a religious act, by which satisfaction or atonement is made for the commission of some crime, the guilt done away, and the obligation to punishment cancelled.

Expiations among the Heathens, were of several kinds; as sacrifices and religious washings. They were used for effacing a crime, averting any calamity, and on numberless other occasions, as purifying towns, temples, and sacred places, and armies before and after battle. And they were performed for whole cities as well as particular persons.

The method of expiation among the Jews was chiefly by sacrifice, whether for sins of ignorance, or to purify themselves from certain pollutions.

Feast of Expiation among the Jews, called by our translators the day of atonement, was held on the tenth day of Tisri, or the seventh month of the Jewish year, answering to part of our September and October. It was instituted by God himself, Levit. xxiii. 27, &c. On that day the high-priest, the figure or type of Jesus Christ, entered into the most holy place, and confessed his sins; and, after several ceremonies, made an atonement for all the people to wash them from their sins. Lev. chap. xvi. See Scape-Goat.

a figurative sense, is applied by divines to the pardon procured to the sins of the penitent by the merit of Christ's death. See the article CHRISTIANITY.