======================================================================== WRITINGS OF STEPHEN CHARNOCK by Stephen Charnock ======================================================================== A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by Stephen Charnock, compiled for study and devotional reading. Chapters: 44 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. A DISCOURSE OF SELF-EXAMINATION. 2. A DISCOURSE ON CHRIST OUR PASSOVER 3. A DISCOURSE ON THE ACCEPTABLENESS OF CHRIST’S DEATH. 4. A DISCOURSE ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST CRUCIFIED 5. A DISCOURSE ON THE VOLUNTARINESS OF CHRIST'S DEATH. 6. A DISCOURSE UPON THE FIFTH OF NOV 7. A Discourse of Afflictions 8. A Discourse of Delight In Prayer 9. A Discourse of God's being the Author of Reconciliation 10. A Discourse of Mortification 11. A Discourse of the Cleansing Virtue of Christ's Blood 12. A Discourse of the Efficient of Regeneration 13. A Discourse of the Nature of Regeneration 14. A Discourse of the Pardon of Sin 15. A Discourse of the Word, the Instrument of Regeneration 16. Charnock's Writings 17. Discourse On the Eternity of God 18. Discourse On the Power of God 19. Discourse On the Wisdom of God 20. God 21. God's Patience Abused 22. God's Regard for His Own Glory, Seen in the Saving of Sinners 23. Life and Character of Charnock 24. On God as a Deliverer 25. On God's Being a Spirit 26. On God's Dominion 27. On God's Knowledge 28. On God's Omnipresence 29. On God's Patience 30. On Practical Atheism 31. On Spiritual Worship 32. On The Eternity of God 33. On The Existence of God 34. On The Goodness of God 35. On The Holiness of God 36. On The Immutability of God 37. On The Power of God 38. On The Wisdom of God 39. S. Discourse II: On Practical Atheism 40. The Chief of Sinners Saved 41. The Fruits of Converting Grace in the Salvation of Sinners 42. The Necessity of Christ's Death 43. The Necessity of Regeneration 44. Why Salvation Must Be Supernatural ======================================================================== CHAPTER 1: A DISCOURSE OF SELF-EXAMINATION. ======================================================================== A DISCOURSE OF SELF-EXAMINATION. Stephen Charnock Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves: know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?—2 Corinthians 13:5. THE apostle having blamed the Corinthians for some enormities among them, and knowing there were some that had not repented of them, comes now to a conclusion of his epistle, and assures them, that if he should come again to them, he would not spare them, but be sharp against them with his ecclesiastical censures. And as for such who had not been guilty of those crimes, yet had mean thoughts of the apostle, and would have some eminent proof of his apostleship, or of Christ speaking in him, 2 Corinthians 13:3, he refers himself to them, and makes them the judges of it, whether they had not found the mighty operation of Christ in him. For as though Christ’s being crucified evidenced his being subject to the infirmities of man and the penalty of the law, yet his resurrection and his glory is an evidence of the power of God in him and with him; so though I be weak, yet you yourselves bear arguments in you of the power of God, working in the apostleship, which I have exercised among you, and therefore ‘examine your own selves,’ and try whether there be not a mighty change wrought in your souls, ‘whether you are not in the faith,’ and quite other men than you were. If you find not such effects, assure yourselves you are not yet in the state of true Christianity. Some understand this of Christ being in them in regard of the miraculous gifts, the gifts of miracles, tongues, and healing; and understand by faith here, a faith of miracles, which was a special gift, and very resplendent in the primitive church. But that doth not seem to be the sense of it, for the possessing such gifts is not a sign of election, nor the want of them a presage of reprobation, or a testimony of insincerity. Miracles may be wrought by those that have not a justifying and saving faith. Judas had the same commission with the rest of the apostles, at Christ’s first sending them out in the time of his life ; and we may well conjecture, that miracles were wrought by him, as well as by his colleagues, in that employment. Besides, it cannot be manifested that those gifts were bestowed upon every member of the primitive church, but only upon some called out by God for that purpose. And if by faith be understood here a faith of miracles, whereby they should try themselves whether Christ was in them, those that had not that gift conferred upon them had no evidence of their being in Christ; or at least, had not so illustrious an evidence as the others had, who outstripped the rest of their brethren in those miraculous powers. The gift of miracles was an evidence that Christ was in those instruments, in regard of his power, but true faith only is an evidence that Christ is in a man in regard of his grace. Examine yourselves, Peirazete. Tempt yourselves. The word tempting is sometimes taken for trying, as when God is said to tempt Abraham in commanding him to sacrifice his son, to know or make known to him that he feared God, Genesis 22:1, Genesis 22:12. Prove yourselves, Docimazete. Try yourselves as goldsmiths do metals; prove yourselves, that you may know experimentally what is in you. Docimh; is used for experience, Romans 5:5. The phrase speaks diligence in this work, the repetition intimates both diligence and frequency; what is not known in one act, may be known in repeated acts. Self-examination is a duty in all cases, the repetition speaks necessity ; it implies also men’s natural backwardness to it. Know you not your own selves. It implies the folly and unreasonableness of the neglect of it, also the possibility and easiness, upon a due and diligent inquiry, to know whether Christ be in us or no. How that Christ is in you. Whether the power of Christ hath not wrought in you to the transforming your soul. Unless you be reprobates, ’Adokimoi,. The apostle doth not understand by the word reprobates, such as are eternally rejected by God, as reprobates are opposed to the elect. Those that had not Christ in them at that time might have him afterwards, the work of conversion being daily promoted in the church; but reprobates, i.e. counterfeit, adulterate, not yet purified and refined from your dross, or, unless you are unapproved or void of judgment, or unexperienced in the ways of Christ. And he puts mhj ti, a diminutive term, unless you be somewhat and in part sincere. Or it may go further, and the apostle might mean thus: if after the power of Christ, which hath appeared so gloriously among you, you find no strong operation in your own souls towards him, you have reason to suspect that you are not owned by him, that he may give you over to yourselves. The protestants confirm the doctrine of the possibility of assurance, and a man’s knowledge of himself to be in a state of grace from this text, which doctrine the papists impugn. It is strange that some of the schoolmen, who assert that a man may by the strength of pure naturals love God above all things, yet deny that a man can know that he loves God above all. In the verse, observe, 1. The duty expressed: examine yourselves, prove yourselves. 2. The matter of it : whether you be in the faith. 3. The enforcement and motive : except you are reprobates. Doct. Self-examination is a necessary duty, belonging to every one in the church, and requires much diligence in the performing of it. Hence some observe, that when it is expressed that God created man in his own image,—Genesis 1:27, ‘In the image of God created he him,’—the word is Elohim, which is a name of God belonging to his judicial acts, which imply trial and examination ; in the image of Elohim created he him, i.e. with a power of self-trial and self-judging. This self-examination is an exact and thorough search into a man’s self, an exquisite consideration in what posture he stands to God. The word is the rule, a glass wherein we see God’s will; and conscience is the examiner, that is, the glass wherein we see our lives and the motions of our hearts, and which, by the help of the word, doth dissect and open the soul to itself. I shall not prosecute this doctrine fully, only lay down some conclusions. 1. It is a necessary duty, in regard of our comfort. What good doth it do a man to hear that a Christ is sent to redeem, that a ransom is paid, that sin is pardonable, hell avoidable, heaven attainable, upon the conditions of faith, and not know whether he hath so advantageous a grace in him, which only entitles him to such glorious privileges? What comfort in Christ, in his meritorious passion, in his triumphant resurrection and ascension, in his prevalent intercession, unless we know that by faith we are united to him, and consequently have an interest in all the gracious fruits of his different states of humiliation and exaltation? If we can find this grace in our souls, what a joy unspeakable doth result from thence? Christ as a king will protect my soul, Christ as a priest hath expiated my sins, Christ as a prophet will remove my ignorance; my soul was in his mind upon the cross, my concerns are in his breast in heaven, my name is enrolled in the register of his subjects. It is necessary, (1.) Because there are common graces. As there is an outward and inward call, so there is an outward profession and an inward transformation. There are some virtues come from the hand of God as creator, and some immediately from the Spirit as a renewer; some common virtues for the preservation of human society, and some special graces for the fabric of an invisible church. There is an acceptation of the law for an outward practice, without an affection to the lawgiver, or an esteem of the spirituality of the law itself. There is a sanctification in opposition to Judaism, or Paganism, or some erroneous opinion; which is common to those that may apostatise, Hebrews 10:29. The apostle calls the church of Corinth saints: 1 Corinthians 1:2, ‘called to be saints;’ saints by vocation outwardly, not all saints by a new vocation inwardly. (2.) Because there are counterfeit graces. There is much false coin in the world, washed pewter and gilded brass; there are sepulchres garnished outwardly, and full of rottenness and stench within; there are many that want not their artifices in religion as well as in common converse. Good things may be imitated when they are not rooted. We have heard of some limners that have represented Christ so to the life as to deceive artists as skilful as themselves. The apostle speaks of ‘a dead faith,’ James 2:26, which is like the carcase of a man without life, a faith that deserves no more the name of faith than the carcase doth the title of a man when the enlivening and principal part is fled. There is a ‘repentance unto life,’ Acts 11:18, which supposeth a dead repentance, such as Ahab’s humiliation, like marble sweating tears in moist and rainy weather without any mollifying of the natural hardness, or Judas his sorrow, raised by the fire in his conscience, not like Peter’s, by the spiritual influence of his Master. There is a ‘lively hope,’ 1 Peter 1:8, which supposeth a dead hope ; there is a ‘lively stone,’ 1 Peter 3:5, which implies that there are lifeless stones, that are not inwardly fitted and prepared for the spiritual building. The building upon the rock and the sand might have the same beauty, form, and ornaments, but not the same foundation; one was stable and the other tottering. There is a ‘repentance towards God,’ Acts 20:21, when the dishonour of God afflicts us, which implies there is a repentance towards ourselves, when the danger of our own persons starts a pretended sorrow for sin. There is a faith that is sound and lasting, a faith that is temporary and perishing, a faith that starts up like a mushroom in a night, and withers at the next scorching temptation. There is a faith common with devils, and a faith proper to Christians; there is a faith of Christ and a faith in Christ. (3.) Because every man is in a state of grace or nature. There is a state of grace, Born. Ephesians 2:1, a state of wrath, Ephesians 2:3. The world is made up of receivers of Christ or rejecters of him, true subjects to God or rebels against him. There are two families, the family of God and the family of the devil. The visible church was not without its distinction. The ark contains unclean as well as clean beasts. There is a Cain in Adam’s family, a Ham in Noah’s ark, an Ishmael in Abraham’s house, and a Judas in our Saviour’s retinue; and at the last day the whole world will be distinguished into two only kinds, of sheep and goats. It is necessary therefore to inquire whose we are, whether we belong to the God of heaven or the god of this world; whether we have the renewed image of God, or still retain the old stamp of the devil. 