that a visionary scene was presented to his mind, în which an ideal Spirit came to tempt him to fail in the promise he had made of saving mankind. Now, mark the consequence which is to follow these visionary trials. By the example which he gave in resisting the allurements of an unreal tempter, he is to teach mankind how to resist temptations that were to be real, and of perpetual occurrence. O most lame and impotent conclusion! But the absurdity ends not here. He was, moreover, endued with a voluntary power of working miracles; but, as this teacher was open to frailties and to sin, it was necessary to guard against an abuse of this voluntary power: this restraint, therefore, was cautiously imposed upon him, "that he should not work miracles for his own advantage or profit, but solely for the purpose of his mission!" What more earthly and groveling can be conceived than this! Really there is something so puerile, so contemptible, so absurd, in these vile suppositions, that I cannot further stoop to refute them, nor can I suppose that any Jury in this country were so void of understanding or feeling as to require that I should; much less can I deem it necessary to rebut that further charge of ignorance imputed to "Him who knew all things," of incapacity to judge of what was real, and what was unreal, as regarded himself; and that he should be in such a state of doubt, uncertainty, and blindness, as " to apprehend

himself transported into heaven, when only he was favoured with a divine vision.1

Next, Gentlemen, we come to another point of great importance. After all that we have heard and believed, what, think you, was the purport of the death of Christ? Perhaps you are irrational enough to think, with St. Paul, that he offered "himself a sacrifice to God for the sins of the world?" that "he died for our sins?" that "he was delivered for our offences?" that "he tasted death for every man ?" or, with St. Peter, perhaps, you think that "he bare our sins in his own body upon the tree?" that "he once suffered for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God?" and that in this manner he fulfilled the prediction of Isaiah," He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all?” 2 "No such thing," say the Defendants: "you and the two Apostles are wholly in an error. Christ did not suffer death to appease the wrath, or to satisfy the justice, of God. In no sense did he make an atone-` ment for sin.3 You are entirely mistaken, and so is St. John when he ignorantly says, He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for our sins only,

Calm Inquiry, p. 449.

2 1 Cor. xv. 3. Rom. iv. 25. 1 Pet. ii, 24. 1Pet. iii. 18. Isaiah, liii. 4.

3 Calm Inquiry, p. 450.

but also for the sins of the whole world." The idea is as contrary to reason as you must see it is to Scripture. No: "the sole purport of Christ's death was, that he might fall a martyr to the truth." "To what truth?" you ask; "to the truth of our being redeemed and saved by him?” No: "to the truth of his resurrection from the grave. This, and this only, was the purport of his coming into the world." Now, Gentlemen, you will have the goodness to bear in mind that Christ, pointing to his own body, said, "Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up." "I lay down my life, that I might take it again; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again."2 Yet he elsewhere says, "As The Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so The Son quickeneth whom he will." 3 Who can read these passages and not see that the Son made himself a voluntary sacrifice, and that the Father and the Son are spoken of as possessing equal power? With respect to the particular mode of death which Christ was to suffer, our Lord did not think fit to disclose it otherwise than by a similitude; that as the brazen serpent was raised up by Moses, in order that the children of Israel, at the sight of it, might be cured of bodily disease,

1 1 John, ii. 2. 3 John, v. 21.

2 John, xi. 19. and x. 17.

so the Messiah was to be lifted up, that, by a stedfast looking to, and firm belief in him, so raised up, all men might be healed of the spiritual disease, the disease of sin," that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." No words could more pointedly express the efficacy of the death of Christ. He is lifted up,' or crucified, in order that whosoever believeth in him may have eternal life. Now, surely men might have believed (and many did believe) that Jesus was the Messiah, a Prophet sent from God, without his being crucified; and, indeed, our Saviour does not say that he was to be crucified that men might believe in him, but in order that those who did believe in him might be saved. It is then a plain and necessary inference, that the death of Christ was the indispensable condition of man's salvation, and that the belief required of Christians is a belief in the efficacy of that death.” 2

Yet it is but fair to the Defendants to say, that if only to prove the certainty of the resurrection from the grave were the object of the death of Christ, and the instruction of mankind in morality, were the sole purport of his coming into the world, certainly a very common man with the delegated

.C

1" And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." This," adds the Evangelist," he said, signifying what death he should die."

2 Bishop Blomfield's "Five Lectures," p. 47.

powers of heaven was quite sufficient to answer these purposes; and all that our Scriptures tell us, how, "that he purchased the Church of God with his own blood;" "that he came to give his life a ransom for many; "that we are bought with a price;"—" that he redeemed us to God by his blood;"1- and all such things, are merely the illusions of a vain philosophy, upon which we can build nothing; although St. John would persuade us that "through faith in him we are no longer children of wrath, but are made children of grace, for, as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name which were born not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." 2 But we have not so learned Christ: we have been taught from our youth up until now, with those Scriptures in our hands, that Christ was the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world;" that the whole Jewish ceremonial law was one continued type of his coming into the world to offer himself a piacular victim, an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of the human race; that the paschal lamb, a male, a firstling without spot or blemish, to be killed, but whose bones were not to

;

1 Acts, xx. 28. Matt.xx. 28. and. 1 Tim.ii. 6. 1 Cor. iy. 20. Rev. v. 9. and 1 Pet. i. 19.

? John, ii. 12.