The foundation of the Christian's hope consists in believing, that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, who offered up himself a ransom for us, whereby we have an unfailing assurance of the love of God. And truly believing this, our hearts, by the power of the Spirit, are melted with love to him, and in that love really desire to do his will. But this truth, that God so loved the world, is no where declared to us, but by the revelation of the Spirit in the Holy Scriptures. And so vast is the difference between Christianity, and any knowledge of God as possessed by the Heathen, that the attempt to prove the similarity ought to be accounted a delusion.
EXTRACT II.
Atonement and Reconciliation.
"Some will set up a particular system, and tell much about old things, the prophets under the law, and about Jesus Christ in that outward body, asserting that his death made atonement for our sins.—What astonishing ignorance it must be, to suppose that material blood, made of the dust of the earth, can be considered a satisfactory offering for a spiritual being, that is all spirit, and no flesh! I say what astonishing ignorance!" p. 15, 17.
Atonement for sin, and reconciliation to God, through the death of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ, is the cardinal doctrine of Christianity; it runs through the whole of the sacred volume. It was intimated immediately after the fall of our first parents: it was prefigured by types under the Patriarchial, and more
