2. "The use of such terms, we have said, would not only be wholl}^ absurd, but criminally misleading to the Gentiles, as M^ell as to the Jews, who were first converted to Christianity. To them the notion of pro- pitiatory offerings, offerings to avert the displeasure of the gods, and which expiated the crimes of offend- ers, was most familiar, and terms corresponding to it were in constant use. The bold denial of this hy Dr. Priestly might well bring upon him the reproof of arch- bishop Magee, who, after establishing this point from the Greek and Latin writers, observes, ' So clearly does their language announce the notion of a propitia- tory atonement, that if we would avoid an imputation on Dr. Priestly's fairness, we are driven, of necessity, to question the extent of his acquaintance with those writers.' The reader may consult the instances given by this writer in No. 5 of his ' Illustrations,' appended to his 'Discourses on the Atonement;' and also the tenth chapter of Grotius's De Saiisfuciione, whose learning has most amply illustrated and firmly settled this view of the heathen sacrifices. The use to be made of this in the argument is, that as the apostles found the ver}' terms thej' used with reference to the nature and efficacy of the death of Christ fixed in an expiatory signification among the Greeks, they could not, in honesty, use them in a distant figurative sense, much less in a contrary one, without giving their read- ers due notice of their having invested them with a new import. From iiyog, a polluti'in, an impuriti/, which "was to be expiated by sacrifice, are derived ayviil,(jj and ayid'Coj, which denote the act of expiation ; KaOaipto, too, to purify, cleanse, is applied to the effect of expia- tion ; and i\a<jKOf^iai denotes the method of propitia- ting the gods by sacrifice. These, and other words of similar import, are used by the authors of the Septua- giut, and by the evangelists and apostles ; but thej' give no premonition of using them in any strange and altered sense ; and when they apply them to the death of Christ, they must, therefore, be understood to use them in their received meaning. In like manner the Jews had their expiatory sacrifices, and the terms and phrases used in them are, in like manner, employed by the apostles to characterize the death of their Lord ; and they would have been as guiltj'' of misleading thsir Jewish as their Gentile readers had they em- plo3'ed them in a new sense, and without warning, which, iniquestionably, they never gave.
3. "As to the expiatory nature of the sacrifices of the law, it is not required by the argument to show that all the Levitical offerings were of this character. There were also offerings for persons and for things prescribed for purification, which were identical ; but even the}-- grew out of the leading notion of expiatory sacrifice, and that legal purification which resulted from the forgiveness of sins. It is enough to prove that the grand and eminent sacrifices of the Jews were strictly expiatory, and that by them the offerers were released from punishment and death, for which ends they were appointed by the lawgiver. When we speak, too, of vicarious sacrifice, we do not mean either, on the one hand, such a sulistitution as that the victim should bear the same quantum of pain and suflering as the offender himself; or, on the other hand, that it was put in the place of the offender as a mere symbol- ical act, by which he confessed his desert of punish-
ment ; but substitution mmle hy divine appointment, by which the victim was exposed to sufferings and death instead of the ott'ender, in virtue of which the offender himself was released. With this view, one can scarce- ly conceive why so able a writer as archbishop Magee should prefer to use the term ' vicarious imporf rather than the simple and established term ' vicarious,' since the Antinomian notion of substitution maj' be other- wise sufficientl}' guarded against, and the phrase ' vi- carious import' is certainly capable of being resolved into that figurative notion of mere symbolical action, which, however plausible, does in fact deprive the an- cient sacrifices of their typical, and the oblation of Christ of its 7-eal efficacy. Vicarious acting is acting for another; vicarious suflTering is suffering for anoth- er ; but the nature and circumstances of that suflTering in the case of Christ are to be determined bj' the doc- trine of Scripture at large, and not wholly by the term itself, which is, however, useful for this purpose (and therefore to be preserved), that it indicates the sense in which those who use it understand the declaration of Scripture, 'Christ died for us,' so as that he died not merely for our benefit, but in our stead ; in other words, that, but for his having died, those who believe in him would personallj' have suffered that death wluch is the penalty of every violation of the law of God.
4. " That sacrifices under the law were expiatory and vicarious admits of abundant proof. The chief objections made to this doctrine are, (1.) That under the law, in all capital cases, the offender, upon legal proof or conviction, was doomed to die, and that no sacrifice could exempt him from the penalty. (2.) That in all lower cases to which the law had not at- tached capital punishment, but pecuniary mulcts, or personal labor or servitude upon their non-payment, this penalty was to be strictly executed, and none could plead any privilege for exemption on account of sacrifice ; and ihat when sacrifices were ordained with a pecuniary mulct, they are to be regarded in the light oi fine, one part of which was paid to the state, the other to the Church. This was the mode of argument adopted by the author of The Moral Philosopher, and nothing of weight has been added to these objections since his day. Now much of this ma}' be granted without an_y prejudice to the argument, and, indeed, is no more than the most orthodox writers on this sub- ject have often remarked. The law under which the Jews were placed was at once, as to them, both a moral and a political law ; and the lawgiver excepted certain oflTences from the benefit of pardon, because that would have been exemption from temporal death, which was the state penalty. He therefore would ac- cept no atonement for such transgressions. Blasphe- my, idolatry, murder, and adultery were the 'pre- sumptuous sins' which were thus exempted ; and the reason will be seen in the political relation of the peo- ple to God ; for, in refusing to exempt them from pun- ishment in this world, respect was had to the order and benefit of society. Kunning parallel, however, with this political application of the law to the Jew's as sub- jects of the theocracy, we see the authority of the moral law kept over them as men and creatures ; and if these 'presumptuous sins' of blasphemy and idolatry, of murder and adultery, and a few others, were the only capital crimes considered politically, they were not the only capital crimes considered morally ; that is, there were other crimes which would have sul)jected_the offender to death but for this provision of expiatory oblations. The true question, then, is whether such sacrifices were appointed by God, and accepted instead of the yiersonal punishment or life of the oflPender, which otherwise would have been forfeited, as in the other cases ; and, if so, if the life of animal sacrifices was accepted instead of the life of man, then the notion that ' thev were mere mulcts and pecuniary penalties' iaWs to the ground, and the vicarious nature of most of the Levitical oblations is established. That other