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incarnate and suffering Messiah, when his subject leads him to treat respecting the cities of refuge.

The fourth remaining article of these propositions, says he, is the ordinance concerning the return of those who had fled for refuge; which was to be at the death of the high-priest. The consideration of this has given me a good deal of trouble from the purport. For the punishment appointed is not equally distributed: as some must have been confined for a longer, and some for a shorter, season; as some of the high-priests were of a longer, and others of a shorter, date; and as some arrive at the dignity when young, and others when old. Those likewise, who were accidentally guilty of bloodshed, must have sought this shelter; some at the beginning of the priesthood, and others when the high-priest was near his death."

These were the difficulties, which gave Philo so much uneasiness, and which for a time he could not solve. But he tells us, that at last he perceived the whole to be a type and a mystery. I maintain, that the high-priest alluded to is not a man, but the divine Word." Nor have I mentioned these things without good reason; but to shew, that the natural and appointed return of the fugitives was the death of the high-priest, the most holy Word of God.3 Still however the grand enigma remains unsolved: for what, on the principles of Philo, could possibly be meant by the

Phil. de Profug. vol. i. p. 561, 562. apud Bryant.
3 Ibid. p. 563..

2 Ibid. p. 562.

death of a divine High-Priest, venerated as God and viewed as his express image? He turns this death into a fanciful allegory: and, by such an expedient, vainly endeavours to extricate himself from an insuperable embarrassment.

III. Sacrifices are either eucharistic or piacular. They are eucharistic, when they merely express gratitude to God for benefits conferred: they are piacular, when their object is to divert his wrath from the offerer.

Now, in order to a piacular devotement being a proper sacrifice, it is no way necessary that the victim should be formally burned by a priest upon an altar for the essence of its being a sacrifice does not consist in the outward act of burning; but in the piacularity of the intention. Accordingly, the Gentiles, who from old patriarchal tradition held the very same sentiments respecting piacular sacrifice, as those held in the Church of God whether under the Levitical or under the Christian dispensation, did not always burn upon an altar the victims which they devoted in order to avert the divine displeasure. They knew, that the intention constituted the sacrifice: hence they argued, that, if the victim was slain piacularly, it was no way necessary, to complete the sacrifice, that his body should be burned upon an altar.'

I

Apparet tamen antiquum esse hunc immolandorum hominum ritum. Siquidem Saturnus in Latio eodem genere sacrificii cultus est: non quidem ut homo ad aram immolaretur; sed uti in Tiberim de ponte Milvio mitteretur. Lactan. Instit. lib. i. c. 21. p. 114. See likewise Ovid. Fast.

2

1. Agreeably to these principles, we might, from the very reason of the thing, determine the slaughter of the paschal lamb to be a strictly piacular sacrifice because, though, at the first institution of the Passover, no portion of it was devoted upon an altar; yet, what was always counted the most essential part of a sacrifice,' its blood was sprinkled upon the lintels and the door-posts of the Israelites that the sword of the avenging Angel might be turned aside from their families. So we might determine from the very reason of the thing; even if there had not been a subsequent special command that the lamb should not be slain in a private house but should be devoted in the temple,' and even if the priests themselves had not been accustomed solemnly to sprinkle the blood and to burn upon the altar that part of the fat and the intestines which they called Imurim: but Scripture has not left this important matter to be settled by an inference, which those, whose system it suited not, might be disposed to controvert. The slaughter of the paschal lamb is expressly denominated the

lib. v. ver. 621-632. Purchas. Pilgrim. book viii. c. 11. p. 797, 798. c. 13. p. 807. and Cook's Third Voyage, book iii. 2, 3.

C.

1 Maimon. in Korban Pesach. c. ii. apud Cudworth on the

Lord's Supper. chap. ii. p. 10.

2 See Outram. de sacrif. lib. i. c. 13. § XI.

3 Deut. xvi. 5, 6.

42 Chron. xxx. 16. xxxv. 11. See an account of the mode in which this rite was celebrated in Cudworth on the Lord's Supper. c. ii. p. 15.

SACRIFICE of the Lord's Passover.' Hence there is no room for litigation as to its true and proper nature."

2. The slaughter then of the lamb being a strictly piacular sacrifice, since the Israelites were commanded to feast upon its flesh, this latter part of the ordinance was manifestly a feast upon a sacrifice and it was closely analogous to those sacrificial feasts of the Gentiles, which they had doubtless, I think, received from patriarchal antiquity.'

2

These two points must be carefully borne in

Exod. xii. 27.

* In direct opposition to this plain language of Moses, some have argued, that the Passover was a mere commemorative feast and not a sacrifice; because the lamb was slain, not exclusively by the priests, but also by each lay master of a family. This argument, if solid, might eventually prove of mischievous importance; because it might tend to corroborate the Socinian doctrine, that the death of Christ is no proper sacrifice. It is built however upon a gross mistake: for the offering up of sacrifice was no way peculiar to the Levitical priesthood; it might also be performed by the laity. See Levit. i. 4, 5. iii. 2. iv. 24. Hence R. Obadiah of Bartenora well argues, on this very principle, that the paschal lamb might be devoted by any person. The people of Israel might all kill the Passovers themselves, if they pleased; BECAUSE the killing of ANY SACREFICE might be done lawfully by strangers: but the priests received the blood. Cudworth on the Lord's Supp. c. ii. p. 12. The true paschal sacrifice, accordingly, was slain by the hand of strangers.

3 Levit. vi. 25-30. vii. 1—6, 11—21. Exod. xxxii. 4—6. xxxiv. 15. Numb. xxv. 2. Psalm cvi. 28. Judg. ix. 27. Ezek. xviii. 11. Iliad. lib. i. ver. 446-474. lib. ii. ver. 402-431. Eneid. lib. viii. ver. 102-106, 172-183. Herod. Hist. lib. i. c. 31.

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mind, because they directly tend to explain the nature both of our Lord's death upon the cross and of the ordinance which he was pleased to appoint in perpetual commemoration of it.

3. That the paschal lamb was a studied type of Christ, may be gathered, both from the language used by St. John, and yet more clearly from the positive decision of St. Paul.

I

(1.) I would not build with too much confidence on the frequency, with which our Lord is termed the Lamb or the Lamb of God or the Lamb which taketh away the sins of the world: because, as other lambs no less than the paschal lamb were devoted under the Law with other ceremonies, we may not perhaps be warranted in saying that he is thus denominated in exclusive reference to the Passover. But, that the paschal lamb was eminently a type of the true Lamb of God, must certainly be inferred from a remarkable applicatory exposition given us by St. John.

Having related that the soldiers did not break the bones of Christ as he hung upon the cross, the evangelist proceeds to declare, that these things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. Now the Scrip ture, A bone of him shall not be broken, no where occurs, save in the passages which describe the institution of the Passover: the bones, that were not

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John i. 36. Rev. v. 6, 12. vi. 1. vii. 14. xiv. 1, 4. xv. 6. xix. 7, 9. xxii. 1.

2 John xix. 36.

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