I shall lay down some propositions for the illustrating this doctrine.
other sacrifices, all which did prefigure the spiritual redemption by the Messiah. A sacrifice is defined to be a religious oblation of something consecrated and dedicated to God, by the ministry of a priest, according to God's institution, to be destroyed, for a testimony of the worship of God and an external symbol.†
I shall lay down some propositions for the illustrating this doctrine.
1. Sacrifices were instituted as types of Christ.
(1.) They were instituted by God. No satisfactory reason can be rendered of the custom of sacrificing, derived from the first age of the world, practised by all nations, till the appearance of the gospel abolished it in those places where it shone. It could not be a dictate of the law of nature inscribed in all men's hearts, for then they would have been of force still. Christianity doth not extinguish any beam of natural light, but adds a clearness to it; it abolisheth only what was corrupt, or only ceremonial. Though natural light could not invent them, yet it made them entertainable by all, while they were stung with the conscience of sin and expectations of vengeance. Men might know that they were unlike to what they were in their creation; they found their light darkened, their beauty defaced, and might suppose that a God of infinite goodness did not send them forth in such a shape out of his mint; this deformity must come upon them for some provocation, and by the means of their own sin. They also found the marks of God's anger upon them, saw and felt his thundering judgments in the world; they had a notion of the vindictive justice of God; they had frequent manifestations of it upon themselves and others. This the apostle affirms generally of the heathens: Rom. 1:32,
'They knew the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death;' they had a sentiment of God and revenging justice m their consciences, that it did not become the holiness and righteousness of the divine nature to let their rebellions remain unpunished. The apostle speaks not there of any
supernatural revelation, but the natural manifestation by the creatures, whereby his justice was discovered, as well as his eternal power and Godhead. Upon this account sacrifices were practised among them, as seeming to them congruous means for the expiation of sin, and to put a stop to the wrath of God, either feared by them or already kindled among them. For by this action they confessed their desert of death for their crimes, acknowledged God's sovereignty and right over all they had, and owned his mercy in accepting in their stead the life of an irrational animal. For when men are sensible of the anger of God, the next thought in order is how to escape it. When men see a magistrate suffer murders and violences in a nation to go unpunished, they generally have an horror of it, and expect some judgment of God, till an expiation be made by the death of the offender. And could they reasonably think God to be void of that virtue of justice, which is commendable over all the world by the light of nature, when those perfections of human nature, left in the midst of corruption, are but as little sparks to those which are infinite in God? They were at first instituted by God; though we have not the institution of them in express words, yet we have the practice in Abel, Gen. 4:4; afterwards in Noah, Gen. 8:20, Noah offered burnt offerings on the altar. And since the apostle, Heb. 11:4, speaks of Abel's offering a sacrifice in faith, it must be God's command; for no act of worship of a human invention can please God. The demand might be made, Who hath required those things at your hands? It had not been formally good unless offered in faith; nor had it been a fit ground or medium of faith without a divine stamp upon it. If the foundation were not divine, the act could not be acceptable.
(2.) No other reason can be rendered of the institution of them, but as typical of the great sacrifice of the Redeemer. The Scripture gives us the only account of this; all nations in the world without the Scripture are in the dark as to the design of those sacrifices, though they practised them conformably to the sentiments of their consciences. The institution of them from the beginning of the world cannot reasonably be concluded to be for any other end than to prefigure some sufficient sacrifice, able to appease the wrath of God,
and pacify the consciences of men, and to instruct men in what was to be brought upon the stage in time, in the exhibition of the person of the Redeemer. In the state of innocence we find no mention of them, nor could they have had any place had man continued in his created rectitude and integrity. The covenant of works, which then was the rule and ground of man's standing, required not faith in a Redeemer, and therefore implied no such act as sacrificing. Man then had no relation to God but as a creature, and persisting in obedience could not by the righteous law of God be subject to death, and therefore no other subjected to death for him; for to have any one to die for us implies that we had merited death ourselves. It cannot enter into the reason of man to imagine what use they could be for in that state. Death was not due to the righteousness of man's nature, but to his corruption. Adam stood upon his own bottom, and was the foundation of all his posterity, and no person was substituted in his room. What could sacrifices then represent? Whereof could they be typical? Could they be for the confession of sin? There was none to confess. Could they be to represent a death deserved? There was no crime committed whereby to merit it. Could it be to typify
Christ to come? There was no revelation of him till after the fall, Gen.
