chief of sinners. We do not tell We do not tell you who are Christians, that this report is worthy of all men to be received; you know it to be a faithful saying, you are sensible of its inestimable worth. I need not tell you of the joy and comfort of that which is already your best consolation. But it is commended to your further notice and attention. It has still new glories to reveal, new comforts to unfold, new joys to impart, of which your knowledge and experience are yet imperfect. It is a treasure unfailing of things new and old. You should read, mark, learn, and inwardly more and more digest them, till you are able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God." And unto him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we are able to ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.”

SERMON III.

CHRIST THE TRUE SACRIFICE.

Heb. x. 8-10.

Above, when he said, Sacrifice, and offering, and burnt-offerings, and offering for sin, thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; (which are offered by the law;) Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

THIS is one of those passages of the holy scriptures, which are of such comparative excellence, as makes them suitable to be selected for the subjects of sermons. The Christian should never forget that "the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ." The unbelieving world will view the institutions of Moses, and the various ordinances of the Jewish law, as splendid, but unmeaning institutions, without reason, and without utility. And not unbelievers only, but Christians incline too much to view them as a dead letter, which, being now fulfilled, is less worthy of our attention. Some Christians, to support their favourite systems, find it convenient to degrade the laws of Moses, and say what our 7th article condemns,

"that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises;" that the old dispensation had respect to temporal things only. Such a notion is very erroneous. Though we are no longer under a schoolmaster, we are bound still to profit by his instructions. They who come to Christ, will come most surely in the way in which God would conduct them. Christ came into this world, as himself tells us, not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them. And we who preach his gospel, are authorized to "say none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come;" and to what they testify of him, does Christ send us for a knowledge of his true character. He plans his doctrine on that foundation which God had laid: "Search the scriptures, they testify of me." Indeed, throughout the New Testament, we are continually sent back to the Old, for a knowledge of Christ and his religion. The old scriptures are the inexhaustible mine containing the true gold; in the New Testament we are taught how to dig the ore and to refine it. The gospel is constantly sending us back to that schoolmaster, that we may with true knowledge come to Christ..

In the text now chosen, is a remarkable example. What is written in the 40th Psalm, you are here taught, has regard to Jesus Christ; that all the sacrifices and other offerings under the law, God would not accept; they were insufficient to make expiation for sin. Then it was, or because no other offering could suffice, that the Son of God offered himself as a Mediator. By taking a human body, he did God's will; he fulfilled all righteousness, and made an atonement which was accepted.

This text taken in its connection, teaches the grand fundamental doctrine of our religion, that Christ is the true sacrifice. And what I now propose, the Lord permitting, to say upon it, may conveniently be arranged under three distinct heads; showing, First, That sacrifice was necessary to put away sin: Secondly, That God would accept no other than that of Christ: And, thirdly, That to him, all the sacrifices under the law had regard. It is a subject you will readily see commended to your attentive consideration, not by its novelty, but by its importance. As some articles of food are deemed necessaries of life, and are always required; so some doctrines are essential to religion, and must be often discoursed on, and always kept in view; and none can possibly be more essential than this under present consideration.

I. This first point proposed, that sacrifice was necessary to put away sin, is clearly and fully taught throughout the bible. It is not necessary to the purpose of this discourse, that I should cite the passages of the scriptures which confirm it: you know that there are many more such, than one sermon would contain. But, as we might expect, the grand adversary has set himself to oppose this doctrine, and human reason has been raised in arms against it. right use of our reason would teach us, that if the bible be God's word, it is folly in us to pretend to be wiser than God, or to attempt, by forced construction, to make the scriptures say what we suppose ought to be their meaning. And we might expect too, that common sense would teach every man of common understanding, that if we owe a debt to

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divine justice, and have nothing to pay, except another will pay it for us, we must suffer the penalty. But whatever men may think of reason or of scripture, facts at least are unyielding, and no ingenuity of man can explain them away. And no fact is more remarkable or undeniable, none more worthy the attention of mankind, than that, before the death of Jesus Christ, bloody sacrifice, or the slaying and offering of innocent beasts for the sins of men, were almost universal in all ages and countries of the world. Now reason and the high importance of the question, require that this fact be accounted for. There is no effect without a cause. How came it that mankind should entertain the hope, or idea, that the blood of beasts should atone for their transgressions; that the death of the innocent should give life to the guilty; that by the shedding of blood, sinners should obtain remission? If this had been the opinion, or the practice of a few individuals only, or of but one or two nations, we might have reckoned it among the unaccountable singularities which sometimes appear in the world. But this practice was universal, and it extends back to the remotest antiquity. It was

not the effect of ignorance or barbarism; it was most practised where learning flourished. Those nations which had most advanced in science and the liberal arts, offered the most abundant sacrifices, and seemed most to rely upon them. And what reason are we to assign for this well known fact? There are but two reasons that can be given. One is, that the common sense, or reason of mankind, has directed them to this mode of appeasing the wrath of heaven, of expiating sin, and becoming reconciled to God. But if