Few transgressors come to hate sin, and love the government. Of those who do come, none come of their own accord; they are all drawn by the exercise of sovereign influences. Some presume that God is so exclusively merciful, that he will never execute the penalty which he has threatened. Others fancy that the atonement has made a kind of commercial payment and satisfaction for their sins, and that they are no longer responsible for them. They are warned, and exhorted, invited and urged to forsake sin; nevertheless they sin with a high hand, laugh at every remonstrance, ruin their own souls, desolate the creation, and assail every perfection in the Godhead.

Against all this God has reasoned with mankind, by the public sufferings of his own Son. He asks them, "If these things be done in the green tree, what will be done in the dry?" "How shall you escape if you neglect so great salvation?" For such provisions and remonstrances to be despised, and despised by such a creature as man, seems to merit the most marked infliction of his displeasure. Had it been possible for another god to invade and injure his government, it would have been an aggression to be expected from a peer in infinity; but to be openly insulted by a worm of the earth-to have "the rod and the staff" of his own tender mercies converted into spears to assault himself to have the dreadful denunciations of his law, and the gracious invitations of his gospel, to be treated. as sounding brass, or tinkling cymbal, must be the acme of wrong. It is the higher of the highest towerings of wickedness, around which the thickest and the heaviest clouds of vengeance would gather, and "rain down snares and fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest."

19

SECTION II.

The Atonement, an expedient instituted instead of the Punishment of Sin.

In the chapter on the atonement in its relation to the divine moral government, I promised to take up the subject of this section. We have already seen that threatnings are indispensably necessary to the administration of moral government-that distributive justice. requires the literal execution of these threatenings, but that public justice can suspend their execution, if some expedient can be found that will as fully answer the ends of government. We have also seen that the scriptures represent the atonement of Christ as such an expedient substituted instead of the infliction of the threatened penalty. I will now proceed to illustrate this.

I. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered AS IF he had been a sinner.

The sufferings of Christ were perfectly novel to the universe-a new phenomenon in the moral constitution. They posed and amazed all angelic Intelligences. The annals of moral government supplied no precedent of suffering, but in connection with sin. Angels had witnessed sufferings before, but never unconnected with sin. The sufferings of the Holy One of God was, therefore, to them, a problem which they could not solve, and into which they desired further to look.

Jesus Christ suffered as one condemned of men. He was numbered among the transgressors. He suffered from man as if he had been an offender and a criminal. He was charged with crimes of a high and offensive enormity. He was publicly arraigned as a blasphemer of God, a subverter of religion, a seducer of the people, a rebel against Cæsar, a vile impostor, a notorious malefactor. His merciless persecutors said to Pilate, "If he were not a male factor, we would not

have delivered him up unto thee," John xviii, 36. In this character, and under this ignominy he died, by the hand of legal authority, the death of a condemned criminal.

The most amazing circumstance connected with his death was, that he suffered as one disowned, reprobated, and "forsaken of God." He was despised and rejected of men. At the same time, "it pleased the Lord to bruise him." God "made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin." He delivered him up for us all, to be treated as a sin-offering-as a sin-expiatora lustration for the world. He became a curse for us; exposed to reviling, and scorn, and malediction; devoted and accursed, anathematized to reproach and shame, as one infamous and execrable, deserted and rejected of God. O! how great is the mystery of revealed godliness.

Sufferings are incident to sinners only. How then did the holy Son of God come into contact with suffering? Did he ever sin? No-he was holy, undefiled and separate from sinners. On what principle, then, can the sufferings of Christ be in harmony with God's eternal justice in moral government, and with his ineffable love to his own beloved Son? There is but one principle revealed that will reconcile them, and that is the principle of substitution-the substitution of vicarious sufferings. In this arrangement the sufferings of "the Just," are substituted instead of the sufferings due to "the unjust;"-"the Just" is treated as if he had been "the unjust;"-the Son of God suffered as if he had been a transgressor. Christ did not suffer as a transgressor, but as if he were a transgressor. Cain suffers, not as if he were a transgressor, but as a transgressor. Christ suffered not as a transgressor, but as if he were one. He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities. He is often said to have suffered for sin, that is, as if he had been a sinner.

The doctrine of the New Testament concerning the vicariousness of the sufferings of Christ is summed up in 2 Cor. v, 21. "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God through him." The advocates of a limited substitution of Christ for the persons of the elect, often represent Christ as bearing, not the effects of sin, but actually the very guilt of sin. This arises from a misunderstanding, and a consequent misapplication of the term guilt. The term guilt has various meanings. It sometimes means, consciousness of having done wrong. It means also, desert of punishment, arising from a consciousness of crime. Sometimes the term, guilt, is used for liableness to punishment, independent of consciousness of crime.

The Schoolmen had three different designations for these various applications of the term guilt. The consciousness of having done wrong, they called, reatus culpa. The deserving of punishment, they called, dignitas pænæ or, meritum pœnæ. The liableness to punishment or sufferings independently of having done wrong, they called, reatus pæna. The person in any of these circumstances, they called, reus. When Joseph's brethren thought themselves verily guilty about their brother, they considered themselves as rei culpa, conscious of crime, and meriti pœnæ, deserving of punishment. The children who suffered in the destruction of Sodom, and in the gainsaying of Corah, were rei pœnæ, liable to the punishment, though no one could regard them, as either rei culpæ, conscious of crime, or meriti pœnæ, deserving of punishment. This was precisely the case of the scape-goat. He was neither reus culpæ, nor meritius pœnæ, but he was treated as "reatus pœnæ."

This I concieve to be the meaning of the above text. In the language of the Schools, I would read it thus. "He hath made him to be reatum pœnæ for us, who knew no reatum culpæ, that we might be non rei pœnæ through him." Or, in plain English, let it be para

phrased thus. "He made him to be liable to punishment for us, who was not conscious of having done wrong, that we might be not liable to punishment through him."

The principles of commercial redemption, and of personal commutation between Christ and the elect, would require the text to be translated thus. "He hath made him to be "meritum pœnæ" for us, who was not "reus culpæ," that we might be "non meriti pœnæ❞ through him." Indeed, Dr. CRISP, CHAUNCEY, and the author of "GETHSEMANE" have argued, as if the words were to be translated thus, "He hath made him to be reatum culpæ for us, who was not reatus culpæ, that we might be non rei culpæ through him:" that is, He made him to be guilty of our crimes, who was not guilty of crimes, that we might be made not guilty of crime through him.

The translations of these ultra-Calvinists, take for granted, utter and perfect impossibilities. It is no dishonor to God to say that He cannot unmake a transpired event, that He cannot annihilate a fact, that he cannot transfer moral identity. It is utterly impossible to unmake the facts that we are "rei culpæ" and "meriti pœnæ," guilty of wrong, and deserving of punishment. It is, however, possible, to make us not "rei pœnæ,' liable to punishment, by a measure which will, in public justice, answer the same ends as our punishment. On the other hand, it is perfectly impossible to make the Lamb that was without blemish, to be reatus culpæ, or meritus pœnæ, guilty of wrong, or deserving of punishment; when it is a transpired fact, that he was "without sin." Yet his sufferings are altogether inexplicable except on the principle that he was by a divine institution treated as if he were, like the innocent scape goat, “reus pœnæ," liable to punishment for us. This arrangement could never unmake the fact, that we were guilty of wrong, and deserving of punishment. Nor can our being treated as "non reati pœnæ," not liable to punish