3:15. And supposing (as some do) that Christ should have been incarnate had man persisted in his first integrity, yet none suppose that Christ should have been crucified in that nature without the entrance of sin. What end could be supposed of shedding his blood?
For satisfaction of justice? Justice was not provoked. For example?
Man, perfect in all virtue, needed none; besides, he was not capable of the exercise of suffering virtues, who was not capable of suffering in that state. They were appointed therefore after the fall, as the representations of this sacrifice, so necessary for the expiation of sin.
And some conclude with probability that they were put in practice immediately after the making the promise of the seed of the woman
(though there be no express scripture for it), from Gen. 3:21, 'God made them coats of skins,' which probably were the skins of slain beasts, very likely consumed by fire from heaven, as the Jews say
Abel's sacrifice was, which was a token of God's acceptation of it.
This was probably done for the confirmation of the truth of the
promise, the clearer representing the design of it to them, by substituting another in the room of the offender, and comforting them thereby, since 'without shedding of blood is no remission,' Heb.
9:22. And of those sacrifices the skins were appointed to be the garments of the first man and woman, to put them in mind of their apostasy, and the way of their recovery, and the righteousness of another, wherein they were to stand before God. But howsoever it be, we cannot suppose Abel to be the first that offered sacrifice, and that 129 years should run without the offering of any.* It is likely Abel was slain in that year, because Seth was born in the 130th year of Adam's age, Gen. 5:3. Indeed sacrifices, as they looked backward, could be no other than a transcript of the agreement between the Father and the Son, of the one's paying, and the other's accepting the price of blood for the redemption of man; † and as they looked forward, a type of the real performance of the sufferings on the one part, and the acceptance of them on the other part, when the fulness of time should come wherein they were actually to be undergone.
This tradition of sacrifices was handed down to all nations of the world, but the knowledge of the end of them was lost. Yet in an exercise of reason they might rise to a consideration, that this low blood could not be a compensation for sin, as not being proportioned to the dignity of him with whom they had to do. But as to the true end of them, the representation of a higher sacrifice, they were not able to discern it by all the reason in the world, after they had lost the revelation of it. By the way, this adds a credit to the Scripture, since it gives us an account of the reason of that which was practised by all nations, which they could not without revelation render any tolerable reason for. The Scripture makes it plain. God would have a representation of that which the Redeemer was to offer in the fulness of time for the abolition of sin. As men always need a satisfaction of the justice of God, so God would have it that in all their worship there should be a mark of this necessity, and some presage that one day there should be a sacrifice eternally efficacious, the reality of which was represented by this figure.‡
(3.) Christ did really answer to these types. They were all Christ in a cloud; the substance did answer to the shadows, and he was used in such a manner as the figures of him were. Christ was a victim put in the place of the sinner to appease the anger of God; and as sins were laid upon the head of the sacrifice, so God 'put upon him the iniquities of us all,' Isa. 53:6. In regard of this typicalness of the legal administration, Christ is often called a lamb, and 'the Lamb of God,'
John 1:29, and 'a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,' not only in the decree, but in the type of him, the first sacrifice mentioned in Scripture, which was a firstling of the flock, Gen. 4:2, 4,
Abel being a keeper of sheep. To those figures of him he seems to refer in his last speech upon the cross, John 19:30, 'It is finished.'
