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obligations, or signified the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh; I must beg leave to differ from you: because it might have its effect, or be of use to Abraham and his posterity, as it was a token (which you allow it was) of the covenant God made with Abraham; being fitted as such to remind them of that covenant, and of the obligations arising from it: at the same time that we allow, that it might have a relation to the heart; be intended to signify the retrenching inordinate affections; and give occasion (by reason of the moral poses, which, from its obvious significancy, it was fitted to subserve) to the figurative application of the word circumcision. In like manner as the levitical sacrifices might have their effect, and answer, perhaps, their more immediate intention in another way; at the same time that they were calculated to put the Israelites in mind of what they owed to God, and gave occasion, as expressing, in the general notion of them, religious homage, to the using the word sacrifice, to signify any thing that was pleasing, or, as it were, offered to God. So that the case of circumcision, which you have here mentioned in order to explain

and illustrate your sentiments concerning sacrifices, seems to me capable of affording such an illustration, as will, by no means, be favourable to them; but may be so to those, which you are endeavouring to over

turn.

But it is time to proceed, and consider what you have more directly and professedly said concerning expiatory sacrifices; and particularly, the transferring of guilt, and bearing of sin, which are the subjects of your third chapter. Only before I make any particular remarks upon what you have said under these heads, I think it not amissjust to observe one thing; and the rather, as it may be applied to the subject of some other chapters, as well as of this before us. It is this; that I do not propose, nor indeed think myself obliged to defend those sentiments, which you oppose, and which I myself may entertain, just as you are pleased sometimes to express them; though they may have been expressed, as I am sensible they have been, in the same manner, not by weak and injudicious writers only, but by some considerable ones too. For though I would not presume to compare myself with the latter; I cannot think

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myself concerned to defend, either the sentiment or expressions of any, how considerable soever in other respects, if they appear to me indefensible. Thus, for instance, when you tell us (No. 29.) of others, who think differently from you upon this subject, and suppose, that the guilt of the offender was transferred to, 'or laid upon, the sacrifice; and that this was signified by the sacrificer's laying his 'hand upon the head of it, as in the case of the scape-goat,' &c. and when you tell us farther, that hence it is concluded by them, that the sacrifice must be considered, as substituted in the place of the of fender, and as dying in his stead; and so suffering a succedaneous or vicarious punishment though I must own, that the guilt, or sin of the offender, seems to me to have been so far transferred to (if we must use that word) or laid upon the sacrifice, if an expiatory one, as that the death of the sacrifice was, through the divine pleasure, the reason or ground of the offender's guilt being pardoned, removed, or taken away: away and though and though I own, that the sacrifice was instituted in the place of the

offender, and died in his stead, and so un

derwent (if you please) a vicarious suffering or death, so far, as that the death of the sacrifice was the reason or ground of the sacrificer's life being spared, or of his escaping that punishment, which he was liable to, and must otherwise have undergone; yet, I do not, and, indeed, canno say, that the guilt or sin of the offender was really and properly transferred to, or laid upon, the sacrifice; being sensible, that guilt or sin, as it is a personal thing, and must necessarily belong to the offender alone, (No. 31.) cannot be transferred to any other, in such a manner as to make it really his neither, of consequence, can I say, that any sacrifice suffered a succedaneous or vicarious punishment: because punishment, strictly speaking, necessarily implies guilt, and therefore cannot properly be said to be inflicted, where guilt really is not. Nor does it seem to me necessary to say these things, at least in the strict sense of the words: the sin of the offender might very well be said, so far as I can perceive, to be laid upon the sacrifice; and the sacrifice to be offered, or to suffer in his stead, without our being obliged to maintain, that there was a real transferring of guilt in the

case, or the proper suffering of a vicarious punishment because the effect of the sacrifice, as to the pardon of sin (in regard to which (effect) chiefly, the sacrifice is said to bear the sin of the offender, and to die for him) was every whit as certain and real, through the divine appointment, as if the sacrifice had actually bore the sin of the offender, and suffered a vicarious punishment, if that could have been. And this, so far as I can judge, if it had been more attended to, would have prevented many of those objections, which have been urged against the notion of vicarious suffering.

But to proceed and first, as to what you have said (No. 31.) with regard to the transferring of guilt; I must freely own, that neither the laying hands on the head ' of the sacrifice, nor the uncleanness con'tracted by burning the sin-offerings, cer

tainly proves, that sin was put upon such offerings: because, as you observe, 'hands were laid upon all sorts of sacrifices, as well as sin-offerings; and un'cleanness-was contracted by touching things, where certainly no guilt was transferred, as creeping things, &c. Lev. xi.