Zwingle and Luther and Calvin, each independent in his origin, drawing from different sources, and marked by many profound characteristic differences from the others; and with them all the four great spontaneous move- ments of reform, in Switzerland, Germany, France, and Britain, each of which was so truly original, and marked by characteristic differences, which still survive after three centuries of change; and finally, all of the great evangelical denominations into which the Churches of the Reformation have been developed, who now embrace the sum total of Christ’s kingdom on the face’ of the earth ;—all these, and whatsoever persons or bodies of this kind have ever existed, in whatever else they have differed, have agreed in maintaining that the virtue of the redemption of Christ resides in its power to expiate sin and thus to propitiate God. (4.) We maintain, also, in the fourth place, that true religion has never flourished when this doctrine of expiation has been explicitly de- nied, but that the invariable sequence, if not consequence, of its denial may be read in the history of the ancient Gnostics and Arians, in that of such heretics as Scotus Erigena and Abelard during the Middle Ages, of the Socinians of the sixteenth century, and of their succes- sors, the Unitarians of England and America, and the Neologians of Germany, during the eighteenth and nineteenth. |
CHAPTER >
XIX.
CHAPTER XIX.
250 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
3. We maintain, over against the advocates of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement: (1.) That it is susceptible of proof that, with few exceptions, the whole Church from the beginning has held the doctrine of Redemption in the sense of a literal propitiation of God by means of the expiation of sin. (2.) That this view of the nature of Redemption has been held most definitely and earnestly, as a general fact, by those men,
and in those branches and ages of the Church which have
exhibited the most decided evidence of the Saviour’s presence and favour. (3.) That each one of the great sections into which the Christian Church has been di- vided—the Greek and Roman, Lutheran and Reformed —unite in maintaining that the gospel is founded upon the expiation of guilt. (4.) That all of the later and more perfect Confessions, both of the Lutheran and of the Reformed Churches, agree in teaching in the fullest terms the strictly vicarious character of both Christ's active and passive obedience, and the imputation of that perfect obedience to the believer as the strictly judicial ground of his justification. And (5.) That the origin of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement among the semi-Socinian Dutch Remonstrants, and its affiliation with the speculations of the heretical French Professors of Saumur, give but a doubtful indication as to its pos- sible connection, for a protracted period, with spiritual health and fruitfulness.
II. I now proceed to present the evidence which, I think, proves the points above stated. Let it be remem- bered that, as a matter of course, all that can be pre- sented here is a mere specimen of much more that remains behind. Let it be remembered, also, that our position, assumed in the first statement of our doctrine, is not that either of the heterodox theories we are here combating is false, but that they are each essentially
HISTORY OF OPINION. 251
defective. Hence it will in no way weaken the force of cmarrer our argument if it be proved that the positive principles ia: maintained by either or both of them have been taught generally or uniformly in the Church. If the principle
of literal expiation be admitted at all in connection with those principles specially signalized by each of the other views, then, from the very nature of the case, the fact of expiation, since it concerns God, must be central; and
the other principles, since they concern the creature, must
be subordinate to it. It will be abundantly sufficient
for all the purposes of my argument, therefore, if I suc-
ceed in tracing the principle I contend for as a constant element, more or less clearly discriminated, of the faith
of God’s people. *
The Rev. Dr. John Young of Edinburgh has recently nistorical gone over the monuments of Patristic theology, &c., for (5. the purpose of tracing the history of the origin and Yours growth of the doctrine of Satisfaction. He claims that refuted. there is no trace of this doctrine in the Scripture ; that it has its root in the ignorance and depravity of human nature ; that it emerged in the Christian Church as a
* T have drawn the testimonies cited from the following sources :—
Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines. Edited by the Rev. H. B. Smith, D.D., New York.
Shedd’s History of Christian Doctrine. New York.
Dorner’s History of Development of Doctrine of the Person of Christ. Clark’s Edinburgh edition.
Ullman’s Reformers before the Reformation. Clark’s Edinburgh edi- tion.
Neander’s Church History. Torrey’s translation,