The whole design of the daily and extraordinary sacrifices was completed, the demerit of sin and severity of divine justice were manifested, and the truth of God, as well as his love, made glorious therein; upon which followed the rending of the veil, and the setting heaven open for the entrance of all that believed in him, to approach to God upon the account of this sacrifice.
2. The sacrifices thus instituted were of themselves insufficient, and could not expiate sin, they must therefore receive their accomplishment in some other. Being but shadows by their institution, they could make nothing perfect, Heb. 10:1, 11, where, and in the following verses, the apostle lays the glory of the legal sacrifices in the dust; nor really atone, though they typically did, they did but evidence the guilt of sin and misery of men, whence the law is called a minister of death.
(1.) It was not consistent with the honour of God to be contented with the blood of a beast for an expiation of sin. How could there be in it a discovery of the severity of his justice, the purity of his holiness, or the grandeurs of his grace? How would he have been known in his infinite hatred of sin, if he had accepted the blood of an abject animal as an atonement for the sin of a spiritual soul? Was it becoming the majesty of God, who had denounced a curse in the law upon the transgressors of it, and published it with so terrible a
solemnity, as thunders, lightnings, earthquakes, which made it pass under the title of a fiery law, Deut. 33:2, in regard of the severe menaces against the transgressor, to make so light of it, to accept of the mangling a few beasts in the place of the offender against it?*
Should he appear on mount Sinai with ten thousand of his angels in the giving of it, to let all the threatenings of it vanish into smoke?
Was it likely all those curses should be poured out upon a few irrational and innocent creatures, who had never broken that law?
Can it be imagined, that after so terrible a proclamation, he should acquiesce in so light a compensation as the death of a poor beast? No man can reasonably have such despicable thoughts of the majesty, justice, and holiness of God, or the vileness of sin and greatness of its provocation, as to imagine that the one could be contented, or the other expiated, by the blood of a lamb or bullock. Our own consciences will tell us that if God will have a sacrifice, it must be proportioned to the majesty of him whom we have offended, and the greatness of the crime we have committed.
(2.) They have no proportion to the sin of man. The sin of a rational creature is too foul to be expiated by the blood of an irrational creature; nor could the blood of a human body, though the first-born, the strength and delight of man, Micah 6:7, much less of a beast, bear any proportion to the sin of the soul: Heb. 10:4, 'It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin.' The butchery of so poor a creature cannot be any compensation for that which is a disparagement of the Creator of the world. What alliance was there between the nature of a beast and that of a man? An inferior nature can never atone the sin of a nature superior to it.
There is indeed in the groans of those dying creatures some demonstration of God's wrath, but no bringing in an everlasting righteousness, nor any vindication of the honour of the law.
(3.) The reiteration of them shews their insufficiency.† Had the wrath of God been appeased by them, why should the fire burn perpetually upon the altar? Why should it be perpetually with the carcases of beasts? As often as they were offered, a conscience of sin was excited
in the presenter of them, iniquity was called to remembrance, Heb.
10:2, 3. The whole scene of that administration loudly published that the wrath against sin was not appeased, the guilt of the soul not wiped off. If a man had presented a sacrifice for his sin one day, and fallen into the same, or another, before night, he must have repeated his sacrifice for a new expiation; had there been ability in them to perform so great a thing, there had not been a repetition. They were rather a commemoration of sin, and confessions of it, than expiations of any; rather accusers than atoners.
(4.) God had often spoken slightly of them. He resembles them to the 'cutting off a dog's neck,' when done with an unholy heart, Isa. 66:3.
While the temple stood, he struck their fingers off from hanging upon them, Isa. 1:11–13; indeed, he would 'not reprove them for their offering,' Ps. 50:8, but he would not have them place their justification in them. He professeth he had no delight in them, Ps.
