inconclusive appeals to nature, the advocates of the vicarious scheme
are chargeable with this fundamental inconsistency. They appear to deny
that the justice and benevolence of God can be reconciled with the
phenomena of nature; and say that the evidence must be helped out by
resort to their interpretation of scripture. When, having heard this
auxiliary system, we protest that it renders the case sadder than
before, they assure us that it is all benevolent and just, because it
has its parallel in creation. They renounce and adopt, in the same
breath, the religious appeal to the universe of God.
(2.) Another inconsistency appears, in the view which this theory gives
of the character of God.
It is assumed that, at the æra of creation, the Maker of mankind had
announced the infinite penalties which must follow the violation of his
law; and that their amount did not exceed the measure which his
abhorrence of wrong required. “And that which he saith, he would not be
God if he did not perform: that which he perceived right, he would be
unworthy of our trust, did he not fulfil. His veracity and justice,
therefore, were pledged to adhere to the word that had gone forth: and
excluded the possibility of any free and unconditional forgiveness.” Now
I would note in passing, that this announcement to Adam of an eternal
punishment impending over his first sin, is simply a fiction; for the
warning to him is stated thus; “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die;”[297] from which our progenitor must have been as
ingenious as a theologian, to extract the idea of endless life in Hell.
But to say no more of this, what notions of veracity have we here? When
a sentence is proclaimed against crime, is it indifferent to judicial
truth, _upon whom_ it falls? Personally addressed to the guilty, may it
descend without a lie upon the guiltless? Provided there is the
suffering, is it no matter _where_? Is this the sense in which God is no
respecter of persons? Oh! what deplorable reflection of human artifice
is this, that Heaven is too veracious to abandon its proclamation of
menace against transgressors; yet is content to vent it on goodness the
most perfect. No darker deed can be imagined, than is thus ascribed to
the Source of all perfection, under the insulted names of truth and
holiness. What reliance could we have on the faithfulness of such a
Being? If it be consistent with his nature to _punish_ by substitution,
what security is there that he will not _reward_ vicariously? All must
be loose and unsettled, the sentiments of reverence confused, the
perceptions of conscience indistinct, where the terms expressive of
those great moral qualities which render God himself most venerable, are
thus sported with and profaned.
The same extraordinary departure from all intelligible meaning of words
is apparent, when our charge of vindictiveness against the doctrine of
sacrifice is repelled as a slander. If the rigorous refusal of pardon,
till the whole penalty has been inflicted (when, indeed, it is no pardon
at all) be not vindictive, we may ask to be furnished with some better
definition. And though it is said, that God’s love was manifested to us
by the gift of his Son, this does but change the object on which this
quality is exercised, without removing the quality itself; putting _us_
indeed into the sunshine of his grace, but _the Saviour_ into the
tempest of his wrath. Did we desire to sketch the most dreadful form of
character, what more emphatic combination could we invent than this;
rigour in the exaction of penal suffering; and indifference as to the
person on whom it falls?
But in truth this system, in its delineations of the Great Ruler of
creation, bids defiance to all the analogies by which Christ and the
Christian heart have delighted to illustrate his nature. A God who could
accept the spontaneously returning sinner, and restore him by corrective
discipline, is pronounced not worth serving, and an object of
contempt.[298] If so, Jesus sketched an object of contempt when he drew
the father of the prodigal son, opening his arms to the poor penitent,
and needing only the sight of his misery to fall on his neck with the
kiss of welcome home. Let the assertions be true, that sacrifice and
satisfaction are needful preliminaries to pardon, that to pay any
attention to repentance without these is mere weakness, and that it is a
perilous deception to teach the doctrine of mercy apart from the
atonement; and this parable of our Saviour’s becomes the most pernicious
instrument of delusion; a statement, absolute and unqualified, of a
feeble and sentimental heresy. Who does not see what follows from this
scornful exclusion of corrective punishment? Suppose the infliction not
to be corrective, that is, not to be designed for any good, what then
remains as the cause of the Divine retribution? The sense of insult
offered to a law. And thus we are virtually told, that God must be
regarded with a mixture of contempt, unless he be susceptible of
personal affront.[299]
(3.) The last inconsistency with itself which I shall point out in this
doctrine, will be found in the view which it gives of the work of
Christ. Sin, we are assured, is necessarily infinite. Its infinitude
arises from its reference to an Infinite Being; and involves as a
consequence the necessity of redemption by Deity himself.
