“For he testifieth, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec,” Hebrews 7:17For he testifieth, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.
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“For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens,” Hebrews 7:26For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens;
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COROLLARIES

• From hence we may learn, that without the blood of Christ offered up as a propitiatory sacrifice to God, there is no remission of sin, nor eternal life. God’s wrath is only appeased by a sacrifice; and this clearly hinted from the beginning.
• From hence we may learn how far the Priesthood of Christ, and the Gospel covenant doth excel that of the law; moreover, the end and design of God in the one, and in the other. Many things have been briefly touched, wherein the great differences do consist; some of which, for the sake of the weak, I shall reiterate in this place. The Priest under the law was a mortal man; Christ God-man. Those Priests were sinners themselves, and needed a sacrifice for their own sins; Christ was without sin, and needed no offering for himself, Christ offered up his own body on the tree. Those sacrifices were the shadow; the sacrifice of Christ is the substance of them. The Priest and sacrifice is the type, Christ the Anti-type. Those sacrifices could not take away sin, nor purge the conscience; Christ’s sacrifice doth both.
• Moreover, this reprehends such as slight and invalidate the meritorious sacrifice of Christ, and accounts his blood to have no more virtue nor efficacy in it to justification, than the blood of any godly man.
• It also calls upon all faithful Christians, to study the nature of Christ’s Priesthood more and more; much of the mystery of the two covenants consisteth in Priesthood, and sacrifice, there is something in it hard to be understood.
• This greatly detects the ignorance and abominable error of the Romish church, that continues to offer up fresh sacrifices for sin; as if Christ had not offered up a sufficient sacrifice once for all, or that he needeth competitors, and help, to atone and make peace between God and sinners.
• It may also confute their blasphemous notion concerning Christ’s Priesthood as if it passed from him unto them; whereas nothing can be more plainly asserted than his continuing a Priest forever. His Priesthood is unchangeable, exercised in his own Person, as a principal part of the glory of his office; and on the discharge of it, depends the Church’s preservation and stability: “seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them,” Hebrews 7:25Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.
  See All.... And every believer may from hence go with confidence unto him in all their concerns, for relief and succour.

But this of Christ’s offering once for all, and continuing a Priest forever, the annotators are greatly at a loss about, concluding, that it makes against the Jews and Aaron’s Priesthood. For clear it is, that what the papists affirm concerning their Priest and mass to be a propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead, is detected from hence to be a blasphemous, execrable, and pestilent error; and by no means are they able to make the offerings and sacrifices made by their Priests as Christ’s successors, to hold good in any case, or consonant to God’s word. Which further to evince, we shall here cite a page of Dr. Owen’s, on Hebrews 7:24But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood.
See All...; and so conclude this of Christ’s Priesthood.

“The expositors of the Roman church are greatly perplexed in the reconciling of “this passage of the apostle unto the present Priesthood of their Church; and they may well be so, seeing undoubtedly they are irreconcilable. Some of them say, that Peter succeeded unto Christ in his Priesthood, as Eleazar did unto Aaron. Some of them deny that he hath any successor. But it is openly evident, that some of them are not so circumspect but do plainly affirm, that Peter was Christ’s successor. A Lapide indeed affirms, that Peter did not succeed unto Christ, as Eleazar did unto Aaron, because Eleazar had the Priesthood in the same degree and dignity with Aaron, and so had not Peter with Christ; but yet that he had the same Priesthood with him, a Priesthood of the same kind, he doth not deny.

“That which they generally fix upon is, that their Priests have not another Priesthood, or offer another sacrifice, but are partakers of his Priesthood, and minister under him, and so are not his successors, but his vicars; which I think is the worst composure of this difficulty they could have thought upon: for,

1. “This is contrary unto the words and design of the apostle; for the reason he assigns, why the Priesthood of Christ doth not pass from him to any other, is, because he abides himself forever to discharge the office of it. Now this excludes all subordination and conjunction, all vicars, as well as successors; unless we shall suppose, that although he doth thus abide, yet he is one way or other disabled to discharge his office.
2. “The successors of Aaron had no more another Priesthood, but what he had, nor did they offer any other sacrifice than what he offered, as these Priests pretend to offer the same sacrifice that Christ did; so that still the case is the same between Aaron and his successors, and Christ and his substitutes.
3. "They say, that Christ may have substitutes in his office, though he abide a Priest still, and although the office still continue the same unchangeable: so God, in the government of he world, makes use of judges and magistrates, yet is himself the supreme Rector of all. But this pretence is vain also: for they do not substitutes their Priests unto him, in that which he continueth to do himself, but in that which he doth not, which he did indeed, as a Priest ought to do, but now ceaseth to do for ever in his own Person; for the principal act of the sacerdotal office of Christ consisted in his obligation, or his offering himself a sacrifice of a sweet-smelling savour unto God. This he did once, and ceaseth for ever from doing so any more; but these Priests are assigned to offer him in sacrifice every day, as partakers of the same Priesthood with him, which is indeed not to be his substitutes, but his successors, an to take his office out of his hand, as if he were dead, and could henceforth discharge it no more; for they do not appoint Priests to intercede in his room, because they grant he continueth himself so to do, but to offer sacrifice in his stead, because he doth so no more. Wherefore if that be an act of Priesthood, and of their Priesthood, as is pretended, it is unavoidable that his Priesthood is passed from him unto them. Now this is a blasphemous imagination, and directly contrary both unto the words of the apostle, and the whole design of his argument; nay, it would lay the advantage on the other side; for the Priests of the order of Aaron had that privilege, that none could take their office upon them, nor officiate in it, whilst they were alive; but although Christ abideth for ever, yet according to the sense of these men, and their practice thereon, he stands in need of others to officiate for him, and that in the principal part of his duty and office. For to offer himself in sacrifice unto God, he neither now doth, nor can, seeing henceforth he dieth no more. This is the work of the mass-Priests alone, who must therefore be honoured as the successors of Christ, or else be abhorred as his murderers; for the sacrifice of him by blood and death.

“The argument of the apostle, as it is exclusive of this imagination, so it is cogent unto this purpose; for so he proceedeth: that Priesthood which changeth not, but is always vested in the same person, and in him alone, is more excellent than that which was subject to change continually from one hand to another; for that transmission of it from one unto another, was an effect of weakness and imperfection. And the Jews grant, that the frequency of their change under the second temple was a token of God’s displeasure. But thus it was not with the Priesthood of Christ, which never changeth, and that of Aaron, which was always in a transient succession. And he reasons he gives of this contrary state of these two Priesthoods, do greatly enforce the argument: for the first Priesthood was so successive, because the Priests themselves were obnoxious unto death, the sum and issue of all weaknesses and infirmities. But as to the Lord Jesus Christ, his Priesthood is prepetual and unchangeable, because he abideth personally for ever: “Being made a Priest according to the power of an endless life,’ which is the sum of all perfection that our nature is capable of.”