2. It is a duty that requires diligence and care. That which is of infinite consequence in the state of your souls, ought not to be built upon sandy and slight foundations. It is called communing with a man’s own heart, Psalms 4:4, not a slight glance and away; sweeping and looking with a candle, Luke 15:8, wherewith every cranny and chink is pried into ; trying of the reins, which are parts of the body hidden with fat. There must be a careful removing of several things to come at them; a searching for some precious filings of gold in a heap of dust; an employing all the faculties of the soul in a diligent search: Psalms 77:6, ‘My spirit made diligent search.’ It is expressed by counting, Psalms 119:59, ‘I thought on my ways, ’ytbvh; he looked over the acts of his soul one by one. The heart is called the ‘inward parts’ or depths ‘of the belly,’ Proverbs 20:7. As the bowels are folded together in many coats and coverings, that they are not easily come to, so the heart of man is full of devices. (1.) Diligence is requisite, because the work is difficult. It is no easy matter to be acquainted with ourselves. The soul is not well acquainted with its own features, and preserves not the species of itself. ‘ We behold our faces in a glass, and soon forget what manner of men we are,’ James 1:23-24. As man is apt to know anything but himself, so it is more easy for him to know anything than himself, as the eye sees everything but itself. There must be diligence to discern the rational workings of our soul, to know whether we truly understand such a thing, or really and firmly will such a good. The judgment of man is corrupted, and misrepresents things like a cracked glass. We can more easily judge of a bodily than of a spiritual disease, because the understanding which should judge of the state of the soul is sickly and ill-affected itself. Our wills also being so changeable, sometimes set on one thing and sometimes flitting to another, the spiritual workings of them are not so readily discernible. This work is done by a reflex act; and reflex acts, in spirituals as well as naturals, are weakest and more languishing, whereas direct acts are more powerful and vigorous. Where grace is small and corruptions many, it must be hard to discern it, as it is for an eye to discern a small needle, especially if in the dust and rubbish. The roots of sin also lie deep, like Achan’s wedge of gold in the earth, not easily to be found without good directions. Lust lies in secret corners; there is a deceitfulness of it, subtle evasions, and specious pretences: consideration is requisite to the discerning of them. External acts discover themselves, but the inward acts of the soul, which are the surest evidences, are not discernible without a diligent inspection. The natural inconstancy and levity of our spirits divert us, and the streams of our corruptions cloud and bemit us, and control our endeavours in self-examination, that. we cannot sometimes any more fixedly behold the motions of grace than we can see the beams of the sun in a black and mourning sky. (2.) Diligence is requisite, because man is naturally unwilling to this duty. He would live anywhere but with himself, think of anything but himself, delights most in those things which hinder him from a consideration of his own state. Men are more willing to have their minds rove through all the parts of nature than to busy themselves in self-reflection, would read any book or relation rather than the history of their own heart. We are nearest to ourselves physically, and furthest from our own selves morally. Men whose titles are cracked and unsure are loath to have them tried before the judge, and come under the siftings of conscience. Ever since the fall we run counter to God; it is the property of the divine nature first to know himself, and then to know other things; but we are cross, would know any other thing but not ourselves, would read others, and not so much as spell ourselves. We naturally abhor any actions wherein we may be like God, though they are the most proper operations for our souls, and suitable to the nature of them, as reflex acts are. There being in us a contrariety to God and his law, to God and his gospel, there results from thence an unwillingness in us to bring our hearts under the examination of conscience, that power which acts by authority and deputation from God. And when grace doth egg us at any time to the performance of the duty, do not our hearts hang back, and our corruptions check us in it? Satan is no mean instrument in this: he is said to blind the world, that they might not know their state. He bath lost his likeness to God in his primitive happiness, and ever since envies man the recovery of that likeness which is possible to man and impossible to himself, and therefore diverts him from all glances towards it, and endeavours after it, the first step to which is self-reflection. This unwillingness ariseth, [1.], From carnal self-love. It is natural to man to think well of himself, and suffer his affections to bemist or bridle his judgment. A biassed person cannot be a just judge. Every man is his own flatterer, and so conceals himself from himself. Very few that are uncomely in body, or deformed in mind, but think themselves as handsome and honest as others. David so loved himself that he saw nothing of his sin, but was fair in his own eyes till Nathan roused him up by telling him, ‘Thou art the man.’ Every man would be ‘right in his own eyes,’ Proverbs 16:2. Every blackamore fancies himself to have a comely colour. This self-love may so far bemist a good man, that he may not believe such an act to be a crime, such an excuse to be a fig leaf, such a mark to be unsound. And this self-love keeps men off from this work, for fear they should behold their own guilt, and their souls be stung with anguish. Men that are bankrupts are loath to cast up their accounts, lest it should appear to them that they are undone. Some are loath to see their ugly faces in a glass. Conscience, awakened by this duty, bites and stings, and men are loath to impair their own ease because they would escape the din of an accuser in their own bosoms; they turn fugitives from their own hearts, and would rather go to hell in a feather bed than to heaven in a fiery chariot. While man seeks nothing more than himself in a sinful way, he conceals himself and flies furthest from himself in a reflexive way. [2.] From presumption and security. Some walk as securely as if there were no heaven, and it concerned them not; others walk as presumptuously as though they were heirs-apparent unto it, and yet have no title. Many will have a false persuasion of their faith and interest in Christ at the last day, Matthew 7:22, and cry, ‘Lord, Lord!’ and the foolish virgins will knock as confidently and expect entrance to the feast as well as the wise, will not believe but they have a title to heaven till Christ himself clap the door upon them, and manifest the contrary. Had they raked in their own souls and been plain dealers with themselves, they could not but have found themselves in a lost condition. Those that thus presume cannot endure to hear of the differences between hypocrisy and sincerity, how far a castaway may go in religion. This was the reason the pharisees were such enemies to Christ, because he raked in their consciences; they could never come near him, but he brought some indictment against them of hypocrisy. As Tertullian called heretics lucifugæ scripturarum, because they would not be cured of their errors, so are such men also afraid to bring their hearts to the test of the word, because they would not be cured of their false presumptions. As Ahab hated Micaiah, so these their own consciences, because they expect to bear that from them which they think evil, and cannot have such a view of themselves in that glass as they desire to have. (3.) Diligence is requisite, because man is hardly induced to continue in this work. That self-love which makes them unwilling to enter upon it, renders them unfit to make any progress in it. When we do begin it, how quickly do we faint in it! How soon are our first glances upon ourselves turned to a fixedness upon some slighter object! Every man’s heart is like an unruly horse, that will be going out of the way if there be not a resolution to check it in its first starts, and bring things to a judicial trial. The heart itself is so light and fluttering, that it wants the stability of grace to fix it in the trial of grace. (4.) Diligence is requisite,, because we are naturally apt to be deceived and to delude ourselves. Our natural blindness and dimness render us liable to mistake, and our deceitful heart may sing a requiem to us while we are fools. We have a subtle enemy that lies in wait for us, who can transform himself into an angel of light, and disguise his serpentine hissings to make them appear like the breathings of the Spirit. If Adam in innocence, who had an ability to discern his methods, was deluded by him, much more may we be deceived by him in a state of corruption, when our hearts naturally have his stamp, and are inclined to take his part and join with him in a self-deceit: ‘The heart of man is deceitful,’ Jeremiah 17:9. It is the great impostor and cheat of the world, the antichrist within us, the deceiver of our souls, as the great antichrist is called the deceiver of the nations. How apt are we to take upon trust what our heart first speaks! James and John could tell Christ that they were able to drink of his cup, and no question they meant as they spake, Matthew 20:22; but had it come to a trial, they would not have endured to sip of it; and the issue manifested it: they turned their backs upon him, as well as the other disciples. The Israelites, bad they tried themselves by their present resolution, Deuteronomy 5:27, ‘All that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee we will hear and do it,! might have subscribed themselves as pious as any in the world; they spake no other than they meant. But God had a further inspection into them than they had into themselves: Deuteronomy 5:9, ‘Oh that there were such a heart in them that they would fear me, and keep my commandments always!’ Natural conscience is often silenced by a pretence and a show, and a man is naturally apt to make his own corrupt judgment, sometimes also his passion, the standard of good and evil, and not only to frame grace according to his own affections, but a god also: Psalms 1:21, ‘Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself.’ The apostle intimates it in that signal mark of caution, when he presseth a truth to which natural conscience will subscribe, that ‘neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor covetous, nor drunkards, shall inherit the kingdom of God;’ 1 Corinthians 5:9, ‘Be not deceived,’ saith he: even in these things men may deceive themselves with false hopes, much more in moral righteousness. Many boast themselves rich in spirituals when they are really poor; so did Laodicea think herself rich when God gave her another inventory of her estate, that she was ‘poor and miserable, and blind and naked,’ Revelation 3:17. There is too much resting in the world upon outward privileges, and often beggars conceit themselves princes because they dream of sceptres. How many extend their hopes as far as their wishes, and these as far as a fond fancy and imagination! (5.) Diligence is necessary, because to be deceived in this is the most stinging consideration. To drop into hell when a man takes it for granted that he is in heaven, to dream of a crown on the head when the fetters are upon the feet, will double the anguish. It is better for a rich man to dream that he is a beggar, for when he awakes his fears vanish, than for a beggar to dream that he is rich, for when his dream ends his sorrow begins. The higher the false conceit, the lower do men sink when they fall; the higher men’s expectations of heaven are without ground, the more stinging is their loss of it. To have vain hopes, till God puts us into the scale and weighs us, will be a miserable disappointment. For a man to deceive himself aggravates this; as self-murder is accounted a greater sin than the murder of another, because it is against that charity to ourselves which is the copy and rule of charity to another. (6.) Diligence is necessary, because many have miscarried for want of it. Thousands that have thought themselves in the suburbs of heaven, have been cast down to the depths of hell. If all should be saved that think they shall be saved, the strait way would be that which leads to hell; for what man is there almost that doth not confidently believe he shall be happy? How many dream they are going to paradise, and when they awake find themselves in the devil’s arms! II. The use. 1. If this be our duty, to examine ourselves, then the knowledge of our state is possible. If we are to examine ourselves, we may then know ourselves. Reflection and knowledge of self is a prerogative of a rational nature. We know that we have souls by the operations of them. We may know that we have grace by the effects of it, if we be diligent; as we may know by the beams of the sun that the sun is risen, if we shut not our eyes. Grace chiefly lies in the will, and it discovers itself in actions. The more raised any being is, the more active it is. The being of a God is known by the effects of his power in the world, and the being of faith is known by the operations of it in the heart and life. Though gold and that which is gilt be like in appearance, yet the true nature of each of them may be discerned by the touchstone. Hypocritical grace is like true grace, but it is not the same. Sincerity may be known. If we cast but a glance upon our hearts in any word or action, we may know whether we mean as we speak or do, or whether we have any by-ends in it. The discerning of habitual sincerity is not so easy as the knowledge of an integrity in a particular act; yet if we keep a due watch over the motions of our hearts and the actions of our lives as they come upon the stage, and consider what their ends are, it will not be so difficult to know ourselves. It is impossible a man’s will should steal by him in all the actions it produceth, and a man be ignorant and insensible of it. The spirit and conscience of a man may know such things as are in it, both the habits it bath and particular motives to this or that act: 2 Corinthians 2:11, ‘The spirit of a man that is in him knows the things of a man.’ If men would be more inward in conversing with their own hearts, they might have an acquaintance with the concerns of their souls, as their sense hath with outward objects. There can be no sufficient reason given why the understanding should not as well know the acts of the soul and will, as the acts of the sense and the motions of the body. We know our particular passions and the exercises of them. There is no man that fears a danger, or loves an amiable object, but he knows his own acts about them, as well as the object of those acts. If a man have faith and love, why should he not be as able to know the acts of faith and love as to know the acts of his particular affections? This is easy, if we did live more with ourselves, and oftener exercise that prerogative of reflection which we have above beasts. It is difficult indeed in regard of our corruption; as the law is said to be weak, not in itself, it was able to answer the end for which God appointed it, and man by the endowments of his creation was able to observe it; but it became weak to make men happy, and man impotent to conform to it, through the flesh, Rom. viii. 3, by the entrance of corruption. It is the same corruption of man which renders this knowledge of himself difficult. He lives too much abroad out of his own soul, and too little within, otherwise there is no doubt but he may know his own will, and the habitual inclination of it. 2. How foolish is the neglect of this duty! How many ramble about the world without acquainting themselves with their own hearts, or considering whether Christ be in them! What advantage can there be in the knowledge of other things, if we know not whether there be any operations of grace in our own souls! How few give themselves the opportunity of a serious retirement! How unreasonable is it to rest satisfied with underground hopes of heaven, to call ourselves citizens of Jerusalem above, and have no copy of our freedom to shew, nor any living witness in us to bear testimony for us! It is against nature to desire to be in any company rather than our own, to endeavour to know everything in the world rather than ourselves, which is the first object of knowledge. Should that reason which God hath given us, more excellent than the nature of beasts, be employed about examining everything but ourselves? 3. Use of exhortation. It is our highest advantage to know what should become of our souls in eternity. Is it a small thing to be within the verge of the wrath of God? And is not the knowledge of this necessary, if we be in such a case that we may avoid it? Or is it a small thing to be an heir of heaven? Are justification, adoption, acceptation, small privileges ; faith, love, repentance, small graces? Is not the knowledge of them necessary, that we may have the comfort of them? May not some convenient space of time be every day spent in this? May I not say, as Christ to his disciples, ‘Can you not watch one hour?’ Can you not spare one hour for so great and necessary a work? Let us enter therefore into the bosom of our heart, and see whether we have a true faith, such as Abraham’s; whether it be such a lively faith that hath freed our souls in part from the mud of our corruptions; whether it be a faith resting upon Christ for salvation, without giving indulgence to the least offence to him? Such a faith that purifies the heart, reforms the life, inflames the soul with a love to God, causing us to rejoice in him, and in any further degree of conformity to him? Whether it engenders in us a serious desire and a suitable endeavour to obey Christ? Such a faith that relies upon his promises without slighting his precepts? III. I shall, lastly, give you some directions about this duty of self-examination. 1. Acquaint yourselves with those marks that are proper only to a true Christian. Overlook all those that are common with the hypocrite, such as outward profession, constant attendances, some affections in duties. Let us not judge ourselves by outward acts; a player is not a prince because he acts the part of a prince. But we must judge ourselves by what we are in our retirements, in our hearts. He only is a good man, and doth good, that doth it from a principle of goodness within, and not from fear of laws, or to gain a good opinion in the world. Grace is of that nature, that it cannot possibly have any by-end. As it is the immediate birth of God, so it doth immediately respect God in its actings. In the very nature of it, it aims at God, as to love him, believe in him. The great accusation the devil brings against Job was, that he served not God for nought, that his service was not sincere, that he acted a righteous part for his own ends, and to preserve his worldly prosperity, Job 1:9-10. But if our ends be right, and our actions in the course of them according to his rule, if our hearts in them respect God’s law and his glory, how will the devil’s arrows drop down, as shot against a brazen wall! The inward bent and the habitual delight and affection of our hearts, is chiefly to be eyed, whether they are in God or in other things. This was the apostle’s way of trial: Romans 7:22, ‘I delight in the law of God after the inward man;’ and what the incitements are to your profession and service, whether they are not bare affections, moveable passions, carnal interests, a good education, a working fancy, &c. Take those marks, which are inconsistent with hypocrisy, ‘such as accompany salvation,’ Hebrews 6:9, and necessarily infer a truth of grace. Begin at the lowest step of true and sincere grace, inquire not at first into the marks of an high and towering faith, of the eminent degrees of it. This would be to put a giant’s suit upon an infant’s back, and judge ourselves not men, because the garments fit us not. A small beam will manifest that the sun doth peep out of a cloud; but larger ones, and more spread, evidence that it hath got a full victory. Have a right notion of true grace, and though grace be little, yet you may know it; as if a man hath a true notion of a diamond, though never so small, he can truly say that is a diamond as well as if it were bigger. Though a gracious spirit may not have grace enough to satisfy its desires, yet it may find grace enough to settle its soul. There may be grace enough to give a man an interest in Christ, though there be not a full strength to answer all the obligations of the gospel. Let us examine, first, the truth of grace, and afterwards the height of grace. A little of the coarsest gold is more valuable than much of the finest brass. See how the habitual frame and inclination of the heart stands. A heart set upon heaven discovers the treasures of the heart to be there. See whether we have David’s temper, to ‘hate every false way,’ or Paul’s, to ‘have a conscience void of offence towards God’ in regard of his service, as well as towards man in regard of his converse; not to neglect anything towards God that conscience tells us is our duty to him. One sound and undeniable mark is better than a thousand disputable ones. 2. Let us make the word of God only our rule in trials. This is the only impartial friend we can stick to, and therefore it ought to be made our main counsellor. The word is the principle whereby grace is wrought, and it is the medium whereby grace is known. The word is that whereby we must judge of doctrine, ‘to the law and to the testimony.’ If an angel from heaven speaks any other thing than what God hath delivered, he is not to be heard. It is also the rule whereby we must judge of graces. If conscience speak anything for a man’s comfort, that is not according to the word, it is to be silenced; if conscience presents us with anything as a grace, that will not hold water before God, it is to be rejected in that ease; bring it to the touch-stone to see if it, be current coin. As we are to try other men’s spirits, so our own, by this rule; it is a part of man’s sinful ambition to be his own judge, and so to make his own fancy his rule. The Scripture beam is like a sunbeam, it will discover the most inward, and the most minute, thing, Hebrews 4:12 ; it will reveal the deceitful contrivances and sophistry of the heart. This word must try us at last, it is to be the rule of the last judgment, to salvation or condemnation; let it be the rule of our self-judgments It is safe for us to take that rule which God himself will take, and take in good part whatsoever the word saith; if it shew us our evil, let us change our course; if it speak good, let us be thankful to God, and give him the rent-charge and tribute due to him for it. 3. Take not the first dictates of conscience. ‘He that trusts his own heart is a fool,’ Proverbs 28:26, i. e. without a diligent inquisition, it is not wisdom to do so, ‘but he that walks wisely shall be delivered;’ he that makes a strict inquiry into it, shall be delivered from its snares and his own fears. It is a searching, examining, proving our hearts, that is required, not taking them at the first word. There may be gold at the top, and dross at the bottom. We are naturally quick of belief of those things we would have and desire; we should be jealous of these hearts which have so often deceived us, as we are of those who have often broken their word. Whatsoever it speaks, suspend your belief of its sentence, till you have well examined the ground and reasons why it gives in such a report; if it tells you, you are in a good state, that you are penitents, believers, have a choice love to God, an eye fixing on the glory of God as your end, bring it to the test, examine why it saith so. We have here to do with the greatest impostor, and in other things we will not give credit to a cheater. Therefore our searching often in Scripture is joined with trying. We must not only search out our graces, but try whether they be of the right stamp, and have the mark of God upon them. Examination and proof must go together in this act, as they do in the text. 4. In all, implore the assistance of the Spirit of God. Natural conscience is not enough in this case, there must be the influence of the Spirit; it is God’s interpreter that can only ‘shew unto a man his righteousness,’ Job 33:23. The sun must give light, before the glass can reflect the beams. Grace cannot be discerned, if the Spirit obscure and hide itself. In the night, the beautiful colours in a room are by the darkness, as it were, buried from the sight; but when the sun discharges its beams into the chamber, they are enlivened, and affect our sense. There may be graces in the soul which appear not, if the Spirit withdraws his light; but when he displays himself, they will appear in their true lustre. In all our trials of ourselves, let us beg of God to try us. When David had been ransacking his heart, he would not rest in his own endeavours, but begs of God to open his heart more fully to his knowledge, and bless him with a perfect discovery of it: Psalms 139:21-23, ‘Do not I hate them which hate thee? I hate them with a perfect hatred.’ I think, I conclude I do; but lest my conclusions may be wrong, do thou, O God, ‘search me and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts,’ i.e. make my heart and thoughts, and bent of them, visible and fully discernible to me. 5. Let us take heed that, while we examine our graces and find them, our hearts be not carried out to a resting upon them. We may draw some comfort from them, but must check the least inclination of founding our justification upon them. Graces are signs, not causes, of justification. Christ’s righteousness only is our wedding-garment, our graces are but as the fringes of it. Liberty is a sign the malefactor is pardoned, but it is not the cause of his pardon, but the king’s merciful grant God is a jealous God, and is likely there to withdraw his hand, where the glory of his works shall be attributed to anything below him, and his gifts made equal with his Son; and therefore as one saith, in our trials of ourselves we should do as men with a pair of compasses, fix one foot in the centre while they move the other about the circumference; so let our souls rest in Christ, and hold him with one hand, while with the other we turn over the leaves of our hearts, and be inquisitive after our evidences. Our justification is not by any inherent grace, but our justification is known to us by the grace we find in ourselves. 6. In case we find ourselves not in such a condition as we desire, let us exercise direct acts of faith. Let us not deject ourselves, and make so bad a conclusion as Peter did, and say to Christ, ‘Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinful man;’ but let us cast ourselves upon the truth and faithfulness of God in the promise of life in Christ. Lay hold on the promise of life, as if you had not laid hold of it before. When comfort is not fetched in by reflex acts, let faith be exercised in direct acts; when there is darkness and no light, ‘trusting in the name of the Lord,’ and ‘staying upon God,’ is the proper business of the soul, Isaiah 1:10; we should then drink of the waters of life, groan under our sin, and go to a Saviour; ‘forget,’ as Paul, ‘the things that are behind, and press forward to the things which are before,’ Php 3:13-14. We naturally would believe God upon his deed, and trust in him, because we find something wrought in our own souls; God therefore sometimes hides a man’s own graces from him, to draw out the soul in acts of faith, which indeed gives the most glory to God. God will be believed upon his word, and God turns it often to the great advantage of the soul, and puts it upon the exercise of faith, when he denies it the comfortable sight of faith. In this case we should make use of such Scriptures which may foment and nourish faith, and put us upon the casting out that filth and mud in our souls which we discerned. When we can find no grace to present Christ with, we should fetch grace from him. A city of refuge is for a malefactor, a physician for the sick, and a Christ for those that groan under the burden of sin; a Christ lifted up and dying, for those that are stung by the serpent. To conclude. Let us be frequent in this work. Let us not neglect a privilege God hath invested us with above other creatures below us. There is nothing can reflect upon itself, inquire into the nature of its own being, but man; and shall we only resemble the beasts, to see those things which are without us, and not turn our eyes inward, and see what workmanship of God there is in our souls, and what conformity there is between us and our Creator, between us and our Redeemer? Shall we put such an affront upon ourselves, as to banish the noblest part of our souls from its proper operation? A frequent examination of ourselves would ballast our life, keep faith and repentance fresh and vigorous. Let us take heed of a spiritual laziness, and saying, ‘There is a lion in the way;’ let us remember it is necessary. and though it be difficult, it is not so in itself, but by reason of our averseness to it. The difficulty may be cured by diligence; the necessity of it, and the advantages of it, should both inflame our desires to it, and increase our pains in it. Certainly there can be no more dreadful sign of no grace at all than a neglect of trial whether we have grace or no. If we examine not ourselves, prove not ourselves whether we be in the faith, we are reprobates, i. e. unsound, insincere, not in a state of true Christianity. Author Stephen Charnock was born in the year of 1628, in the Parish of St. Katherine Cree, London. His mental and moral endowments, his educational acquirements, his habitual seriousness, his sanctified imagination, and his vigorous faith, pre-eminently fitted him for discharging with ability and effect the duties of a herald of the Cross. His discourses, while excelling in solid divinity and argumentative power, were not by any means deficient in their practical bearing, being addressed not more to the understandings than to the hearts of his hearers. While able to unravel with great acuteness and judgment the intricacies of a nice question in polemics, he could with no less dexterity and skill address himself to the business of the Christian life, or to the casuistry of religious experience. Perspicuous plainness, convincing cogency, great wisdom, fearless honesty, and affectionate earnestness, are the chief characteristics of his sermons. To this it must be added that his preaching was eminently evangelical. So deeply imbued with gospel truth were his discourses, that, like the Book of the Law of old, they might be said to be sprinkled with blood, even the blood of atonement. The Cross was at once the basis on which he rested his doctrinal statements, and the armory from which he drew his most forcible and pointed appeals to the conscience. His aim seems never once to have been to catch applause to himself by the enticing words of man’s wisdom, by arraying his thoughts in the motley garb of an affected and gorgeous style, or by having recourse to the tricks of an inflated and meretricious oratory. His sole ambition appears to have been to “turn sinners from the error of their ways;” and for this end he wisely judged nothing to be so well adapted as “holding forth the words of eternal life” in their native simplicity and power, and in a spirit of sincere and ardent devotion. His object was to move his hearers, not towards himself, but towards his Master. He was taken home to be with Christ on July 27, 1680. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 2: A DISCOURSE ON CHRIST OUR PASSOVER ======================================================================== A DISCOURSE ON CHRIST OUR PASSOVER For Christ our passover is sacrificed for us,-- 1 Corinthians 5:7. THE words are a reason of the apostle’s exhortation to the Corinthians to cast out the incestuous person, in regard of the contagion, which might be, by so ill an example, dispersed to others, as a leaven spreads in vapours through the whole lump: "Know you not, that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?" ver. 6. And having used this similitude of leaven, he pursues it in allusion to the custom of the Jews before the celebration of the passover, according to the command, to have no leaven found in their houses at that time, upon the penalty of being cut off from the congregation of Israel; and with respect to the true design of that ceremonial injunction, exhorts the Corinthians to purge out the old leaven, namely, that person from their society, lust from their hearts, every member of the old Adam, that they might be a new lump answering their holy and heavenly calling. The reason of this exhortation is in the words, “For Christ our passover is sacrificed for us," and by his death hath taken away the sin of the world. As the sacrifice of the paschal lamb represented the sacrifice of Christ, so the manner wherein the Israelites celebrated that solemnity with unleavened bread, represents the manner wherewith we ought to celebrate the death of the Redeemer of the world. As therefore our true passover, which is the Lord Jesus, hath been sacrificed for us, let us daily celebrate the memory of it in a manner worthy of so great a grace. As therefore the Jews abstained from all leaven in the time of the figure, let us not only abstain from, but purge out, all things contrary to God, because for this end Christ was sacrificed for us. As the passover was a type of Christ, so the unleavened bread was a type of christians, and of their innocence and purity of life. And that .because you are unleavened by law, you ought to be so: for that is said in Scripture sometimes to be in fact, which ought to be; as, the priest’s lips preserve knowledge, that is, ought to preserve knowledge. "Purge out" is very emphatical, and means, Purge it out wholly, that nothing may be left in you, that you may be such as a new lump did figuratively signify. "Christ our passover." The institution of this solemn figure is particularly set down, Exodus 12:3-5, &c. It was appointed by God as a memorial both of the Israelites’ slavery m Egypt, and their deliverance from it. After they had been about two hundred years in that country, God, mindful of his promise, sets upon their delivery, and since all the former miracles bad proved unsuccessful for the bending Pharaoh’s heart to give the captives liberty to depart, God designs the slaying of the first-born of every Egyptian family, and thereby sending the greatest strength of the nation to another world. Upon this occasion he orders the Israelites, by Moses, to slay the lamb the fourteenth day of the first month, (which answers to our March,).and to sprinkle the posts of their doors with the blood, and to feast upon the flesh of it in their several, families; and that night the angel comes, and mortally strikes every first-born, none escaping, but those who observed this command of God, and had sprinkled their door-posts with the blood of the slain lamb; every house besides, being made that night a house of mourning. It was an earnest of the Israelites’ deliverance, and the Egyptians’ calamity. Observe 1. God’s greatest mercies to his, church, are attended with the greatest plagues upon their enemies. The salvation of man is the destruction of sin and the devil: the passover was the salvation of Israel, and ruin of Egypt. 