the matter did not come under his cognizance because the offender had eluded detection. There

fore, as far as the civil magistrate was concerned, there was no exception in favour of these specified cases of transgression. And the punishment which might be apprehended from the Divine wrath, must surely be far from mitigated in favour of these specified offences. Surely in His eyes theft and perjury* cannot be held in a more favourable light than theft alone, but rather to be regarded with greater abhorrence, and visited with heavier punishment.

The severity of the law was not mitigated in favour of any particular offence. For, if these cases of moral transgression were detected, they were liable to all the punishment due by the Law to the double offence. If they were not detected, and were persisted in, then the offender virtually defied God, and finally involved himself in all the guilt, and incurred all the punishment denounced by God against presumptuous sin.

Therefore the penalty, whether to be exacted by the magistrate, or inflicted by God, was not mitigated in favour of these specified offences, but a repentant sinner was entirely forgiven; and the token of his repentance, an earnest endeavour to make reparation for the evil he had committed, was required as a previous condition to the acceptance of his atonement. But it was the atonement, not the restitution, which was the ostensibly meritorious cause of forgiveness.

Punishment was inflicted for example, and against the will of the offender. It had no reference to Divine forgiveness. But restitution, previous to offering an atonement, did in no wise partake of the nature of punishment. It was a voluntary act of repentance and amendment, performed when none was privy to the guilt of the offerer, but God, and his own soul. This was the condition of acceptance. It is a misnomer to call it a mitigated penalty. It was the scale of restitution, wherewith the penitent was assured he might bring his offering to God.

Compare Lev. vi. 5. with Exod. xxii. 2.

The sacrificial atonement of the law being, as we have observed, the means of averting the effects of God's displeasure, and of restoring the offender to that favour which he had forfeited; to suppose: that, upon repentance, the offender, who suffered the heavier penalty for the smaller crime, was not with respect to the means of atonement, at least, upon an equal footing with him, who had been guilty of these specified cases of moral offence, in favour of which Mr. D. has fancied there was a mitigation of the general severity of the law;-involves the glaring absurdity, which I have already mentioned; it exhibits the Almighty as making this exception in favour of perjury and theft, and accepting an atonement, when he would admit of none for theft alone*.

So far from its being, as Mr. D. affirms," most obvious, that there was some special design of civil

* Exodus xxii. 24. Lev. vi. 5. Here are two cases of moral offence, the one of detected theft; the other in which detection had been avoided by perjury. The former offender is compelled to make double restitution; the latter is allowed to pay one-fifth. But, according to Mr. Davison, an exception is made in favour of the latter offence, and an atonement is permitted, which is denied to the former. Hence it follows, that he who has been guilty of the lesser crime, not only pays the heavier penalty, but also is excluded from the appointed means of forgiveness; while the favoured crime, of theft and perjury, both pays a mitigated penalty, and its author is admitted, by atonement, to God's favour. I deny this preposterous doctrine. I contend, that atonement is open to the former, as well as to the latter, moral transgression. Is it asked, where it is appointed; I answer, "If any one of the common people sin through ignorance while he doeth somewhat against any of the commandments of the Lord, concerning things which ought not to be done, and be guilty, then he shall bring," &c. &c. Lev. iv. 27. If no atonement were provided for the man, who had been detected and paid the penalty, one of these two conclusions must follow. Either the penalty per se was accepted, and thus procured forgiveness; in which case the moral guilt was pardoned by God without reference either to the penitence of the offender, or to any expiation. Or the penalty was not accepted, and no means of reconciliation were offered to him; in which case the INEXPIABLE guilt of moral offence would consist, not in the nature of the crime, but solely in DETECTION. In the former case, that a penalty exacted should have any efficacy in

policy in relation to public society regulating the exceptions made;" the fact is, that they had no reference at all, when connected with atonement, to civil policy; they referred to God's acceptance of atonement; and the restitution, they enjoin, has little more concern with the regulations of public society, than the similar condition enjoined by our Saviour; "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught. against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother and then come and offer thy gift." (Matt. v. 23, 24.)

CHAPTER XI.

