ness exercised under the control of wisdom, prescribing what in the entire view of things is fittest and most conducive to the highest ends.

"Not unfrequently, justice is defined to be that attribute which awards to each precisely his due, whether considered in relation to debt or to the alternatives of moral character. Were this latter a correct representation of its requisition as a binding power, it seems impossible that mercy could be extended to any delinquent without at the same time committing a violation of justice; and the mode of reasoning not unfrequently adopted on this subject (though inconsistent with their subsequent admissions), would lead to the inference that such is the conception entertained by many minds.

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Having accepted the definition just stated as apparently very simple, they push their argument to shew that God cannot pardon sin, but speedily turn round and announce that he does pardon it. Retributive justice is in such reasonings represented as binding to the execution of penalties, as fully as to the granting of rewards, either explicitly promised or in some way the object of equitable expectation. It is obvious, however, that a rigorous adherence to this notion can never consist with the escape of a transgressor on any terms. Justice, to be consistent with the definition, would so have required the proportional suffering as to be really violated by its remission. There would have been no room either for atonement or mediation.

"The sufferings of Christ, however expiatory, can never be really the punishment of the offender who receives pardon through his name. If God, therefore, be essentially a Being of retributive justice, and if that justice binds him to inflict suffering on an offender, as it does to reward obedience, one inference only remains-that there can be no deliverance. For as an upright Being cannot be rewarded by proxy, so neither can an offender be so punished. ** It would seem to be correct, therefore, to regard justice, when considered as a binding power, as having reference to the faithfully granting what is due in the form of benefit, but not as absolutely obliging to inflict merited evil.

"A guardian of public rights, indeed, for the protection of which public law is instituted, may often be bound by justice to award suffering; but it is not by justice to the individual sufferer, who would willingly forego that claim, but by justice to the public, for whose security the law, and in particular this essential part of it, its penalties, were provided. Yet let it be clear that no interests can be impaired, and especially let it be proved that benefit instead would follow, by the remission of a sentence, however deserved, and it may well be assumed that no justice would be violated. *** Let the interest be exclusively confined between the two parties,-the powerful governor and the individual culprit, and let it be as clear that the criminal himself would derive no moral benefit from the discipline, and it will follow that justice will not insist upon the penalty. Without any violation of right, an unrestricted pardon may issue. Justice, in short, binds to beneficiary claims; but, except when other interests are involved, not to deserved loss or sufferings."-Congregational Lecture, pp. 184-187.

Mr. Gilbert's agreement with Socinus respecting the sphere of justice is very plain. So likewise the correspondence of his theory of atonement with that of Dr. Wardlaw; while, by reason of his agree

ment with Socinus, that theory acquires ability to cope with the objection by which it is so vigorously assailed. Retributive justice, Mr. Gilbert says, does not bind to the infliction of suffering, except when the interests of the community at large require it. It follows, therefore, that although the awards of retributive justice may not be duly executed, yet if no injury is done to public or private interests, no justice, not even retributive justice, is violated. This fairly repels the objection. But it does so, as I have intimated, at the cost of widening the breach between the two parties into which the Evangelical body is now divided, and evidently of placing one of them in still closer proximity to the Unitarians.

For it is with the adherents of the old theology a fundamental principle, that no threatening of God can be set aside. It must be executed either on the offender himself, or on some other standing in his place. This, they think, both truth and justice require; and it is on this requirement that they found the necessity of the atonement, reasonably alleging against their friends of the new school, that if there is no absolute necessity of putting in execution the threatenings of God's laws, the atonement may, for aught they can say, proceed on some other principle than that of vicarious punishment, or be dispensed with altogether. We have heard Mr. Gilbert saying, that "if the interest be confined between the powerful governor and the culprit, and no benefit would accrue to the culprit himself from the punishment, then no justice would be violated by its remission."