40:6. If all sacrifices of the law were not of such value as love to him and fear of him, they could not expiate; and if that which was more excellent than those were too weak to effect it, an utter inability must remain in the other. He doth frequently predict the abolition of them, and hath destroyed the temple to which he had affixed them, which remains in desolation without a sacrifice to this day. Besides, he never provided a typical remedy for all sins in them; some transgressors were to be cut off without a sacrifice for them, according to the judicial law, the rule of the government of that people; upon which account David argues that God did not delight in them: Ps. 51:16, 'Thou desirest not sacrifice, thou delightest not in burnt-offerings,' because he had provided no sacrifices for those sins
David at that time was guilty of; whereupon he desires, ver. 18, that God would 'do good to Sion in his good pleasure;' bring forth that Redeemer out of Sion which he had promised, whose sacrifice, being a sacrifice of righteousness, should be infinitely delightful to him.
Since, therefore, it is unbecoming the majesty of God to be satisfied with the blood of a calf or goat, since it bears no proportion to the sin of man; since he never intended those institutions to be perpetual; since the threatening of the law must, if God be a God of truth, have
their accomplishment either in the person offending, or in some undertaker for him, capable to hear them in his stead; there must be some other sacrifice suited to the majesty of God, able to make an expiation proportionable to the sin of man, a sacrifice able to remove the guilt and pacify the conscience, a rest for God and a security for the creature. The natural order of things requires, and the whole design of those legal institutions declares, that as he that keeps the law should have a reward from the goodness of God, so he that breaks it should endure a punishment from the justice of God; and every man being a breaker of the law, must either sink under the menaces of it, or present a sufficient sacrifice to God to avert his wrath, a precious blood that may quench the flames of his anger, that God may say to the sinner, 'I have found,' and accepted, 'a ransom' for thee. And what is said of this may be said of all our duties and performances, the staves upon which men naturally lean for acceptation of their persons. They can no more be acceptable in themselves to God, or remedies for man, than the legal sacrifices, which had no merit in themselves, but represented that which was grateful to God and meritorious for the creature; and whatsoever virtue and efficacy they had was not from themselves, but from that which they shadowed.
3. Proposition. Such a sacrifice, therefore, is necessary for a sinful creature. No creature can be such a sacrifice. As the apostle argues,
'If righteousness be by the law, then was Christ dead in vain,' Gal.
2:21. Upon the same account it may be concluded, if expiation could be made by a creature for himself, in vain did God send his Son to be a propitiation for sin. Had man himself been sufficient for it, God's sending his Son had rather appeared an act of cruelty to Christ than of mercy to us. Who could think God should expose the delight of his soul to our infirmities and a shameful death, if a sufficient sacrifice could have been found elsewhere? Besides, the wrath of God being so terrible that the human nature of Christ trembled at it, how is any creature ever able to bear the horror of it, and stand as a sacrifice under the weighty strokes of that justice?
(1.) What is a sacrifice for sin must be pure and sinless. God will not accept a defiled offering. He that provokes him by his own offence is not capable of appeasing him for his own or another's. The least blemish in a typical lamb rendered it unfit for the altar. God is infinitely pure who is offended; the law is exactly holy which is contemned. A compensation cannot be made to a holy God and a righteous law by the criminal without enduring an infinite penalty, which, because it cannot be intensive so, must be extensivè, infinite in point of duration, i.e. since it cannot be infinite it must be perpetual. As he would be always suffering, so he would be always sinning, and wrath can never be appeased by that which provokes it at the same time it endeavours to pacify it. What is displeasing can never be capable of pleasing an infinite holiness. If a man had but one sin, and thought to expiate that by anything he could do, he would still need another sacrifice to expiate the sin of the former, and so would be always satisfying and always sinning, since 'there is no man that doth good and sins not,' i.e. in the doing of it, Eccles.
