sional glimpses, yet could they not wholly penetrate the mystery, until the Spirit was given; for which reason it was needful that he should go away. And, dear brethren, it seemeth good to me to warn you, that at this time the clear insight into his Divinity appears to be departing from the church, whereof they hold not the high discourse, nor shew the deep and full conviction, which gave such glory to the days of other times. And, finally, to complete this emblem of, and preparation for, the Incarnation; as there was a court for the Gentiles, where they might behold, though at a distance, and witness the going in and out, and hear as it were the rumour of the holy things, so our Lord might not, while incarnate, nor his ministers, profane the children's bread, by giving it unto the dogs, though he refused not to feed them with the crumbs, and to encourage them with the hope of a speedy admission into the holiest place. So that our Lord's flesh was the true temple, the pure and holy temple: as he said, the first time he was revealed unto the people, "Destroy this temple, and in three days 1 will raise it up again; speaking of the temple of his body." And in this, I think, consists a great use of the Incarnation, to interpret the former worship, and realize all its shadows; to fill with meaning all its words, and all its ordinances with power. In this sense the Incarnation was the perfection and accomplishment of religion to the Jew; but to the Christian in this sense it is of a very secondary use, because upon the cross that fleshly tabernacle was rent, and with it that whole dispensation passed away, whereof it was the living reality which had taken life for

the very end of being crucified and slain, and carrying flesh to the grave, and with it all fleshly ordinances now, when the reality ceased, surely much more did this shadow cease.

This leadeth us to observe a second, and yet more ancient, intimation and introduction of the Incarnation, contained in the institution of sacrifices; and a second use of the Incarnation, that thereby he might become the true, the only real, sacrifice. His living body was the temple, his dead body was the sacrifice. From the first creation of man, the word of God unto his creature was, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." And that the creature died not in the day that he ate thereof, is the greatest mystery upon record. Let any man unfold to me why man died not when he disobeyed the commandment, which said, Thou shalt die when thou dost transgress. In the very staying of that word of God, we, who have been enlightened in the nature of sin, can discover the mystery of the Godhead. It is nothing to say, that from thenceforth, in the word of God, it hath been a constant manner of his to threaten and not perform. That doth only magnify and multiply the difficulty. Why always threatening, and always withholding? What meaneth this recession and shrinking in the Divine mind; in the True One; in the Almighty; in the Unchangeable; in the Creator of the stedfast world? He who hath put all things under such invariable laws and ordinances, doth himself only change and fluctuate! This, the character of the first threatening and every succeeding one, hath explanation only by the separation of the personality of THE WORD. The holy will of God declareth its

holy purpose of justice and righteousness; THE WORD refuseth not to declare it, but addeth thereto words of grace and mercy. Whence come these? From his own independent being and self-existence; from his own unconstrained love; from his everlasting dedication of himself to redeem us: which though the Father was well pleased withal, yet did he continually declare his holiness, and execute it also; which the Word failed not to declare, adding thereto the declaration of mercy and hope descending through the channel of his mediation, by virtue of his own free-will offering of himself. But that man might know, that the curse of death still depended over him-and that a death by violence, by slaying-sacrifice was instituted, and became universal upon the earth; and that the sacrifice by blood, not the offering of first-fruits merely. The offering of first-fruits was a confession that he held the earth of God's mercy: but this was not enough; he must offer blood, in order to shew that he held life also of God's mercy; that life was yet to be required, and the curse yet to be accomplished; the full curse-as it is written, "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die':" that is, That human nature, wrapt up in thee, shall die: human nature in its perfection and completeness shall die: thou, sinful Adam, art not now worthy to be the sacrifice another Adam, sinless and spotless, of whom thou, O man, art the type, and thou, O woman, the mother, shall die, to purchase life for himself and for all who are chosen, in him, to suffer with him and to live with him. And to the end of symbolizing this great truth, and preserving it in an ordinance for ever, sacrifice was appointed. For, brethren, I hold with the old

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school of divines, in believing that sacrifice was in the world from the Fall, because it is the first act which is recorded after the Fall; and that it contained in itself a threefold use-first, the declaration of sin; secondly, the signification that by blood the guilt of sin was to be cleansed away; and thirdly, that by fire the purification of all which sin had defiled was to be accomplished. The substance of which symbol Cain did deny, and so despised and desecrated the ordinance of God; wherefore God forsook him, and he became a murderer and a vagabond upon the earth, the proto-apostate from the church, as Abel was the proto-martyr. For it is the way of the Lord to come swiftly in judgment upon the first breach of any ordinance: as we see in Corah's rebellion, in Achan's transgression, and in Ananias's lying unto the Holy Spirit: by which swift vengeance I am the more convinced that sacrifice was an ordinance of God from the beginning in the observance of which, Noah took possession of the earth by sacrifice; and Abraham took possession of the promise by a more clear and significant sacrifice of his own son, which was done in spirit, though not in the very act; and the children of Israel took possession of the land, and kept possession of it, in the daily offering up, evening and morning, of a sacrifice, and annually on the day of atonement; and, as Paul well concludes, "almost every thing under the Law was purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission." Whereby it was always signified that every national, and personal, and natural blessing, the people of God, yea, the whole world (for Adam and Noah were the fathers of all), did hold only in the anticipation of that great sacrifice of his body which the Son of God had

provided from all eternity, when he said, "Sacrifice and burnt-offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou provided me:" or, in other words, that from the fall man was possessed of nothing in his own right, no, not of his own life, but held every thing in the right of that woman's Seed which was promised to our first parents, and of that atonement, or satisfaction, or purchase, or redemption, which he was to offer up; in the expectation of which the very world had its being preserved, and was peopled with animation, with spiritual promises enriched, and with a dispensation of grace and of glory over-canopied. But if there were no spiritual guilt, why be at such endless pains to translate it into sensual signification? What mean those bloody conditions of every blessing, this dark foreboding of some future pledge and title, if so be that man stood free before his Maker, clothed with rights in himself, and invested in his own rightful possession? Adam and Abel and Enoch, Noah and Melchizedec, Abraham and the Patriarchs, Moses and the Prophets, and every one in whom any light abode, knew their true standing before the Lord, and regarded themselves but as pilgrims and sojourners, permitted to live and breathe, privileged to believe and hope, until He should come who, in his own title of perfect and sufficient man, should purchase back the right and title of man to the earth, which had been lost by the Fall; should roll back the tide of sin and death which had burst in by that gate, opened of Satan; and gather up again unto himself, as the Head, those disjointed fragments of being, which would never have been disjointed and dispersed had not the first Adam