An answer to the discourse of Mr. William Sherlock, touching the knowledge of Christ,…

And surely he was no stranger to Christ in his Faith: Job saith, I know that my Redeemer liveth, Job 19.25. And O how piercing and appropriative of Christ was his Faith! The Fathers in Moses's time did all eat the same spiritual meat, and all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ, 1 Cor. 10.3, 4. And how this feeding on Christ should be without Faith, I know not: Unto us was the Gospel preached as well as unto them, saith the Apostle, Heb. 4.2. They were [Greek or Hebrew], Evangelized; they had Christ set before them: And we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved even as they, saith St. Peter, Act. 16.11. We shall be saved, [Greek or Hebrew], according to the very same manner as they were saved; that is, we and they are both saved by Faith in Jesus Christ and his Grace. Again, it is to be considered, that the Sacrifices under the Law were ⟨p. 349⟩ordained to be as Types, and shadows of Christ, to make an Atonement for sin (as appears in Leviticus) not that the Sacrifices themselves were an absolute real Atonement in themselves; but a typical one, pointing out the only true atoning expiatory Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Now either God did reveal to the Jews, at least wise to the Believers among them; the typicalness, the true use and end of those Sacrifices, or not: if he did reveal it to them, then all true Believers among them did not hang upon the Shadow, and outward Sacrifice only; but by their Faith did fix upon Christ and his precious Blood: but if he did not reveal it to them, the Sacrifices, even of those Believers, must be all miscarriages, nothing but mere blots and Errata's; they must be offered up not in Faith, but in mistake, in the belief of an utter falsity; that is, in the belief of that impossible thing, That the blood of bulls and of goats could take away sin: There must be such a gross error in modo, a misprision so horrible; that it is not imaginable, that any one among all the millions of Sacrifices under the Law, could be rightly offered up, or accepted by God: Such hard intolerable ⟨p. 350⟩