sanctification is not in order to remission. But since sacrificial blood, by making expiation, and so securing remission, always effects purification, it is eminently proper that the instrumentality should be differently designated, as one or other effect might be in the special case most prominently thought of. To the second point the answer is obvious, that the sin of man really brings, in a true sense, under condemnation with himself, his body, his world, and the very instruments of his daily life and religious service. The disease of leprosy was chosen as a type or image of sin. Leprosy in the walls of a house was treated as an image of that in man. The priest was directed to slay a bird, to sprinkle the house seven times to make an atonement for the house. This is of course a figure from beginning to end; but a figure of what? ‘The leprosy is a figure of human sin- fulness, involving guilt and pollution. The atonement is a figure of human redemption from sin. In both cases the cleansing comes through the atonement or covering, and the covering is effected through sacrificial blood. :
When it is said that the Atonement had a bearing upon the divine nature, and in some real sense pro- pitiated God’s justice and so reconciled him to the sinner, it is by no means forgotten (a) that God is absolutely unchangeable in his states and moods, as well as in his essence; or (b) that instead of the Atonement being the cause of God’s love for his people, it is itself the effect - of that love pre-existing from eternity. For ‘God so loved the world, that fs gave his only-begotten Son ” (John ui. 16).
The Scriptural doctrine of Beaton is no more in- consistent with the divine unchangeableness than the Seripture doctrine with respect to the real efficacy of
The At- onement the effect, not the cause, of Goad’s love for his people.
OH APTER XII.
174 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
prayer. We may not be able to define the method of that consistency, yet it is not difficult to believe that the atoning work of Christ was present, like every act of prayer, in the divine mind from eternity. It by no means follows that because there are no chronological successions in God, there are therefore to be traced no relations of cause and effect through his pen pur- poses, or actions,
In like manner, our doctrine is not in the least incon-— sistent with the glorious truth that the love of God for his own people is eternal and _ self-originated—the cause, and not the effect, of the Atonement. The fact is, that his love for their persons, and his holy displeasure for their sins, were co-existent states of mind from eternity. And yet the apostle takes upon himself to say that the very elect themselves, so beloved, were, because of God’s righteousness, ‘‘By nature the children of wrath, even as others” (Eph. ii. 3). The wrath of God is a verity, being revealed from heaven, and coming even now upon the children of disobedience, and in many cases fearfully treasured up against the day of wrath to come (Rom 1 18; 1. 5). But it is asserted over and over again that “we shall be saved from wrath through Christ” (Rom. v. 9); and that ‘Christ delivered us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess, i. 10). Absolutely considered, God is unchangeable. But such a change in our relations to God was wrought by the work of Christ, that his infinite righteousness coincides with his infinite love in all their blessed manifestations and operations towards his own people for ever.
Young complains that our doctrine of Satisfaction leads inevitably to the conception of two different Gods.* “The one God is angry with the other God; and the incarnate God is represented as bearing the wrath of
* Life and Light of Men, pp. 284, 286.
EFFECTS OF CHRIST’S WORK. 175
_ the first.” He admits, that ‘“‘When we bow in adoring cuarrer
reverence before the eternal essential Unity, it is not ~~
hard to think of distinct aspects blending mysteriously
and harmoniously in one being, or of distinct agencies
and influences springing out of one source.” Although
we have not time to dwell upon the point, it is impos-
sible not to notice the very significant fact, that although
he professes to be, and doubtless is in his heart, a
devout believer in the real divinity of our Lord Jesus
Christ, yet having adopted the Unitarian theory as to
the nature of Christ’s work, he necessarily gravitates
towards the Unitarian theory as to the constitution of
his person. In the above extract, which harmonizes
with the tone of his whole book, he distinctly excludes
the Scriptural doctrine of the three-fold distinction of
persons in the unity of essence. If the first clause, in
which he speaks of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as
“distinct aspects,” stood alone, we would credit him with
being a Sabellian, holding that God is one single person
as well as one single essence, and admitting a modal
three-foldness in respect to manifestation and operation.