SECT. 7.] OF THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST. 203
slew the enmity, made peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles unto God in one body, by the cross, Eph. ii. 15,16. Our adversaries would have the reconciliation intended to be only on our part, or the reconciling us unto God; not on the part of God, or his reconciliation untous. But as this is false, so it is also, as to our present argument, impertinent; for we dispute not about the nature of reconciliation, but the cause and time of its making. Whatever be the especial nature of it, it is an effect of a sacerdotal act. Nor is this denied by our adversaries, who plead that our conversion to God depends on Christ’s offering himself to God in heaven, as the effect on the eause. And this reconciliation, whatever its especial nature be, is directly ascribed to the death of Christ. Therein, therefore, was he a priest and offered sacrifice. Besides, the especial nature of the reconciliation made by the death of Christ is sufficiently declared; for we are so reconciled by Christ as that our sins are not imputed unto us, 2 Cor. v.19, 21; and that because they were imputed unto him when he was made a curse for us, Gal. iii. 13,—when he hung on the tree, and bare our sins in his own body thereon, 1 Pet. ii. 24. And then he gave himself Abrpov, “a ransom,” Matt. xx. 28, and dyriAvrpov, 1 Tim. ii. 6, a price of redemption for us; and his soul was made a sin-offering, Isa. liii. 10,—that is, “ sacrificium pro reatu nostro,” “a sacrifice for the expiation of our guilt.” And this he did as the sponsor or surety, or “ the mediator of the new covenant,” * Heb. ix. 15; and therefore he must do it either as the king, or as the prophet, or as the priest of the church, for within these offices and their actings is his mediation circumscribed. But it is manifest that these things belong unto neither of the former; for in what sense can he be said to pay a price of redemption for us in the shedding his blood, or to make his soul an offering for sin, to make reconcili- ation by being made sin and a curse for us, as he was a king or a pro- phet? In like manner and to the same purpose we are said to have “redemption in” (or “ by’’) “his blood, even the forgiveness of sins,” Eph. i. 7; to be “justified by his blood,’ Rom. v. 9; Col. i. 14; 1 Pet. i. 18,19. Now, redemption, forgiveness and justification, consisting, according to our adversaries, in our delivery from the punishment due unto sin, it is an effect, as they also acknowledge, of the sacer- dotal actings of Christ. But they are all said to be by his blood, which was shed on the earth. Besides, it is in like manner acknow- ledged that the Lord Christ was both priest and sacrifice; for, as it is constantly affirmed, he “ offered himself,’ Heb. ix. 14, Eph. v. 2. And he was a sacrifice when and wherein he was a propitiation ; for propitiation is the end and effect of a sacrifice. So the apostle dis- tributes his sacerdotal acts into propitiation and intercession, 1 John ii. 1, 2. His making oblation and being a propitiation are the same.
204 OF THE ACTS AND ADJUNCTS [EXERC. XXXIII.
And wherein God made him a propitiation, therein he was our propitiation. But this was in his death; for God set him forth “to be a propitiation through faith in his blood,’ Rom, i, 25. Our faith, therefore, respecting Christ as proposed of God to be a pro- pitiation,—that is, making atonement for us by sacrifice,—considers him as shedding his blood unto that end and purpose.
8. Thirdly, The Lord Christ entered into the holy place, that is, heaven itself, as a high priest, and that with respect unto what as a high priest he had done before; for when the apostle teacheth the entrance of Christ into heaven by the entrance of the high priest into the sanctuary, as that which was a prefiguration thereof, he instructs us in the manner of it. Now, the high priest was already in office, completely a high priest, before his entrance into the most holy place, and was not admitted into his office thereby, as they pretend the Lord Christ to have been by his entrance into heaven. Yea, had he not been a high priest before that entrance, he would have perished for it; for the law was, that none should so enter but the high priest. And not only so, but he was not, on pain of death, at any time to go into the sanctuary, but with immediate respect unto the preceding solemn discharge of his office; for he was not to enter into it but only after he had, as a priest, slain and offered the expiatory sacrifice, some of the blood whereof he carried into the
>» most holy place, to complete and perfect the atonement. Now, if the ~ Lord Christ was not a priest before his entrance into heaven, if he did not enter thereinto with respect unto, and on the account of, the sacrifice which he had offered before without the holy place, in his death and blood-shedding, all the analogy that is between the type and the antitype, all that is instructive in those old institutions, is utterly destroyed, and the apostle, illustrating these things one by another, doth lead us unavoidably into misapprehension of them. For whosoever shall read that, as the high priest entered into the most holy place with the blood of bulls and goats, which he had sacrificed without, to appear in the presence of God, in like manner Jesus Christ, the high priest of the church, called of God unto that office, by the one sacrifice of himself, or by his own blood, entered into the holy place in heaven, to appear in the presence of God for us, will understand that he was a high priest and offered his sacrifice before he so entered into the heavenly sanctuary, or he must offer violence unto the plain, open sense of the instruction given unto him.