for the commission of some crime, the guilt done away, and the
obligation to punishment cancelled. The chief methods of expiation among
the Jews were by sacrifices; and it is important always to recollect
that the Levitical sacrifices were of an expiatory character; because as
among the Jews sacrifices were unquestionably of divine original, and as
the terms taken from them are found applied so frequently to Christ and
to his sufferings in the New Testament, they serve to explain that
peculiarity under which the Apostles regarded the death of Christ, and
afford additional proof that it was considered by them as a sacrifice of
expiation, as the grand universal sin-offering for the whole world. For
our Lord is announced by John as “the Lamb of God;” and that not with
reference to meekness or any other moral virtue; but with an
accompanying phrase, which would communicate to a Jew the full
sacrificial sense of the term employed, “the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sin of the world.” He is called “our Passover, sacrificed for
us.” He is said to have given “himself for us, an offering and a
sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smelling savour.” As a priest, it was
necessary “he should have somewhat to offer;” and he offered “himself,”
“his own blood,” to which is ascribed the washing away of sin, and our
eternal redemption. He is declared to have “put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself,” to have “by himself purged our sins,” to have
“sanctified the people by his own blood,” to have “offered to God one
sacrifice for sins.” Add to these, and to innumerable other similar
expressions and allusions, the argument of the Apostle in the Epistle to
the Hebrews, in which, by proving at length, that the sacrifice of
Christ was superior in efficacy to the sacrifices of the law, he most
unequivocally assumes, that the death of Christ was a sacrifice and
sin-offering; for without that it would no more have been capable of
comparison with the sacrifices of the law, than the death of John the
Baptist, St. Stephen, or St. James, all martyrs and sufferers for the
truth, who had recently sealed their testimony with their blood. This
very comparison, we may affirm, is utterly unaccountable and absurd on
any hypothesis which denies the sacrifice of Christ; for what relation
could his death have to the Levitical immolations and offerings, if it
had no sacrificial character? Nothing could, in fact, be more
misleading, and even absurd, than to apply those terms which, both among
Jews and Gentiles, were in use to express the various processes and
means of atonement and piacular propitiation, if the Apostles and Christ
himself did not intend to represent his death strictly as an expiation
for sin:--misleading, because such would be the natural and necessary
inference from the terms themselves, which had acquired this as their
established meaning:--and absurd, because if, as Socinians say, they
used them metaphorically, there was not even an ideal resemblance
between the figure and that which it was intended to illustrate. So
totally irrelevant, indeed, will those terms appear to any notion
entertained of the death of Christ which excludes its expiatory
character, that to assume that our Lord and his Apostles used them as
metaphors, is profanely to assume them to be such writers as would not
in any other case be tolerated; writers wholly unacquainted with the
commonest rules of language, and therefore wholly unfit to be teachers
of others, and that not only in religion but in things of inferior
importance.
2. The use of such terms, we have said, would not only be wholly absurd,
but criminally misleading to the Gentiles, as well as to the Jews, who
were first converted to Christianity. To them the notion of propitiatory
offerings, offerings to avert the displeasure of the gods, and which
expiated the crimes of offenders, was most familiar, and terms
corresponding to it were in constant use. The bold denial of this by Dr.
Priestley might well bring upon him the reproof of Archbishop Magee,
who, after establishing this point from the Greek and Latin writers,
observes, “So clearly does their language announce the notion of a
propitiatory atonement, that if we would avoid an imputation on Dr.
Priestley’s fairness, we are driven, of necessity, to question the
extent of his acquaintance with those writers.” The reader may consult
the instances given by this writer, in No. 5 of his “Illustrations,”
appended to his “Discourses on the Atonement;” and also the tenth
chapter of Grotius “_De Satisfactione_,” whose learning has most amply
illustrated and firmly settled this view of the Heathen sacrifices. The
use to be made of this in the argument is, that as the Apostles found
the very terms they used with reference to the nature and efficacy of
the death of Christ, fixed in an expiatory signification among the
Greeks, they could not, in honesty, use them in a distant figurative
sense, much less in a contrary one, without giving their readers due
notice of their having invested them with a new import. From ἄγος, _a
pollution_, _an impurity_, which was to be expiated by sacrifice, are
derived ἁγνίζω and ἁγιάζω, which denote the act of expiation; καθαίρω,
too, _to purify_, _cleanse_, is applied to the effect of expiation; and
ἱλάσκομαι denotes the method of propitiating the gods by sacrifice.
