To the question why God punishes sin, only four distinct answers are possible. (1.) That all punishment is designed for the reformation of the offender. This confounds punishment with chastisement, and is a solu-
_tion obviously inadmissible in the case of the eternal perdition of the reprobate and of the vicarious sufferings of Christ. (2.) That the reason and necessity of punish- ment is to be resolved into the sovereign good pleasure of God. This position has been held by Dr. Twisse, prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly, and others, but is not held by any prominent party in these days. (3.) That God punishes sin in order to deter the subjects
_ sin; and the sinner is never forgiven mf on condition
THE DIVINE NATURE DEMANDS PUNISHMENT. 51
of his moral government from its commission. ‘This is a necessary corollary of the theory that all virtue is comprehended in disinterested benevolence. In that view, justice is one mode of benevolence, prompting God to punish the individual sinner for the sake of the greater good of the moral universe to be secured thereby. (4.) The true view is, that God is determined, by the immutable holiness of his nature, to punish all sin because of its intrinsic guilt or demerit; the effect produced on the moral universe being incidental as an end, and dependent as a consequence, upon the essential character of punishment, as that which expiates guilt and vindi- cates righteousness.
This is the centre of the question in debate between ourselves and the advocates of the Governmental and of the Moral Theory of the Atonement, Both parties estimate it as a moral question of the utmost importance, and incapable of compromise. Dr. N. W. Taylor * says that to punish sin on account of its intrinsic demerit, or for any other purpose except the promotion of happiness, “Gs beyond the capacity of infernal malice.” A recent writer in the New Englander declares that our doctrine represents Jehovah as acting upon principles that would disgrace the Jew Shylock. So also Dr. J. Young: “That wild and daring transcendentalism which, in a greater or less degree, essentially affects evangelical theology at the present hour, is not by any means the most fatal evil. The doctrine of satisfaction to divine justice is immeasurably worse in its moral tendency..... This, beyond all comparison, is the deadliest error.” + There is indeed not room for compromise. What these men blaspheme, the inspired Scriptures and the Christian
* Moral Government of God, vol. ii., p. 278. t John Young, LL.D., of Edinburgh. Life and Light of Men, pp. 476, 477.
CHAPTER Iv.
——o
CHAPTER IV.
That dis- interested
/ benevo- \ lence is
the whole of virtue, disproved.
52 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
Church revere and vindicate as an essential element of that holiness which is the crowning glory of our God.
1. Disinterested benevolence is not the whole of virtue. (1.) Some exercises of disinterested benevo- lence, for example, the natural parental affection, are purely instinctive, and have no positive moral character. (2.) Some exercises of disinterested benevolence, such as the weak yielding of a judge to sympathy with a guilty man or his friends, are positively immoral. (3.) There are virtuous principles incapable of being resolved into disinterested benevolence; such as a proper prudential regard for one’s own highest good, aspiration and effort after personal excellence, holy abhorrence of sin for its own sake, and just punishment of sin in order to vindi- cate righteousness. Ps. xcviu. 10: “Ye that love the Lorp, hate evil.” (4.) The idea of oughtness is the essential constitutive idea of virtue. No possible analysis of the idea of benevolence will give the idea of moral obligation. This is simple, irresolvable, ultimate. Oughtness is the genus, and benevolence one of the species comprehended in it.
These principles are admitted by some who yet refuse to accept the Church doctrine of the Atonement as the
necessary consequent. Barnes* argues (a) that punish-
ment is not intended, and does not even tend, to secure the reformation of the offender; (b) that the sole end of punishment is not to deter others from a repetition of the offence, and so protect the community; (c) “that punishment is intended as a proper expression of what is due to crime.” ‘It is inflicted because it is right it should be inflicted. It is inflicted because the offence deserves such an expression.”
2. As the essential and irresolvable characteristic of virtue is oughtness, and of sin its opposite oughtnotness,
* Atonement, pp. 186-202.
ee ee
THE DIVINE NATURE DEMANDS PUNISHMENT. 53
so it is an intrinsic and immutable attribute of sin that it ought to be punished. This obligation to punishment
is an ultimate fact of moral consciousness; it cannot be