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who were employed, for reasons already assigned, to slay the lambs on these two occasions, instead of the heads of families, on whom that office properly devolved. The altar is not named: but as the blood must be disposed of somewhere, and as there was a drain for that purpose at the foot of the altar, no doubt it was there that the priests sprinkled or poured it away. The act was simply an act of cleanliness,-in plain speech, a resort to the sink,-from which theology can extract nothing profitable. The priests were the parties to perform the office because no other persons could approach the altar under penalty of death. In later times, when the sacerdotal influence had made the temple the scene of the paschal slaughter, each head of a family killed his own lamb in the court: the blood, received in a basin, was handed to the first of a row of priests reaching to the foot of the altar, where it was poured away at the usual place.* In this there is nothing of the nature of an offering or proper sacrifice.

(5.) But it is said that the fat and entrails were placed on the altar fire and burned.

Archbishop Magee says, that this "may be collected from the accounts given of the ceremony of the passover in the passages already referred to." It requires perhaps that able controversialist's peculiar mode of "managing passages" (to use a favourite phrase of his own) to elicit this from the authorities named; at least, I am unable, after careful examination of them, to conjecture what he means. The passages however are before my readers, and I must leave the assertion to their judgment. Meanwhile, I must conclude, that there is absolutely no trace in Scripture of such a practice as is here pronounced to be one of the essentials of the passover.

I am aware that there is Talmudical authority for considering this “burning” as a part of the process connected, in later times, with the killing of the paschal lamb." It was probably one of the modifications of the rite, introduced by the priests on its transference from the private homes of the people to the temple. The original law required, that the lamb should be roasted whole, not even the entrails

See Lightfoot's Temple Service, ch. xii. sec. 5. "The Mishna says: Mactat Israelita, excipit sanguinem sacerdos."-The Treatise Pesachim, in Surenhus. ii. 153.

† P. 294.

See Lightfoot's Temple Service, xii. 5, and the Treatise Pesachim, Surenh.

ii. 135.

being removed; it also enjoined, that whatever was left should be immediately burned with fire, and every trace of it destroyed before morning.* This private burning was clearly no religious and sacrificial act, though, perhaps, a provision against any superstitious use of the remnants: and it is easy to perceive, that the parts thus destroyed would be the same, which subsequently it was the custom of the priests to consume on the altar fire. When the killing became a collective act, and the temple the scene of it, doubtless both people and priests thought it more cleanly and agreeable to burn the parts which were sure to be left, before hand on the public fire, than afterwards on the hearths of their private dwellings: and it would require a very illiberal interpreter to pronounce this a violation of the original law, the spirit of which it certainly observed. This view, which treats the burning on the altar as simply a mode of consumption, substituted for the destruction of the same worthless parts at home, is less insulting to the Jewish religion than the opinion which discerns here an act of worship. The Jews were certainly a very coarse people, and offered many disagreeable things to God: but really, such a gift as this is without any parallel. They always,-in obedience to their law,-presented something valuable (sometimes the whole animal, sometimes the breast and right shoulder), either to Jehovah on the altar, or to his ministers the priests :† and the pious Jew would have indignantly resented the idea of quitting the temple courts with the whole value of his sacrifice on his shoulder, and only the refuse remaining in the sanctuary.

By law, then, there was nothing of the paschal lamb burned on the altar and by custom there was no part offered to Jehovah or given to the priests and without these characteristics, there is no proper sacrifice.

Archbishop Magee admīts, that the ceremony of laying the hand on the head of the victim, which was observed in the undoubted sacrifices, did not take place in the rite under consideration: and he notices the statement of Philo, that the animal was slain, not by the priest, but by the individual presenting it. He considers Philo to have been mistaken, however, in his assertion that this immolation by private hand was peculiar to the passover; and cites the language of

* Exod. xii. 9, 10. The phrase "the purtenance thereof," in the common version, means "the entrails thereof," p.

† See Lev. i. 9, 13, 17; vi. 15-18, 26, 29; vii. 3, 6-10, 14, 15, 30-36. * Pp. 295, 296.

Lev. i. 4, 5; iii. 2; iv. 24, to show that the burnt offering, the
peace-offering, the sin-offering, might all be slain by the offerer. Cer-
tainly these passages appear to leave such permission open to the
Israelitish worshipper: but it seems more likely that the sacrifices
here enumerated were intended to be made by the hands of the priest :
nor would it be easy to reconcile the liberty of private sacrifice with
the sacerdotal duties and privileges defined in Num. xviii. 1-7. As
to the actual practice, it cannot be reasonably doubted that Philo
was correct and his expressions seem to imply that, in the paschal
rite, the priest might be altogether dispensed with, and his interven-
tion required for no religious act.
He says:
"On the fourteenth
day of this month, at the coming of the full moon, is celebrated the
public festival of the passover, called in the Chaldee language the
Pascha when, instead of the private citizen presenting his victim at
the altar to be slain by the priest, the whole nation officiates in sacred
things, every one in turn bringing and immolating his own victim
with his own hands. The whole people is festive and joyous, every
one being entitled to the dignity of priesthood."* He uses similar
expressions in his treatise on the decalogue: The festival, “which
the Hebrews in their language call the Pascha," is a time" when each
and all of them slay their victim, without waiting for the services of
their priests: the law, on an appointed day of every year, conceding
to the whole people the sacerdotal functions, to the extent of per-
mitting them to officiate for themselves at a sacrifice."† This language
evidently implies, that every essential part of the passover rites, every
act necessary to constitute and complete its character as a religious
celebration, was performed by private hand: so that the auxiliary
operations of the priests, the pouring out of the blood and burning
the inwards,―must be regarded as non-essentials and accessaries;
menial contributions to the main act; and in the performance of
which, therefore, the usual law, forbidding to the non-official Jew
all approach to the altar, came into effect again. Had the paschal
celebration required, as an indispensable ingredient in it, any trans-
actions at the altar, the private Israelite, being temporarily invested
with whatever sacerdotal privileges were needful for the rite, would
have gone himself to make his offering. Philo indeed obviously con-
ceived of the subsequent part of the ceremony, in which the temple
and the priest had no share,—the domestic meal which took place in
† De decalogo, p. 766. D.

