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| Of the Sacrifices Which God Does Not Require, But Wished to Be Observed for the Exhibition of Those Things Which He Does Require.
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Chapter 5.—Of the Sacrifices
Which God Does Not Require, But Wished to 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.”382
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 read 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 neighbor 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.”383
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 fullness thereof.
Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?”384
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 shall glorify
me.”385
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?”386
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.”387
And so,
when it is written, “I desire mercy rather than sacrifice,”388
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 neighbor. For “on these two commandments,” as it is
written, “hang all the law and the prophets.”389
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