7:20; he could not possibly find anything in himself or in any corrupted creature, where he might rest his foot with any content and security. Where any sin is, though but one, there can be no merit. Whatsoever is done after all our strength is gone is done by the grace of God. In that case God deserves service of us, but we deserve no acceptation from him. Since, therefore, we are not able since our fall to do one good work, we are not able to offer one acceptable sacrifice, how can man then satisfy for himself, any more than a man that owes a shilling pays that by borrowing two, whereby he is so far from paying his debt that he increaseth it?
(2.) An infinite sacrifice is necessary for a sin in some respects infinite; for every sin entrencheth upon the honour of an infinite
God. An infinite sacrifice is due for an infinite offence. God is infinite in his glory, which is impaired, infinite in his sovereignty, which is degraded; the sacrifice must be of as great a dignity as the offence was of malignity. It must be fully proportioned to the sin of man and the majesty of God.* What man, nay, what creature is capable of such a proportion? The condition of his nature is too low, and the limits of
his dignity too strait, to correspond with such an effect. The drop of a bucket and the dust of the balance are of too vile a nature to be a satisfactory sacrifice to God. All men are no more, Isa. 40:15–17, nay,
'worse than nothing and vanity,' and therefore all men in the world put together would be so far from redeeming themselves by a sufficient sacrifice, that as themselves, so their sacrifice, would be worse than nothing and vanity, and would be overwhelmed under the punishment due to their offence. Finite bears no proportion to infinite, therefore a finite sacrifice carries no equivalent compensation in it for an infinite wrong; so that neither length of time nor strength of nature can ever make a recompence for that offence, which increaseth in proportion according to the dignity of the person against whom it is committed. If every hair of our head were a soul, and every soul a sacrifice, all would be too poor an amends for that glorious God wronged by us, though it had been but by one act of rebellion; for man cannot do any act of that value in the nature of satisfaction, as one act of sin is injurious in the nature of wrong. Upon the same account of finiteness no angel could be a proportionable sacrifice to the justice of God for the sin of man; for, though the excellency of the angelical far transcends the nature of man, yet it cannot equal the dignity of God.* They are creatures, and an unconceivable distance is perpetually between creatures and the Creator; therefore saith Job, chap. 4:18, 'He puts no trust in his servants, and his angels he chargeth with folly.' All the excellency of the angelical nature is despicable compared with God, and if God did not secure them they would fall; if God did not preserve light in them, they would be darkness as well as we. If they could not because they are creatures, man could not because he was a sinful creature;
'Thousands of rivers of oil, and thousands of rams,' would have borne far less proportion to the Creator of them, or to sins against him, Micah 6:6, 7.
(3.) Necessary, in regard of the justice of God, which is an immutable and infinite perfection of the divine essence. As God is so infinitely holy as it is impossible ho should not but hate the least sin, so he is infinite in his justice, and cannot let any sin go unpunished, since he
hath declared by his law, that 'cursed is he that continueth not in all things of the law to do them,' and that it was irrevocably passed, that 'in the day man ate of the forbidden fruit he should die the death,'
Gen. 2:17. As the perfection of his nature requires that he should have for sin an implacable aversion, so the same perfection requires that justice be not appeased without punishment. Since God therefore would have a sacrifice for sin, to have one disproportioned to his infinite dignity and justice, had been the same as to have none at all. An infinite sacrifice cannot be offered but by an infinite person; it is necessary therefore that one of the persons of the Trinity should be this sacrifice, and it was most congruous to the wisdom of God, upon several accounts, that it should be the second. This sacrifice is necessary at least in point of becomingness. As God is the author of all things, and placed them in a rectitude from which they departed by their own folly, and sullied that glory they were created to manifest; it became him to bring things into order again by such a method as should manifest his hatred of that disorder sin had introduced into the world, and how strict a guardian he would be of the eternal order of things, and of those sacred laws whereby he governs the world: Heb. 2:10, 'It became him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering.' As God had made all things for his glory, so it was fit his Son, becoming the head of the world, should be put in such a posture as to shew forth the glory of God in the most illustrious manner. Now, in the sufferings of Christ, the justice of God flames more bright than it could in any creature, and shews itself inflexible against sin; the treasures of his grace are wider opened than could be in any other act, and his wisdom sparkles more gloriously in bringing men to glory by punishment; and since he made all things, and that for himself, it became him after the apostasy of man and the defacing the creation, to restore things in such a way as might conduce most to his own glory and the happiness of the creature.