De vitâ Mosis, p. 686. E.

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the several homes of the Each house," he says,

people, as its peculiarly sacred element: "at that time put on the form and sanctity of a temple, the victim that has been slain being made ready for a suitable meal." "'* Fond as this writer is of types, it is impossible to express the retrospective and commemorative character of the passover more emphatically than in his words: ἀποικίας ἐστὶν ἡ ἑορτὴ, καὶ χαριστήριος. Η

ὑπομνητικὴ τῆς μεγίστης

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In one passage of his note on the Passover, Archbishop Magee appears to admit that the paschal lamb was not a "sacrifice for sin,' and affirms that he "would not dispute with Dr. Priestley any conclusion he might draw from so productive a premiss." Yet, a few pages further on, he quotes with apparent approbation the arguments by which Cudworth sought to prove the rite to be an expiatory sacrifice.§ I cannot pretend to reconcile these two portions of his Essay. But if the passover cannot be shown to be an expiatory sacrifice, I do not see what the advocates of the doctrine of atonement gain by proving it a sacrifice at all. If the paschal lamb was not a sinoffering, to what class did it belong? It must have been either of the eucharistic kind, or else unique and simply commemorative; and so far as the death of Christ was analogous to any such offering, it was destitute of expiatory efficacy: and either was an expression of thanksgiving, (which seems absurd) or, like the blood of the lamb sprinkled on the lintel, a mere sign of some deliverance which it was not instrumental in effecting, but which, simultaneously perhaps, yet independently occurred. Those, therefore, who are disposed to strain the resemblance between the passover and the cross, must either maintain the expiatory nature of the Jewish right, or admit the Lord's Supper to be, not even the celebration of a real deliverance, but the mere commemoration of a sign.

*De sept. et fest. p. 1190. B.

as an

† loc. cit. After the remarks which have been made on the word epithet of the passover, it is hardly necessary to notice the application to the same rite of the word Ovola by Philo and Josephus. It must be clear to any one who will open Trommius or Biel at the word, that it will not bear the stress laid upon it by Archbishop Magee. No one denies that the paschal lamb was slain and eaten, in observance of a religious celebration, in obedience to a religious law, and in expression of religious feeling; and this surely is enough to attract to it the word Ovoía. In itself, however, the term, according to Biel, does not necessarily denote even so much as this. He defines it hostia, sacrificium, etiam epulum ac profana manducatio: and he exemplifies this latter meaning by reference to Judg. vi. 18. Biel's Thesaurus, Ed, Schleusner in v.

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In the notes to the Sixth Lecture of this series (p. 89-92,) I have adduced an example of Archbishop Magee's misrepresentation of Mr. Belsham, and stated that the Prelate had quoted his opponent falsely. In comparing the two authors, I employed the latest editions of both their works; not being able to procure a copy of the first edition of the Calm Enquiry, which has been out of print for twenty-two years. At the same time, I thought it only just to insert the following note: "There is a possibility, which I think it right to suggest, of a difference between the two editions of Mr. B.'s work; as, however, the accusation is still found in the newest edition of the Archbishop's book, I conclude that this is not the case. Indeed, even if the Prelate's quotation had been verbally true, it would in spirit have been no less false; for, at all events, Mr. B. cites the Vulgate, to give evidence as to the text, not the translation; and had he used the word renders, it would only have been because the term naturally occurs when a VERSION is adduced to determine a READING."

I have since obtained a copy of the first edition of the Calm Enquiry; and I hasten to acknowledge that the Archbishop's quotation is "verbally true," as far as it goes. But I regret to say that this makes only a formal difference in his favour; for by stopping short in his citation, he accomplished the very same object, of leaving an absolutely false impression, which I had supposed him to have effected, in this as in other instances, by direct falsification of his author. He wishes to make it appear, that Mr. Belsham (purposely mistranslating for the occasion,) appeals to a certain verse in the Vulgate in evidence, not of a READING, but of a RENDEring; and so he cites these words from the Calm Enquiry: "The Vulgate renders the text, the first man was of the earth, earthy; the second man was from heaven, heavenly;" but he leaves out the very next words, in which the point intended to be proved by this testimony of the Vulgate is cited, “This is not improbably the TRUE READING." Doubtless it was one of Mr. Belsham's incuria that he did not attend to his italics in his first edition: but the charge of intentional mistranslation is simply injurious; except indeed, that it is also absurd, seeing that Mr. Belsham has put the Latin of his mistranslated passage at the bottom of the page ;—a policy which this heresiarch could scarcely have thought safe, unless he had taken his Unitarian readers to be either more dishonest critics," or more defective scholars," than even our learned opponents are prepared to think them.

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