14. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Heb. X, 22. Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
Heb. XII, 24. And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
1 Peter I, 1. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,
2. Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.
CHAPTER IV.
THE LORD'S SUPPER.
An ordinance instituted by our Savior in the place of the Passover, and immediately after celebrating that rite with his disciples for the last time. The Passover was an eminent type of our Lord's sacrifice and of its benefits, and since he was about to fulfill that symbolical rite, which from age to age had continued to exhibit it to the faith and hope of ancient saints, it could have no place under the new dispensation. Christ, in person, became the true Passover, and a new rite was necessary to commemorate the spiritual deliverance of men, and to convey and confirm its benefits. The circumstances of its institution are explanatory of its nature and design.
On the night when the first-born of Egypt were slain the children of Israel were commanded to take a lamb for every house, to kill it, and to sprinkle the blood upon the posts of the doors, so that the destroying angel might pass over the houses of all who had attended to this injunction. Not only were the first-born children thus preserved alive, but the effect was the deliverance of the whole nation from bondage in Egypt, and their becoming the visible Church and people of God by virtue of a special covenant.
In commemoration of these events the feast of the Passover was made annual, and at that time all the males of Judea assembled before the Lord in Jerusalem; a lamb was provided for every house, the blood was poured under the altar by the priests, and the lamb was eaten by the people in their tents or houses. At this domestic and religious feast every master of a family took the cup of thanksgiving, and gave thanks with his family to the God of Israel.