We see, Secondly, The infinite love of the adorable Trinity—the amazing wisdom, and the astonishing pity and compassion of the covenant Three, in providing for our miseries, in a way surpassing all human thought, even by the Assumption of our Nature, appearing in flesh, as a sinner, and putting away sin by the sacrifice of himself—and it is the work of precious faith, upon every discovery of our vileness, misery, and guilt, to eye the adorable Mediator, as the gift of the Father’s love, to heal our every woe. And was the ransom paid?—it was, and paid for you! _This_, only _this_, subdues the fear of death, and takes away Her sting.—This is the grand Sacrifice. “Sacrificing is a religious action, in which a creature devoted to God was in a solemn manner destroyed in his presence, for sacred ends; and it was a mode of worship that obtained in the most early ages of the world. It may not only be traced up to the famous æra of giving the law from Mount Sinai; for the ancient patriarchs did commonly practise it. How many altars were built by Abraham and his grandchild Jacob? Job offered sacrifices both for his children and for his friends; and God smelled a savour of rest, when Noah sacrificed clean beasts and birds on the altar which he built unto the Lord. But why mention these personages as the most ancient practisers of sacrificial worship, when it may be more than conjectured, that Adam himself did practise it? Can we think when Abel offered, up to the Lord the firstlings of his flock, that his father did not instruct him to testify in this manner his fear of the Lord? And what shall we say of the coats of skins which the Lord made for them, or directed them to make? The beasts to whom they belonged, cannot, so soon after the creation, be supposed to have died of age; they behoved therefore to be slain. How natural to suppose that they were slain in sacrifice, rather than for any other use? Perhaps it was not without a meaning, that the skins of these beasts should clothe their bodies, whose blood made atonement for their souls. To be short then, though we can by no means assent, that in the state of innocence, there would have been the least occasion for them, they seem, however, to be as ancient as the promise about the seed of the woman, who was to have his heel bruised, while he braised the serpent’s bead.” “Let us here glance at some of the most glaring parallels only, betwixt the sacrifices of Moses and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.”