Of the Office of Our Blessed Saviour
We find in Holy Scripture three parts of the office of the Messiah: the first of a “Redeemer” or “Saviour”; the second of a “pastor,” “counsellor,” or “teacher,” that is, of a prophet sent from God to convert such as God hath elected to salvation: the third of a “king,” an “eternal king,” but under His Father, as Moses and the high priests were in their several times. And to these three parts are correspondent three times. For our redemption He wrought at His first coming, by the sacrifice wherein He offered up himself for our sins upon the cross: our conversion He wrought partly then in His own person, and partly worketh now by His ministers, and will continue to work till His coming again. And after His coming again, shall begin that His glorious reign over His elect, which is to last eternally.
To the office of a Redeemer, that is, of one that payeth the ransom of sin, which ransom is death, it appertaineth, that He was sacrificed, and thereby bare upon His own head and carried away from us our iniquities, in such sort as God had required. Not that the death of one man, though without sin, can satisfy for the offences of all men, in the rigour of justice, but in the mercy of God, that ordained such sacrifices for sin, as He was pleased in His mercy to accept. In the old law (as we may read, Levit. 16) the Lord required that there should, every year once, be made an atonement for the sins of all Israel, both priests and others; for the doing whereof, Aaron alone was to sacrifice for himself and the priests a young bullock; and for the rest of the people he was to receive from them two young goats, of which he was to “sacrifice” one; but as for the other, which was the “scapegoat,” he was to lay his hands on the head thereof, and by a confession of the iniquities of the people, to lay them all on that head, and then by some opportune man, to cause the