These, and other words of similar import, are used by the authors of the
Septuagint, and by the Evangelists and Apostles; but they give no
premonition of using them in any strange and altered sense; and when
they apply them to the death of Christ, they must, therefore, be
understood to use them in their received meaning. In like manner the
Jews had their expiatory sacrifices, and the terms and phrases used in
them are, in like manner, employed by the Apostles to characterize the
death of their Lord; and they would have been as guilty of misleading
their Jewish as their Gentile readers, had they employed them in a new
sense, and without warning, which, unquestionably, they never gave.
3. As to the expiatory nature of the sacrifices of the law, it is not
required by the argument to show that _all_ the Levitical offerings were
of this character. There were also offerings for persons and for things
prescribed for purification, which were incidental; but even they grew
out of the leading notion of expiatory sacrifice, and that legal
purification which resulted from the forgiveness of sins. It is enough
to prove, that the grand and eminent sacrifices of the Jews were
strictly expiatory, and that by them the offerers were released from
punishment and death, for which ends they were appointed by the
Lawgiver. When we speak, too, of vicarious sacrifice, we do not mean
either, on the one hand, such a substitution as that the victim should
bear the same quantum of pain and suffering as the offender himself; or,
on the other, that it was put in the place of the offender as a mere
symbolical act, by which he confessed his desert of punishment; but _a
substitution made by divine appointment_, by which the victim was
exposed to sufferings and death instead of the offender, in virtue of
which the offender himself was released. With this view, one can
scarcely conceive why so able a writer as Archbishop Magee should prefer
to use the term, “vicarious _import_,” rather than the simple and
established term, “vicarious;” since the Antinomian notion of
substitution may be otherwise sufficiently guarded against, and the
phrase “vicarious _import_” is certainly capable of being resolved into
that figurative notion of mere symbolical action, which, however
plausible, does in fact deprive the ancient sacrifices of their
_typical_, and the oblation of Christ of its _real_, efficacy. Vicarious
acting, is acting for another; vicarious suffering, is suffering for
another; but the nature and circumstances of that suffering in the case
of Christ are to be determined by the doctrine of Scripture at large,
and not wholly by the term itself, which is, however, useful for this
purpose, (and therefore to be preserved,) that it indicates the sense in
which those who use it understand the declaration of Scripture, “Christ
died for us,” so as that he died not merely for our _benefit_, but _in
our stead_; in other words, that, but for his having died, those who
believe in him would personally have suffered that death which is the
penalty of every violation of the law of God.
4. That sacrifices under the law were expiatory and vicarious, admits of
abundant proof.
The chief objections made to this doctrine are, (1.) That under the law
in all capital cases, the offender, upon legal proof or conviction, was
doomed to die, and that no sacrifice could exempt him from the penalty.
(2.) That in all lower cases to which the law had not attached capital
punishment, but pecuniary mulcts, or personal labour or servitude upon
their nonpayment, this penalty was to be strictly executed, and none
could plead any privilege or exemption on account of sacrifice; and that
when sacrifices were ordained with a pecuniary mulct, they are to be
regarded in the light of _fine_, one part of which was paid to the
state, the other to the church. This was the mode of argument adopted by
the author of “the Moral Philosopher;” and nothing of weight has been
added to these objections since his day. Now, much of this may be
granted, without any prejudice to the argument; and, indeed, is no more
than the most orthodox writers on this subject have often remarked. The
law, under which the Jews were placed, was at once, as to them, both a
moral and a political law; and the Lawgiver excepted certain offences
from the benefit of pardon, because that would have been exemption from
temporal death, which was the state penalty. He therefore would accept
no atonement for such transgressions. Blasphemy, idolatry, murder, and
adultery, were the “presumptuous sins” which were thus exempted; and the
reason will be seen in the political relation of the people to God; for
in refusing to exempt them from punishment in this world, respect was
had to the order and benefit of society. Running parallel, however, with
this political application of the law to the Jews as subjects of the
theocracy, we see the authority of the moral law kept over them as men
and creatures; and if these “presumptuous sins,” of blasphemy and
idolatry, of murder and adultery, and a few others, were the only
capital crimes considered politically, they were not the only capital
crimes considered morally; that is, there were other crimes which would
have subjected the offender to death, but for this provision of
expiatory oblations. The true question then is, whether such sacrifices
were appointed by God, and accepted instead of the personal punishment
or life of the offender, which otherwise would have been forfeited, as
in the other cases; and if so, if the life of animal sacrifices was
accepted instead of the life of man, then the notion that “they were
mere mulcts and pecuniary penalties” falls to the ground, and the
vicarious nature of most of the Levitical oblations is established. That
other offences, beside those above mentioned, were capital, that is,
exposed the offender to death, is clear from this, that all offences
against the law had this capital character. As death was the sanction of
the commandment given to Adam, so every one who transgressed any part of
the law of Moses became guilty of death; every man was “accursed,” that
is, devoted to die, who “continued not in all things written in the book
of the law.” “The man only that doeth these things shall live by them,”
was the rule; and it was, therefore, to redeem the offenders from this
penalty that sacrifices were appointed. So with reference to the great
day of expiation, we read, “For on that day shall the priest make an
atonement for you, to cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your
sins; and this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an
atonement for the children of Israel, for all their sins, once a year,”
Lev. xvi, 30–34.