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But this, say the opponents of Dr. Wardlaw and his allies, is to surrender "the very fortress of the gospel into the hands of its enemies." "The sole ground," says one of them, "of the atonement was the justice of God, that justice which forbids him to clear the guilty,—that justice which demands the rigid satisfaction, death for death,"-distributive justice, as he again and again affirms. Set aside this justice," says he, "and where is the need of any satisfaction? I admit our brethren of the new school are not Unitarians. They enter the lists against Unitarians. Yet, alas! where is the value of all they contend for? Where is the material difference between their views and the views they oppose?"*

Such is the lament of Dr. Marshal; and Dr. Symington, like Dr. Marshal, a distinguished minister of the Scotch Secession Church, unites with him in his sorrow and alarm. Mr. Haldane also, another Scotchman, has lifted his voice in protestation; and were the Owens, Gills and Ridgleys, of former times, now amongst us, such a tocsin would be raised, as would sound from one end of the country to the other. My friends of the Evangelical persuasion, therefore, will, I trust, allow to me that I have not spoken rashly in saying there is war in your camp, though to a careless eye every thing seems so peaceful. There is war, and that not on points of minor importance. It is a repetition, in certain essential particulars, of the identical struggle which of old led to the separation of the Socinians from the main body of the Reformers, and in later times the separation of the Unitarians in this country from the English Church and the other bodies of Dissenters.

Catholic Doctrine of Redemption vindicated, by Andrew Marshal, D.D., LL.D., p. 65. See also pp. 24, 50, 51, 84, 186.

Do I give offence by these remarks? Let us consider the matter more closely, and divested as much as possible of every thing adventitious. What is the real tendency of the new views? They teach us that neither the justice nor the truth of God is bound to punish every infraction of his laws; and therefore that the atonement by Christ did not originate in any fancied necessity of this kind (which would have been inconsistent with all atonement), but in the wants of that great community, of whose interests God is the rightful, the all-wise and omnipotent Guardian.

But from this it follows inevitably, that if in the case of indulgence shewn to any criminal, those interests could be sufficiently protected in any other way than by proper vicarious punishment, divine justice could oppose no obstacle to its adoption. Should it, for instance, appear that no evils would result, were the offender received to mercy on his repentance, coupled with such an experience of the bitter fruits of sin as the present life affords, justice could make no further demand on his punishment. These pains and this repentance would be a proper atonement for the offences committed. For an atonement, according to Dr. Jenkyn (and Dr. Wardlaw quotes this very passage with approbation), “is any provision introduced into the administration of a government, instead of the infliction of punishment on an offender,—any expedient that will justify a government in suspending the literal execution of the penalty threatened,-any consideration that fills the place of punishment, and answers the purposes of government as effectually as the infliction of the penalty on the offender himself would."* On the supposition made, the repentance of the sinner would be in the place of his punishment, would answer the end of punishment, and therefore would be a true atonement for his offences.

Again: Should it have appeared to the eye of Infinite Wisdom that such a constitution as is delineated in the works of some of the old Arians, and which is called by Mr. Gilbert "atonement by merit" (the middle scheme, as it is called by others), could be introduced without damage to the general interest, justice could have made no demur against it; while the principal agent and sufferer in such a constitution might with perfect truth have been represented as atoning for our sins, dying for us, and even in our stead. Indeed, on the supposition that there is nothing in the nature of the case requiring the atonement to be made by punishment (which the theory I am considering plainly warrants), it must be allowed that a strong antecedent presumption lies against its employment, in the repugnance which is ordinarily felt to the principle of vicarious punishment, and its allowed inadmissibility in our own juridical transactions (points which, I trust, were sufficiently evinced in my former Lecture).

Accordingly, the adherents of the new theology are sometimes found condemning the application of the word punishment to the sufferings of Christ. Mr. Jenkyn prefers to say that these sufferings stand in the place of our punishment, rather than that they are strictly a punishment. I do not suppose, moreover, that all believe in those additional and special sufferings to which others attach so much importance.

Most of you, I dare say, are acquainted with the name of Neander,

* Extent of the Atonement, p. 2.

a man of large mind and large heart, Professor of Theology in the University of Berlin. He is of orthodox reputation, and is known to the English reader by translations of many of his works, chiefly carried on under Trinitarian auspices. In his work on the Planting of Christianity, wherein he unfolds his view of the doctrine of Paul respecting human redemption, he certainly makes no mention of these special sufferings. His view of the doctrine appears to be this,-that Jesus, by his unblemished perfection, has wiped out the disgrace which attached to human nature on account of sin, and so afforded reparation to the moral order of the universe, and honoured the Creator in that nature, wherein his