2.God provides for the security of his people, before be lays his wrathful hand upon their adversaries. He provided a Moses to conduct them, an ordinance to comfort and refresh them, before he shoots his arrows into the Egyptians’ hearts. God settles this passover as a standing ordinance in the church; a feast throughout; their generations, to be kept by an ordinance for ever, Exodus 12:14 so that it was not only, a memorial of a past and temporal deliverance,’ but the type of a future and spiritual one. ’. As, all the sacrifices were types of what was to be performed in the fulness of time, in the person of the Messiah; so this was a great and signal type, and had its truth, reality, and .efficacy, in the death of the Redeemer. "Christ the passover," that is, the paschal lamb. The lamb was called the passover; the sign for the thing signified by it, 2 Chronicles 35:11. "And they killed the passover," that is, the lamb; for the passover was properly the angel’s passing over Israel, when he was sent as an executioner of God’s wrath upon the Egyptians, So Matthew 26:17. "Where shall we prepare for thee to eat the passover?" that is, the paschal lamb. "Our passover:" our paschal lamb. He is called God’s lamb, John 1:29. God’s in regard of the author, ours in regard of the end; God’s lamb in regard of designation, ours in regard of acceptation. "Our passover." Not only of the Jews but of the Gentiles; that was restrained to the Israelitish nation, this extends in the offers of it to all, and belongs to all that are under the new administration of the covenant of grace. "For us." Not only for our good, but in our stead, to free us from eternal death, to purchase for us eternal life: sacrifices were substituted in the place of the transgressor, and received the stroke of death which his sin had merited. The title of the paschal lamb is given here to Christ, not only in regard of his meekness and innocence, but in regard of his being a sacrifice, whence he is called the lamb slain, Revelation 5:12 the “lamb that redeems us by his blood," 1 Peter 1:19. Here we have, I.A description of Christ in the type, passover. II. The end of his death. Three doctrines may be observed from the words. Doct. 1. CHRIST IS OUR PASSOVER. Doct. 2. CHRIST IS A SACRIFICE. Doct. 3. CHRIST IS A SACRIFICE IN OUR STEAD. Doct. 1. CHRIST IS OUR PASSOVER. In allusion to this, he is so often called a lamb, as also in allusion to the Iambs offered in the daily sacrifice; but especially in relation to the paschal lamb, which did more fully express, both the nature of his sufferings, and the design of his office: you do not therefore find him expressed in the New Testament by the name of any of those other animals, which were figures of him in the Jewish sacrifices, but only by this of a lamb, as being more significant of the innocence of his person, the meekness of his nature, his sufficiency for his people, than any other. I.The design of the passover was to set forth Christ. All the sacrifices, which were appointed by God as parts of worship, were designed to keep up the acknowledgment of the fall of man, his demerit by sin, and to support his faith in the promised Redeemer; for they being instituted, not before the fall, but probably immediately after the first promise of the Seed of the woman, did all refer to that seed promised, whose heel was to be bruised, as to the foundation of their institution; and being unable of themselves to purge the sin of a rational creature, and the spiritual substance of the soul, they must refer to that which was only able to do it: "Sacrifice, and offering, and burnt-offerings, and offering for sin, thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will," Hebrews 10:9, the will of God manifested in the first draught and agreement in heaven, and shadowed in all the sacrifices under the law. When sacrifices of themselves were not, nor could be grateful to God, nor the blood of an animal ’give a due compensation to an offended God for the sin of man, then said Christ, "Lo, I come," as the person represented by those pictures, as the body signified by those shadows. All those institutions, not being designed for any virtue in themselves, but as notices of the intent of God, and the methods he designed for the taking away sin by the promised Seed; that it was to be by blood and death, that this was the agreement between God and the seed so promised; therefore they were, in all those doleful spectacles of blood and slaughter, to look through that veil to the calamities the promised Seed should endure for the taking away sin, and have a prospect of the heinousness of sin, and the sharpness of the sufferings of the Messiah, in the groans and stragglings of those dying creatures. So the design of this passover was ultimately to represent the Messiah to them, by whose blood they were to have a spiritual deliverance from sin and Satan, as, by the blood [of the Lamb, they had a deliverance from the sword of the destroying angel, and afterwards from Pharaoh and the Egyptian pressures. He is therefore called the Lamb of God, as being shadowed by the paschal lamb of the old testament. All things under the law were but shadows of things to come, Heb. x. 1. Christ is the real accomplishment of all; he is our mystical, spiritual, heavenly, perfect passover; therefore those words which are immediately spoken of the paschal lamb, and did immediately respect the passover, "neither shall you break a bone thereof," Exodus 12:4-5. and Numbers 9:12 are said to be fulfilled in Christ the antitype, as if they had been immediately pronounced of him, when they were spoken of the paschal lamb: "For those things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken," John 19:36. And, indeed, if we consider all the circumstances in the institution, they seem not worthy of the wisdom of God, nor are capable of having any reason rendered for them, if they be not referred to some other mystery: and what can that be, but the Redeemer of the world represented thereby? Why should so much care be in the choice and separation of a lamb? What virtue had the blood of a poor animal to secure the house, and the life of the first-born against the sword of a strong and invisible angel? Was the sprinkling of the blood upon the posts a necessary mark for the angel, as though he had not understanding enough to distinguish between the houses and children of the Israelites and Egyptians? Could not God have signified his pleasure to the angel without such a mark, and given him directions for the security of his people? How can we think God should appoint so many ceremonies in it, lay such a charge upon them for the strict observation of them, if he designed it not as a prop to their faith, a ground to expect a higher and spiritual deliverance by the blood of the Messiah, as well as a trial of their obedience, a memorial of their temporal deliverance, and a sign for the direction of the angel in the execution of his commission. II.The believers in that time regarded it as a type of the Messiah. "Through faith, he," that is, Moses, "kept the passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the first-born should touch them," Hebrews 11:28. It was an illustrious testimony of Moses’ faith, to rely upon the promise and good-will of God, and keep the passover, when the blood of a lamb seemed so improbable a means of preserving the Israelites from the destroying angel’s sword; yet certainly Moses faith pierced further, and looked through this shell to the kernel, through this sign to the thing signified by it. Moses could not have esteemed the reproach of Christ, Hebrews 11:26 had he not known Christ; and we cannot suppose so illustrious a prophet, that had such an estimation of Christ as to value his reproaches, did terminate his faith upon the outward action and the bare type, but pierced further to the promised Seed, as well as Abel in his sacrifice. It is not likely that his faith stuck only in the effusion of the blood of an animal, and did not see the effusion of the blood of the Messiah, whose reproach he had been so willing to bear. It had been too low a faith for so great a man, not to regard the spiritual deliverance promised to be wrought by the bruising the heel of the Seed of the woman. Who can think Moses utterly ignorant of the design of that promise? And if not, who can think his faith should terminate in the outward sign, and that the apostle should give such encomiums to a faith of no higher an elevation, than that which respected .the command of God in that present affair? Moses’ faith had been great in former commands; why should the apostle skip over them, if he had not designed to show his faith in the Messiah figured in the passover? The apostle doth not speak of faith in God simply considered in that chapter, but of faith in the Mediator or high Priest, whom he had discoursed of throughout that book. How could the ancient believers eat the same spiritual food, and drink of the same spiritual rock, which was Christ, without faith in him, and respecting him as the object of faith in that rock and manna? 1 Corinthians 10:3-4. Some ot the Jews acknowledge, that the Messiah is to come exactly on that day in which the passover was offered, when they fled out of Egypt. And to redeem Israel the 15th day of the month Nisan, which was the day wherein Christ by his death redeemed the world. They came out of Egypt the first month, when the moon was at the full, and in the same month, and the same appearance of the moon, did Christ procure our spiritual liberty by his death. III.The paschal lamb was the fittest to represent Christ. It was a sacrifice and a feast; a sacrifice in the killing it and sprinkling the blood, a feast in their feeding upon it. It represents Christ as a victim satisfying God, as a feast refreshing us; he was offered to God for the expiation of our sins, he is offered to us for application to our souls. The apostle mentions one in the text, the other in the verse following, “therefore let us keep the feast." A lamb is both clothes and meat: Christ is clothing to us, by righteousness to cover our nakedness; and food to us, by his body and blood to satisfy our appetite: a sacrifice, and a feast, for us. The truth of this proposition will appear, 1. In the resemblance between the paschal lamb, and the Redeemer. 2. In the effects or consequents of it. 1. In the resemblance between the paschal lamb and the Redeemer. (1.) A lamb is a meek creature. It hurts none, is hurt by all; it hangs not back, when it is led to the slaughter; it cries not when it is pierced; no greater emblem of patience to be found among irrational creatures. To this the prophet likens our Saviour, when he saith, “He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before the shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth," Isaiah 53:7. How strange was his humility in entering into such a life! how much more stupendous in submitting to such a death, as shameful as his life was miserable! For the Son of God to be counted the vilest of men; the Sovereign of angels, to be made lower than his creatures; the Lord of heaven, to become a worm of the earth; for a Creator to be spurned by his creatures--is an evidence of a meekness not to be paralleled. The soldiers that spat upon him, and mocked him, met not with a reproachful expression from him. He held his peace at their clamours, offered his back to their scourges, reviled them not when he lay under the greatest violences of their rage, was patient under his sufferings, while he was despised more than any man by the people. His calmness was more stupendous than their rage, and the angels could not but more inexpressibly wonder at the patience of the sufferer, than the unmercifulness of the executioners; he was more willing to die, than they were to put him to death; he suffered not by force, he courted the effusion of his blood, when he knew that the hour which his Father had appointed, and man needed, was approaching. Neither the infamy of the cross, nor the sharpness of the punishment, nor the present and foreseen ingratitude of his enemies, could deter him from desiring and effecting man’s salvation. He went to it, not only as a duty, but an