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Paul concludes the whole argument with shewing that, as the Christian Dispensation was a covenant no less than the Levitical Dispensation, the new Covenant must needs have been established upon the same general principle as the first Covenant. But the general principle, upon which the first Covenant was established, was the sacrificial slaughter of a ratifying victim. Therefore, upon the self-same general principle of sacrificially slaughtering a ratifying victim, must the new Covenant also have been established.

VI. The learned Spencer, arguing from the undoubted priority of the sacrificial rite of covenant-making to the promulgation of the Law from mount Sinai, would thence conclude, agreeably to the well-known principle of his elaborate work, that the rite in question, like many other rites of the ceremonial Law, was borrowed from the Gentiles; and that God adopted it, as he did various other ordinances, in condescension to the obtuseness of the people with whom he had to deal'.

1 Sacrificia fœderalia (h. e. ad fœdus consignandum aut confirmandum oblata) Lege Moses antiquiora fuisse, et a seculi consuetudine in mores Hebræorum venisse, censeantur. Victimæ fœderales apud Hebræos in usum tam crebrum abiere, quod Médus noster, sacrificium, oblationem ́tantum fæderalem censuerit, et ita definiendum: Sacrificium est oblatio in Dei honorem facta, qua offerens particeps evadit mensæ Dei, in signum amicitiæ et fœderis cum illo initi. Quicquid

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This argument, in order to be coherent with the general plan of the work, must be built upon the presumption, that the sacrificial rite of covenant-making was INVENTED by the Gentiles for, while it is readily acknowledged or rather indeed strenuously maintained that it was USED by them from the most remote antiquity, the mere circumstance of the USE most un doubtedly will not prove the INVENTION; and, unless the INVENTION be proved, the conclu

sit, sacrificium in fœderibus sanciendis ab Hebræis frequenter usurpatum, patet e Psalmistæ verbis: Congregate mihi sanctos meos, qui pepigerunt mecum super sacrificium. Alia testimonia sub manu habeo, quæ, ne lectorem rebus obviis ob tundam, prætermitto. Sacrificia vero, in fœderibus cum Deo vel homine feriendis, diu ante Legem usitata fuisse, fidem indubitatam facit Historia Sacra; nempe Gen. xv. 9. ubi Deus, cum Abrahamo foedus initurus, ait, Offer mihi (sic verba transferenda docet Chaldæus) vitulam, capram, et arietem. His itaque dissectis et oblatis, Deus, în imagine lampadis ardentis, inter sacrificii partes medius transiisse, et fœdus cum Abrahamo fecisse, dicitur. Cum etiam Jacob et Laban in perpetuum fædus amicitiamque firmandam consensissent, Jacob, ut fœderi eo major fides accederet, victimam mactavit, et Labanem cum cognatis suis ad epulum Ovoμov convocavit. Hic autem, si Scriptura tacuisset, facile credi posset, antiquos, ante datem Legem, sacrificia fœderum solennitatibus adhibuisse, quod hostias fœderales, ab ultima vetustate, receptas et usitatas inveniamus. Hoc omnibus innotescit, qui ullum cum literis sacris aut profanis commercium habuere. Ut absolvam paucis: si veterum scripta evolvamus, raro sacrificia sine convivio, rarissimè fœdera sine sacrificio, facta reperiamus. Spencer. de leg. Heb. rit. lib. iii. dissert. 2. cap. 3. sect. 2. p. 145, 146.

sion, that the ceremony was adopted from the ritual of the Gentiles into the ritual of the Jews, will plainly be invalid.

Now, though I have supposed the Apostle to argue (after the manner of men) from the general mode of ratifying covenants to the particular mode of ratifying the Levitical and Christian Covenants, I do not conceive that this affords any warrant for the opinion, that the mode itself was in the first instance a mere arbitrary human invention. So far as we can learn from Scripture (and Scripture is our only sure guide in matters of such high antiquity), instead of saying with Dr. Spencer that the rite was borrowed by God from man, I should much rather say that the rite was borrowed by man from God in other words, I should say, that, in the first instance and at an era long prior to the promulgation of the Mosaical Law, God, not man, was the INVENTER of the rite.

In all the three divine Covenants, Patriarchal, Levitical, and Christian (the two former, as I have supposed, being collectively viewed by St. Paul as the first or the old Covenant), the mediator or victim-ratifier was still, effectively and substantially, the same; even Christ who was once offered to bear the sins of many: but, since Christ was only once offered, and that for the ratification of the Christian Covenant, the formal rati

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fiers of the other two Covenants were of necessity certain typical sacrifices; for, unless this expedient had been adopted, the two earlier Covenants must have been wholly without any formal and visible ratification. Now, that the Levitical Covenant was ratified by sacrifice, we are expressly assured: and I think we may gather not obscurely, that such also was the case with the Patriarchal Covenant; for, as it has often been remarked, we shall not easily account for the appearance of those skins with which our first parents are said to have been clad, unless we suppose them to have been taken from certain animals which were sacrificed at the ratification of that Covenant. But, however this may be, we find God immediately after the deluge, expressly entering into a covenant with Noah and ritually confirming it over a sacrifice. Under such circnmstances, I think it clear and indisputable, that the Gentiles did not themselves INVENT the rite; but that, in all the different lines which were evolved from Noah, they continued to observe a ceremonial originally instituted by God himself. The primitive idea of the rite immediately respected the doctrine of an atonement through the death of a promised Redeemer and the grand Covenant between God and man was accordingly made over a slaughtered victim, which either typified the Messiah or was the Messiah himself. From this its original application, the rite was afterwards trans

ferred to any covenant; as we may see, in the case of God's covenant with Noah immediately after the deluge, and in the several cases of Abraham's covenant with Abimelech and Jacob's covenant with Laban: the notion, however, both of a proper sacrifice and of a mediator between the contracting parties, was carefully preserved. The transfer itself took place in the deepest antiquity: and, so far as Scripture teaches us in its account of the Noëtic covenant, it took place under the direct sanction of the Lord. For the first notice, which we have of a covenant ratified over a sacrifice subsequent to the primeval ratification of the Patriarchal Covenant with fallen man, is that of the covenant, into which God himself entered with Noah that there should never more be a flood to destroy the earth. From the Scripture therefore I conclude, that, when the Lord was pleased to ratify the Levitical Covenant over a sacrifice, he did not borrow the peculiar ceremony from the Gentiles; but, on the contrary, that the Gentiles, who sprang from Noah, borrowed the ceremony from the long-remembered primitive institution of the Lord himself'.

' Hence the sacred ship, commemorative of the ark, was denominated Baris or Barit (as may be gathered from its Greek oblique case Baridos, and as indeed follows of course from the circumstance of the letters 8 and t being convertible): that is to say, in allusion to God's covenant with Noah, it was styled the ship of the covenant. See my Origin of Pagan Idol. book ii, chap. 4. § IV. 4.

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