Christ, as the far greater number of expositors, for very strong reasons, maintain? Are they the words of David, who, considering the many reasons, which persuade us to believe, that the dedications of our persons to the service of God are the most acceptable of all sacrifices to him, vows to devote himself to his service? We answer they are the words of Jesus Christ; they are the words of David; and they express the sentiments of all true be-lievers after him. We are going to prove these assertions.

First, We will consider the text, as proceeding from the mouth of Jesus Christ. We will shew you Jesus substituting the sacrifice of his body instead of those of the Jewish economy.

Secondly, We will put the words of the text into your mouths, and we will endeavor to convince you, that this second sense of the text is clearly deducible from the first, and necessarily connected with it. Having excited your admiration, in the first part of this discourse, at that inestimable gift of God, his beloved Son, we will endeavor, in the second, to excite suitable sentiments of gratitude in each of your hearts.

Great God! What bounds can I henceforth set to my gratitude? Can I be so stupid as to imagine, that I express a sufficient sense of thy beneficence by singing a psalm, and by performing a lifeless ceremony? I feel irregular propensities. Great God! to thee I sacrifice them all. My body rebels against thy laws. To thee I offer it in sacrifice. My heart is susceptible of fervor and flame. For thee, my God! may it forever burn! Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not: but a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt-offerings, In burnt-offerings, and sacrifices

for sin thou hast had no pleasure: then said 1, Lo! I come, (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God! Accept this dedication of ourselves to thee, O God! Amen.

İ. Let us consider our text in relation to Jesus Christ, the Messiah, Three things are necessary. 1. Our text is a quotation; it must be verified. 2. It is a difficult passage; it must be explained. 3. It is one of the most essential truths of religion; it must be supported by solid proofs.

1. Our text is a quotation, and it must be verified. It is taken from the fortieth psalm. St. Paul makes a little alteration in it, for which we will assign a reason in a following article. In this, our business is to prove, that the psalm is prophetical, and that the prophet had the Messiah in view. In confirmation of this notion, we adduce the evidence, that arises from the object, and the evidence that arises from testimony.

In regard to the objection we reason thus. All the fortieth psalm except one word, exactly applies to the Messiah. This inapplicable word, as it seems at first, is in the twelfth verse, mine iniquities have taken hold upon me. This expression does not seem proper in the mouth of Jesus Christ, who, the prophets foretold, should have no deceit in his mouth, Isa. liii. 9. and who, when he came, defied his enemies to convince him of a single sin, John viii. 46. There is the same difficulty in a parellel psalm, I mean the sixty-ninth, O God! thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee. ver. 50. The same solution serves for both places. Some have accounted for this difficulty by the genius of the Hebrew language, and have understood by the terms, sins and iniquities, not any crimes, which the speaker means to attri

bute to himself: but those, which his persecutors committed against him. In the style of the Jews, my rebellion sometimes signifies the rebellion, that is excited against me. In this manner we account for an expression in Jeremiah, My people are attached to my rebellion, that is to say, My people perish in rebelling against me. So, again, we account for an expression in the third of Lamentations, O Lord, thou hast seen my wrong. That is, the wrong done to me. In like manner are those words to be explained, my foolishness, my sins, my iniquities, ver. 59.

But, if the idiom of the Hebrew language could not furnish us with this solution, we should not think the difficulty sufficient to engage us to erase the fortieth psalm from the list of prophecies, if other solid reasons induced us to insert it there. Jesus Christ on the cross was the substitute of sinners, like the scape-goat, that was accursed under the old dispensation, and, as he stood charged with the iniquities of his people, he was considered as the perpetrator of all the crimes of men. The scripture says in so many words, he bare our sins. What a burden! What an inconceivable burden! Is the bearer of such a burden chargeable with any exaggeration, when he cries, My iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head? 1 Pet. ii. 25. This passage being thus explained, we affirm, there is nothing in this psalm, which doth not exactly agree to the Messiah; and if we do not attempt now to prove what we have affirmed on this article, it is partly because such a discussion would divert us too far from our subject, and partly because there seems to be very little difficulty in the application of each part of the psalm of Jesus Christ.

Moreover, the fortieth psalm is parallel to other prophecies, which indisputably belong to the Messiah. I mean particularly the sixty-ninth psalm, and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. Were not the expositions of fallible men grounded on the testimonies of infallible writers, the nature of the thing would oblige us to admit the application. In whose mouth, except in that of the Messiah, could David with so much reason have put these words? For thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hatk covered my face, Psal. Ixix. 7. Of whom could Isaiah so justly say as of the Messiah, He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all, chap. liii. 5, 6. Now if you put the chapter and the psalm, which we have quoted, among prophecies of the Messiah, you will find no difficulty in adding the psalm, from which our text is taken, because they need only to be compared to prove that they speak of the same subject.

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Over and above the evidence, that arises from the object, we have the evidence of testimony. St. Paul declares, that the words of the Psalmist are a prophecy, and that the mystery of the incarnation was the accomplishment of it. After a decision so respectable, it ill becomes us to reply.

I very well know what the enemies of our mysteries say against this reasoning, and against all our arguments of this kind, by which we have usually derived the mysteries of the gospel from the writings of the prophets. Jesus Christ, say they, and his apostles; reasoned from the prophecies only for the sake of a accommodating themselves to the

genius of the Jews, who where always fond of finding mysteries in the writings of their sacred authors, even in the most simple parts of them. What you take, continue they, for explications of prophecies in the writers of the New Testament, are only ingenious applications, or more properly, say they, accommodations. But what! when Philip joined himself to the Ethiopian treasurer, who was reading the fifty-third of Isaiah, and who puts this question to him, I pray thee of whom speakest the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man? When he began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus, Acts viii. 34, 35. did he mean only to accommodate himself to the genius of the Jewish nation? What! when St. Matthew, speaking of John the Baptist, said, This is he, that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, chap iii. 3. and when John the Baptist, in answer to those questions, which the Jews, whom the priests sent, put to him, Who art thou? Art thou Elias? Art thou that prophet? When he replied, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, John i. 19, 21, 23. did he mean only to accommodate himself to the prejudices of the Jews? What! when Jesus Christ after his resurrection taxed his disciples with folly, because they had not discovered his resurrection in the ancient prophecies; and when, beginning at Moses, and all the prophets, he derived from thence arguments to prove that Christ ought to have suffered, and to enter into his glory, Luke xxiv. 25, 26, 27. had he no other design than that of making ingenious applications, and of accommodating himself to the prejudices of the Jewish nation? And is this the design of St. Paul in my text? Hear how he speaks, how he reasons, how he concludes. It is not possible, says he, that the blood of bulls and of goats