[ 66 ]
perfectly answers all these four ends, and both priests and people as often as it is celebrated, ought to join in offering up our petition to the Almighty God for the conviction and convertion of the souls of the people and ourselves, that it may go well with us here and hereafter. Amen. "For ye shall burn no leaven nor any honey in any offering of the Lord made by fire." No leaven nor honey was to be used in the sacrifice offered to God, to signify that we are to exclude from the pure worship of the Gospel, all double dealing and affection to carnal pleasure. In every sacrifice salt was to be used, which is an emblem of wisdom and discretion, without which none of our performances arc agreeable to God. Peace, in scripture language, signifies happiness, welfare or prosperity: in a word, all kinds of blessings. Such sacrifices, therefore, as were offered either on an occasion of blessings received, or to obtain new favors, were called peace offerings. In these some part of the victim was consumed with fire on the altar of God, other parts were eaten by the Priest and by the persons for whom the sacrifice was offered. The perpetual fire. This fire come from heaven and was always kept burning on the altar, as a figure of the heavenly fire of divine love, which ought always to be burning in the heart of a christian. Lev. 9: 24. "And there came a fire out from before the Lord and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat, which, when all the people saw, they shouted and fell on their faces." This will show that all the people of God are to shout, not that I mean they should jump up off the ground, but I mean to shout when a men feds his heart to burn, with sacred love as the disciples of our Lord did when they said, "did not our hearts burn within us; while he conversed with us and opened unto us the scriptures." This is the kind of shouting; I mean, for God is a Spirit and seek such to worship him in the spirit and in truth; this may be done in standing or sitting, running or walking or lying down, so that it is done with sincerity, this is all that God requires. "Speak unto the children of Israel saying, These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on the earth." Lev. 11: 2. The prohibition of so many kinds of beasts, birds and fishes in the law was ordered 1st. To exercise the people in obedience
