ing the mercy and the goodness of God, repentance does not prevent the natural penal confequences of our crimes in this world; what reafon is there to think, that it will avert the vengeance due to them in the next, which is under the government of the fame Almighty Being?

That it is incapable of producing this effect, will appear further from the confideration, that the fincereft repentance and refor mation must neceffarily be in fome degree imperfect, mixed with failings, and subject to occafional relapfes; and therefore, instead of atoning for paft tranfgreffions, muft themfelves ftand in need of indulgence and forgiveness. If repentance placed us in a state of moral perfection and unfinning obedience, there might be fome pretence, perhaps, for afcribing to it a confiderable degree of expiatory virtue. But let the trueft and devouteft penitent look impartially into his own heart, and then let him fairly fay, whether this is actually the cafe. Has he fo completely

washed his hands in innocency, and purified

his foul from fin, that not a fingle evil pro

as a friend in our behalf, and voluntarily fubftituting himself for us on the cross.

penfity

penfity remains within him? Has he entirely fubdued every inveterate habit, every inordinate paffion, every fin that did most easily beset him? Is it all calmnefs, compofure, peace and order within? Is all rancour and malice laid asleep in his breast? Can he forgive the groffeft infults, the cruelleft calumnies, and the most unprovoked injuries? Do his thoughts never wander beyond the limits of duty, nor his eye delight to dwell on improper objects? Are his affections detached from this world, and fixed entirely on things above? Does his heart glow with unbounded love towards his neighbour, and is it touched with the hallowed flame of piety and devotion towards his Maker? When he can truly fay, that this is a genuine picture of his foul, he may then, if he thinks fit, reject a crucified Redeemer. But till then, he will do well not to lean too confidently on repentance as his only stay.

If then neither Scripture nor experience teach us, that repentance alone will avail for our pardon from God, does the light of nature affure us that it will? To know what

are the genuine dictates of nature, you

must

not

not look for them in a land enlightened by Revelation; you must go back to those ages, and those countries, where nature was, indeed, the only guide that men had to direct their ways. And what was then their opinion of the efficacy of repentance? Did the antient Pagans entertain fuch high notions of it, as fome theologians, in the present times, feem to have taken up? By no means: we scarce ever hear them talking of repentance. When they had offended their gods, they thought of nothing but oblations, expiations, luftrations, and animal facrifices. These were the expedients to which they always had recourse to regain the forfeited favour of their deities. This univerfal practice of fhedding blood to obtain the pardon of guilt, moft clearly shows what the common apprehenfions of mankind were on this subject, when under the fole direction of their own understanding: it shows, they thought that something else was neceffary, befides their own repentance and reformation, to appease the anger of their gods. They thought that, after all they could do for themselves, fomething must be done or fuffered by fome other being, before they could

be

be restored to the condition they would have been in if they had never forfeited their innocence. Nay, fome of the greatest, and wisest, and best amongst them, declared, in exprefs terms," that there was wanting fome univerfal "method of delivering men's fouls, which no sect "of Philofophy had ever yet found out *."

This univerfal method of delivering men's Souls, (as it is here moft properly and most emphatically called) was at length made known to mankind by the Christian Revelation; and it is that very doctrine of Redemption which we have been here confidering. Our bleffed Lord was himself the great, the all-atoning victim, offered up for the whole world upon the crofs." He was wounded for "our tranfgreffions, and on him the Lord hath "laid the iniquity of us all." "He bore our "fins in his own body on the tree, that we

being dead to fin should live unto righteouf

"nefs." He was, in short, the very Pafchal Lamb, which was flain for us from the foundation of the world. He was the great univerfal Sacrifice to which all the prophets, from

Porphyry, as quoted by Auftin de Civitate Dei. 1. 10.

C. 32.

+ Ifaiab liii 5, 6.

ti Peter ii. 24.

the

the fall of Adam to the birth of Chrift, uniformly directed their views and their predictions, and of which all the facrifices under the Jewish law were only types and emblems. They were the shadow: Chrift was the subftance. And, as the writer to the Hebrews juftly observes, "if the blood of bulls and of

goats, and the afhes of an heifer, fprinkling "the unclean, fanctified to the purifying of "the flesh;" (that is, released the offender from legal uncleanness and temporal punishment) "how much more fhall the blood of "Chrift, who, through the eternal Spirit, "offered himself without spot to God, purge 66 your confciences from dead works, to ferve "the living God * ?"

This is, in a few words, the fum and substance of the great mystery of our Redemption. That it is a mystery, a great and asto

Heb. ix. 13, 14.-The Socinians fay, that the expreffions in Scripture, which feem to prove the death of Christ to be a real facrifice for fin, are nothing more than figurative allufions to the animal facrifices of the Mofaical law. But it has been well obferved, that the very reverse of this is the truth of the case. For these Mosaical facrifices were themselves allufions to the great all-fufficient Sacrifice, which was to be made by our Saviour on the cross.

nishing