uncommanded of God, is a mere act of gratuitous superstition. Whence, on the principle of St. Paul's reprobation of what he denominates Will-worship, it is neither acceptable nor pleasing to God.

But sacrifice, during the patriarchal ages, was accepted of God and was plainly honoured with his approbation.

Therefore sacrifice, during the patriarchal ages, could not have been a mere act of gratuitous superstition uncommanded of God.

If then such were the character of primitive sacrifice; that is to say, if primitive sacrifice were not a mere act of gratuitous superstition uncommanded of God: primitive sacrifice must, in that case, indisputably have been a divine institution.

Thus, by a more precise statement of the argument than that which has been given by Hallet, I have exhibited it in its full effectiveness, and have sufficiently enervated (I trust) the alleged confutation of it by Mr. Davison.

SECTION IV.

NOTICES OF OBJECTIONS TO THE OPINION, THAT EXPIATORY SACRIFICE WAS DIVINELY INSTITUTED AT THE

COMMENCEMENT OF THE PATRIARCHAL DISPENSATION.

CHAPTER I.

Respecting the objection founded upon the alleged circumstance, that there is no express mention of the Primeval Divine Institution of Expiatory Sacrifice.

THOUGH I am willing to hope that I have already completed my purpose; yet nothing, that escapes from such a man as Mr. Davison, can be unworthy of our serious attention. Before I conclude, therefore, I shall notice various objections which he has made to the opinion, that the rite of expiatory sacrifice was divinely instituted at the commencement of the Patriarchal Dispensation.

Of these, perhaps the most imposing is that which occurs almost at the very opening of Mr. Davison's Inquiry.

"I begin," says he, "by stating that there is a "total silence in Holy Writ as to the rise of sacri