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words: Let us draw near with a true heart, in full affurance of faith, having our hearts Sprinkled from an evil confcience, and our bodies washed with pure water.

The qualification is a true heart.

Truth is directly oppofed to diffimulation or falfehood. A true heart, then, in drawing near to God by the blood of Jefus, must be a heart that corresponds to the profeffion we make: and what that profeffion is, in the cafe before us, may, with ease and certainty, be collected from what was delivered under the former head.

When we profefs to enter into the holieft by the blood of Jefus, we explicitly renounce all pretenfions or hopes of obtaining admittance by any other means. We acknowledge the forfeiture we have incurred by our guilt, and fubfcribe to the juf tice of the fentence that condemns us: we confess, that we have done, and can do, nothing to recommend us to the favour of God, or that may found the remotest claim to pardon and acceptance. All our own righteousnefs we throw afide as filthy rags. In fhort, we plead guilty at a triVOL. II.

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bunal of justice, and adopt the language of the publican, as expreffing our true character, and the only form of address that befits our state,—God be merciful to me a fin

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When the Jew brought the sacrifice which the law had appointed for his offence, to the door of the tabernacle; when he laid his hand upon the head of the victim, confeffing his fin over it, and then delivered it to the high-priest, that its blood' might be fhed for the expiation of his guilt; what was the true meaning and intent of that fervice? Did not the of fender prefent the victim that it might be fubftituted in his place? Did he not thereby acknowledge that he had incurred the penalty of death; and that the dying agonies of the devoted animal were only a faint reprefentation of what was ftrictly due to himfelf? Was not this a virtual renunciation of any right to the continuance of life, but what arofe from the acceptance of the facrifice in his room, and the gratuitous promife of remiffion annexed to that acceptance And can

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any thing less than this be meant by drawing near to God by the blood of Jefus ? -Was there more virtue in the typical. than in the real atonement ? Or is lefs to be expected from the fubftance than from the fhadow? Did the offending Jew, when he made his confeffion over the head of the victim, look back to any instances of paft obedience, or even forward to any purposes of future amendment, and conjoin these with the blood of the facrifice, for rendering it more effectual to obtain pardon and acceptance? Surely none who attended to the nature and form of the institution, could be led by it to dream of any mixture of this kind. And can we fuppofe, that the blood of Jefus, by which we have boldness to enter into the bolieft, is only a joint cause with our own imperfect obedience, of our obtaining admiffion into the heavenly fanctuary? Is no more meant by his confecrating for us a new and living way, than that he hath repaired the old way which fin had broken; and by removing some obstructions, rendered it more fmooth and acceffible than originally it was? Hath

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he, instead of paying to the last mite what justice demanded, done no more by his facrifice, than purchased an eafy composition of the debt, that an hundred pence might be accepted for the ten thousand talents?-Is it poffible that human pride and vanity can give fuch a colouring to this motley scheme, as to make it pafs with any reasonable creature, for that marvellous doing of the Lord, that highest exertion of wisdom and grace, which angels themselves defire to look into?-To account for this, we must have recourfe to what the Apostle Paul writes, I Cor. ii. 14. "The natural man receiveth

not the things of the Spirit of God; for "they are foolishness unto him: neither

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can he know them, because they are fpiritually discerned." He is become vain in his imaginations, and his foolish heart is darkened. But they whofe eyes are opened by the Spirit of truth, will cordially join with the fame Apostle, and fay as he did, Philip. iii. 7, 8, 9. "What things 66 were gain, to me, thofe I counted lofs "for Chrift. Yea, doubtlefs, and I count

all things but lofs, for the excellency of

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the knowledge of Chrift Jefus my Lord:

and do count them but dung that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteoufnefs, which is of the law, but that which is through "the faith of Chrift, the righteousness "which is of God by faith." This is the language of a true heart, in drawing near to God by the blood of Jefus; which may fuffice to explain the first qualification here mentioned. I do not fay that no more is included in it; but this I affirm, that fuch an abfolute renunciation of every other ground of hope, is one principal thing implied in the true heart, as it ftands connected with the Apostle's reafoning, if not the very thing he had most directly in his eye.

2dly, To a true heart, the Apostle adds the full affurance of faith.

This leads us back to the great objects of faith that have already been presented to our view, viz. the high-prieft over the boufe of God; the vail of his human nature, which is the paffage into the fanctuary ;— and the blood of his facrice, that emboldens ns to enter in : And it is required, that

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