law stood on better ground. This may be regarded as his answer to the last class of Abp. Magee's arguments for the divine institution of sacrifice, and it is certainly acute and ingenious; but yet it is built upon assumptions which are not proved, and of which the proof would be difficult. If sacrifice was divinely instituted, a ceremonial law must have existed in the patriarchal ages; and to aver that it was not, is to assume the matter in dispute. The institution of the sabbath must be considered to be in some degree of a ceremonial nature. That expiation for moral sin was not the privilege of the Mosaic dispensation, is a proposition, the truth of which is denied not only by some of the most distinguished writers, but also by one to whom Mr. Davison pays well-merited deference, by the learned and judicious Outram*. Nor, supposing the premises to be sound, would the conclusion, which he is labouring to establish, be indubitable; for there might be reasons why sacrifices of expiation were given in the primitive times, and denied under the law.

Having completed his review of the historical evidence applicable to the inquiry, our author proceeds to the doctrinal evidence,-which he thus states:

"The doctrinal evidence by which the divine institution of sacrifice is thought to be evinced, is briefly this: What is not commanded by God, cannot be a worship acceptable to him.' For, first, the worshipper cannot render it in faith; since' faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,' (Rom. x. 17.); and, secondly, there is a sentence of reprobation pronounced in Scripture upon will-worship,' the mere invention of human reason, (Col. ii. 23.) In the strength of these objections to all voluntary institutions of religion, there is thought to be contained the valid conclusion, that sacrifice must have been God's own ordinance to render it capable of his approbation." (P. 97.)

We shall not follow the learned author throughout his reply to this statement of the doctrinal evidence-a reply characterized by his accustomed penetration and controversial skill; but shall content ourselves with one or two observations.

In the zeal to oppose an adverse system, Mr. Davison seems to allow too much merit to spontaneous piety. God's will is the only measure of right and wrong in all moral actions; and, if he have given us a revelation, it must contain every thing essential, otherwise it would be an imperfect revelation. But we are

De Sacrificiis, lib. i. cap. 12, 13. See also Grotius, De Satisfact. Christi, cap. 10; Richie's Peculiar Doctrines of Revelation, part 3; Magee, Discourses, &c. No. 37.

not to suppose that a special commandment is given for every pious office, that every instance of moral and religious duty must be made a matter of positive revelation. This was the ruling error of Puritanism, so admirably exposed by the incomparable Hooker. Leading truths, and general principles, are alone declared; while the application is left to the sober judgment of men. The law of nature and of reason is also confirmed by the Holy Scriptures; so that it becomes a co-existent rule of duty, and whatever is sanctioned by it, is for that reason obligatory upon the conscience. There is, nevertheless, a broad line of distinction between duties so sanctioned, and duties commanded in the sacred writings: they are both binding, but binding upon different grounds: and though it is a palpable error to reject the obligation of the law of nature, it is equally so to place it, in a religious point of view, on the same footing with the law of revelation. If the Bible, and the Bible alone, be the religion of Protestants, every thing entitled to the epithet "religious," must be founded on the Bible. Actions may be fit, may be expedient, may be required from other considerations; but, if they be not founded on the Bible, they cannot be called Christian duties. It is dangerous to hold up any practice, not authorized by revelation, as a religious duty; a moral one it may be, and, as such, binding upon the conscience; but to enforce it on religious grounds, is to open a door for all the inventions of Papal will-worship. As no article of Christian faith, so no branch of Christian practice is to be received as such, unless it can be proved by certain warranty of Holy Writ; not indeed always enjoined by a positive enactment, but sometimes deduced by inferential reasoning, yet in all cases resting on the fundamental truths and principles of religion.

Supposing, with our author, that there may be acceptable religious services without a positive revelation; and supposing further, that the Scripture has no where authorized us to treat those sacrifices as shut out from acceptance, simply because they might not be commanded and instituted by a revelation, it may be doubted whether this will meet the exigencies of the case before us. The stress of the argument built upon the divine acceptance of the patriarchal sacrifices, appears to be not that they could by no means have been acceptable without a divine command, but that their being accepted is presumptive evidence of such a command. With respect to Abel's sacrifice, for instance, it is more probable, from the very circumstance of its being approved by the Almighty, that it was an act of obedience to a sacred direction, than a spontaneous offering. Though to assert with Abp. Magee, that the early sacrifices

could not have received the divine approbation without the authority of a divine institution *, may be to transgress the limits of our knowledge, yet does not such approbation highly favour the notion of their divine institution? We do not mean to say how far, or whether in any degree, this confirms the sacred original of sacrifice; but we conceive it to be the true jet of the argument, which has been overlooked or evaded by Mr. Da

vison.

A very important passage, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, comes next under consideration: "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and by it he, being dead, yet speaketh." xi. 4. Here, it is argued, the Apostle declares "faith" to be the reason why Abel offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain: now faith has always relation to some revealed communication of God without some revelation granted, some assurance as to the object of faith. Abel could not have exercised this virtue. The object of this faith cannot be conceived to be any other than the great Deliverer promised in the seed of the woman; and therefore the offering of Abel was the ordained manifestation of his faith in the promise of a Messiah. It is at least beyond the reach of controversy, that Abel's offering was "by faith;" and as this virtue cannot be exercised without something revealed as the object of it, his offering must have testified his belief in that object, and therefore must have been in obedience to a divine appointment: hence it is inferred, that sacrifice had its origin in divine institution.