designs seemed to be in a measure frustrated. Without questioning for a moment the individual responsibility of the race, and God's care over us as individuals, he yet seems to suppose that the species is regarded by him as a unity, being adapted to one type, and constituting one step in the great scale of animated nature. Hence, as Neander thinks, we all fell in the first model pair, and are restored in the second Adam, whose virtue is the germinating principle from which the reformation of the race proceeds. It is his notion that Jesus suffered for us and bore our sins, inasmuch as, though himself sinless, he entered into the suffering condition of humanity, a condition developing with luxuriance the fruits of sin. Of these he partook to the full; and though they afforded a trial of virtue such as the first man could not have been subjected to in his bright and palmy state, he came off victorious. Death, the peculiar penalty of transgression,-death, though it approached him in one of its most appalling shapes, could not vanquish him. He met it; and while thus he suffered the penalty of our sins (he being sinless), carried his self-denying virtue, his unconquerable trust in God, his submission and piety, to such a height, that God himself was content with an exhibition of excellence which reached even his own idea of human perfection, and transcended all that had been or could have been elicited amid scenes of innocence and peace. This was the atonement; and now all who put themselves into communion with the Saviour, and strive after his excellences, in humility and penitence, may hope for pardon and life evermore.

I apprehend there is little in this to offend the straitest of Unitarians. Indeed, the difference between it and the Arian scheme, which has its advocates among Unitarians, is almost imperceptible. I know not where it lies, except it be in this, that Neander seems to look upon the sufferings of Christ as serving not only to illustrate the virtues of the sufferer, but also to express the divine abhorrence of sin. In this, too, I apprehend, nearly the whole who in this country claim to be distinguished as holding orthodox views, concur. But I cannot think that this alone furnishes any justification of that schism which now divides the Unitarian and Trinitarian churches. It is a point which must very much depend on another question, namely, whether the ills of life in general are to be looked upon as penal? Now, it is true, the Unitarian commonly looks upon these evils as disciplinary only. But he is not so wedded to this side of the question as to deny the rights of Christian fellowship to those who take the opposite, and contend that they are penal as well as disciplinary. Indeed, the question is one which is intimately bound up with the great controversy respecting the freedom

of the will, and at all events ought not to create any greater division than that which now exists between Calvinists and Arminians.

And now let me turn to those supernumerary sufferings on which so much stress is sometimes laid. They who give the greatest license to their imaginations in magnifying the sufferings of their Redeemer, and darkening the closing scenes of his earthly career, yet never imagine that they were any other than the sufferings of a human mind. They shrink as sensitively as the Unitarian from ascribing suffering to the divine nature. They allow also that neither remorse nor despair could have had any place among the sufferings of Jesus; and that when he seemed most deserted by his Heavenly Father, he was, and must have known that he was, the object of his unchangeable love,-nay, that he had within himself an infinite sufficiency. It is amazing to observe how these supererogatory sorrows dwindle, when they come to be closely inquired into. Jonathan Edwards, in describing them, lays principal stress on a certain acute apprehension of the evil of sin, and of the punishment it deserved, with which he supposes the mind of Jesus to have been filled in his last moments. "Such is human nature," says he, "that a great and clear and full idea of suffering, without some other pleasant and sweet idea to balance it, brings suffering, as appears from the nature of all spiritual ideas. They are repetitions (in a degree at least) of the things themselves of which they are ideas. Therefore, if Christ had a perfectly clear and full idea of what the lost suffer in hell, the suffering he would have had in the mere presence of that idea would have been perfectly equal to the thing itself, if there had been no idea in Christ in any way to balance it, such as some knowledge of the love of God, of a future reward, &c."

This is Jonathan Edwards. And surely such drivelling from such a man should convince every one how very little there is to be said on the subject. From an opponent, such an account of the sufferings of Jesus would have been taken as a burlesque of vicarious punishment. For it is very much as if a man sentenced to be flogged should offer to procure a substitute, not however to take the punishment on himself, but to think what the pain and disgrace of a public flogging would be. Or as if Zaleucus had proposed to atone for the offence of his son, not by actually losing an eye, but by vividly representing to himself the idea of it. And the question would then very naturally arise, whether a criminal might not perform this sort of expiation for himself, and so, in ordinary cases, save himself from actual punishment by devoting some hours or days, if you will, to the painful thinking of it. This would be a notable method of doing away with capital punishments, which I would take leave to recommend to the consideration of those who are interesting themselves in this matter, were it not that I too deeply sympathize with them in their object.

Beside this suggestion of Jonathan Edwards, I find nothing deserving of notice in the piece from which it is extracted, excepting that the sufferings which Jesus is allowed on all hands to have endured, were from the hand of God himself (which, one would think, must have been a special consolation to the gentle sufferer), and that "the devil was let loose upon him," as the President expresses himself,-" God's executioner, the roaring lion that devours the damned in hell." But the idea