LA and duration. of suffering which the law—z~e,, absolute and omniscient justice—demands in each specific case, the person suffering and the sin to be expiated both. being considered. (c.) In debt, the payment of the thing due, ‘by whomsoever it may be made, ipso facto liberates the debtor, and instantly extinguishes all the claims of the creditor, and his release of the debtor is no matter of grace. In crime, a vicarious suffering of the
_ penalty is ‘admissible only. at the absolute discretion of — the sovereign ; remission is a I Sh the rights acquired by the vicarious endurance of penalty all accrue to the sponsor; and:the claims of law upon the sinner are not ipso facto dissolved by such a satisfaction, but
* Turretin, Locus XIV. Quaestio 10, 2.
36 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
cuarmmr remission accrues to the designed beneficiaries only at —_ such times and on such conditions as have been deter- mined by the will of the sovereign, or agreed upon be- tween the sovereign and the sponso or“Pen. 938. The significance of the term PENALTY, and the fining Gastinction between CALAMITIES, CHASTISEMENTS and
fon be PENAL Evits.—Calamities are sufferings viewed without
lamities, any reference to a design or purpose in their infliction ;
‘heen that is, suffering considered simply as suffering. Chas-
ane tisements are sufferings viewed as designed for the im- provement of those who experience them. When viewed as designed to satisfy the claims of justice and law, they are Penal Evils. The sufferings of Christ were not mere objectless, characterless calamities. They could not have been chastisements designed for his per- sonal improvement. They must therefore have been penal inflictions vicariously endured.,*
Penalty is suffering exacted by the supreme law- making power of the breakers of law. The penalty in case of any person and in view of any crime is precisely that kind, degree, and duration of suffering, which the supreme law-making power demands of that person under those conditions for that crime. Human law is necessarily generalized in an average adaptation to classes. But divine law with infinite accuracy adapts itself to the absolute rights of each individual case of crime and of punishment, the penalty in each case ful- filling all righteousness, both as respects the person punished and the crime for which it is inflicted. We say that Christ suffered the very penalty of the law, not because he suffered in the least the same kind, much less the same degree, of suffering as was penally due those for whom he acted, because that is’ not at all necessary to the idea of penalty. But we say that he suffered the
* Dr, Charles Hodge.
DEFINITION OF TERMS. 37
very penalty of the law, because he suffered in our stead ; our sins were punislied in strict rigour of justice in him: the penal demands of the law upon his people were ex- tinguished, because his sufferings sustained precisely the same legal relations that our sufferings in person would have done; and because he suffered precisely that kind, degree, and duration of suffering, that absolute lpstiee demanded of his divine person, Ww
responsible : for the » guilt_of all the _sins.of the,elect. We
believe that while the sufferer is substituted, the penalty as penalty, though never as suffering, is identical. We are willing to i it, in accommodation a “substituted _ penalty,” yet we believe the phrase inaccurate. “But the phrase insisted upon by the advocates of the Govern- mental Atonement Theory—viz., “‘a substitute for a penalty’’—we believe to be absurd. Sin is either punished or not punished. The penalty is either executed or re- mitted. Justice is either exercised or relaxed. There can be no manifestation of penal righteousness without an exercise of penal justice.
CHAPTER IIT.
4. The meaning of the words SUBSTITUTION and VICA- Of “Sub-
stitution ”
RIOUS.—These terms are admitted in a loose sense even sna‘ Vi by Socinians, and are paraded by Young, Maurice, and “°"*
Jowett, and very much in the same loose, indifferent sense by Barnes and the advocates of the Govern- mental Atonement Theory generally. When these parties say that Christ was substituted for us and that his suffer- ings are vicarious, they mean nothing more than that he suffered.in our behalf, for our benefit. We hold, on the other hand, that Christ was in a strict and exact sense the substitute of his people; 7¢., by divine appointment, and of his own free will, he assumed all our legal responsibilities, and thus assumed our law-place, binding himself to do in our stead all that the law de- manded of him when he suffered the penalty due us,
38 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.