The special case of Levit. xix. 20. compared with Deut. xxii. 25, 29.

"One single "there is, for

IV. WE come next to his special case. offence more," says Mr. Davison, which an atonement was allowed, viz. the sin of unchastity, when one of the offending parties was a. bondmaid and betrothed*. But then we observe that the like offence, if in the person of a free womant, was not susceptible of a sacrificial expiation.":

taking away guilt is incredible. And in the latter, that guilt should consist in detection, is a creed which, since the days of Sparta, has been peculiar to men, to whose notions of morality Mr. D. would be sorry to lend the slightest countenance.

* Levit. xix. 20. "They shall not be put to death because she was not free."

+ Deut. xxii. 25, 27.

I have copied his typography, and it is evident, that the inference, which he thinks, ought to be drawn from these cases, is, that the reason of an atonement being admitted in one case was, because the woman was a bondwoman; and of its being refused in the other, because the woman was free. A less acute and discriminating mind than that of Mr. Davison, might, I should have imagined, have been awakened to a suspicion of some fallacy, by the very consequence of his interpretation, namely, that, as atonement was the means of restoration to God's service and favour, his interpretation caused God's abhorrence of a great moral crime, to be measured by the mere external circumstance of the freedom or bondage of the woman. But he has misinterpreted the very letter of these cases. The bondage or freedom of the woman was the criterion, by which the civil punishment * was apportioned, and not the possibility of God being reconciled to the offender estimated. 66 They shall not be put to death, because she was not free." The woman was scourged. the man, if penitent, might bring his offering, and could not be re-admitted, to partake of the public worship till he had done so. The reason, for which there was no atonement appointed in the other case was, because, by the social sentence of the law, the parties were put to death, and consequently could not be readmitted to the public rites of religion; the external, and visible † tokens of their sharing the temporal·

*

And

Any person who has considered with attention the practice of both the Patriarchal and Mosaic polity, must perceive at a glance, that this distinction in the civil punishment was founded upon the polygamic licence of these times respecting a man's taking to his bed a bondmaid. It is no part of my present enquiry to investigate the extent, or the reasons of this licence. Its existence is notorious. The bondwoman did not come under the provisions of the sacrificial law.

†This was one peculiarity of the law adapted to the grossness and perverseness of the Jews, that it acted upon their outward sense, and present fears by a multiplicity of external and visible tokens of God's favour or displeasure. When an offence was committed, the

privileges, and the type of their sharing the spiritual and eternal privileges of God's favour, if they continued in it. But this is the very reverse of Mr. D.'s inference. The proposition is not convertible. That there could be no appointed private atonement because a man was condemned to death; is by no means the same proposition as, that a man was con demned to death, because there was no appointed atonement. I believe that, in respect to the ultimate and typified object of atonement, restoration to God's favour, both these offenders stood upon an equal footing; that if they were penitent, both shared in the benefit of that great atonement, which was made for the sins of the whole world; which was prefigured by the daily, weekly, and especially by the great annual expiation, made for ALL the sins of the people. The parallel with this, drawn by St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, at least forbids us to limit the mercy of God; if it does not warrant us in presuming, that this embraced all cases which, from their nature, would not admit of the offering of a private atonement, and that none was excluded from its range but the faithless, the impenitent, the PRESUMPTUOUS sinner, who died in his iniquity, defying his God *.

Jew became forthwith unfit for the tabernacle service, and thus excluded from the special protection of God. An atonement must be offered; for he knew that, if he dared to approach without it, he was under a special Providence, and would be visited according to his presumption. Present forgiveness, and admission to the external service of God, was the immediately covenanted promise of the law. The appointed atonement being accepted signified, not only to the individual, but also to the congregation, that he was restored to God's favour, and was not to be considered as an excommunicated, or an unclean person. But in the case of a person's being put to death there was no opportunity, or occasion to give a visible token, either to the individual, or to the congregation, that he was re-admitted to the service, or to the favour of God.

* If it were held that no atonement was to be accepted because death was inflicted by the civil magistrate for the punishment of an offence, it might be held, a fortiori, that there was no atonement