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Such is the mode of argument pursued by those who ascribe sacrifice to a sacred original; and without presuming to decide, whether it be successfully combated by Mr. Davison, we put it to his candour, whether he has not made some admissions which his opponents will convert into arguments against himself. Thus, in saying, "I make no question whether Abel, and every good man, from the earliest times, had a faith in the Messiah, (p. 118.); will they not reply, that, if such be the fact, the most probable ground of the acceptance of Abel's sacrifice is, that it testified his "faith in the Messiah," which it could not do except it were the instituted means of testifying a belief in the promised Deliverer. Cain must have had a general belief, that his sacrifice would be approved by the Almighty, or he would not have offered it at all; consequently this general faith could not be

* Disc. on Atonement, No. 47. See Faber's Origin of Pag. Idol. vol. i. p. 482, et seq.

that which rendered Abel's sacrifice acceptable. It must then have been a distinctive faith; and if the promise of mercy in the Messiah was revealed to the first pair, it seems the natural conclusion that Abel's offering was approved, because it was in obedience to that revelation. Again, in admitting that the phrase λiova Justav may be rendered a more abundant, or simply a better sacrifice, (p. 128.) does he not afford room for his adversaries to retort, that as it cannot be shewn from the history that Abel's was a more abundant sacrifice, it must be rendered a better sacrifice; but how could it be a better, otherwise than by being the appointed ordinance for testifying faith in the promised seed? We merely throw out these hints for the author's consideration.

So much for the First Part of Mr. Davison's publication:the Second Part commences with the defence of his second position, "that the human origin of sacrifice infringes neither upon the rites of the law, nor the doctrine of the Gospel." (p. 132.) This proposition forms no uninteresting enquiry, when viewed in connexion with the preceding; for if the human origin of sacrifice be the more probable account, it becomes an object of moment to ascertain, whether the admission of it entails any dishonour upon the constitution of the Mosaic law, or disturbs the proper doctrine of atonement.

With respect to the Mosaic law, he argues, that the human beginnings of sacrificial worship could not disqualify it for a place in the ordinances of the Levitical law, unless the rite itself was founded in some error of belief, or obliquity of practice; that to suppose God would proscribe sacrifices merely on account of their human reason, would be equivalent to the supposition that he must proscribe the essential duties of thankfulness and penitence from which they proceeded; that if superstition had corrupted sacrifice before the institution of the law, that previous corruption would not of necessity bring a stigma upon the whole use of a rite which the wisdom of God might adapt to his purposes; that if sacrifice had degenerated from its simplicity, the first institution of it could make no difference in the propriety of its subsequent adoption; that as the Mosaic religion was preparatory to Christianity, many things would for that reason acquire a fitness and use, which they would not otherwise have; and that the typical and symbolical purport of sacrifice renders it a fit instrument of God's worship "beyond the power of all human abuse to disable and discredit its adoption into his Law."

With respect to the essential doctrine of the Gospel, Mr. Davison argues, that those who have resisted the human origin of

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sacrifice, in the fear lest they should forfeit the proper doctrine of Christianity connected with this Rite, have not sufficiently distinguished its two-fold character; that God's revelation was in the Atonement, and man's discovery in the guilt; that the coincidence which obtains between the act of sacrifice on the part of man, and the method of redemption on the part of God, is not the consequence of God's adaptation of his method to man's worship, nor of man's previous knowledge of God's design, but of his own constitution of things; that the real Atonement of the Gospel is rescued from dishonour by a just consideration of the defective nature of sacrifice, so long as it remains the mere creation of human reason; and therefore the legal atonements, inasmuch as they are the sign of the Christian one, and that is their true specific character, are as far above any collision with the mere human rites, as the Christian sacrifice itself is above all competition with them.

The subtlety which pervades this part, and renders it very imposing, will create a doubt in the minds of many, whether it should be designated as solid reasoning or metaphysical refinement, ingenious but unsubstantial. The position the author labours to establish, that the human origin of sacrifice infringes neither upon the rites of the Law nor the atonement of the Gospel, will not be easily reconciled with his sentiments in an early part of the work...

If its divine institution (i. e. of sacrifice) be taken away, the rite thereby forfeits its prophetic character. It becomes simply a branch of the primitive religion. In which reduced idea of it, however it might express the piety of the worshipper, it cannot be reckoned among the typical signatures of Christianity; for though the action of sacrifice was in either case the same, not so the force of it. What God had not ordained, could not, under its institution, merely human, serve afterwards to attest the design or confirm the truth, or explicate the sense of any of his special appointments, so far removed from the reach of all human cognizance as that of the evangelical atonement." P, 3.

We come now to the third and last position of our author, that

"There exists no tenable ground for maintaining that any disclosure was made, in the primitive times, of a connection between the rite of sacrifice, if that rite be still assumed to have been divinely appointed, and the future expiatory sacrifice of the Gospel." P. 149.

To this the supporters of the divine institution of sacrifice will not be inclined to make much opposition; for there may be a connection between this rite and the expiatory Sacrifice of the Gospel,