This is the law of the burnt offering, of the meat offering, and of the sin offering, and of the trespass offering, and of the consecrations, and of the sacrifice of the peace offerings;
This is the law of the burnt offering. Here follows an enumeration of the various Levitical sacrifices. They have been arranged in the following classification-namely, impetratoria (supplicatory), eucharistica (thanksgiving), and piacularia (expiatory). The burnt offering, which is the most ancient of them, had in patriarchal times a very general significance, which probably comprehended all the three orders now mentioned. Its import was of course modified by the introduction of these numerous varieties; and in comparing the elaborate system of sacrifices prescribed by the Mosaic law with the simpler observances of the patriarchs, an intelligent reader can have no difficulty in perceiving an adaptation of sacrifices to the state of the Church incorporated in a chosen nation, for serving at once to expiate offences committed under a special economy, and at the same time to prefigure the great sacrifice to which all the typical ones pointed.