And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.
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George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
St. Paul speaks here of legal purifications and remissions, which (ver. 10.) he calls carnal justices and ordinances, (ver. 13.) purifying the flesh. How then, it may be asked, were sins remitted under the law? I answer, by true repentance, joined with faith and hope in the promised Messias. As to the cleansings and expiations of the Mosaic law, they were generally effected by water and animal blood, and were typical of the real cleansing of the conscience by the water of baptism, and by the blood of Jesus Christ. The flowing, therefore, of the pure water and blood from the wound in Christ's side, denoted that the real expiation was now complete, and the cleansing font set open; and on this account, they are appealed to by St. John, as two of the three terrestrial witnesses, whose testimony is so efficacious for the confirmation of our faith, that the crucified Jesus was the Christ foretold by the prophets. And thus "the old law confirms the new, and the new fulfils the old. "(St. Paul...
447. – Having explained things done in the Old Testament and disclosed their mystical explanation, the Apostle now uses these facts to prove his thesis, namely that the New Testament is preferred to the Old, because it can do what the Old could not. In regard to this he does two things: first, he states the intended conclusion; secondly, he proves something he had presupposed. The first is divided into two parts: in the first he concludes from the foregoing that Christ is a mediator; secondly, that the Old Testament could not do this (v. 15b).
448. – He says: Therefore, i.e., because Christ entered into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption, i.e., leads us to eternal things, which the Old could not do; it was fitting that this testament be distinct from that, as the new from the old: ‘I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah’ (Jer. 31:31); ‘Behold, I make all things new’ (Rev. 21:5). Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant betw...