honour; and was content for a while to be the sport of devils, that he might be the spring of salvation to men. And when he was in the furnace of divine wrath, and deserted by his Father, he utters a sensible, but not a murmuring expostulation; he received our sins upon his shoulders, to confer his divine benefits upon our hearts; he endured the contradiction of sinners against himself, he despised the shame, submitted to the cross, his own worldly reputation was of no value with him, so he might be a sacrifice for the redemption of forlorn man; and, in the whole scene, manifested a patience greater than their cruelty. From this paschal lamb typifying the Redeemer, the Jews might have learned not to expect a Messiah wading through the world in blood and slaughter, sheathing his sword in the bodies of his enemies, and flourishing with temporal victories and prosperity; but one, meek, humble, and lowly, suiting the temper of the lamb which represented him in the passover. (2.) It was to be a lamb without blemish, Exodus 12:5. It was to be entire in all its parts, sound, without bruise or maim; and the reason why it was separated four days before the killing of it was, that they might have time to understand whether it had any spot or defect in it: so is the Lamb of God; he was holy in the production of his nature, as well as in the actions of his life; though he was of Adam’s substance, he was not contained in Adam’s seminal virtue; he was conceived by the Holy Ghost, therefore unblemished in his conception, unspotted in his birth. From the first moment of his conception, he was filled with all supernatural grace, according to the capacity of his humanity; his union with the divine nature, secured him against the sinful infirmities of our nature, and made all supernatural perfections due to him, whereby he might be fitted for all holy operations. As he was that holy thing in his birth, Luke 1:35 so he was righteous to the last moment of his life. The law of God was within his heart, signified by the tables of the law laid up in the ark, a type of his human nature, which possessed in a sovereign degree all the habits of the most accomplished righteousness that ever was in the world; to which Peter alludes, "a lamb without spot and blemish," 1 Peter 1:19 a divine idea of all virtue, who infinitely surpassed all the holiness of men or angels. The apostle multiplies expressions to declare it, and all little enough to express it: "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners," Hebrews 7:26. He was like us in our nature, but not in our blemishes; he had our flesh, but without the least stain of imperfection; he had the likeness of sinful flesh, but there was not any inherency of sin in him, or adherency of it to him, in the assumption of our nature, Hebrews 4:15 as the serpent upon the pole had the likeness, but not the venom of the serpent. He was not. subjected to our sin, as he was to our natural infirmities; as he had the form of a servant, without the impurities of our slavery; and, in all the days of his flesh, was not found guilty of one fault to God or man. It was necessary he should be so. Had he been obnoxious to sin, he had not been able to take away the sins of the world; no impure person could have made our peace with God, because he could not have made his own peace, nor have procured quietness in his own conscience; he could not have merited for himself, much less have wrought any righteousness for others. (3.) The lamb was to be chosen, and set apart three days, and killed the fourth in the evening, Exodus 12:6. Or between the two evenings; as it is in the Hebrew. Our Saviour was separate from men, manifested himself in the work of his prophetical office three years and upwards, before he was offered up as a sacrifice in the fourth year, after he had been solemnly inaugurated in the exercise of his office. Their keeping the lamb in custody, and tying it at the feet of their beds, that being in view it might remind them of their servitude in Egypt, and deliverance from thence by the mighty hand of God, noted the humiliation of Christ before his death, which is called his prison, and therefore the beginning of his exaltation is called a taking him from prison and from judgment," Isaiah 53:8. As the lamb was set apart the tenth day, so some observe, that, in answer to the type, Christ did on the tenth day solemnly and in triumph enter into Jerusalem, and by the same gate through which lambs were led to sacrifice; and he was crucified that very day and time wherein the paschal lamb was to be slain, between the two evenings; that is, the declining of the sun from noon, which was the first evening, and the setting of it, which was the second; for it was about the ninth hour, or three in the afternoon, the usual time wherein they killed the passover, that Christ was offered up as> a complete "sacrifice to God," Matthew 27:46, Matthew 27:50. It was ordered by God to be killed in the evening, to signify the sacrifice of the Messiah in the evening of the world. He was crucified at the end of the second age of the world, the age of the law, and the beginning of the third age, that of the gospel, which is called in scripture the last times, Hebrews 1:2 and “the ends of the world," 1 Corinthians 10:11 which Peter alludes to, when he compares him to the paschal “lamb without blemish, manifested in these last times for you," 1 Peter 1:19-20. The death of Christ was in the first evening of the world. The sun is turned; the world shall not last so long after the coming of Christ, as it did before; the state of the world is far declined, and the consummation of all things is not far off, since more than sixteen hundred years are past, since the first evening began. (4.) "The lamb was to be roasted with fire whole, not sodden," Exodus 12:8-9. To put them in mind of the hardship they endured in the brick-kilns of Egypt, and as a type of the scorching sufferings of the Redeemer, whose "strength was dried up like a potsherd, and his tongue cleaved to his jaws," Psalms 22:15 probably alluding to this roasting of the paschal lamb. He bore the wrath of that God who is a consuming fire, without any water, any mitigation or comfort in his torments. It may note also the gradual rising of the suffering of Christ. As his exaltation was not all at one time, but by degrees, so were his sufferings, by outward wounds, cutting reproaches, and inward agonies. The pains of the body were inexpressible in regard of the nervousness, and therefore sensibility, of those parts, his hands and feet, which were pierced upon the cross. The consideration of those millions of sins laid upon him, could not but be an inexpressible grief to the pure nature of Christ, had there been nothing of the wrath of God mixed with it. But this bodily death and grief was not all; the wrath of God dreadfully flamed out against his soul; there was the principal seat of the sufferings of Christ, because the soul is the principal seat of that sin for which he suffered. What should have been inflicted upon us, was inflicted upon him: but we had not only merited the death of the body, but a death joined with the curse of God tormenting the soul. He tasted death, the death which the devil had the power of, that "death which men feared," Hebrews 2:9, Hebrews 2:14-15 which is the weight of that eternal death due to sin. How sharp must that be, which had the bitterness of a thousand deaths, for those millions of sins which Christ bore in his body, every one of which had deserved an entire death from the hand of God! How grievous was that death, since he that was more courageous than all the martyrs, sweat drops of blood at the approach of the cross; and when he was upon it, uttered that terrible complaint, "My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me V words which never came out of the mouth of any of the martyrs in the strength of their torments; so that, the sufferings of Christ were of that weight, that a mere creature would have sunk under them, not only the holiest man, but the highest angel. (5.) “Not a bone of the paschal lamb was broken," Exodus 12:46. Which, according to the opinion of some, signified that kind of death to which the breaking of the bones belonged, and that was crucifixion; it being the custom to break the bones of malefactors, that their punishment might be shortened. This was fulfilled in our Saviour, John 19:36. Death had not a full power over him, he was not broken to pieces by the greatness of his sufferings, but surmounted his enemies upon the cross, and was reserved entire for a resurrection. There may be other resemblances noted. As the lamb was to be a male, which implies the perfection and strength of the sacrifice, not above a year old, the sufferings of Christ were in the prime of his age. 2. There is a resemblance in the effects or consequences of the passover. (1.) The diverting the destroying angel by the sprinkling of the blood upon the posts, to be a mark to the angel, to spare the first-born of such houses, was the main end expressed in the institution, Exodus 12:12-13. Their preservation could not be merited by the blood of an animal. It had a higher cause, the blood of Christ, which was represented by it; to which purpose the observation of Chrysostom is remarkable. As the statues of kings, though they are inanimate things, yet are sanctuaries to preserve those that fly to them; not because they are statues, but because they represent the prince: so the blood of the Lamb preserved the families, not because it was blood, but because it represented the blood of the Messiah. This blood quenches that fire of wrath we had merited, turns away that vengeance which would else consume us. By virtue of this sacrifice, "we pass from death to life," John 5:24. When God shall judge the world, he will pass over those whom he sees sprinkled with the blood of his Well-beloved, and turn from them the edge of that consuming sword, which shall strike through the hearts of those that are without this blood of sprinkling. It is only under the warrant of this blood, that we can be safe. The Redeemer’s blood shed for us, and sprinkled on us, preserves our souls to eternal life. As the destroying sword did not touch the Israelites, so condemning wrath shall not strike those that are under the protection of it; death shall have no power over them. The blood of the paschal lamb wrought a temporal deliverance, and this blood a spiritual and eternal one. (2.) Upon this succeeded that liberty God had designed for them, Exodus 12:31. As it secured them from death, so it was the earnest of their deliverance, and broke the chains of their slavery. The death of Christ is the foundation of the full deliverance of his people, and the earnest of the fruition of the purchased and promised inheritance. This was the conquest of Pharaoh, upon which soon after followed his destruction. Pharaoh’s heart was not bent till the celebration of this passover; that which succeeded upon it, laid him more flat than all the former plagues, whereby he had smarted. The promises concerning the Messiah, and the sacrifices which were types of him, terrified the devil, Pharaoh’s antitype; but only the blood of Christ shed, conquers him, and pulls captives from his chains. The Israelites’ slavery ended, when their sacrifices were finished; the efficacy of this Divine Passover delivers men from a spiritual captivity, under the yoke of sin, and the irons of Satan, instates them in the liberty of the children of God, whereby they become a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a free and peculiar people. This strikes off the shackles, works an escape from the pressures of spiritual enemies, changes a deplorable captivity into a glorious liberty, and reduces Satan to so impotent a condition, that all his strength, and all his stratagems, cannot render him master of that soul that is once freed from his chains. As after this passover, the Egyptian strength was so scattered, that they were as ready to force that people to their liberty, as before they were desirous to detain them their slaves, and were never able to reduce them to their former chains. (3.) After this passover they do not only enjoy their liberty, but begin their march to Canaan, the promised and delightful land. They then turn their backs upon Egypt, and their faces towards Canaan; and, after a pilgrimage in the desert, they enter into the land flowing with milk and honey; so, by the merit of the sacrifice of Christ, the true Israelite turns his face from earth to heaven, from a world that lies in wickedness, to an inheritance of the saints in light, and travels towards Canaan, whither he shall be sure to enter after he hath finished his pilgrimage, to feed upon the milk and honey, the glory and happiness proper to that state. Then shall all the ends of this passover be fulfilled and completed "in the kingdom of God," Luke 22:16 and the soul remain for ever in a glorious state beyond the reach of its former tyrants, free from all fear of slavery, for ever rejoicing in the happy accomplishment of the promises of God. In short, as after the celebration of this passover in Egypt, all the promises of God to them began to take place, and pass into performance; so by the death of Christ, the true passover, all the promises were made yea and amen, in him, and began to be made good to every believer. 