5. To prove that this was the intention and effect of the annual
sacrifices of the Jews, we need do little more than refer to Lev. xvii,
10, 11: “I will set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and
will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in
the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an
atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement
for the soul.” Here the blood which is said to make an atonement for the
soul, is the blood of the victims; and to make an atonement for the soul
is the same as to be a ransom for the soul, as will appear by referring
to EXODUS xxx, 12–16; and to be a ransom for the soul is to avert death.
“They shall give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord, that
there be no plague among them,” by which their lives might be suddenly
taken away. The “soul” is also here used obviously for the life; the
blood, or the life of the victims in all sacrifices, was substituted for
the life of man, to preserve him from death, and the victims were
therefore vicarious.
6. The Hebrew word כפר, rendered _atonement_, signifying primarily _to
cover_, _to overspread_, has been the subject of some evasive
criticisms. It comes, however, in the secondary sense to signify
atonement or propitiation, because the effect of that is to cover, or,
in Scripture meaning, to remit offences. The Septuagint also renders it
by ἐξιλάσκομαι, _to appease_, _to make propitious_. It is used, indeed,
where the means of atonement are not of the sacrificial kind, but these
instances equally serve to evince the Scripture sense of the term, in
cases of transgression, to be that of reconciling the offended Deity, by
averting his displeasure; so that when the atonement for sin is said to
be made by sacrifice, no doubt can remain that the sacrifice was
strictly a sacrifice of propitiation. Agreeably to this conclusion we
find it expressly declared, in the several cases of piacular oblations
for transgression of the divine commands, that the sin for which
atonement was made by those oblations should be forgiven.
7. As the notion that the sacrifices of the law were not vicarious, but
mere mulcts and fines, is overturned by the general appointment of the
blood to be an atonement for the souls, the forfeited lives, of men, so
also is it contradicted by particular instances. Let us refer to
Leviticus v, 15,16: “If a soul commit a trespass, and sin through
ignorance in the holy things of the Lord, he shall make amends for the
harm that he hath done in the holy thing, and shall add a fifth part
thereto, and shall give it to the priest.” Here, indeed, is the proper
fine for the trespass; but it is added, “He shall bring for his trespass
unto the Lord a ram without blemish, and the priest shall make atonement
for him with the ram of the trespass offering, and it shall be forgiven
him.” Thus, then, so far from the sacrifice being the fine, the fine is
distinguished from it, and with the ram only was the atonement made to
the Lord for his trespass. Nor can the ceremonies with which the
trespass and sin offerings were accompanied agree with any notion but
that of their vicarious character. The worshipper, conscious of his
trespass, brought an animal, his own property, to the door of the
tabernacle. This was not a eucharistical act; not a memorial of mercies
received, but of sins committed. He laid his hands upon the head of the
animal, the symbolical act of transferring punishment; then slew it with
his own hand, and delivered it to the priest, who burned the fat and
part of the animal upon the altar; and, having sprinkled part of the
blood upon the altar, and, in some cases, upon the offerer himself,
poured the rest at the bottom of the altar. And thus, we are told, “The
priest shall make an atonement for him, as concerning his sin, and it
shall be forgiven him.” So clearly is it made manifest by these actions,
and by the description of their nature and end, that the animal bore the
punishment of the offender, and that by this appointment he was
reconciled to God, and obtained the forgiveness of his offences.
