Religion from the beginning was invested by a special Revelation, most reasonable is it to think, that some notice of such an authoritative Institution of it would have been preserved, and transmitted to memory, for the instruction of after-times. And although in the great conciseness and simplicity of the first Annals of Religion, as delivered in the Book of Genesis, it will not be right to take this negative argument from the absence of all such notice, as conclusive in the case, yet it plainly has a great presumption on its side; and to this original presumption, presented by the historical evidence, there is nothing, as I think will be seen in the sequel, of greater force to be opposed. For if the earlier record of things in Scripture is concise, yet the paramount importance of that divine Institution, and of Sacrifice itself, when so instituted, will constrain us to think, that the memorial of it could scarcely have been altogether withholden. For that institution would make the Worship by Sacrifice, in every view, a different object. In its difference, it would affect the Primitive Worshipper, by its authority; by its History, and its systematic relation to the principles of their Religion, it would affect the Israelite and the Christian.

Moreover, in this Scriptural narrative, brief and contracted as it is, we perceive a place is given to things which cannot be said to be of a nature more likely to have been selected for a specific mention. Witness what is said of the divine sanctification of the Sabbath; that second branch of the Primitive

Religion; with some other particulars introduced (as the clothing of the Human Kind, under a divine direction,) which do not seem to rise to an equal magnitude and moment.

This express mention of the Sabbath, joined with the omission respecting Sacrifice, has been urged by Bishop Warburton with great force. He holds it as almost decisive in itself, against the divine appointment of Sacrifice. In some of the most important views of the principal question, I shall have to express my dissent from that distinguished writer. But in this one article, his reasoning is most just. The direct, the obvious impression, from the dissimilar state of the Scripture Evidence reflected upon the two institutions, is to create a belief in their different origin. God's own blessing and sanctification, from the beginning, adhere to the first, that of the Sabbath. His blessing indeed, but not His precedent sanctification, to the other, that of Sacrifice. This argument, however, has lately been discussed again, and rejected, in a work of our own times; a work which has acquired a just celebrity by the merits of its various erudition, and by its tone of acute and forcible discussion: "The Discourses and Dissertations on the Scriptural Doctrines of Atonement and Sacrifice," by a Prelate of the Irish Church, Archbishop Magee. This very able writer, of whom I can speak only with a great respect, and with the deference due to his learning and his high station, maintains the Divine Origin of Sacrifice, which he

b Gen. ii. 3.

makes it a leading object of his work to establish, and treats any deviation from that opinion with a very frank severity. He has suggested some solutions intended to account for the omission, which is now in question, and deny the adverse inference from it. In all which solutions, I cannot but think that the denial is ineffectually made; and, in one instance, I could almost say that I desiderate something in the candour and perfect fairness of the learned author towards his subject. For he would diminish and depress the comparative evidence for the first divine institution of the Sabbath, by urging the incidental and indirect mode in which it is referred to, without a positive command for its observance expressed. To which plea I think the reply must be, that if the indirect reference to the Sabbatical Institution does not sufficiently prove, or imply, a command for its observance, the no-reference to the Institution of Sacrifice, will render a command for its observance far from credible.

But reliance is placed also by the same Author, and by others, on the confessed omission of important matter in the narrative of Genesis, and in other historical parts of Scripture. Instances of such

omission are taken in the observance of the Sabbath itself, and of Circumcision; the actual observance of the former Rite in the Primitive Age, and of the other Rite in the long period of a later Age, being passed over without any mention in the series of the d Ibid. p. 81, 82.

c Vol. ii. p. 79, 80.

e As Witsius, Kennicott, &c.

History. It is thought that the primary command for Sacrifice might fall under a similar suppression. But the cases are most dissimilar. For what is the fact? We have the observance of Sacrifice, both in the Antediluvian and the Patriarchal Ages, distinctly recorded; but this mention of the actual observance of Sacrifice, giving the apt opportunity to the sacred Historian, and even inviting from him the information of its Divine appointment, is yet unaccompanied by any such information or allusion. Whereas, in

the instances of the Sabbath and of Circumcision, the inspired Writer has thought the Divine Separation of the one, and the commanded Institution of the other, the memorials the fittest to be given; memorials more important than the simple observance of the Rites themselves. And so they were. For, from the Divine Institution declared, the observance might be inferred-not so the Divine Institution from the observance. In Sacrifice, as we see, it is the observance, and that alone, which is specified. The entire comparison, therefore, of these several branches of the Scripture narrative, can lead to no other issue, than to infer, on this head of the proof, a different origin of the respective institutions.

Upon the whole, there remains a great and substantial force in the disparate evidence relative to these kindred subjects: a force which we shall not be able to evade, without resorting to suppositions too doubtful, and too gratuitous, to be indulged, nor to resist, without disturbing, and throwing into vio

lent disproportion, the great outlines of the Scripture History.

On these grounds, therefore, which have now been canvassed, I conclude that the historical evidence of Scripture, the first element in our Inquiry, is certainly not favourable, but adverse, to the belief, that Primitive Sacrifice was consecrated by a Divine Institution.

But its Human Origin is objected to. And the Objections on that head come next to be considered.

The first of these objections is, what is described to be the natural incongruity of Sacrificial worship; its unsuitableness to the dictates of reason. Gifts, it has been said, cannot conciliate the Divine Being, or purchase His favour; and the Blood of a Victim seems to possess no remedial expiatory virtue, no power to obliterate sin, which should recommend the effusion of it to Man, or promise the acceptance of it with God. How, then, could Man, of his own accord, devise such a mode of worship? if devised, how could he put any confidence in it? above all, what rational sense could he ascribe to the immolation of his Victim?

This exception, taken to the Natural Reasonableness of Sacrifice, must be reduced within limits. The stress of it, in fact, bears only upon the Sacrifice strictly so called, that of a living creature, slain, or offered as an holocaust upon the altar, and pre