4. Proposition. Christ only was fit to be this sacrifice. Whatsoever any creature could have done had been a debt of duty, and that could not
have made a compensation for a debt of rebellion. Whatsoever a mere creature could do was by the gift of God, and therefore could not merit anything at the hand of God. Whatsoever is meritorious must be our own, as well as that which is not due. Besides, from any other hand God would have received less than the offence merited; at the best, it would have been but a feigned and partial satisfaction, which had not been congruous to the wisdom and justice of God, since he determined it necessary to have a sacrifice. But Christ in his divine nature was 'equal with God,' Philip. 2:6, and therefore in his person was answerable to the dignity of the person offended; and as he was in the form of a servant and innocent, he offered that which was not due from himself and upon his own account to God; for though as a creature he was bound to the obedience of the precepts of the law, yet as an innocent creature he was not obliged to the penalties of the law: suffering was in no wise due upon his own account. And he was without blemish. Had he been a criminal, he could not have been a remedy. He had also an alliance with both parties; he could treat with God as partaking of his glory, and be a sacrifice for man as partaking of the infirmities of his nature. He had a body to bear the stroke due to a victim, and a divine nature to sustain him under it. He had a human nature to offer as a sacrifice, and a divine nature to render it valuable and infinitely meritorious; being God and man, he wanted not a fitness to accomplish so great an undertaking. If he had not been man, he could not have been a sacrifice; and if he had not been God, he could not have been a remedy.
5. It was necessary, in regard of his office of priesthood, that he should be a sacrifice. He was constituted as 'a priest for ever,' by an oath, Ps. 110:4. Now, he could not be a priest without a sacrifice; a priest and a sacrifice are relatives: Heb. 5:1, 'Every high priest taken from among men, is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. It is therefore of necessity that this man have something to offer,' Heb. 8:3. As he was a prophet, he was to have a doctrine to teach; as a king, he was to have subjects to govern; as a priest, he was to have a sacrifice to
offer; as he was a prophet, he was to deliver something from God to men; as he was a priest, he was to present something for man to God; as a prophet, he was to teach men obedience to God; as a priest, he was to make God propitious to men; that which he was to offer must be expiatory, that is the proper notion of a sacrifice; the other offerings are termed gifts. If he had offered the blood of bulls and goats, we had been in the same case we were in before; the insufficiency of them had not been removed by the dignity of the offerer; they could never in their own nature be proportioned to the dignity of the wronged sovereign, or be adequate to the punishment the criminal had deserved. The impossibility of their taking away sin is positively asserted, Heb. 10:4. The transcendent excellency of the priest could never alter the disproportion between the justice of God provoked by sin, and the death of the miserable beast for it; though the person offering had been greater, the thing offered had been the same; besides, the offending nature had not suffered, but a nature inferior to it. They must have been always offered, the repetition of them must have been continued, and had that been a proper employment for the Son of God, to have been always imbruing his hands in the blood of animals? But a sacrifice must be offered by him
(if he did not offer one, he was no priest), and none but himself was a sacrifice worthy to be offered by so great a priest. He offered but once, and it was himself he offered, Heb. 7:27. And this was so spotless, Heb. 9:14; and of so sweet smelling savour, Eph. 5:2, that it need not again be repeated, Heb. 9:28. His unblemished 'soul was made an offering for sin,' Isa. 53:10. For being a priest of another kind than the legal priests, he must have a sacrifice of another kind.