The position, that guilt be estimated not by its amount or its motive,
but by the dignity of the being against whom it is directed, is
illustrated by the case of an insubordinate soldier, whose punishment is
increased, according as his rebellion assails an equal, or any of the
many grades amongst his superiors. It is evident, however, that it is
not the dignity of the person, but the magnitude of the effect, which
determines the severity of the sanction by which, in such an instance,
law enforces order. Insult to a monarch is more sternly treated than
injury to a subject, because it incurs the risk of wider and more
disastrous consequences, and superadds to the personal injury a peril to
an official power which, not resting on individual superiority, but on
conventional arrangement, is always precarious. It is not indeed easy to
form a distinct notion of an infinite act in a finite agent; and still
less is it easy to evade the inference, that if an immoral deed against
God be an infinite demerit, a moral deed towards him must be an infinite
merit.
Passing by an assertion so unmeaning, and conceding it for the sake of
progress in our argument, I would inquire what is intended by that other
statement, that only Deity can redeem, and that by Deity the sacrifice
was made? The union of the divine and human natures in Christ is said to
have made his sufferings meritorious in an infinite degree. Yet we are
repeatedly assured, that it was in his manhood only that he endured and
died. If the divine nature in our Lord had a joint consciousness with
the human, then did God suffer and perish; if not, then did the man only
die, Deity being no more affected by his anguish, than by that of the
malefactors on either side. In the one case the perfections of God, in
the other the reality of the atonement, must be relinquished. No doubt,
the popular belief is, that the Creator literally expired; the hymns in
common use declare it; the language of pulpits sanctions it; the
consistency of creeds requires it; but professed theologians repudiate
the idea with indignation. Yet by silence or ambiguous speech, they
encourage, in those whom they are bound to enlighten, this degrading
humanization of Deity; which renders it impossible for common minds to
avoid ascribing to him emotions and infirmities, totally irreconcileable
with the serene perfections of the Universal Mind. In his influence on
the worshipper, _He_ is no Spirit, who can be invoked by his agony and
bloody sweat, his cross and passion. And the piety that is thus taught
to bring its incense, however sincere, before the mental image of a
being with convulsed features and expiring cry, has little left of that
which makes Christian devotion characteristically venerable.
II. I proceed to notice the inconsistency of the doctrine under review
with the Christian idea of salvation.
There is one _significant scriptural fact_, which suggests to us the
best mode of treating this part of our subject. It is this; that the
language supposed to teach the atoning efficacy of the cross, does not
appear in the New Testament till the Gentile controversy commences, nor
ever occurs apart from the treatment of that subject, under some of its
relations. The cause of this phenomenon will presently appear; meanwhile
I state it, in the place of an assertion sometimes incorrectly made,
viz., that the phraseology in question is confined to the epistles. Even
this mechanical limitation of sacrificial passages is indeed nearly
true, as not above three or four have strayed beyond the epistolary
boundary, into the Gospels and the book of Acts: but the restriction in
respect of subject, which I have stated, will be found, I believe, to be
absolutely exact, and to furnish the real interpretation to the whole
system of language.
(1.) Let us then first test the vicarious scheme by reference to the
sentiments of Scripture generally, and of our Lord and his apostles
especially, where this controversy is out of the way. Are their ideas
respecting human character, the forgiveness of sins, the terms of
everlasting life, accordant with the cardinal notions of a believer in
the atonement? Do they, or do they not, insist on the necessity of a
sacrifice for human sin, as a preliminary to pardon, to sanctification,
to the love of God? Do they, or do they not, direct a marked and almost
exclusive attention to the cross, as the object to which, far more than
to the life and resurrection of our Lord, all faithful eyes should be
directed?
(a.) Now to the fundamental assertion of the vicarious system, that the
Deity cannot, without inconsistency and imperfection, pardon on simple
repentance, the whole tenor of the Bible is one protracted and
unequivocal contradiction. So copious is its testimony on this head,
that if the passages containing it were removed, scarcely a shred of
Scripture relating to the subject would remain. “Pardon, I beseech
thee,” said Moses, pleading for the Israelites, “the iniquity of this
people, according to the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast
forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now; and the Lord said, _I
have pardoned according to thy word_.”[300] Will it be affirmed, that
this chosen people had their eyes perpetually fixed in faith on the
great propitiation, which was to close their dispensation, and of which
their own ceremonial was a type?—that whenever penitence and pardon are
named amongst them, this reference is implied, and that as this faith
was called to mind and expressed in the shedding of blood at the altar,
such sacrificial offerings take the place, in Judaism, of the atoning
trust in Christianity? Well then, let us quit the chosen nation
altogether, and go to a heathen people, who were aliens to their laws,
their blood, their hopes, and their religion; to whom no sacrifice was
appointed, and no Messiah promised. If we can discover the dealings of
God with such a people, the case, I presume, must be deemed conclusive.
