sion was to preach and impart divine instructions." The Editor, I am sorry to say, following a frequent practice of his other orthodox brethren, omits the immediately following verses, which thoroughly explain whether "the will of God," mentioned in verse 8 of the Psalm quoted by the Editor, implies sacrifice or divine instructions: "I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart. I have preached righteousness in the great congregation: lo, I have not refrained my lips, O Lord, thou knowest. I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation: I have not concealed thy loving-kindness and thy truth from the great congregation." It is now left to the public to judge whether Psalm fortieth, quoted by the Editor, establishes that "the grand design of the Son in becoming man was that of being a sacrifice," or of preaching the righteousness of God to the world, and declaring his truth and salvation to them. The preparing of the body for the Son, as found in Heb. x. 5, implies, of course, the necessity of his being furnished with a body in preaching the will of God to mortal men ; a body which, in the fulfilment of his commission, Jesus never valued, but exposed to danger, and virtually offered as a sacrifice.

It is worth observing, that the Editor, though he affirms positively that the grand object of the Son's appearing in this world was to be a sacrifice, and not to inculcate divine instructions, and thinks it proper

to rest his position upon a comparison of the above Psalm with Hebrews, yet never attempts to reconcile to this notion the verses pointed out in page 202 of my Second Appeal, proving that the object of his mission was to preach and impart divine instructions. Are we to place greater reliance on his bare affirmation, or on the authority of Jesus himself, the Lord and King of Jews and Gentiles?

Not finding a single assertion in the Scriptures that can support his above notion, the Editor lays stress upon John x. 17, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again." Do these words imply any thing more than his attributing the love of the Father towards the Son to his implicit obedience, even to the loss of his own life, taken by the rebellious Jews? Should a general inform his fellow-soldiers, that his king is attached to him in consequence of his being ready to give up his life in the discharge of his duty, can we thence infer that the grand design of the king in appointing him general is his death, and not his reconciling rebels to their merciful king through friendly entreaty and offers of amnesty, which we know he has employed?

The second conclusion of the Editor from the above-quoted Psalms and Hebrews, is, that "they also demonstrate that the Son delighted in offering himself a sacrifice, which refutes that dreadful assertion, that Jesus declared great aversion to the death of the cross, and merely yielded to it as knowing

that the will of his Father rendered such death unavoidable." I find no mention made in Heb. x., much less in Psalm xl., of the Son's " delighting in offering himself as a sacrifice;" on the contrary, it is evidently found in Heb. x., that whatever the Son performed with the body prepared him, was entirely through his implicit obedience to the will of the Father.-Ver. 7: "Then said I," (the Son,) "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God."-" Then said he," (the Son,) "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God," ver. 9;—an assertion which is thoroughly confirmed by what I quoted in my Second Appeal, (pp. 206, 207,) part of which I am necessitated to repeat here, to shew that Jesus (whether as man or God let the Editor decide) declared great aversion to death, yet yielded to it in common with many other prophets, knowing that the will of his Father rendered such death unavoidable. Matt. xxvi. 37-39, 42: "And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.—And prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup" (meaning death) "pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done." Mark xiv. 36: "And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but

what thou wilt." Luke xxii. 42, 44: "Saying, from me:

Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup nevertheless not my will, but thine be done. And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood, falling down to the ground."

Now, let the Editor find out a set of verses, or even a single passage, which may evince that Jesus, so far from feeling aversion to death, delighted in it, as he has attempted to prove; and let him take upon himself to reconcile such gross contradictions between those two sets of passages, (if there are any such,) or reject one set of them.

The third conclusion of the Editor, from the above Psalm and the compared passage of Hebrews, is, that "they furnish a complete answer to the declaration, (page 206,) that it would be a piece of gross iniquity to afflict one innocent being, who had all the human feelings, and who had never transgressed the will of God, with the death of the cross for the crimes committed by others, and (page 207) that the iniquity of one's being sentenced to death as an atonement for the fault committed by another, is such, that every just man would shudder at the idea of one's being put to death for a crime committed by another, even if the innocent man should willingly offer his life in behalf of that other." The Editor, then, maintains, that the texts quoted (Psalms and Hebrews) refute the above positions, stating, that "this iniquity, if it be such, the Father willed, since he prepared the

Son a body, in which to suffer this palpable injustice." In this I perfectly coincide with the Editor, that the death of the innocent Jesus took place, like that of many preceding prophets, by the unsearchable will of God, who hath ordained that all the sons of men shall die, some by a violent and painful death, others by an easy and natural extinction; nor do I require the evidence of the text quoted, ("Thou hast prepared me a body,") to convince me of the fact, declared by Jesus in his agony in the garden, that his sufferings, in particular, were, like those of mankind in general, conformable to the will of God. But I cannot find any thing in these words that warrants an inference so contrary to our ideas of justice, as, that the pain thus suffered by Jesus was inflicted on him, though innocent, by God, as an atonement to himself for withholding merited punishment from the truly guilty. And this is the real point in discussion. The Editor will admit that the ways of God, in bestowing happiness on some and leaving others, in our eyes more worthy of divine favour, to wretchedness and misery, are inscrutable; yet, on the bare fact, that the innocent Jesus was ordained to die on the cross, he pretends to rest the conclusion, as the only possible one, that this death he suffered to satisfy the justice of his Maker. Was it for this that John the Baptist was beheaded? Was it for this that Zechariah was slain? Was it as an atonement for the sins of the rest of mankind, that Jerusalem was suffered to