6. Proposition. Jesus Christ, then, was a sacrifice in his human nature. To this end a body was prepared for him, to be substituted in the place of those sacrifices wherein God had no pleasure: Heb. 10:5,
'Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared me.' Cited out of Ps. 40:6, 'Mine ears hast thou opened' (as some* think figuratively, the ear being taken for the whole body, because obedience is learned by the ear, the instrument of hearing the will of another). The will of God was, that he should be an
offering in this body: Heb. 10:10, 'By which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ once for all.' And his soul was an offering for sin, Isa. 53:10. The first promise evidenced, that though the seed of the woman should tear up the empire of the devil, which by the law he had over sinners, yet it should be by the suffering something from him, by having his heel bruised. There was an obedience to the law to be performed, without which he had not been capable of being a sacrifice; the penalty of the law to be endured, without which he could not be an actual sacrifice. Neither of those could be but in the human nature; obedience to the law is not consistent with the sovereignty of God; according to his divine nature he was under no law. Suffering was impossible to the Deity; it is the property of God to be immutable and impassible. His human nature therefore was the sacrifice; for as he was made of a woman, whereby he took our nature, as he was made under the law, whereby he subjected himself to our obedience, he 'redeemed us from under the law', from our condemnation, Gal. 4:5. He that was to break the serpent's head, i.e. to dissolve the power which, as an executioner, he had from an offended God, was to be the seed of the woman. And this he effected by his death and bloody sacrifice, appeasing the wrath of God, and thereby destroying the power of the jailor, which he obtained by the entrance of sin and the curse of the law: Heb.
2:14, 'Through death he destroyed him that had the power of death,' i.e. the devil. This sacrifice was both of soul and body, as the threatening was, 'In the day thou eatest thou shalt die the death,' i.e. be subject to the death and condemnation both of soul and body. As the reward of goodness respects the entire man, composed of soul and body, so doth the punishment of sin, which hath corrupted one as well as the other. The sacrifice therefore to be offered for the appeasing that wrath, and removing that curse, was to consist both of soul and body.
7. Proposition. That whereby this sacrifice was sanctified was the divine nature. Every sacrifice was sanctified by the altar, Mat. 23:19.
There must be something to add an infinite value to the sufferings of his humanity,† which could be nothing but the divine nature, and
union with it Nothing but that which is infinite can confer an infinite value on that which is finite. The infiniteness of dignity resides in the divine nature and essence, and the infiniteness of dignity is as incommunicable as the infiniteness of essence. For it hath its root and foundation in the infiniteness of being, and the one is but the reflection of the other. It is impossible to add a dignity without limits, but one must attribute an essence without bounds, as it is impossible that anything can possess the lustre and enlivening virtue of the sun but the sun itself. The human nature suffered, and the divine nature sanctified the humanity, and by reason of this admirable union, and the reflection of the divinity upon the humanity, what was done to the human nature upon the cross, is ascribed to the whole person. They 'crucified the Lord of glory,' 1 Cor.
2:8. And God 'purchased the church with his own blood,' Acts 20:28.
It was this made his sufferings acceptable to God, whose justice was to be satisfied; and efficacious for man, whose happiness and commerce with God were to be restored, and his indigencies to be supplied. Thus some interpret Heb. 9:14, 'Through the eternal Spirit he offered himself to God,' understanding by eternal Spirit his Deity; not that he suffered in his divine nature, but by virtue of that presented himself to his Father a most acceptable sacrifice. So that he had a human nature to serve for a sacrifice, and an eternal spirit or divine nature, wherein he subsisted, from whence that sacrifice derived an infinite dignity, as gold, which hath a lustre of itself, hath a greater when the sun shines full upon it. We may see here how
Christ was a priest, sacrifice, altar, in several respects: a priest in his person, a sacrifice in his humanity, the altar in his divinity. He was the offerer and the sacrifice, both are expressed: Eph. 5:2, 'He offered up himself.' Active as a priest, passive as a victim; as one, offering; as the other, offered. Upon this account of his blood being offered by his person, he is called God in the act of oblation of his blood for the redemption of the church, Acts 20:28, 'which he,' referring to God, 'hath purchased with his own blood.' The Jews and soldiers were not the priests, as some affirm. They were the instruments of slaying him, but not with the intention of a sacrifice.
