Page images
PDF
EPUB

souls of the faithful, whereby not only their souls live to eternal life, but they surely trust to win their bodies a resurrection to immortality.

Of which that we may be partakers, I desire your prayers, as you have those of your fellow-labourer, brother, and faithful servant, CHARLES LESLIE.

ID.-Case of the Regale and Pontificate. § xix.

The seals which the Levitical priesthood were empowered to put to the covenant, which they administerred to the people in the name of GOD, were circumcision and the Sacrifices, which were appointed as types of CHRIST, for the remission of their sins.

The seals of the New Covenant are baptism and the LORD's Supper, as commemorations and exhibitions of the Sacrifice of CHRIST already past, and a true, real conveyance of all the benefits of it to the worthy receivers, for the remission of their sins, and a pledge to assure them of heaven.

Now surely these are greater and more glorious, and at least as efficacious, as the seals of the law; and therefore, the priests of the Gospel, to whom CHRIST has committed the administration of these, are as truly and properly priests, empowered by CHRIST, to seal covenants in His name with the people, as the priests under the law. . .

[ocr errors]

And so, on the other hand, as we are commanded to sanctify GOD, and to esteem Him holy, the same is communicated to the priests, who represent Him, and officiate in His name,... (ver. 8.) "Thou shalt sanctify him, therefore, for he offereth the bread of thy God; he shall be holy unto thee, for I the LORD, who sanctify you, am holy." The meaning ofwhich is, that if God be holy, so must His priest be esteemed by us; not upon a personal account, as GOD is holy, in Himself, and none but He; and some priests, as Hophni and Phineas, are sons of Belial, and know not the LORD; and there was a Judas among the apostles; but upon account of their office, which is holy, and that they offer the bread of our GoD, which is holy.

Nor can the shewbread in the temple be called the bread of our God so properly, so strictly, so eminently, as the bread in

we

the holy Sacrament, which is the body of CHRIST. And “ being many, are one bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread." (1 Cor. x. 17.) And does not then holiness and honour belong as much, at least, to the evangelical priesthood, who offer this bread of our GoD, as to the priests under the law, who set the shewbread upon the holy table in the temple? And is not the one as properly the office of a priest as the other?--Works, i. pp. 660. 665.

SCANDRET, J., PRESBYTER.-Sacrifice the Divine Service, from the Covenant of Grace to the Consummation of the Mystery of Man's Redemption.

I shall set down the doctrine of the great Christian Sacrifice in the method or manner wherein our Church teacheth the doctrine of the Sacraments. And first, as the general notion of a Sacrament is an outward visible sign of an inward and invisible thing signified, so likewise every Sacrifice has so far the nature of a Sacrament. For, whether it be the offerings of the people or the offerings of the priesthood, every offering or Sacrifice is an outward visible sign of some invisible thing thereby signified. But here we are further to observe carefully the great difference, or distinction, between these two; for whereas the one is an outward visible sign of an invisible grace, or favour, from God to man, the other is an outward visible sign of an invisible worship paid by man to GOD. The one is an act from a superior to an inferior; the other is an act from an inferior to a superior. The one, I say, is an act of grace and favour from God to man; the other is an act of worship paid by man to GOD.

To proceed in the method designed. And having declared a Sacrifice to be an outward and visible sign of an inward or invisible worship, the first thing to be considered is the outward visible sign, which, in every Sacrifice, must be some one of God's creatures, either animate or inanimate, brought into His presence and offered to Him. It must be either of the fruits of the earth, as bread, or wine, or flour, or oil, or incense, or silver, or gold; or it must be some living creature, from the flock, or herd, or fowl. And this according to the particular appointment and will

of GOD, revealed to men; as we read in the old Law; where, whatever the offering was, whether of thanksgiving and for the general infirmities of human life, as were the peace-offerings among the Jews, or whether it was a sin or trespass offering or Sacrifice, which had respect to some particular crime committed by the offerer, and till he had offered it, was not supposed to be at peace with GOD, it was always some creature, and that of God's appointment.

... Thus, when God renewed His worship to His peculiar people the Jews, and ordered a complete service, recommending it to them as copied from Heaven, He specified the outward visible sign in every Sacrifice that was to be offered to His supreme Majesty. And thus also JESUS CHRIST appointed the creatures of bread and wine as the outward visible sign in the great Sacrifice of the Christian Church, to remain for ever to the end of the world.