8. An equally strong proof that the life of the animal sacrifice was
accepted in place of the life of man, is afforded by the fact, that
atonement was required by the law to be made, by sin offerings and burnt
offerings, for even bodily distempers and disorders. It is not necessary
to the argument to explain the distinctions between these various
oblations; nor yet to inquire into the reason for requiring propitiation
to be made for corporal infirmities which, in many cases, could not be
avoided. They were, however, thus connected with sin as the cause of all
these disorders; and God, who had placed his residence among the
Israelites, insisted upon a perfect ceremonial purity, to impress upon
them a sense of his moral purity, and the necessity of purification of
mind. Whether these were the reasons, or some others not at all
discoverable by us, all such unclean persons were liable to death, and
were exempted from it only by animal sacrifices. This appears from the
conclusion to all the Levitical directions concerning the ceremonial to
be observed in all such cases: “Thus shall ye separate the children of
Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in,” or by, “their
uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle which is among them,” Lev.
xv, 31. So that, by virtue of the sin offerings, the children of Israel
were saved from a death which otherwise they would have suffered from
their uncleanness, and that by substituting the life of the animal for
the life of the offerer. Nor can it be urged that death is, in these
instances, threatened only as the punishment of not observing these laws
of purification; for the reason given in the passage just quoted shows
that the threatening of death was not hypothetical upon their not
bringing the prescribed purification, but is grounded upon the fact of
“defiling the tabernacle of the Lord which was among them,” which is
supposed to be done by all uncleanness, as such, in the first instance.
9. As a farther proof of the vicarious character of the principal
sacrifices of the Mosaic economy, we may instance those statedly offered
for the whole congregation. Every day were offered two lambs, one in the
morning, and the other in the evening, “for a continual burnt offering.”
To these daily victims were to be added, weekly, two other lambs for the
burnt offering of every Sabbath. None of these could be considered in
the light of fines for offences, since they were offered for no
particular persons, and must be considered, therefore, unless resolved
into an unmeaning ceremony, piacular and vicarious. To pass over,
however, the monthly sacrifices, and those offered at the great feasts,
it is sufficient to fix upon those, so often alluded to in the Epistle
to the Hebrews, offered on the solemn anniversary of expiation. On that
day, to other prescribed sacrifices were to be added another ram for a
burnt offering, and another goat, the most eminent of the sacrifices for
a sin offering, whose blood was to be carried by the high priest into
the inner sanctuary, which was not done by the blood of any other
victim, except the bullock, which was offered the same day as a sin
offering for the family of Aaron. The circumstances of this ceremony,
whereby atonement was to be made “for all the sins” of the whole Jewish
people, are so strikingly significant, that they deserve a particular
detail. On the day appointed for this general expiation, the priest is
commanded to offer a bullock and a goat, as sin offerings, the one for
himself, and the other for the people; and, having sprinkled the blood
of these in due form before the mercy seat, to lead forth a second goat,
denominated “the scape-goat;” and, after laying both his hands upon the
head of the scape-goat, and confessing over him all the iniquities of
the people, to put them upon the head of the goat, and to send the
animal, thus bearing the sins of the people, away into the wilderness;
in this manner expressing, by an action which cannot be misunderstood,
that the atonement, which, it is affirmed, was to be effected by the
sacrifice of the sin offering, consisted in removing from the people
their iniquities by this translation of them to the animal. For it is to
be remarked, that the ceremony of the scape-goat is not a distinct one:
it is a continuation of the process, and is evidently the concluding
part and symbolical consummation of the sin offering: so that the
transfer of the iniquities of the people upon the head of the
scape-goat, and the bearing them away into the wilderness, manifestly
imply, that the atonement effected by the sacrifice of the sin offering
consisted in the transfer and consequent removal of those iniquities.