Hear then, what happened on the banks of the Tigris. “Jonah began to
enter into the city,” (Nineveh,) “and he cried and said, yet forty days
and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God,
and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them
even unto the least of them.” “Who can tell,” (said the decree of the
king ordaining the fast), “if God will turn and repent, and turn away
from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that
they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that he
had said he would do unto them; and he did it not.”[301] And when the
prophet was offended, first at this clemency to Nineveh, and afterwards
that the canker was sent to destroy his own favourite plant, beneath
whose shadow he sat, what did Jehovah say? “Thou hast had pity on the
gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which
came up in a night and perished in a night; and should not I spare
Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six-score thousand
persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left
hand?”[302] —and who are not likely, one would think, to have discerned
the future merits of the Redeemer.
In truth, if even the Israelites had any such prospective views to
Calvary, if their sacrifices conveyed the idea of the cross erected
there, and were established for this purpose, the fact must have been
privately revealed to modern theologians; for not a trace of it can be
found in the Hebrew writings. It must be thought strange, that a
prophetic reference so habitual, should be always a secret reference;
that a faith so fundamental should be so mysteriously suppressed; that
the uppermost idea of a nation’s mind should never have found its way to
lips or pen. “But if it were not so,” we are reminded, “if the Jewish
ritual prefigured nothing ulterior, it was revolting, trifling, savage;
its worship a butchery, and the temple courts no better than a slaughter
house.” And were they not equally so, though the theory of types be
true? If neither priest nor people could _see at the time_ the very
thing which the ceremonial was constructed to reveal, what advantage is
it that divines can see it _now_? And even if the notion was conveyed to
the Jewish mind, (which the whole history shows not to have been the
fact,) was it necessary that hecatombs should be slain, age after age,
to intimate obscurely an idea, which one brief sentence might have
lucidly expressed? The idea, however, it is evident, slipped through
after all; for when Messiah actually came, the one great thing which the
Jews did _not_ know and believe about him was, that he could die at all.
So much for the preparatory discipline of fifteen centuries!
There is no reason then why anything should be supplied in our thoughts,
to alter the plain meaning of the announcements of prophets and holy
men, of God’s unconditional forgiveness on repentance. “Thou desirest
not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in burnt
offering; the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a
contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”[303] “Wash you, make you
clean,” says the prophet Isaiah in the name of the Lord; “put away the
evil of your doings from before mine eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do
well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead
for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord;
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they
be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”[304] Once more, “When I say
unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do
that which is lawful and right; if the wicked restore the pledge, give
again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life without
committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die.”[305] Nor
are the teachings of the Gospel at all less explicit. Our Lord treats
largely and expressly on the doctrine of forgiveness in several
parables, and especially that of the prodigal son; and omits all
allusion to the propitiation for the past. He furnishes an express
definition of the terms of eternal life; “Good master, what good thing
shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, why
callest thou me good; there is none good save one, that is God; but if
thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” And Jesus adds, “if
thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor,
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”[306] This
silence on the prime condition of pardon cannot be explained by the
fact, that the crucifixion had not yet taken place, and could not safely
be alluded to, before the course of events had brought it into prominent
notice. For we have the preaching of the Apostles, after the ascension,
recorded at great length, and under very various circumstances, in the
book of Acts. We have the very “words whereby,” according to the
testimony of an angel, “Cornelius and all his house shall be saved;”
these, one would think, would be worth hearing in this cause: “God
anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power; who went
about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for
God was with him. And we are witnesses of all things which he did, both
in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a
tree; him God raised up the third day, and showed openly; not to all the
people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat
and drink with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to
preach unto the people, and to testify, that it is he who was ordained
of God to be the judge of quick and dead. To him give all the prophets
witness, that, through his name, whosoever believeth in him shall
receive remission of sins.”[307] Did an Evangelical missionary dare to
preach in this style now, he would be immediately disowned by his
employers, and dismissed as a disguised Socinian, who kept back all the
“peculiar doctrines of the Gospel.”
(b.) The emphatic mention of the resurrection by the apostle Peter in
this address, is only a particular instance of a system which pervades
the whole preaching of the first missionaries of Christ. _This_, and not
the cross, with its supposed effects, is the grand object to which they
call the attention and the faith of their hearers. I cannot quote to you
the whole book of Acts; but every reader knows, that “Jesus and the
resurrection” constitutes the leading theme, the central combination of
ideas in all its discourses. This truth was shed, from Peter’s tongue of
fire, on the multitudes that heard amazed the inspiration of the day of
Pentecost.[308] Again, it was his text, when passing beneath the
beautiful gate, he made the cripple leap for joy; and then, with the
flush of this deed still fresh upon him, leaned against a pillar in
Solomon’s porch, and spake in explanation to the awe-struck people,
thronging in at the hour of prayer.[309] Before priests and rulers,
before Sanhedrim and populace, the same tale is told again, to the utter
exclusion, be it observed, of the essential doctrine of the cross.[310]
The authorities of the temple, we are told, were galled and terrified at
the apostle’s preaching; “naturally enough,” it will be said, “since,
the real sacrifice having been offered, their vocation, which was to
make the prefatory and typical oblation, was threatened with
destruction.” But no, this is not the reason given: “They were grieved
because they preached, through Jesus, the resurrection from the
dead.”[311] Paul, too, while his preaching was spontaneous and free, and
until he had to argue certain controversies which have long ago become
obselete, manifested a no less remarkable predilection for this topic.
