It is objected that our doctrine is inconsistent—1. With the general offer of the Gospel : answer—2. With those passages which declare he suffered for “‘ all,” or “the world :” answer—3. With those passages which speak of the possi- bility of those dying for whom Christ died; answer............e.esee eee
Wait Ey ATONE MEN TE.
Pack Heck Che Hature of the Atonement.
CHAPTER IL INTRODUCTORY.
seat doctrine of the Atonement is evidently the
{41 central and principal element of the doctrine of Justification, which Luther truly affirmed to be the article of a standing or a falling Church. The truth of this aphorism is obvious, both because this truth concerns the foundation upon which our relations to God as our heavenly Father, and conse- quently all our present life and our future hopes, depend; and also because our conception of this central principle
necessarily determines our conception of all the other _ elements of the entire system of revealed truth—such as
the Moral Attributes of God, the Nature of his Moral
Government, of Law, Sin and Penalty, the Person of the God-man, the Person and Office of the Holy Spirit, the Office of Faith, and hence the entire character of our re- ligious experience.
CHAPTER
The
Atone-
ment—
import- ance
of the
doctrine.
\/ the “Church in
14 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
CHAPTER die contradiction of the assertion of Bushnell, and the
—_ vague impression of many others, that no consistent
General view as to the nature of Christ’s redemptive work has
ment ot cHaracterized the faith of the Church in all ages, I expect
to show in the following chapters that, although the
prpecess Church did not attain to a definite and complete scientific
redemp- Statement of the Doctrine of Redemption before the
Hye work. neriod of the Socinian controversy in the early part of
the seventeenth century, it is nevertheless a fact that the
whole Church, in its historical divisions from the apos-
tolic age, and each branch of it in exact proportion to its
general orthodoxy, has held essentially but one opinion
on this subject. On the subject of the nature and objec-
tive reference of the redemptive work of Christ there
was no controversy between the Reformers and _ the
Church of Rome. All the great national churches of
both the Lutheran and Reformed families, and all the
authoritative Church creeds, are here, at the very heart
of the gospel, at one. Even all evangelical Arminians,
such as Arminius himself, John Wesley, and Richard
Watson, by a happy sacrifice of logic, are on this vital
question at one with Calvinists, and opposed to the more consistent Pelagianizing Arminians.
Danger of On the other hand, the lesson of history is none the
see a less clear, that Rationalism, in all its forms and degrees,
tends to pervert the testimony of Scripture as to the
nature of Redemption ; and that erroneous views on this
subject are invariably connected, as cause or effect, with
erroneous views on every other main principle of the
gospel. Thus Socinian views as to the Person of Christ
have always been accompanied with corresponding views
as to the nature of his work. The same is true precisely
of high Arianism, and again of the semi-pantheistic
Monism of Schleiermacher and the American Mercers-
berg theology. Arminianism is distinguished by its
INTRODUCTORY. 15
peculiar soteriology, corresponding accurately to its an- thropology. Calvinistic advocates of general redemption, whether of the French, English, or American schools, have always been constrained to modify to a correspond- ing extent the common doctrine of all the Reformers, and of all the Church creeds, as to the nature of Re- demption and of Justification. The Pelagianizing specu- lations of the New England theologians—as to the nature of sin and of virtue, the extent of man’s moral ruin in the Fall, the necessity and nature of Effectual Calling and Regeneration—have in all their varying phases been accompanied with corresponding theories of the Atonement, so called. And every passing school of German Rationalists, old or new, and the neoplatonizing Rationalists of the Broad Church school in England and America, are characterized by the uniformity of purpose with which, in various methods, they seek to make void the teaching of Scripture on this vital theme.
Thus history puts it beyond question that a tendency ‘to deny, or even to abate or to modify, the full truth on this subject, is always symptomatic of a tendency toward a total disintegration of the system of revealed truth.
CHAPTER I.
And all the indications of the present time also warn us Preva-
that the whole Church is just now, in a pre-eminent de-
lence of Rational-
eree, exposed to this very influence from many directions. *™