the ancient prophets, priests, and kings performed in a lower sphere and as an adumbration of Christ's more perfect work. (5.) We as fallen men, ignorant, guilty, polluted, and helpless, need a Saviour who is a prophet to instruct us; a priest to atone and to make inter- cession for U6 ; and a king to rule over and protect us. And the salvation which we receive at his hands mcludes all that a prophet, priest, and king in the highest sense of those terms can do. We are enlightened in the knowledge of the truth ; we are reconciled unto God by the sacrificial death of his Son ; and we are delivered from the power of Satan and introduced into the kingdom of God ; all of which supposes that our Redeemer is to us at once prophet, priest, and king. This is not, therefore, simply a convenient clas- sification of the contents of his mission and work, but it enters into its very nature, and must be retained in our theology if we would take the truth as it is revealed in the Word of God.
Under the old economy the functions of these several offices were not only confided to diflferent persons, no one under the theocracy being at once prophet, priest, and king; but when two of these offices were united in one person they were still separate. The same man miglit sometimes act as prophet and sometimes as priest or king ; but in Christ these offices were more intimately united. He instructed while acting as a priest, and his dominion extending over the soul gave freedom from blindness and error as well as from the power of sin and the dominion of the devil. The gospel is his sceptre. He rules the world by truth and love. " Tria ista officia," says Turrettin, "ita in Christo conjunguntur, ut non solum eorum operationes distinctas exerat, sed eadem actio a tribus simul prodeat, quod rei admirabilitatera non parum auget. Sic Crux Christi, quae est Altare sacerdotis, in quo se in victimam Deo obtulit, est etiam schola prophetge, in qua nos docet mysterium salutis, unde Evangelium vocatur verbum crucis, et Trophasum regis, in qua scil. triumphavit de principatibus et potestatibus. Col. ii. 15. Evangelium est lex prophetas, Is. ii. 2, 3, Sceptrum regis, Ps. ex. 2, Gladius sacerdotis, quo penetrat ad intimas cordis divisiones, Heb. iv. 12, et Altare, cui imponi debet sacrificium fidei nostrse. Ita Spiritus, qui ut Spiritus, sapientise est effectus pro- phetise, ut Spiritus consolationis est fructus sacerdotii, ut Spiritus roboris et glorise est regis donum." ^
1 Locus XIV. quasi, v. 13, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. pp. 347, 348.