1.Of information. Is Christ called our passover? Then, (1.) The study of the old testament is advantageous. The apostle here writes to the Corinthians, among whom were not only Hellenites, but Gentiles, who could not understand the nature and ends of the passover, without the knowledge of the old testament; by this they are implicitly directed to the study of it. The old testament verifies the new, and the new illustrates the old. The old shows the promises of God, and the new the performance; what was predicted in the old, is fulfilled in the new. By comparing both together, the wisdom of God in his conduct is cleared, and the truth of God in his word confirmed. The old testament delivers the types, the new interprets them: the old presents them like money in a bag; the new spreads them, and discovers the value of the coin; the Israelites in the old felt the weight of the ceremonies, believers in the new enjoy the riches of them. (2.) Upon what a slender thread doth the doctrine of transubstantiation hang! Christ is here called the passover; was the paschal lamb therefore substantially the body of Christ? "Were those lambs that were slain in Egypt, or at any other time in the celebration of this ordinance, transubstantiated into Christ? Yet Christ is as absolutely here called the passover, and in other places the lamb, as the bread in the sacrament is called his body, or the wine his blood. Christ is said to be the rock, of which the Israelites drank, 1 Corinthians 10:4. Was the rock or the water that flowed from it, transubstantiated into Christ? But in scripture the name proper to the thing represented, is given to that which represents it. The lamb is called the passover, because it is a memorial of the angel’s passing over the Israelites’ families, and not only called so at the first institution, but above fifteen hundred years after that miraculous mercy. So the bread and wine are called the body and blood of Christ, because they are memorials and signs of his body and blood. If the church of the Jews spake figuratively in the case of the passover, what difficulty is h, that Christ should call the memorials of his body and blood by the name of the things they signified? (3.) It gives us a probable reason for the change of the sabbath from the seventh day to the first. That it is changed, is evident by apostolical example. It is probable that from the creation the year began in September, the autumnal equinox, the fruits being on the trees at the creation; but now God orders the beginning of the year from the time of this first passover, and the consequences following upon it, their deliverance from Egypt, which was in March the vernal equinox: "This month shall be unto you the beginning of months, it shall be the first month of the year to you," Exodus 12:2. Had the year began from March at the beginning, it had not been so proper to command them to begin it from that month, which they had always observed before as the beginning of the year. The Israelites had been as it were buried in Egypt, and this being the month of their resurrection, should be the first month of the year. This change of the beginning of the year, gives us a probable reason of the change of the sabbath. If the beginning of the year were changed upon the account of the type, a day might well be changed upon the account of the antitype. If this in the figure were counted greater than creation, that the month of the world’s creation must give place to it, the substance of this figure appearing, might well be the cause of the change of a day, and the seventh day of the creation give place to the first day of the perfection of redemption. (4.) The ancient Jews were under a covenant of grace. Christ was the end, the spirit, the life of their sacrifices. The passover, rock, sacrifices, manna, were the swaddling-bands wherein he was wrapt. They ate of the same spiritual meat, drank of the same spiritual drink: the rock which followed them, cherished them, and watered them, was Christ, 1 Corinthians 10:3-4. Christ to come was set forth to them as an object of faith. Christ was the rock, the passover sacramentally. Their sacraments and ours were the same in effect, though diverse in signs. Hence their sacraments are attributed to us, circumcision and the passover, spiritually; ours in the same manner to them, baptism and the Lord’s supper, 1 Corinthians 10:2-3. They indeed had Christ, as it were, in his infancy; we in his ripe and full age. They had him under the obscure veils of lambs, bullocks, goats; we have him in his person. They had the sun under a cloud, we the sun at noon-day in his glory. 2.Comfort. In the security Christ procures. The destroying angel was not to enter into any sprinkled house; no passage was afforded to him. The wrath of God, or the malice of the devil, can have no power over them that are sprinkled with the blood of Christ. In the efficacy. The blood of the lamb was but a sign of that deliverance of the Israelites, but could not purge their defiled consciences; but the blood of our Lamb hath merited our salvation, can cleanse our consciences from dead and condemning works, to serve the living God, and rejoice in him, who without this sprinkling will be to us a consuming fire. As the passover was killed, that it might be their food as well as their security; so was Christ crucified, that he might be our atonement and our nourishment, our shield and our food, to make us partakers of his benefits by a spiritual application, and a close incorporation of us with himself. This comfort is the greater, by how much the tyrant we are delivered from, is more dreadful than Pharaoh, whose design is not only, like his, to afflict our bodies, but to plunge our souls and bodies into the same hell with himself. It is from the wrath of God, our Passover hath delivered us: and what is the anger of Pharaoh to the fury of an offended Deity, kindled against us by our multiplied transgressions? It is true, deliverance is yet but begun; it is not yet perfect; miseries, and spiritual contests, are to be expected. Pharaoh will pursue, but shall not overtake; the sea shall ruin the Egyptians, but secure the Israelites; death shall not swallow up those who are sprinkled with this holy blood. Consider also, if God were so punctual to his word in sa light an instance as the blood of the lamb, he will be as stedfast to it in so great an instance as the blood of his Son beheld cleaving to the soul. 3.Exhortation. (1.) Thankfully remember this passover. A redemption from divine wrath, a spiritual life and liberty, the fruits and purchase of this Lamb, are incomparably beyond the temporal deliverance conferred upon the Jews. The giving thanks was a duty annexed to the eating of the paschal lamb, wherein they blessed God for the mercy showed to their fathers in bringing them out of Egypt. How infinitely more precious is the blood of the Son of God than the blood of a silly animal! How highly doth the benefit of the one surmount the immediate fruit of the other! And is it not fit our praises should surpass those of the Jews for the old passover? Remember it with bitterness. The Israelites ate the passover with bitter herbs; shall we be without it, when we consider the cause of our slavery, and the means of our deliverance? A bitterness of soul will make the taste of the benefit of Christ more delicious. (2.) Inquire whether He be our passover. He is a passover, but is he a lamb eaten by us, owned by us? He is ours by the gift of God, but is he ours by the acceptation of our souls? It is the most useful, most necessary inquiry we can make. All the comfort of possessions in the world consists in the word mine, ours, and the use as ours; all the comfort of spiritual mercy consists in property, possession, and fruition. If he be our lamb, we must be like him, we must learn of him. As he is the cause of our expiation, he must be the copy of our imitation, "Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly, and you shall find rest unto your souls," Matthew 11:29. No rest without a sense of sin, and humiliation for it. This Lamb is ours, in the liberty, life, glory, and rest he hath purchased, when we are like him, when we learn of him. (3.) Have faith in the blood of Christ. The killing the lamb, signified the death of Christ; the sprinkling the blood, signified the application of it by faith. It was not the blood contained in the veins of the lamb, or shed upon the ground, that was the mark of deliverance, but sprinkled upon the posts; nor is it the blood of Christ circulating in his body, or shed upon the cross, which solely delivers us, but as applied by faith to the heart. That was sprinkled upon every house which desired safety, and this upon every soul that desires happiness. Satan will have an undoubted right over all that are without the token of this blood, as the destroying angel had over every house that was not sprinkled with the blood of the passover. This was the sanctuary of the Israelites, the want of it, the death of the Egyptian first-born; from the prince to the peasant; from him that sat upon the throne, to him that was in the dungeon, Exodus 12:29. Without this blood of sprinkling, neither prince nor beggar can possibly escape; the one’s grandeur cannot privilege, nor the other’s misery procure pity. The blood was to be taken and put upon the posts; this condition was requisite. To have a part in the great passover of our Lord, the condition is to sprinkle our hearts by faith with his blood, 1 Peter 1:2. Had an Israelite’s family neglected this, it had felt the edge of the angel’s sword; the lamb had not availed him, not by a defect of the sacrifice, but by their own negligence or contempt of the condition. Or had they used any other mark, they had not diverted the stroke; no work, no blood, but the blood and sufferings of the Redeemer, can take away the sin of the world; without it, every man in the world lies in the sin of his nature under the wrath of God. If any thing else in the world had a virtue for it, it could not prevail, unless God would accept it, because he did not appoint it. This only is designed to be our passover; where else can we find any remedy against the stings of our consciences, any ease under the weight of our sins, any consolation against divine wrath? (4.) Let us leave the service of sin. The Israelites after this passover did no more work at the brick-kilns of Egypt; they ceased to be Pharaoh’s slaves, and began to be the Lord’s freemen. God intended no more to turn them to their former labour ; he would have them eat their passover with their loins girt in the habit of travellers. We must be in a readiness to leave the confines of Egypt, all commerce with, and service of sin and Satan, and have our faces set towards Canaan, our steps directed to observe his commands for our rule, to attain his promises for our comfort, and go forward rejoicing in his goodness, celebrating his name, offering our souls and bodies to him, which is a reasonable service to Christ our passover. Doct. 2. CHRIST IS A SACRIFICE. The word too properly signifies to kill as a sacrifice. Some dispute whether the paschal lamb was a sacrifice, because in a sacrifice something was offered to God either in whole or in part, but the paschal lamb was not offered to God, but eaten by the people; it was killed, to the end that the blood should be sprinkled upon the posts of the doors, and therefore it is rather a sacrament than a sacrifice. Again, the Jews did not sacrifice out of the temple, and therefore in their captivities they did not sacrifice, but both then and now they celebrate the passover. Others again think it a sacrifice, because the sprinkling of the blood upon the posts, was in a manner an offering it to God to turn away his wrath, (" Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of passover be left until the morning," Exodus 34:25.) and a means of reconciliation to him, "Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the Lord," Deuteronomy 16:2. But whether properly a sacrifice or not, yet it was significant of the propitiating blood of Christ, the future grand sacrifice, by virtue of which we have our deliverance. The apostle might here allude to the passover and other sacrifices, all which did prefigure the spiritual redemption by the Messiah. A sacrifice is defined to be, a religious oblation of something consecrated and dedicated to God by the ministry of a priest according to God’s institution, to be offered for a testimony of the worship of God and an external symbol. I shall lay down some propositions for the illustrating this doctrine. I.Sacrifices were instituted as types of Christ. 