Note 157 — LETTER VI.

Heb. vii. 27.—It is astonishing to see an acute mind like that of Pascal so warped by superstition as not to perceive that in this, and other allusions to the Levitical priesthood, the object of the apostle was avowedly to prove that the great sacrifice for sin, of which the ancient sacrifices were the types, had been “once offered in the end of the world,” and that “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins;” and that the very text to which he refers, teaches that, in the person of Jesus Christ, our high priest, all the functions of the sacrificing priesthood were fulfilled and terminated: “Who needeth not daily as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.” The ministers of the New Testament are never in Scripture called priests, though this name has been applied to the Christian people who offer up the “spiritual sacrifices” of praise and good works. (Heb. xiii. 15, 16; 1 Pet. ii. 5.)