Words are, indeed, audible signs or significations of inward and spiritual worship; but what ought to commend to us the great Christian oblation, as above or better than all words in GoD'S public worship, is, that God has ever appointed a material Sacrifice in His Church, but never any form of words, as his chief divine service. We have no instance of any thing (as I can remember) that was said or spoken by the priest at the altar, till the mention of Ezra's occasional prayer, after the Captivity, made at the evening Sacrifice, Ezra ix. 5; and which we may suppose to be spoken by him there, not as a priest, but as a holy man and a prophet, to whom it did belong to pray for the people. In all the commands of GOD to Moses, or of Moses to Aaron, in the ordinances of the Divine worship, whether at the Sacrifices for Aaron's consecration to the priesthood, or at ordinary or extraordinary ones, whether at the altar without, before the tabernacle, or within, at the altar of incense, or when blood was brought on the great day of expiation, within the veil into the Holy of Holies, there is no mention or command of any words to be spoken by the priest, only when he came down from the tabernacle, to the Levites and people, and the Sacrifice being offered he blessed them by the appointed form.

It is further easily observed, that the noise of the trumpets at the time of the Sacrifice, when the tabernacle was in use, and of the many instruments of music afterwards under the Temple, and the songs sung by the Levites, called songs of degrees, because the Levites stood upon the seats one above another in the first court, and in that part which was next the second (not, as some have supposed, on steps ascending into the temple, which had been to stand between the altar and priest, and the mercy-seat, where GoD was supposed to be), was so great, that if the priest had spoken anything in the time of worship, he could not have been heard in the first court, much less in the second, where the people always were by themselves, apart from the Priests and Levites.

Wherefore, I say, the outward visible sign appointed by CHRIST in the great Christian Sacrifice or oblation, is bread and wine, the creatures of GOD offered to Him as the Evangelical Oblation, or Sacrifice of the Christian Priesthood; and which we are not to lay aside for any words, though words are signs or significations of our minds and hearts. And these creatures being offered before God, by being brought to His altar, and by the manual ceremonies appointed in the Rubrick of His service, the Priest holding them to and before GoD, breaking the bread to make a memorial to GOD of CHRIST's Body torn with nails upon the Cross, lifting up the wine as a memorial of His Blood shed for us, laying his hands on both, to signify that on Him was laid the sins of the world, as having undertaken them in the covenant of grace; this is the outward visible part or thing in God's great worship, the Christian Sacrifice in the Christian Church.

The next thing is the inward or invisible part, or the thing signified; and that is the visible and invisible offering of the Body and Blood of JESUS CHRIST, as our claim of the favour of the Covenant of Grace, our appointed plea, or manner whereby we beseech it of GoD, and an ackowledgment of God's infinite justice and mercy in his acceptance of CHRIST as a peculiar victim for the ransom of fallen man.

This was the purpose, intent, and language of all the Sacrifices of the priesthood. They were appointed claims or pleadings of

some covenant between a God and His people or worshippers; and acknowledgments of the power, or goodness, or justice of that God to whom they were offered. This was the internal worship of Sacrifice among the wiser Heathens, offered to their gods, as pleading, or beseeching thereby the favours and mercies of some covenant supposed to have been made between them and their deities. This was the internal worship of the Law Sacrifices literally taken, and as understood by the Jews. They were pleas or claims of the benefit of the covenant made by GoD with Abraham and Moses, in behalf of that whole nation; and acknowledgments of God's justice and mercy in his accepting, as they thought, the blood of those creatures in the room and stead of the life of the owner thereof; according to that famous proclamation of His dreadful Name, Just and Merciful, Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7. And this is, I say, the internal worship of the Christian Sacrifice, as offered by JESUS in the verity or truth, according to the New Testament notion of this word; and as offered by Christian Priests, His representatives on earth, in the image and resemblance appointed us both, in their manner and order, claims or pleadings of the benefits of the Covenant of Grace, and acknowledgments agreed upon in that covenant of God's infinite mercy. . .

.. Prayers are worthy attendants on the great Divine Service. I think him not to deserve the name of a Christian, who does not offer up daily prayers to God, to implore His mercy and grace, and to express his sense and thankfulness for all God's mercies to mankind in general, and to himself in particular.

But I cannot but believe that the great Christian Sacrifice is, and must be peformed by a representation of CHRIST's obedience to death; by a representation of the worship of our heavenly Priest made in heaven, by appearing for us there, with His crucified Body and His Blood ;-a representation, I say, not only of what He did on the cross, but also of His now and ever intercession in heaven; whence the blessed Apostle, when he speaks of the exercise of CHRIST's Priesthood, does chiefly refer to CHRIST'S appearance for us there. "For if He were on earth, He should not be a priest;" which priests" serve to the example and shadow of heavenly things." And again, "CHRIST is not entered

1

« PreviousContinue »