1. It is unquestionably a strong presumptive evi- dence in favour of the truth of our position, that the most learned, impartial, and minute students of the origi- nal sources of all knowledge on this subject, such as Neander, Dorner, Faber, Shedd, Schaff, &c., all in effect bear independent testimony to the substantial truth of the judgment pronounced by the first-named in his Church History—“ As it regards the work of Christ as the Redeemer of mankind, we find already in the lan- cuage used by the Church Fathers on this point, in the period under consideration, all the elements that lay at the basis of the doctrine as it afterwards came to be de- defined in the Church.” t .
2. Young confesses that the early Fathers applied to the work of Christ the ordinary sacrificial language bor- rowed from the Old and New Testaments. But in chapter eight I showed that Outram has presented evi- dence to saturation that the heathen, Jews, and Chris- tians of that age, all agreed in understanding this sacrificial language as signifying, in a strict sense, the vicarious suffering of penal evils on the part of the vic- tim in behalf of the transgressor. It will suffice for our
* Life and Light of Men, p. 422. + George Stanley Faber’s Primitive Doctrine of Justification. t Neander’s Church History, vol. i., p. 640.
HISTORY OF OPINION. 255
purpose, at present, to cite only the testimony of the cnarrsa great metropolitan, cosmopolitan, learned controversi- “~~ alist and church historian, Eusebius, bishop of Ceesarea. His words are as follows: “An attentive observer may learn this very thing also from the law respecting sacri- fices ; which enjoins every one who offers a sacrifice to lay his hands on the head of the victim, and holding it by the head to bring it to the priest, as offering the ani- mal instead of his own head. Wherefore its language respecting every victim is, Let the offerer present it be- fore the Lord, lay his hands upon the head of his offer- ing. And this was observed in every sacrifice, no victim being offered in any other way ; whence it is concluded that the lives of the victims were given instead of the lives of the offerers. . . . For as pious persons, who were familiar with God, and had their minds enlightened by the Divine Spirit, saw that they needed a great remedy for the expiation of deadly sins, they concluded that a ransom for their salvation ought to be presented to God, the disposer of life and death. . . . As long as men had no better victim, none that was great, valuable, and worthy of God, it behoved them to offer him animal sacrifices in ransom for their own life, and as substitutes for their own nature.” *
3. I proved, also, in chapter eight, by arguments drawn directly from the Scriptures, that the Old Testament sacrifices did actually expiate offences by means of vica- rious penal sufferings; and that they, by God’s appoint- ment, were eminent types and symbols of the redemptive work of Christ. It hence follows that the conditional admission of Young, that “if the doctrine of Satisfac- tion be there [in the sacrificial institutions and language of the Old Testament], it is also in the post-apostolic
* Demonstr. Evang., L. 1, c. 10, pp. 270-340. Quoted by Outram, Dis. 1., chap. Xvii.
17
CHAPTER xIx.
Polycarp.
Clemens Romanus.
256 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
writings,” becomes a simple statement of unquestionable fact.
4. In connection with and in addition to the foregoing evidence, our allegation is conclusively proved by the positive statements of many of these early writers, which, as will be seen, involve in explicit terms the essential elements of the doctrine of expiation.
Polyearp (a pupil of John), in his Epistle to the Philippians,* quoted by Shedd, says: “Christ is our Saviour; for through grace are we righteous, not by works: for our sins he has even taken death upon him- self, has become the servant of us all, and, through his death for us, our hope and the pledge of our righteous- ness. The heaviest sin is unbelief in Christ: his blood will be demanded of unbelievers; for to those to whom the death of Christ, which obtains the forgiveness of sins, does not prove the ground of justification, 1t proves a ground of condemnation. Our Lord Jesus Christ suf- fered himself to be brought even to death for our sins;
. . . let us, therefore, without ceasing, hold stead- fastly to him who is our hope and the earnest of our righteousness, even Jesus Christ, ‘who bare our sins in his own body on the tree.’ >