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translates it An odour of rest: and its import he pronounces to be, that The odour of the sacrifice was such as caused God to rest from his anger*. In truth, I see not what other sense can rationally be put upon the expression. But, if such be its sense, it implies of necessity, that Noah devoted his burnt-offering for the purpose of diverting God from his anger: because the specific and well-defined mode, in which God accepted the sacrifice, distinctly, as in the way of question and answer, teaches the intention of the sacrificer†.

2. We shall be brought to exactly the same conclusion by the recorded internal answer, which God is said to have given to Noah's burnt-offering.

I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth: neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While

* Odor quietis, id est, gratus, qui Deum ab ira sua quiescere facit. Aben-Ezra in Gen. viii. 21. Buxtorf. Lex. Heb. in voc. p. 429.

† In the original, the Hebrew scholar will readily observe a play upon the name of Noah: and I take it, that here was accomplished the prophecy, under the influence of which the name itself was proleptically bestowed upon the patriarch. Compare Gen. v. 28, 29, with Gen. viii. 20, 21.

the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease.

What this answer can possibly mean, I see not; if it be not an intimation on the part of God, that, pursuant to the object of the sacrifice, he would cease from his wrath, and would never again punish the wickedness of man as he had recently done by the waters of the deluge. The answer of God, like his peculiar mode of accepting the sacrifice, clearly teaches us the nature and object of that sacrifice. From the drift of the answer, we learn the drift of the petition. Such an answer could not have been given to the accepted sacrifice, had not the intention of the sacrificer been the deprecation of God's wrath.

IV. Thus, both from the well-defined acceptance of the sacrifice and from the specific answer given to the sacrifice, we learn, I think, most clearly, that the burnt-offering of Noah was a deprecatory sacrifice, as contradistinguished from either a simple eucharistic sacrifice or a simple homologetic sacrifice.

Probably, indeed, it might comprehend all the three ideas of deprecation and thanksgiving and confession: but still the sequel of the narrative plainly intimates, that its leading and palmary

idea was that of deprecation*.

Emphatically

and properly, it was a deprecatory sacrifice: and, accordingly, God accepted it as a savour of rest, and promised that he would never more smite every thing living as he had recently done. Adopt the opinion, that it was a deprecatory sacrifice; and the whole narrative is harmonious and consistent: reject the opinion, that it was a deprecatory sacrifice; and the whole narrative is discordant and inconsistent.

V. On these grounds, I consider it as proved, that the sacrifice of Noah was a deprecatory sacrifice.

The next matter, to be discussed, is, Whether it was simply a deprecatory sacrifice; or whether it was that complex deprecatory sacrifice, which involves also the superadded idea of an expiatory

atonement.

Here, as I have already intimated, is the real point, where Dr. Spencer fails. He clearly saw, what every thinking person must see who attends to the rationale of question and answer, that the burnt-offering of Noah was a deprecatory sacrifice:

*Thus Cyril of Alexandria speaks of Noah's sacrifice as being eucharistic: and so, to a certain extent, it probably But the circumstance does not obliterate its special character. Cyril. Alex. cont. Julian. lib. i. p. 8.

was.

but, unless he could give some adequate reason for his assertion, he certainly had no right to pronounce, that this deprecatory sacrifice was also an expiatory one. Now, so far from giving any adequate reason, Dr. Spencer gives no reason whatsoever. Hence, most undoubtedly, he assumes the matter, which he ought to have proved.

Have we then any ground for maintaining, that the burnt-offering of Noah was an expiatory sacrifice or must we rest content with the fact, which alone has hitherto been established; the fact, I mean, that it was a deprecatory sacrifice?

We have, I think, ample ground for maintaining, that it was that complex modification of deprecatory sacrifice, which, to simple deprecation, superadds the idea of an expiatory atonement.

1. The sacrifice of Noah, at the point to which we have now brought it, manifestly corresponds with the sacrifice offered up by the three friends of Job.

Each alike was a deprecatory sacrifice: each alike was accepted and approved by God. Whether each was more than a deprecatory sacrifice, must be determined precisely by the same train of reasoning.

Now this train of reasoning, I am willing to

hope, has fully demonstrated, on the principle of a reduction to an absurdity, that the sacrifice of Job's three friends COULD NOT, consistently with the known moral attributes of God, have been a simple deprecatory sacrifice. Whence, as it was neither an eucharistic sacrifice nor an homologetic sacrifice, it MUST have been that complex deprecatory sacrifice which involves the idea of an atone

ment.

The same train of reasoning, founded as it is on the unchangeable moral attributes of God, is equally applicable to the sacrifice of Noah.

That sacrifice certainly was a deprecatory sacrifice of one description or another. In consistence with God's known moral attributes, it coULD NOT have been a simple deprecatory sacrifice, offered up as a bribe to the Almighty. Therefore it MUST have been a complex deprecatory sacrifice involving the idea of expiation or atonement.

2. The propriety of this conclusion is strengthened by the circumstance, that it perfectly agrees with the conclusion to which we have already been brought by the UNIFORMITY observable in the various systems of Paganism *.

From times of the most remote antiquity, the

* See above, sect. ii. chap. 2.

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