Before Felix, he declares what was the grand indictment of his
countrymen against him; “touching the resurrection of the dead, I am
called in question of you this day.”[312] Follow him far away from his
own land; and, with foreigners, he harps upon the same subject, as if he
were a man of one idea; which, indeed, according to our opponents’
scheme, he ought to have been, only it should have been _another idea_.
Seldom, however, can we meet with a more exuberant mind than Paul’s; yet
the resurrection obviously haunts him wherever he goes: in the synagogue
of Antioch, you hear him dwelling on it with all the energy of his
inspiration;[313] and, at Athens, it was this on which the scepticism of
Epicureans and Stoics fastened for a scoff.[314] In his epistles, too,
where he enlarges so much on justification by faith, when we inquire
what precisely is this faith, and what the object it is to contemplate
and embrace, this remarkable fact presents itself: that the one only
important thing respecting Christ, which is _never once_ mentioned as
the object of justifying faith is _his death, and blood, and cross_.
“Faith” by itself, the “faith of Jesus Christ,” “faith of the Gospel,”
“faith of the Son of God,” are expressions of constant occurrence; and
wherever this general description is replaced by a more specific account
of this justifying state of mind, it is _faith in the resurrection_ on
which attention is fastened. “It is Christ that died, _yea rather, that
is risen again_.”[315] “He was delivered for our offences, and _raised
again for our justification_.”[316] “Faith shall be imputed to us for
righteousness, if we believe on _him that raised up Jesus our Lord from
the dead_.”[317] Hear too, the Apostle’s definition of saving faith: “If
thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in
thy heart _that God hath raised him from the dead_, thou shalt be
saved.”[318] The only instance, in which the writings of St. Paul appear
to associate the word faith with the death of Christ, is the following
text: “whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his
blood;”[319] and in this case the Apostle’s meaning would, I conceive,
be more faithfully given by destroying this conjunction, and disposing
the words thus: “whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation by his
blood, through faith.” The idea of his _blood_, or _death_, belongs to
the word ‘propitiation,’ not to the word ‘faith.’ To this translation no
Trinitarian scholar, I am persuaded, can object;[320] and when the true
meaning of the writer’s sacrificial language is explained, the
distinction will appear to be not unimportant. At present I am concerned
only with the defence of my position, that the death of Christ is never
mentioned as the object of saving faith; but that his resurrection
unquestionably is. This phenomenon in Scripture phraseology is so
extraordinary, so utterly repugnant to everything which a hearer of
orthodox preaching would expect, that I hardly expect my affirmation of
it to be believed. The two ideas of _faith_, and of our _Lord’s death_,
are so naturally and perpetually united in the mind of every believer in
the atonement, that it must appear to him incredible, that they should
never fall together in the writings of the Apostles. However, I have
stated my fact; and it is for you to bring it to the test of Scripture.
(c.) Independently of all written testimony, moral reasons, we are
assured, exist, which render an absolute remission for the past
essential to a regenerated life for the future. Our human nature is said
to be so constituted, that the burden of sin, on the conscience once
awakened, is intolerable: our spirit cries aloud for mercy; yet is so
straitened by the bands of sin, so conscious of the sad alliance
lingering still, so full of hesitancy and shame when seeking the relief
of prayer, so blinded by its tears when scanning the heavens for an
opening of light and hope, that there is no freedom, no unrestrained and
happy love to God; but a pinched and anxious mind, bereft of power,
striving to work with bandaged or paralytic will, instead of trusting
itself to loosened and self-oblivious affections. Hence it is thought,
that the sin of the past must be cancelled, before the holiness of the
future can be commenced; that it is a false order to represent
repentance as leading to pardon; because to be forgiven is the
pre-requisite to love. We cannot forget, however, how distinctly and
emphatically he who, after God, best knew what is in man, has
contradicted this sentiment; for when that sinful woman, whose presence
in the house shocked the sanctimonious Pharisee, stood at his feet as he
reclined, washing them with her tears, and kissing them with reverential
lips; Jesus turned to her and said, “her sins, which are many, are
forgiven; _for_ she loved much.”[321] From him, then, we learn what our
own hearts would almost teach, that love may be the prelude to
forgiveness, as well as forgiveness the preparative for love.