The harmony of the divine attributes in the contrivance and accomplishment of man's redemption…

2. A real Guilt which respects the Conscience, and was contracted from the breach of the Moral Law, and subjected the Offender to Death temporal and eternal. This could not be purged away by those Sacrifices. For how is it possible the Blood of a Beast should cleanse the Soul of a Man, or content the Justice of an offended God? Nay on the contrary they revived the guilt of Sin, and reinforced the rigour of the Law, and were a public profession of the Misery of Men: For this reason the Law is called the Ministry of Death. As the Moral contained a declaration of our guilt, and Gods right to punish, so all the parts of the Ceremonial were either arguments and convictions of Sin, or images of the punishment due for them. But as they had a relation to Christ who was their Complement, so they signified the expiation of moral guilt by his Sacrifice,¹ and freed the Sinner from that temporal Death to which he was liable; as a Representative of our freedom from Eternal Death by the Blood of the Cross. This will appear more clearly by considering, 1. That all kinds of placatory Sacrifices are referred to Christ in the New Testament. 2. That all their Effects are attributed to him in a sublimer and most perfect manner. He is called a Lamb in the notion of a Sacrifice, The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. ²A Lamb was used in the Expiation of moral and legal Impurities. He is called our Passover that was sacrificed for us. The Paschal Lamb in its first Institution had an expiatory efficacy, for God by looking on that Blood, averted the destruction from the Israelites, which seized on ⟨p. 255⟩the Egyptians. This was the reason of the Prohibition, that none should go out of the house till the Morning, lest they should be struck by the destroying Angel: Not but that the Angel could distinguish the Israelites from the Egyptians abroad, but 'twas typical, to show their security was in being under the guard of the Lambs Blood, which was shed to spare theirs. Thus the Apostle Peter tells us, We are redeemed by the Blood of the pure and perfect Lamb. And he was represented by the red Heifer,³ whose ashes were the chief ingredient in the water of Purification. For if the Blood of Bulls and Goats,