Leviticus 16

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XVI.—In these ceremonial observances I am still directed to Jesus as appointed by God, and fully qualified to make atonement for all the sins of an elect world. I behold, in his debasement, stript of his glorious robes of light and majesty, clothed with a mean but a pure manhood; and at once standing as the laborious High Priest, and as the God-honouring and sin-explating sacrifice. He needed not to offer for himself; but the Lord lays upon him the iniquities of us all. As our slain goat he atones for them, and as our scape goat he carries them all into the land of forgetfulness; dying for our offences, but raised again, and ascending to glory, for our justification. Behold him entering into the celestial oracle in the virtue of his own blood! There he appears in the presence of God for us, pleading his own merits, and offering up the incense of continual intercession for us; putting off his robes of debasement, laying aside every vestige of the likeness of sinful flesh, and clothed and crowned with glory and honour. The spiritling of his blood smectifies the church, and all the ordinances of it and readers our sacrifices and incense of grateful obedience, of fervent prayer and praise, acceptable to his Father. He returns also in the Spirit from within the vain to bless all nations in the gospel: and at last will return personally in the clouds, without sin, unto our eternal salvation. But while, in the purification of these agents after their sacred work, I perceive the imperfections of the most noted ceremonies for purging the conscience, let me diligently observe what politics I contract in my most religious, my most solemn, services and let me live by each, looking to Jesus whom I have pierced, and mourning bitterly over my true sight, was as the cause of his sufferings! Nor let me ever forget what infinite glories of Stowell in Christ, who answers, nay, infinitely more than answers, to all these sacrifices, these oblations, these priests, these means of purification, of which I have hitherto read!