fective. The Reformed Churches mean he isomse Gh) oe That Christ fully satisfied all that the justice and law of God required, on the part of mankind, as the condition of their being admitted to divine favour and eternal happiness. (2.) As the demands of the law upon sinful men are both preceptive and penal—the condition of life being, ‘“‘ Do this and live,” while the penalty denounced upon disobedience is, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” —it follows that any work which shall fully satisfy the demands of the divine law in behalf of men must include (1) that obedience which the law demands as the condi- tion of life, and (2) that suffering which it demands as the penalty of sin.*
2. The Difference between a penal and a pecuniary Difference satisfaction.—These differ precisely as do crime and debt, ee con things and persons, and therefore the distinction is both Pecuiay obvious and important. Many, who either are incapable tio». of understanding the question, are ignorant of its history, or who are unscrupulous as to the manner in which they conduct controversy, are continually charging our doc- trine with the folly of representing the sacrifice of Christ as a purely commercial transaction, in which so much was given for so much, and in which God was in such a sense recompensed for his favours to us that however much gratitude we may owe to Christ, we owe on this
* Dr. Charles Hodge.
34 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
Big behalf none to God. Long ago, the doctrine of the Re- —— formed Churches was unanswerably vindicated from such puerile charges by all its most authoritative expounders. “Here the twofold solution, concerning which jurists treat, should be accurately distinguished ;—the one, which apso
facto liberates the debtor or criminal because that very thing which was owed is paid, whether it was done by
the debtor or by another in his name ;—the other, which
ipso facto does not liberate, since ee thing which was owed, but an_equivalent, is paid, which
although 1 it does not t thoroughly and ipso facto discharge the obligation, yet having been accepted—since it might be refused—is regarded as a satisfaction. This distine-
tion holds between a pecuniary and a penal indebtedness.
For in a pecuniary debt the payment of the thing owed ipso facto liberates the debtor from all obligations what- soever, because here the point is not who pays, but what is paid. Hence the creditor, the payment being accepted,
is never said to extend toward the debtor any indulgence
or remission, because he has received all that was owed him. But the case is different with respect to a penal debt, because in this case the obligation respects the per- son as well as the thing ; : the demand is upon the person who pays as well as the thing paid; ‘.¢., that the penalty s should be suffered by t the person sinning : for as’ the law demands personal and proper obedience, so it exacts personal enduring of the penalty. Therefore, in order that a criminal should be absolved—a vicarious satisfaction being rendered by another hand—it is neces- sary that there should intervene a sovereign act of the supreme» lawgiver; which with respect to the law is called.relaxation, and with respect to the debtor is called remission, because the personal endurance of the penalty
is remitted, and a vicarious endurance of it is accepted in its stead. Hence it clearly appears that in this work
DEFINITION OF TERMS. 35
[of Redemption | remission and satisfaction are perfectly cuaprer consistent with each other, because there is satisfaction in the endurance of the punishment which Christ bore, and there is remission in the acceptance of a vicarious victim. The satisfaction respects Christ, from whom God demanded the very same punishment, as to kind of punishment, though not as to the degree nor as to the nature of the sufferings which the law denounced upon us. The remission respects believers, to whom God remits the personal, while he admits the vicarious, punish- ment. And thus appears the admirable reconciliation of justice and merey—justice which executes itself upon the sin, and mercy which is exercised towards the sinner. Satisfaction is rendered to the justice of God by the Sponsor, and remission is granted to us by God.” *
Hence pecuniary satisfaction - differs from penal thus : (a.) In debt, the demand terminates upon the thing due. In-erime, the legal. demand. for punishment is upon the. person of the criminal. (b.) In debt, the demand is for the precise thing due—the exact quid pro quo, and nothing else. In crime, the demand is for that kind,