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"rites of sacrifice or any other, may exhibit the repentance: but they cannot rise above the efficacy of that inward act which they exhibit. They cannot supply the shortness, or cure the infirmity, or satisfy the doubt, of its preten"sions. The human instruments are here infi

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nitely unequal to the end proposed. They may speak the suppliant suing for pardon: they can "never speak the suppliant absolved. And, though

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mere natural reason, when best informed, may "not always have thought justly, or argued so"berly, on the subject of repentance; we may confidently assert, that one of its last resources "would have been that of adopting the blood of a victim as the positive remedy for the guilt of "moral transgression.

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If, therefore, the primitive age had its expiatory sacrifices, sacrifices framed according "to this standard, it would be difficult to ac66 count for them as rational rites; still more "difficult to think that, under the palpable inca

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pacity of their human origin, they could have "been accepted by God. No: expiatory sacri"fice must have been of God's own appointment, "to reconcile it either to God, or to man himself, till he was fallen under a deplorable super"stition*."

*Davison's Inquiry, p. 27-29.

II. Such is Mr. Davison's very important concession: and, from it, I would draw the following conclusions.

Let expiatory sacrifice have originated where and when it may, it мUST, if approved of God, have been instituted by God.

Its leading doctrine, that of an atonement, cannot be deduced from the light of nature, or from the principles of reason: in the fertile soil of a guessing superstition, it might possibly, though accidentally and unauthoritatively, spring up.

Now God, we know, cannot approve of unwarranted and presumptuous superstition; and man, we know, could not have reached the doctrine of an atonement from the light of nature, or from the principles of reason.

Hence, on the present concession, it follows, that if God can be shown to have received wITH APPROBATION piacular sacrifice anterior to the promulgation of the Law, or if piacular sacrifice anterior to the promulgation of the Law can be shown to have NOT originated from a guessing superstition: then, with the full consent of Mr. Davison himself, the divine institution of piacular sacrifice, even under the Patriarchal Dispensation, and even anterior to the Levitical Dispensation, will, independently of any other argument, have been sufficiently demonstrated.

But, if, in addition to this argument from the DIVINELY APPROVED existence of piacular sacrifice anterior to the delivery of the Law, it can be shown, on the testimony of Scripture, both that the earliest recorded sacrifice was piacular, that piacular sacrifice was in the beginning instituted of God, and that the rite of piacular sacrifice was accordingly observed during the patriarchal ages under the express sanction of God himself: the proof of the divine primeval origin of piacular sacrifice will then be as complete, as perhaps can be reasonably desired or expected.

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SECTION II.

EVIDENCE OF THE DIVINELY APPROVED EXISTENCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF AN ATONEMENT PREVIOUS TO THE DELIVERY OF THE LAW FROM MOUNT SINAI.

CHAPTER I.

Respecting the Assertion, that, at the Delivery of the Law, the Doctrine of an Atonement was a New Doctrine, of which we find no probable vestige in the Primitive Religion.

AN assertion has recently heen hazarded, that, at the time when the Law of Moses was promulgated, the doctrine of AN ATONEMENT was altogether a NEW doctrine, of which in primeval theology we can discover no probable traces.

"It will be found," says Mr. Davison, " that, "In the primitive religion, we have actually no evi“dence extant, no one positive example, of any expi"atory atoning virtue ascribed to the sacrifice. This "is a material point, which I state. But I ap"peal to the Scripture History: that History, I "believe, will fully sustain the statement made.

"Turn next to the Mosaic Law. See what a

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