1 They were instituted by God. No satisfactory reason can be rendered of the custom of sacrificing derived from the first age of the world, practised by all nations, till the appearance of the gospel abolished it in those places where it shone. It could not be a dictate of the law of nature inscribed in all men’s hearts, for then they would have been of force still. Christianity doth not extinguish any beam of natural light, but adds a clearness to it; it abolishes only what was corrupt, or only ceremonial. Though natural light could not invent them, yet it made them entertainable by all, while they were stung with the conscience of sin, and expectations of vengeance. Men might know that they were unlike to what they were in their creation; they found their light darkened, their beauty defaced, and might suppose that a God of infinite goodness did not send them forth in such a shape out of his mint; this deformity must come upon them for some provocation, and by the means of their own sin. They also found the marks of God’s anger upon them, saw and felt his thundering judgments in the world, they had a notion of the vindictive justice of God, they had frequent manifestations of it upon themselves and others. This the apostle affirms generally of the heathens, "They knew the judgment of God, that they which commit such things, are worthy of death;" Romans 1:23 they had a sentiment of God and revenging justice in their consciences, that it did not become the holiness and righteousness of the divine nature, to let their rebellions remain unpunished. The apostle speaks not there of any supernatural revelation, but the natural manifestation by the creatures, whereby his justice was discovered, as well as his eternal power and Godhead. Upon this account sacrifices were practised among them, as seeming to them congruous means for the expiation of sin, and to put a stop to the wrath of God, either feared by them, or already kindled among them. For by this action they confessed their desert of death for their crimes, acknowledged God’s sovereignty and right over all they had, and owned his mercy in accepting in their stead the life of an irrational animal. For when men are sensible of the anger of God, the next thought in order, is how to escape it. When men see a magistrate suffer murders and violences in a nation to go unpunished, they generally have a horror of it, and expect some judgment of God, till an expiation be made by the death of the offender. And could they reasonably think God to be void of that virtue of justice, which is commendable over all the world by the light of nature, when those perfections of human nature, left in the midst of corruption, are but as little sparks to those which are infinite in God. They were at first instituted by God; though we have not the institution of them in express words, yet we have the practice in Abel, Genesis 4:4 afterwards in Noah, "Noah offered burnt offerings on the altar," Genesis 7:20. And since the apostle speaks of "Abel’s offering a sacrifice in. faith," Hebrews 11:4 it must be God’s command; for no act of worship of a human invention can please God. The demand might be made, Who hath required those things at your hands? It had not been formally good, unless offered in faith; nor had it been a fit ground or medium of faith, without a divine stamp upon it. If the foundation were not divine, the act could not be acceptable. 2.No other reason can be rendered of the institution of them, but as typical of the great sacrifice of the Redeemer. The scripture gives us the only account of this; all nations in the world without the scripture are in the dark, as to the design of those sacrifices, though they practised them conformably to the sentiments of their consciences. The institution of them from the beginning of the world cannot reasonably be concluded to be for any other end, than to prefigure some sufficient sacrifice, able to appease the wrath of God, and pacify the consciences of men, and to instruct men in what was to be brought upon the stage in time, in the exhibition of the person of the Redeemer. In the state of innocence we find no mention of them, nor could they have had any place, had man continued in his created rectitude and integrity. The covenant of works, which then was the rule and ground of man’s standing, required not faith in a Redeemer, and therefore implied no such act as sacrificing. Man then had no relation to God but as a creature; and, persisting in obedience, could not by the righteous law of God be subject to death, and therefore no other subjected to death for him; for to have any one to die for us, implies that we had merited death ourselves. It cannot enter into the reason of man to imagine what use they could be for in that state. Death was not due to the righteousness of man’s nature, but to his corruption. Adam stood upon his own foundation, and was the foundation of all his posterity, and no person was substituted in his room. What could sacrifices then represent? Whereof could they be typical? Could they be for the confession of sin? There was none to confess. Could they be to represent a death deserved? There was no crime committed whereby to merit it? Could it be to typify Christ to come? there was no revelation of him till after the fall, Genesis 3:15. And supposing, as some do, that Christ should have been incarnate, had man persisted in his first integrity; yet none suppose Christ should have been crucified in that nature, without the entrance of sin. What end could be supposed of shedding his blood? For satisfaction of justice? Justice was not provoked. For example? Man perfect in all virtue needed none; besides, he was not capable of the exercise of suffering virtues, who was not capable of suffering in that state. They were appointed therefore after the fall, as representations of this sacrifice, so necessary for the expiation of sin. And some conclude, with probability, that they were put in practice immediately after the making the promise of the seed of the woman, though there be no express scripture for it, from Genesis 3:21. “God made them coats of skins:" which probably were the skins of slain beasts, very likely consumed by fire from heaven; as the Jews say Abel’s sacrifice was, which was a token of God’s acceptation of it. This was probably done for the confirmation of the truth of the promise, the clearer representing the design of it to them, by substituting another in the room of the offender, and comforting them thereby, since "without shedding of blood is no remission," Hebrews 9:22. And of those sacrifices the skins were appointed to be the garments of the first man and woman, to put them in mind of their apostasy, and the way of their recovery, and the righteousness of another, wherein they were to stand before God. But howsoever it be, we cannot suppose Abel to be the first that offered sacrifice, and that one hundred and twenty-nine years should run without the offering of any. It is likely Abel was slain in that year, because Seth was born in the one hundred and thirtieth year of Adam’s age, Genesis 5:3. Indeed sacrifices, as they looked backward, could be no other than a transcript of the agreement between the Father and the Son, of the one’s paying, and the other’s accepting the price of blood for the redemption of man: and as they looked forward, a type of the real performance of the sufferings on the one part, and the acceptance of them on the other part, when the fulness of time should come, wherein they were actually to be undergone. This tradition of sacrifices was handed down to all nations of the world, but the knowledge of the end of them was lost. Yet in an exercise of reason they might rise to a consideration, that this low blood could not be a compensation for sin, as not being proportioned to the dignity of him with whom they had to do. But as to the true end of them, the representation of a higher sacrifice, they were not able to discern it by all the reason in the world, after they had lost the revelation of it. By the way: this adds a credit to the scripture, since it gives us an account of the reason of that which was practised by all nations, which they could not without revelation render any tolerable reason for. The scripture makes it plain. God would have a representation of that which the Redeemer was to offer in the fulness of time for the abolition of sin. As men always need a satisfaction of the justice of God, so God would have it, that in all their worship there should be a mark of this necessity, and some presage that one day there should be a sacrifice eternally efficacious, the reality of which was represented by this figure. 3.Christ did really answer to these types. They were all Christ in a cloud, the substance did answer to the shadows, and he was used in such a manner as the figures of him were. Christ was a victim put in the place of the sinner, to appease the anger of God; and as sins were laid upon the head of the sacrifice, so God put "upon him the iniquities of us all," Isaiah 53:6. In regard of this typicalness of the legal administration, Christ is often called a lamb, and the "Lamb of God," John 1:29 and a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, not only in the decree, but in the type of him, the first sacrifice mentioned in the scripture, which was a firstling of the flock, Genesis 4:2, Genesis 4:4. Abel being a keeper of sheep. To those figures of him he seems to refer in his last speech upon his cross, John 19:30. “It is finished." The whole design of the daily and extraordinary sacrifices was completed, the demerit of sin and severity of divine justice were manifested, and the truth of God, as well as his love, made glorious therein; upon which followed the rending of the veil, and the setting heaven open for the entrance of all that believed in him, to approach to God upon the account of this sacrifice. II.The sacrifices thus instituted, were of them selves insufficient, and could not expiate sin; they must therefore receive their accomplishment in some other. Being but shadows by their .institution, they could make nothing perfect, (Hebrews 10:1-11 where, and in the following verses, the apostle lays the glory of the legal sacrifices in the dust,) nor really atone, though they typically did: they did but evidence the guilt of sin and misery of men, whence the law is called a minister of death. 1.It was not consistent with the honour of God to be contented with the blood of a beast for an expiation of sin. How could there be in it a discovery of the severity of his justice, the