for any such plan to have originated with any other than God himself. When God's dealings with the fallen angels were considei'ed, who would have imagined that man, partaking of their iniquity, should yet be rescued from their doom? Sup- posing that such a thought could have entered into the mind of man, who could have contrived such a way of maintaining the honour of the Divine government, and of making the dis- cordant attributes of justice and mercy to harmonize in the salvation of man ? If such an expedient as the substitution of God's own Son in the place of sinners could have been devised, who could have dared to propose it to the Deity ; or have prevailed upon him to acquiesce in it? The more this is con- sidered, the more will the salvation of man appear to be totally independent of man himself (as far as respects the contriving or the meriting of it), and to be the fruit of infinite wisdom, sovereign grace, and unbounded love". From the first laying of the foundation to the bringing forth of the top-stone, we must cry, Grace, grace unto it°.]
2. From Christ's sacrifice as the means —
[It might seem that men, under the law, were accepted on account of the sacrifices, which were offered according to the Mosaic ritual. But, not to mention the impossibility that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sinP, the very repetition of those sacrifices shewed their insufficiency for the removal of guilt, or for the satisfying of men's consciences 'J. They had no effect but as they led the offerers to the Lord Jesus Christ, or expressed their faith in his all-atoning sacrifice. All who have ever found acceptance with God, whether before the law, or under it, or since its abolition, have been admitted to merc}'^ purely " through the one offering of Jesus Christ." Nothing but that could ever satisfy Divine justice ; nothing but that could ever atone for one single sin : nor can any creature, to the end of the woi'ld, ever obtain favour with God, but in consideration of that sacrifice presented to God for us, and pleaded by us as the one ground of our hope*". Here I cannot but call your attention to the minuteness and force of David's statement, and to the redoubled force and energy ex- pressed in the Apostle's citation of it. David enumerates the different kinds of sacrifices, in order to shew, that none (whether those burnt without the camp% or those consumed on the altar*, or those of which but a small part was burnt, and the rest was divided between the priest and the offerer")
n 2 Tim. i. 9, « Zech. iv. G, 7. p ver. 4.
q ver. i. 3. Heb. ix. 9. ' Acts iv. 12. 1 Cor. iii. 11,
s Lev. xvi. 27. * Exod. xxix. 38 — 42.
u Lev. vii. 1 — 6, 19, The word " all" includes the offerers. See Lev. vii. 15, 10. and Numb, xviii. 11.
2309. J CHRIST SUPERSEDING THE LEGAL SACRIFICES. 'S'Zl
were of any avail to take away sin. And tivice does the Apostle repeat this enumeration of them, in order the more abundantly to manifest the eternal purpose of God to liberate us from the Jewish yoke, and to establish throughout the world the purer dispensation of the Gospel ; so that all, whe- ther Jews or Gentiles, should henceforth " know nothing as a ground of hope, but Jesus Christ and him crucified."]
Infer —
1. How vain is men's confidence in any services of their own !
[To have been baptized in our infancy, to have attended punctually the outward duties of the Sabbath, and to have waited occasionally upon the Lord at his table, are deemed in general satisfactory evidences of our conversion to God, and sufficient grounds for our hope towards him. But, if the whole multitude of legal institutions, framed by God's own order, and according to a model shewn to Moses in the mount, were of no value as recommending men to God, how much less can the few services which we perform be sufficient to procure us acceptance with him? But it may be said, that moral services are more pleasing to God than ceremonial : true ; but we are not told that God willed them, any more than the others, as means of effecting our reconciliation with him. It was the incarnation and death of Christ that God " willed ;" and, in a remarkable correspondence with the text, he thrice, by an audible voice from heaven, said. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am inell pleased^. Let every self- righteous hope then be banished ; and let us learn to glory in Christ alone y.]