honours, and rights. BE On the other hand, according to the Moral Influence scrip. Hypothesis, a sinner may with evident propriety be pak called to credit the communications of the Divine Mes- fe 7aith siah, and to yield obedience and sympathy to the spiri- cilable tual influence of the heavenly Medium of the Father's rite love to man. But on this hypothesis, it is only in a ho! very far-fetched sense that we could be said to trust on Coe him, and to commit all our interests to his charge. And theory it is simply preposterous to pretend that the Scriptures would make trust in Christ the one sole and essential thing to be done in order to the remission of sins, if the whole design and effect of the work of Christ was to produce a moral impression upon ourselves—that is, save us by persuading us to be good. If that were so, the one characteristic point of the gospel would be to make us look inward and reform, On the other hand, as above shown, and as the whole world knows, the one characteristic point of the gospel is to make us look out- ward to Christ, and trust self-abandoningly upon him.
It is true, also, that the Scriptural language with re- spect to faith refuses absolutely to coalesce with the Governmental Hypothesis. If it be true that Christ did not suffer in the strict sense as our substitute; if he did not occupy our law-place in the covenant’ upon the ful- filment of which our life was suspended; if he did not suffer the penalty of the law in our stead; if his righteousness is not credited to our account as the - ground of our justification ; if the effect of his death is actually to save none, but to put all men indiscrimi- nately in a salvable state ;—then, in such a case, there can obviously be no propriety in our being required to believe on Christ as the one sole condition of salvation.
In such a case, it would be congruous enough to require
CHAPTER XV.
216 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT,
us to submit to God as Sovereign, and to credit the per- sonal claims, the official character, and the infallible teaching of Christ. We may even with sufficient pro- priety be required to trust to his work as far as it is concerned in putting us in a salvable condition. But it plainly would be absurd, in that case, to make the one sole condition upon which remission of sins and actual salvation are instantly suspended to be trust wpon Christ — ignoring the fact that his work, costly as it is, is only one of the independent grounds on which our salvation depends.
On the Governmental Hypothesis, faith must be either (a) the sovereignly imposed condition of salvation, or (6) as including evangelical obedience accepted in the place of perfect legal obedience for Christ’s sake, as the ground of our justification. But since saving or justifying faith, as above shown, involves trust, its very essence excludes the possibility of its being itself the ground upon which justification depends. Faith is in its nature self-empty- ing, appropriating and building upon that on which its trust terminates. If belief in or upon Christ is the sole condition of salvation, if it is the one thing to be done by the inquirer, and if salvation invariably follows upon its exercise, then it is beyond question that Christ’s per- son and work, on which the faith terminates, must be the ground, the meritorious principle, on which the. salvation rests, and the efficient virtue by which it is effected.
Thus the very nature of saving faith, as set forth, in the constant language of Scripture, makes it evident that it is the instrument whereby we are united to Christ and made participants in his righteousness, and in all the eovenanted consequences thereof.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE ORTHODOX DOCTRINE AS TO THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT PROVED FROM WHAT THE SCRIPTURES TEACH AS TO ITS ABSOLUTE NECESSITY IN ORDER TO THE SALVATION OF SINNERS.
p==aHH orthodox doctrine of the nature of the #| Atonement is further certainly established by the teaching of Scripture as to the sense in which the expiation of sin by Christ was an absolutely essential prerequisite in order to the salvation of sinful men, and therefore NECESSARY to that end. It is earnestly maintained by all Calvinists that since all men are sinners, whose natural claims as mere creatures upon their Creator are justly forfeited, salvation must spring up, if at all, out of grace, as a product of the sove- reign will of God. If, therefore, salvation be a matter of grace and sovereignty, it cannot be a matter of neces- sity in any sense of the word whatsoever. But on the hypothesis that it is the purpose of God to save guilty men, the question must arise, In what sense, and on what grounds, was the atoning work of Christ necessary to that end ? |