be observed for the exhibition of those things which He does
require._
And who is so foolish as to suppose that the things offered to God
are needed by Him for some uses of His own? Divine Scripture in many
places explodes this idea. Not to be wearisome, suffice it to quote
this brief saying from a psalm: "I have said to the Lord, Thou art my
God: for Thou needest not my goodness."[377] We must believe, then,
that God has no need, not only of cattle, or any other earthly and
material thing, but even of man's righteousness, and that whatever
right worship is paid to God profits not Him, but man. For no man
would say he did a benefit to a fountain by drinking, or to the
light by seeing. And the fact that the ancient church offered animal
sacrifices, which the people of God now-a-days reads of without
imitating, proves nothing else than this, that those sacrifices
signified the things which we do for the purpose of drawing near
to God, and inducing our neighbour to do the same. A sacrifice,
therefore, is the visible sacrament or sacred sign of an invisible
sacrifice. Hence that penitent in the psalm, or it may be the
Psalmist himself, entreating God to be merciful to his sins, says,
"If Thou desiredst sacrifice, I would give it: Thou delightest not
in whole burnt-offerings. The sacrifice of God is a broken heart: a
heart contrite and humble God will not despise."[378] Observe how, in
the very words in which he is expressing God's refusal of sacrifice,
he shows that God requires sacrifice. He does not desire the
sacrifice of a slaughtered beast, but He desires the sacrifice of a
contrite heart. Thus, that sacrifice which he says God does not wish,
is the symbol of the sacrifice which God does wish. God does not wish
sacrifices in the sense in which foolish people think He wishes them,
viz. to gratify His own pleasure. For if He had not wished that the
sacrifices He requires, as, _e.g._, a heart contrite and humbled by
penitent sorrow, should be symbolized by those sacrifices which He
was thought to desire because pleasant to Himself, the old law would
never have enjoined their presentation; and they were destined to
be merged when the fit opportunity arrived, in order that men might
not suppose that the sacrifices themselves, rather than the things
symbolized by them, were pleasing to God or acceptable in us. Hence,
in another passage from another psalm, he says, "If I were hungry, I
would not tell thee; for the world is mine and the fulness thereof.
Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?"[379]
as if He should say, Supposing such things were necessary to me, I
would never ask thee for what I have in my own hand. Then he goes
on to mention what these signify: "Offer unto God the sacrifice of
praise, and pay thy vows unto the Most High. And call upon me in
the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify
me."[380] So in another prophet: "Wherewith shall I come before the
Lord, and bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him
with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be
pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of
oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of
my body for the sin of my soul? Hath He showed thee, O man, what is
good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"[381] In the words of
this prophet, these two things are distinguished and set forth with
sufficient explicitness, that God does not require these sacrifices
for their own sakes, and that He does require the sacrifices which
they symbolize. In the epistle entitled "To the Hebrews" it is said,
"To do good and to communicate, forget not: for with such sacrifices
God is well pleased."[382] And so, when it is written, "I desire
mercy rather than sacrifice,"[383] nothing else is meant than that
one sacrifice is preferred to another; for that which in common
speech is called sacrifice is only the symbol of the true sacrifice.
Now mercy is the true sacrifice, and therefore it is said, as I have
just quoted, "with such sacrifices God is well pleased." All the
divine ordinances, therefore, which we read concerning the sacrifices
in the service of the tabernacle or the temple, we are to refer to
the love of God and our neighbour. For "on these two commandments,"
as it is written, "hang all the law and the prophets."[384]