NEW TESTAMENT

Hebrews 8:3

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3

For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer.

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EXPLANATION

Verse 3. For every high priest, and so forth That is, as all priests are ordained to offer up to God some gifts and sacrifices; so Christ, a priest for ever, has now in heaven something to offer to his eternal Father; to wit, the infinite merits and satisfactions of his death and passion. This he doth in heaven, and also by the ministry of his priests on earth, who offer the same in his name.10 of this epistle. The apostate Courayer, who pretending to remain a Catholic, ended by becoming a Socinian or Unitarian, taught that persons were at liberty to deny the real presence, and admit with Catholics a commemorative or representative sacrifice, which applies to us the merits of Christ’s death. But this system was condemned by the Gallican church, as contrary to the doctrine of the Council of Trent, which has defined the mass to be not merely a commemorative and representative sacrifice, but a true and real offering of a victim, really present, and actually offered to God by the priest. “By his last sentiments, (published by Dr. Bell) it appears, says the New Gen. Biogr. Dict. edited by Chalmers, an. 1814, vol. lxxx. art. Courayer, that although he professed to die a member of the Roman Catholic Church, he could not well be accounted a member of that, or of any other established Church. In rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity, he became nearly, if not quite, a Socinian, or modern Unitarian; he denied also the inspiration of the holy Scriptures, as to matters of fact; and as to baptism, seems to wish to confine it to adults. In 1811 a more full exposure of his sentiments was published by Dr. Bell, in a posthumous work of Courayer, on the Divinity of Jesus Christ, 8vo. a publication we have little hesitation in saying ought never to have appeared. It could not be wanting to illustrate the wavering, unsettled character of the author. The creed of innovators is never fixed; and when once they cast off the authority of the Church, they are carried about, like children, with every wind of doctrine.”

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