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The twenty second Psalm exhibits our Saviour in the day of his passion, expiring on the cross and surrounded by his enemies. It opens with the precise words, which he used at that dreadful moment; My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me it describes, with wonderful exactness, the malignant taunts of the Jews and it at once sets forth the special mode of his death and the peculiar circumstances which attended it.

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Why art thou so far from helping me and from the words of my complaint? I am a worm, and no a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they, that see me, laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head. He trusted on the Lord, that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws thou hast brought me For dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

into the dust of death.

Yet, notwithstanding this humiliation, the divine speaker confidently anticipates his future triumph; and looks forward to the day when the converted Gentiles should own his power, and should be brought within the pale of his Church.

The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the Lord, that seek him: their heart shall

live for ever. All the ends of the world shall remember, and turn unto the Lord; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord's: and he is the governor among the nations. All they, that be fut upon earth, shall eat and worship: all they, that go down to the dust, shall bow before him; and none can keep alive his own soul. A seed shall serve him it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.'

3. I shall now adduce a passage from the fortieth Psalm, which explicitly declares, that, after the manifestation of Christ in the flesh, the sacrifices and ordinances of the Law were no longer acceptable to God: and, as this same passage has been cited by St. Paul, we have the benefit of his own inspired commentary upon

it.

The Law, having a shadow of good things to come and not the very image of the things, can never, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? Because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not pos

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The twenty second Psalm is referred to the Messiah in the Mishna Tehillim and the Talmud of the Sanhedrim. Huet. Dem. Evan. prop. vii. and Bp. Horseley in loc.

sible, that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore, when he cometh into the world, he saith: Sacrifice and burnt-offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me; in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast no pleasure. Then said I, Lo! I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

From this passage, and indeed from the general tenor of all St. Paul's writings, it appears most decidedly, that the object of the Levitical sacrifices and the design of Christ's meritorious passion were the same for the allusions of the apostle to the ordinances of the Law are so numerous, and his illustrations of them are so pointed, that it is nugatory to seek for any other satisfactory conclusion. Now the Levitical sacrifices were undoubtedly piacular. Therefore that passion of our Lord, which they are declared to shadow out; that passion, which in due time completely superseded them; that passion, which was able to take away sin, while they being merely typical were unable to take it away that passion of our Lord must itself be piacular also. Unless we draw this conclusion, there is neither cogency nor coherence in St. Paul's reasoning: for, according to any other view of the subject, he will argue from one matter

'Heb. x. 1-10.

to another matter, while yet between these two matters there exists no mutual similitude or correspondence. If to profit by the example of our Saviour be the sole end of the Gospel dispensation, it will not be easy to discover any circumstantial resemblance between his death upon the cross and that of the victims before the altar. They were undoubtedly slain to avert the wrath of God from the Church of Israel and to make atonement for the sins of the people. But St. Paul asserts, that they were altogether unable to produce any such effects; and teaches us to look to the death of Christ, as that by which alone those effects could be produced. Christ therefore, unless the whole harmony of Scripture be destroyed, and unless the apostolic reasoning be made perfectly inconclusive, must, by his precious bloodshedding, have appeased the anger of the Almighty; and must thus have procured for his faithful disciples those great and endless benefits, which the Levitical sacrifices were but typically said to procure. In short, the sacrifice of Christ is described by St. Paul, as being of the same nature with the sacrifice of animal-victims under the Law. If then, as the Socinians would persuade us, the sacrifice of Christ was nothing more than his falling a sacrifice to his opinions; we shall be reduced to the strange absurdity of placing the animal-victims under the Law in the same predicament.'

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In connection with these remarks, I may properly cite a very extraordinary passage, which Justin Martyr asserts to

II. Though the various books of the Old Testament are the work of so many different writers, yet it was the same Spirit, that gave utterance to them all. Hence arises their exact mutual agreement, notwithstanding the different periods of time, at which they were composed. Among the inspired penmen we meet with no jarring and contradiction, no alterations and corrections of the earlier authors by their successors, as is constantly the case, where human learning alone is concerned.

This will appear by comparing the passages already adduced with the following extracts from the writings of Isaiah.

1. I shall begin with citing a prophecy, which is built upon the earliest promise made to our first parents; a prophecy therefore, which may be viewed as explaining the character of him who was announced as the special Seed of the woman.

Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given : and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The father of the everlasting age, The prince of peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon

have been erased by the Jews from the Book of Ezra. Kai ειπεν Εσδρας τῳ λαῳ, Τουτο το Πασχα ὁ σωτηρ ἡμων, και ἡ καταφυγη ἡμων· και εαν διανοηθητε, και αναβῃ ύμων επι την καρδιαν, ότι μελλομεν αυτον ταπεινουν εν σημειῳ, και μετα ταυτα ελπίσωμεν επ' αυτον, ου μη ερημωθη ὁ τοπος οὗτος εις τον ἅπαντα χρονον· λεγει ὁ Θεος των δυναμεων, Εαν δε μη πιστευσητε αυτῷ, μηδε εισακούσητε του κηρυγματος αυτου, εσεσθε επιXapμia τois coveσt. Dial. cum Tryph. p. 232.

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