ance of what nothing but AN ANTECEDENT COMMAND could have constituted A BINDING DUTY.

So, likewise, the very acceptance of the one sacrifice, and the very rejection of the other sacrifice, clearly import A PREVIOUS REVELATION: for, unless Cain had already KNOWN that God had instituted the rite of piacular sacrifice for the express purpose of making an atonement, he could not have sinned in bringing an eucharistic vegetable oblation rather than an expiatory animal sin-offering.

Hence the rite must have been divinely appointed, not merely when the sacrifices of Cain and Abel took place, but at some time or other PREVIOUS to their occurrence.

Now the very rite of an offering FOR sin, by the plain necessity of language, undeniably supposes the existence or sin. The rite could not have been appointed anterior to its cause: the first sin-offering could not have been devoted by man in a state of innocence.

Hence, if the rite were not FIRST ordained when Cain and Abel sacrificed, and if it could not have been ordained PREVIOUS to the introduction of sin into the world by the fall of man; it must have been ordained at some period between the fall of man and the sacrifices of the two brothers.

But the special character of the rite, a character impressed upon its very name, is that of AN

OFFERING FOR SIN.

Therefore the natural and reasonable presumption is, that God first ORDAINED it, when through sin it first became NECESSARY.

This last particular, I freely allow, is a matter only of rational presumption, not of strict demonstration: but enough has already been established for our present purpose. It is denied by Mr. Davison, that God ordained the rite of piacular sacrifice under the Patriarchal Dispensation. My answer is, that God COMMANDED Cain to devote A SIN-OFFERING.

IX. It may be useful, at the close of the present discussion, to exhibit the whole of God's expostulation with Cain, both according to what I deem its most just translation, and according to the metrical form in which this very ancient specimen of antithetic or responsive poetry ought to be arranged.

Why is there hot anger unto thee:

And why hath fallen thy countenance?

If thou doest well; shall there not be exaltion?

And if thou doest not well; at the door a sin-offering is couching.

And unto thee is its desire:

And thou shalt rule over it*.

The perfect harmony of the whole expostulation, when thus exhibited, must, I think, strike even the most careless observer: and this perfect harmony does itself tend to establish the propriety of the interpretation which I have been led to adopt.

CHAPTER II.

Evidence of the Primeval Divine Institution of Expiatory Sacrifice, from the Attestation of the Inspired Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

WITH the necessary tenor of the history of the first-recorded sacrifice, agrees the remarkable attestation of the inspired author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

* I have already observed, that the very genius of antithetic poetry demonstrates the Greek translation of the middle distich of this short ode to be erroneous, even if no other objection could be made to it. In that version, the necessary, and therefore expected, response of the middle distich is entirely destroyed: and, instead of regularly arranged metrical poetry, the distich itself becomes a sentence of mere bald prose. If thou hast rightly brought, but if thou hast not rightly divided, hast thou not sinned? Be still.

I. This writer takes occasion largely to celebrate the power of Faith: and, in furtherance of his purpose, he adduces a great variety of instances or examples, wherein certain enumerated persons acted under the influence of this principle.

Now the very necessity of his illustration requires, that the faith of all these several persons should be identical: or, in other words, the very necessity of his illustration requires, that the faith of each individual should be capable of a common definition.

The faith of the several persons, when in operation, might act indeed upon different objects : but still, in some harmonising principle, the faith of them all must have been fundamentally the

same.

.

Hence, if we require an accurate definition of their faith, we must seek it, not in the objects upon which it respectively operated, but in the common principle which constituted its essence or vitality.

This is prose, not antithetic poetry. Mark how different the just version, according to the Masoretic punctuation: If thou doest well; shall there not be exaltation?

And if thou doest not well; at the door a sin-offering is couching.

Here we have, no prose, but a perfect distich of regular antithetic poetry.

Thus, if, on the ground that Moses is said, through faith, to have esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, we define the word Faith, as here employed by the Apostle, to be a faith in Christ; we shall err: because it was clearly through no special faith in Christ, that Noah prepared an ark to the saving of his house*. And thus, if we define the same word Faith to be a firm belief that the children of Israel would at length depart out of Egypt, on the ground that such indisputably was the faith of Joseph, which led him to give commandment concerning his bones; we shall again err: because it is through the working of no such specific faith in the promised exodus, that we believe the worlds to have been framed by the word of God.

In each of these supposed cases, the error would plainly consist in defining the word Faith, from some one of the several objects upon which the Faith in question variously operated, rather than

* I am far from meaning to deny, that a prospective faith in Christ was the faith of the Patriarchs in general, and of Abel in particular: I mean simply to say, that, as a strict definition, we cannot assert, that this prospective faith in Christ is the Faith celebrated by the Apostle through the entire chapter. The reason is simply this: such a definition is too narrow and exclusive. To many of the enumerated cases it may apply to all it certainly does not apply.