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An Essay on the Nature and Design of Scripture Sacrifices
An Essay on the Nature and Design of Scripture Sacrifices Author:James Nicol Subtitle: In Which the Theory of Archbishop Magee [in Discourses on the Scriptural Doctrines of Atonement and Sacrifice] Is Controverted General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1823 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you bu... more »y the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: SECTION II. Of the State and Circumstances of the Ancient World. Having in the former Section made a few general remarks upon the institution and intention of sacrifice, I am now to prove that the intellectual and moral condition of the ancient world imperiously demanded that institution. Were we to form our opinions of the ancient world, from what we see at the present day, our opinions would be far from being just. The amusements and employments of infancy do not differ more from the amusements and employments of manhood, than the knowledge and reasonings of the infancy of the world difler from the knowledge and reasonings of its maturity. We can scarcely conceive it possible, that men could now act as they then acted: and from their actions only, when every other mode of information is denied us, can we form any estimate of their intellectual and moral acquirements. But in forming this estimate, we ought never to forget, that for many ages, the persons whose histories are recorded in Scripture, were under the guidance, not merely of a particular, but of a miraculous providence. I have already mentioned, that then the Almighty daily appeared to them by some visible symbol; directed them in every difficulty; defended them in every danger; and comforted them in every distress. This is now denied us: but will not the difference of our circumstances, from those of the world at first, fully account for the difference of the Divine conduct? In the infancy of the worl...« less