10. How, then, is this impressive and singular ceremonial to be
explained? Shall we resort to the notion of mulcts and fines? If so,
then this and other stated sacrifices must be considered in the light of
penal enactments. But this cannot agree with the appointment of such
sacrifices annually in succeeding generations: “This shall be a statute
for ever unto you.” The law appoints a certain day in the year for
expiating the sins both of the high priest himself and of the whole
congregation, and that for all high priests and all generations of the
congregation. Now, could a law be enacted, inflicting a certain penalty,
at a certain time, upon a whole people, as well as upon their high
priest, thus presuming upon their actual transgression of it? The
sacrifice was also for sins in general; and yet the penalty, if it were
one, is not greater than individual persons were often obliged to
undergo for single trespasses. Nothing, certainly, can be more absurd
than this hypothesis. Shall we account for it by saying that sacrifices
were offered for the benefit of the worshipper, but exclude the notion
of expiation? But here we are obliged to confine the benefit to
reconciliation and the taking away of sins, and that by the appointed
means of the shedding of blood, and the presentation of blood in the
holy place, accompanied by the expressive ceremony of imposition of
hands upon the head of the victim; the import of which act is fixed,
beyond all controversy, by the priest’s confessing over that victim the
sins of all the people, and at the same time imprecating upon its head
the vengeance due to them, Lev. xvi, 21. Shall we content ourselves with
merely saying that this was a symbol? But the question remains, Of what
was it the symbol? To determine this, let the several parts of the
symbolic action be enumerated. Here is confession of sin; confession
before God at the door of the tabernacle; the substitution of a victim;
the figurative transfer of sins to that victim; the shedding of blood,
which God appointed to make atonement for the soul; the carrying the
blood into the holiest place, the very permission of which clearly
marked the divine acceptance; the bearing away of iniquity; and the
actual reconciliation of the people to God. If, then, this is
symbolical, it has nothing correspondent with it, it never had or can
have any thing correspondent to it but the sacrificial death of Jesus
Christ, and the communication of the benefits of his passion in the
forgiveness of sins to those that believe in him, and in their
reconciliation with God. Shall we, finally, say that those sacrifices
had respect, not to God to obtain pardon by expiation, but to the
offerer, teaching him moral lessons, and calling forth moral
dispositions? We answer, that this hypothesis leaves many of the
essential circumstances of the ceremonial wholly unaccounted for. The
tabernacle and temple were erected for the residence of God, by his own
command. There it was his will to be approached, and to these sacred
places the victims were required to be brought. Any where else they
might as well have been offered, if they had had respect only to the
offerer; but they were required to be brought to God, to be offered
according to a prescribed ritual, and by an order of men appointed for
that purpose. Now truly there is no reason why they should be offered in
the sanctuary rather than in any other place, except that they were
offered to the Inhabitant of the sanctuary; nor could they be offered in
his presence without having respect to him. There were some victims
whose blood, on the day of atonement, was to be carried into the inner
sanctuary; but for what purpose can we suppose the blood to have been
carried into the most secret place of the divine residence, except to
obtain the favour of Him in whose presence it was sprinkled? To this we
may add, that the reason given for these sacred services is not in any
case a mere moral effect to be produced upon the minds of the
worshippers: they were “to make atonement,” that is, to avert God’s
displeasure, that the people might not “die.”
11. We may find, also, another more explicit illustration in the
sacrifice of the passover. The sacrificial character of this offering is
strongly marked; for it was an offering brought to the tabernacle; it
was slain in the sanctuary; and the blood was sprinkled upon the altar
by the priests. It derives its name from the passing over and sparing of
the houses of the Israelites, on the door posts of which the blood of
the immolated lamb was sprinkled, when the first-born in the houses of
the Egyptians were slain; and thus we have another instance of life
being spared by the instituted means of animal sacrifice. Nor need we
confine ourselves to particular instances. “Almost all things,” says an
Apostle, who surely knew his subject, “are by the law purged with blood;
and without shedding of blood there is no remission.” Thus, by their
very law, and by constant usage, were the Jews familiarized to the
notion of expiatory sacrifice, as well as by the history contained in
their sacred books, especially in Genesis, which speaks of the vicarious
sacrifices offered by the patriarchs; and in the book of Job, in which
that patriarch is said to have offered sacrifices for the supposed sins
of his sons; and where Eliphaz is commanded, by a divine oracle, to
offer a burnt offering for himself and his friends, “lest God should
deal with them after their folly.”
12. On the sentiments of the uninspired Jewish writers on this point,
the substitution of the life of the animal for that of the offerer, and,
consequently, the expiatory nature of their sacrifices, Outram has given
many quotations from their writings, which the reader may consult in his
work on Sacrifices. Two or three only may be adduced by way of specimen.
R. Levi Ben Gerson says, “The imposition of the hands of the offerers
was designed to indicate that their sins were removed from themselves,
and transferred to the animal.” Isaac Ben Arama: “He transfers his sins
from himself, and lays them upon the head of the victim.” R. Moses Ben
Nachman says, with respect to a sinner offering a victim, “It was just
that his blood should be shed, and that his body should be burned; but
the Creator, of his mercy, accepted the victim from him, as his
substitute and ransom; that the blood of the animal might be shed
instead of his blood; that is, that the blood of the animal might be
given for his life.”