Q. Why is this such a great sin?

A. Because it is contrary to the greatest of all virtues, which is charity: also, it is unnatural that any body should be at enmity with itself: and it is destructive, because such a body, either in whole or in part, must perish. No limb can live, when it is severed from the life of the body.

Q. What is the true meaning of that virtue which the Apostle calls charity?

A. It is the friendship of Christians: the love and unity of the body of Christ, under him, who is the head of it: which shall endure in heaven, when all other things shall. fail and vanish away.

THE TEXTS.

Isa. i. 5, &c. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of our foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it; but wounds and bruises, and putrifying

sores.

Col. i. 18. He is the head of the body, the Church.

Rom. xii. 4. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office;

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office; so we being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

Eph. iv. 15. Speaking the truth in love (we) may grow up unto him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.

From whom the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. V. 4. There is one body, and one spirit. Read also 1 Cor. chap. 12 and 13.

XII. THE CHAPTER OF THE PRIEST AND THE SACRIFICE.

A PRIEST is a person chosen of God to intercede for the people; that is, to stand against heaven and earth, to act for both. He presents offerings and prayers on the part of the people; and pronounces pardons and blessings on the part of God. All ages and all nations (except some wild and fanciful people of these latter days) Patriarchs, Jews, Christians, and the very Heathens, have admitted the authority, and observed the ordi

nances

1

nances of priesthood; all of them declaring with one voice, that without intercession, and the shedding of innocent blood, there can be no remission to sinful man.

Being born a child of wrath, under sentence for sin, and subject to death, I am but dust and ashes: dust by death, and ashes by condemnation. My body must return to the dust from which it was taken; and if God were to visit my sin, as he might in justice do, with the fire of his wrath, nothing would remain of me but an heap of ashes, a sad monument of unexpiated sin. In this state, I can do nothing to save myself: I can only suffer what God pronounced on Adam, "In the day thou eatest, thou shalt dic."

To shew how I am saved from this death, an innocent creature, a lamb, an ox, or a sheep, was brought to the altar to be consumed instead of the offerer. Sin in me should suffer what the burning bleeding vic tim suffered, unless God had appointed a priest to intercede for me, and a sacrifice to die for me.

1 But then, I am to understand, that the blood of bulls and of goats, or of the passover itself, cannot take away sin. These were only the prophetical signs of the law, to teach men

that Jesus Christ should act once for all as

priest and sacrifice, to take away the sin of the world. Unless his death had been foreordained of God for the salvation of man, there never would have been any such thing as a priest or a sacrifice heard of in the world; they would have had no meaning, and could have been of no effect.

As the death of Christ was foreshewn to the faithful by bloody sacrifices before he came; so now, after he is come, his death is commemorated, and its benefits communicated, by the signs of bread and wine, the new Passover of the Gospel, in which we are said to eat his flesh and drink his blood: and except we partake of this sacrifice, we have no more life in our souls, than our bodies would have without meat and drink. So long as there are offerings, there must be priests to offer. Jesus Christ does not act in person under the Gospel, any more than under the law; he is present with us only by those persons who are ordained to act for him; and every true priest must be of his making; for no man taketh this honour to himself, but he that is called of God. No man can act for a

king, but he who hath the king's authority;

so can no man act for God but he whom God

hath

hath appointed. Who are they that make light of priests, and neglect the Christian sacrifice? None but they who have no priests, or who think they want none, or that they can make priests of themselves. Jesus Christ is indeed the only true priest: and every Christian praying to God through his merits, is in private a priest to himself: but priests must be appointed of God, to commemorate the sacrifice of Christ, and communicate the benefits of it from the altar to the congregation, and to pronounce pardon and absolution (that is, forgiveness of sin) from him to the penitent sinner.

This is God's way of forgiving sin; for the teaching of our minds, and the trial of our faith and obedience. Proud people, who understand not the ways of God, think no man great enough to rule them, no man good enough to pray for them: not considering, that no man is any thing of himself; the sufficiency of the ministry being only from God, Therefore God is not jealous of the authority of his ministers, but of his own authority in them. He that despiseth you, says our Lord to his ministers, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me so said Moses and Aaron against Corah, Dathan,