They were instruments in it, but could not force him to it. His death
was intended by them; his death as a sacrifice intended by himself; his laying down his life was of himself, John 20:18, which is not meant barely of his death, but of his death as respecting his sheep, ver. 15, and indeed unless it had been voluntary, it had not been savoury.
8. Proposition. Upon the sacrifice of Christ all his other sacerdotal acts depend, and from thence they receive their validity for us. It is fit therefore we should well understand and often consider this sacrifice, which is the foundation of all our peace and comfort in reference to God. This was the chief thing God eyed in the first declaration of him, Gen. 3:15, in the serpent's bruising his heel; nothing but this spoken of. His resurrection was first represented in the safety of Isaac, after he was designed to death, and other things not till after that successively; God making the light to dawn upon them by degrees.
(1.) This was the ground of his ascension and entrance into heaven as a priest. The high priest was not to enter within the veil without blood; what was in the type, was to be answered in the antitype. An expiatory sacrifice was necessary to precede his ascension to heaven; the sacrifice must be offered upon the earth, as the legal sacrifies were without,—heaven was no place for slaughter,—and with his blood he was to enter. Heaven's gates had been shut against him without it. Death was the penalty threatened, if the legal high priest ventured to step into the holy of holies without blood. The apostle argues from this, Heb. 9:7, 'Into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people,' and ver. 25. According to this type, Christ by his own blood entered once into the holy place.
How and in what order? After he had obtained redemption for us, Heb. 9:12, which is ascribed to his death, ver. 15. His entrance into heaven, and what he doth for us there, is laid upon the account of his death as a sacrifice upon the earth; by virtue of which he went to heaven to present it to God, and apply it to us. And besides, all his royalty and power, whereby we have security and protection from
him, depends upon this; for it is because of that obedience to blood and death which he rendered to God, that he hath given him a name above every name, and advanced him to a sovereign power: Philip.
2:8, 9, 'Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him; wherefore,' referring to his death, ver. 8.
(2.) This is the foundation of his intercession. There are two functions of Christ's priesthood, oblation and intercession;* they are both joined together, but one as precedent to the other. The legal high priest, when he had first cut the throat of the sacrifice without (upon the day of the anniversary sacrifice), was not esteemed by that act to have completed his propitiation, till he had entered into the sanctuary, and sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice with his finger; so the propitiation made by our Redeemer was not fully complete till he entered into heaven to exercise his intercession. Yet the oblation precedes the intercession, and the intercession could not be without the oblation. It was with the blood of the victim, and no other blood, he was to enter. Without the oblation he would have had nothing to present in his intercession. They are placed in this order by the apostle, 1 John 2:1, 2. He is first a sacrifice for propitiation, then an advocate for intercession. What he doth as an advocate, is grounded upon what he did as a sacrifice; and, were it not so, the apostle's arguing would not be valid, who placeth our salvation by the life of Christ upon our reconciliation by the death of Christ, Rom. 5:10.
Indeed, he could not have been admitted, according to the type, as an advocate, but as being the high priest, and a high priest he could not have been without a sacrifice.
(3.) This is the foundation of all the grace any have. The conveyance of all the gracious love of Christ is through this channel. In redemption by his blood, the riches of the grace of God abounded, and that with the marks of the highest wisdom, Eph. 1:7, 8. All had laid buried from the view of man, and the fruition of men, without this sacrifice. This did commend his love, as well as satisfy his justice. His wrath had not been appeased, nor his grace drawn out to us without it; nor could the Redeemer lay any claim to any grace and