[1.] The words are the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, considered as to be incarnate for the redemption of the church. As such, he ‘was always in. the bosom of the Father, parti- cipant of his counsels, especially of those which concerned the church, the children of men, Prov. viii. 22-24, etc. He was there- fore always acquainted with all the thoughts and counsels of God concerning the ways and means of the expiation of sin, and so declared what he knew.
[2.] As unto the penman of the psalm, the words were dictated unto him by immediate revelation: which if nothing had been spoken of it or intimated before, had been sufficient for the decla- — ration of the will of God therein; for all revelations of that nature have a beginning when they were first made. But,—
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VER. 5-10.] EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 455
[3.] In, by, and together with the institution of all these legal sacrifices, God had from the beginning intimated unto the church that they were not the absolute, ultimate way for the expiation of sin, that he designed or would approve of. And this he did partly in the nature of the sacrifices themselves, which were no way com- petent or suited in themselves unto this end, it being “impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin;” partly in giving various intimations first, and then express declaration of his will, that they were only prescribed for a season, and that a time would come when their observance should utterly cease, which the apostle proves, chapters vii. and viii; and partly by evidencing that they were all but types and figures of good things to come, as we have at large declared. By these, and sundry other ways of the like kind, God had, in the institution and command of these sacri- fices themselves, sufficiently manifested that he did neither design them, nor require them, nor approve of them, as unto this end of the expiation of sin. Wherefore there is in the words no new reve- lation absolutely, but only a more express declaration of that will and counsel of God which he had by various ways given intimation of before. And we may observe,—
Obs. III. No sacrifices of the law, not all of them together, were a means for the expiation of sin, suited unto the glory of God or necessities of the souls of men.—From the first appointment of sacrifices, immediately after the entrance of sin and the giving of
_ the promise, the observation of them in one kind or another spread
itself over the whole ‘earth. The Gentiles retained them by tradi- tion, helped on by some conviction on a guilty conscience that by some way or other atonement must be made for sin. On the Jews they were imposed by law. There are no footsteps of light or testi- mony that those of the former sort, namely, the Gentiles, did ever retain any sense of the true reason and end of their original institu- tion, and the practice of mankind thereon; which was only the con- firmation of the first promise by a prefiguration of the means and way of its accomplishment. The church of Israel being carnal also,
had very much lost the understanding and knowledge hereof.
Hence both sorts looked for the real expiation of sin, the pardon of it, and the taking away of its punishment, by the offering of those sacrifices. As for the Gentiles, “God suffered them to walk in their own ways, and winked at the time of their ignorance.” But as unto the Jews, he had before variously intimated his mind concern- ing them, and at length by the mouth of David, in the person of Christ, absolutely declared their insufficiency, with his disapproba- tion of them, as unto the end which they in their minds applied them unto.
Obs. IY. Our utmost diligence, with the most sedulous improve-
456 AN EXPOSITION OF THE [CHAP. X.
ment of the light and wisdom of faith, is necessary in our search into and inquiry after the mind and will of God, in the revelation he makes of them.—The apostle in this epistle proves by all sorts of arguments, taken from the scriptures of the Old Testament, from many other things that God had done and spoken, and from the nature of these institutions themselves, as here also by the ex- press words of the Holy Ghost, that these sacrifices of the law, which were of God’s own appointment, were never designed nor approved by him as the way and means of the eternal expiation of sin, And he doth not deal herein with these Hebrews on his apos- tolical authority, and by new evangelical revelation, as he did with the church of the Gentiles; but pleads the undeniable truth of what he asserts from those direct records and testimonies which themselves owned and embraced. Howbeit, although the books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, were read unto them and « among them continually, as they are unto this day, they neither understood nor do yet understand the things that are so plainly re- vealed in them. And as the great reason hereof is the veil of blindness and darkness that is on their minds, 2 Cor. i. 18, 14; so in all their search into the Scripture they are indeed supinely slothful and negligent. For they cleave alone unto the outward husk or shell of the letter, utterly despising the mysteries of truth contained therein. And so it is at present with the most of men, whose search into the mind of God, especially as unto what con- cerns his worship, keeps them in ignorance and contempt of it all their days.