every sin, satisfaction must be given to the insulted majesty of God by an atonement. The truth of Deity does not less imperatively call for such a provision. He is a God of truth and without ini. quity, just and right is he. He is abundant in goodness and truth. The strength of Israel will not lie. He is a God that cannot lie.* Now, let what God has spoken with regard to sin be here remembered. He has said-' Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are writ. ten in the law to do them-the soul that sinneth it shall die-the wages of sin is death-woe unto the wicked, it shall be ill with him—the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. These are the true sayings of God. His vera. city and faithfulness require that they be fulfilled. But if sin is pardoned without a satisfaction, fulfilled they are not; -the violation of the law is not cursed; death is not the wages of sin; it is not ill with the wicked; God does clear the guilty! And what is this but to impeach the truth of God--to make God a liar? Nor is there any way of reconciling such expressions with the fact of man's forgiveness, but by referring to him who was made a curse for us,' who 'tasted death for every one' of the redeemed, and whose substitutionary satisfaction is rendered necessary by the faithfulness of God to his own word. More distinctly still, if possible, does this necessity appear from the divine holiness. The Lord our God is holy. He is free from every vestige of moral pollution; he delights in whatever is pure; he hates whatever is of an opposite character. Now, sin is opposed to the holiness of God; it is essentially impure, filthy, abominable. It fol. lows that it is the object of his supreme detestation; he is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on ini. quity. But how can this be made to appear, without the punishment of sin? It is not enough that a penalty be annexed to transgressions, that a threat be appended to the violation of his law; if the penalty is not inflicted, if the threat is not executed, there is still room left to suppose that sin is not the abominable thing that was supposed; the blasphemous thought may nevertheless spring up in the bosom of moral creatures, that God, after all, approves o * Deut. xxxii. 4. Exod. xxxiv. 6. 1 Sam. xv. 29. Tit. i. 2. † Gal. iii. 10. Ezek. xviii. 4. Rom. vi. 23. Is. iii. 11. Exo xxxiv. 7.. sin, and secretly connives at the commission of it. To vindicate the holiness of the divine character, the penalty annexed to disobedience must be executed. But its being executed on the transgressor is incompatible with the transgressor's being forgiven. To the pardon of sin, then, consistently with the purity of God, the punishment must fall on the sinner's substitute. In other words, the divine holi. ness proclaims the necessity of Christ's atonement. Thus, and thus alone, can the sinner be saved without sin being palliated, or the perfect moral purity of the Holy One being sullied. To these add the requirements of divine justice. Justice consists in giving to every one his due-in rendering to every being what is right. It is much the same as equity or rectitude, and is an essential and unchangeable perfection of the divine nature. Of justice there are supposed to be four kinds :-general, commutative, distributive, and vindictive. The two last apply to our present subject, Distributive justice consists in giving every one his due, treating all according to their desert, acting toward the subjects of law agreeably to the terms of law. This requires that sin be punished according to its desert. The evil of sin is infinite. It must, therefore, receive an infinite pu. nishment-infinite either in nature or in duration. A punishment which is infinite in nature cannot be borne by a finite creature; punishment infinite in duration is exclusive of all possible pardon; whence it follows, that if sin is to be punished agreeably to its desert, and yet sinners saved, it must meet this punishment in the person of one who can sustain an infliction which is infinite in nature; that is to say, the distributive justice of God renders necessary an atonement. This is still more apparent from the vindictive or retributive justice of God. That opposition of the divine nature to sin, which leads to the annexation of a penalty to the breach of his law, the execution of which penalty is referable to distributive justice, is called the vindictive or retributive justice of God. The opposition of God's law to sin, is just the opposition of his nature to sin; his nature, not his will, is the ultimate standard of morality. His determination to punish sin is not voluntary, but necessary. He does not annex a punishment to sin because he wills to do so, but because his nature requires it. If the whole of such procedure could be resolved into mere voli. tion, then it is not only supposable that God might not have determined to punish sin, but, which is blasphemous, that he might have determined to reward it. This is not more clearly deducible from the nature of a being of perfect moral excellence, than plainly taught in scripture. He will by no means clear the guilty. The Lord is a jea. lous God, he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness, neither shall evil dwell with thee. God is angry with the wicked every day. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? Our God is a consuming fire.* We may con. fidently appeal to every unprejudiced mind whether suc descriptions as these do not fully bear us out in the view we have taken of God's retributive justice. And if this view is correct, sin cannot go unpunished; it cannot be pardoned without a satisfaction; God cannot but take vengeance on iniquity: to do otherwise, would be to violate the perfection of his nature. Just he is, and just he ever must be; and there is only one way, that of an atoning sacrifice, by which he can be at once 'a JUST God and a SAVIOUR.' It is to no purpose to tell us that such lan. guage as we have quoted from the word of God is figura. tive, that it can never be understood as ascribing passions to God. This we fully admit; but if wrath in God is not an agitating passion, so much the worse for our opponents. It is a settled purpose or determination to oppose and to punish sin. Had it been a passion, it might have been supposed to cool, and, in process of time, to die away altogether; but being the fixed necessary opposition of his nature to evil, it is as incapable of change as the divine cha. racter itself. We might even urge the goodness of God in proof of the necessity of Christ's atonement. This is the view of the divine Being to which the enemies of the doctrine incessantly appeal. His goodness prompts him to consult the happiness and welfare of his creatures, especially his mo * Exod. xxxiv. 7. Josh. xxiv. 19. Psal, v. 4; vii. 11, Nah. i. 2, 6. Rom, iii. 5. Heb. xii. 29, ral and intelligent creatures. It is the tendency of sin to destroy all happiness, and inflict all possible misery. Natural evil is the invariable effect of moral evil. It was sin that expelled angels from the abodes of bliss; that introduced sorrow and suffering and gloom into this lower world; and that lit up those flames of Tophet which are to inflict never-dying torment on the wicked in a future state of being. Does not goodness say, then, that every thing should be done to check the progress and hinder the effects of such wide spreading evil? And is this to be done by inflicting on it its merited punishment, or by suf fering it to pass unnoticed and to operate unrestrained? Every man's reason must answer this question. Sin, to be put down, requires to be punished. It is not by pardoning it without satisfaction that it is ever to be prevented from spreading wretchedness and woe among every rank of God's moral creation. Mercy, not less than justice, demands, in order to pardon, that some one shall drink the cup of the wine of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. JUSTICE IS BUT GOODNESS DIRECTED BY WISDOM. "* II. The atonement of Christ was rendered necessary by the nature of God's moral government. That God has placed moral creatures under a law or moral constitution, which is designed to promote the glory of the Lawgiver and the good of his subjects will, it is presumed, be fully admitted. To the accomplishment of these purposes, it must also be admitted, that this moral consti. tution requires to be upheld and obeyed, and every thing done to prevent its violation. So far, all is clear, and can admit of no dispute. It merits consideration whether the notion of pardon without atonement be not directly subversive of the object in question, and destructive of the very principles of moral legislation. It supposes a violation of the very letter of the law. The law says, The soul that sinneth, it shall die;' but the theory in question says, the soul that sinneth shall not die. The law says, 'Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the law to do them;' but, according to the supposed theory, not every one, nay, not any one, shall be cursed. The law says, 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but one jot or one tittle of the law * Stillingflect. shall not pass until all be fulfilled;' but, says the theory we are considering, not only one jot or tittle, but the whole penal sanction of the law shall pass completely away. It reflects on the nature of the law. If the breach of the law can be passed over without compensation, it is clearly supposed to have been originally too strict, to have been over rigorous at first. This is much the same as to affirm that it was originally unjust, in opposition to the scriptures, which declare that the law is holy, just, and good. What a perfect law once was, it must ever continue to be. If it was originally just, it must be always just; but pardon without satisfaction, says either that it was originally un. just, or that it is now so. If it was originally holy, it must be always holy; but if pardon must be dispensed without satisfaction, either originally it was not so, or it has ceased to be what it once was, as it can never be wrong to carry the sanction of a holy law into execution. If it was origi nally good, it must be always good; but pardon without satisfaction proceeds on the supposition that it would not consist with goodness or benevolence to fulfil the threaten. ing of the law. This scheme militates, thus, against the nature of the law, and supposes the moral constitution under which man is placed to be different from what both reason and scripture lead us to conclude. It supposes, moreover, a relaxation to take place of the law or moral government of God, such as a perfect constitution can never undergo. If sin is pardoned without an atonement, then the law, which requires perfect and perpetual obedience, and which denounces punishment on every devia. tion from its requirements, is clearly understood to have relaxed its rigour: its requisitions are supposed to have been modified and abridged in adaptation to what is called human frailty or infirmity. This is not only supposed in the theory of pardon, against which we are contending it is openly avowed, and strenuously defended. But against such a relaxation of God's law, we have more than one thing to urge. : First of all, we say that it supposes the law to have been originally wrong, seeing it could either need or admit of a change; and this we cannot but regard as a direct impeachment, both of the wisdom and equity of the Legislator. Secondly-It supposes that man's indisposition to obey, (for his inability is wholly to be traced to want of will,o a be |