Trenzeus ($202) says: ‘‘ We were God’s enemies and debtors, as Christ in his priestly work fulfilled the law.’”* And again: ‘ And on account of this, in the last times the Lord, through his own incarnation, restored us into friendship, having been made mediator between God and man; truly propitiating the Father, against whom we had sinned, in our behalf.’’++
Eusebius of Ceesarea (A.D. 270-340), quoted by Shedd, says: ‘“ How then -did he make our sins to be his own, and how did he bear our iniquities? . . . . The Lamb of God did not only these things for us, but he under- went torments, and was punished for us; that which he was no ways exposed to for himself, but we were so by the multitude of our sins: and thereby he became the cause of the pardon of our sins; namely, because he underwent death, stripes, reproaches, transferring the thing which we had deserved to himself: and was made a curse for us, taking to himself the curse that was due to us; for what was he but a price of redemption for our souls ?”’+
Athanasius the Great—-champion of tne absolute divinity of Christ (A.D. 278-373), leading and repre- senting a Church party very different from that repre- sented by the former witness, the compromising Eusebius of Ceesarea (as quoted by Dorner)—says: “The death, which is termed his, the death of the Logos, was a ran- som for the sins of men, and a death of death.”§
* TIT. 18; cited from Thomasius (iii. 176) by Hagenbach, vol. i., p. 184. a Lbid.;/ xviie 1 { Demonstratio Evangelica, lib. x. c. 2 Contra Arianos, 1, 45.
CHAPTER XIX.
Trenzeus.
Eusebius of Ceesar- ea.
Atha- nasius.
CITAPTER ATX.
Cyril of Jeru- salem.
Chrys- ostom.
Augus- tine.
260 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
“Laden with guilt, the world lay under the condemna- tion of the law; but the Logos took the judgment (xpiua) up into himself, and suffering in the flesh for all, he bestowed salvation upon all.”* ‘The first and prin- cipal ground of the Logos’ becoming man was that the condemnation of the law, by which we are burdened with guilt and eternal punishment, might be removed by the payment of the penalty.’+
Cyril of Jerusalem (+386), quoted by Shedd, says : “Christ took sin upon his own body. He who died for us was no insignificant creature, he was no mere animal victim, he was no mere man, he was not an angel—but he was God incarnate. The iniquity of us sinners was not so great as the righteousness of him who died for us; the sins we have committed are not equal to the atonement made by him who laid down his life for us.’’t
Chrysostom (A.D. 354-407), quoted by Milner, says: “What a saying! What mind can comprehend it? He made a just person a sinner, that he might make sinners just. But the apostle’s language is still stronger. He doth not say he made him a sinner, but sin; that we might be made, not righteous, but righteousness, even the righteousness of God.’’§
The great and good Augustine (A.D. 354—430), spend- ing his whole strength upon the defence of the truth revealed in Scripture as to human sin and divine grace, against able and active opponents, was undeniably to a great extent in the dark as to the true nature of the piacular work of Christ. He generally uses the term justification in the general and indefinite sense in which it is now used by the Roman Catholic theologians, as including the rémission of sins and the infusion of grace.
* Contra Arianos, 1, 60. { Catecheses, lib. xiii., sect. 33. t De Incarnatione, ¢. xi.—xiv. ? Hom. ii., on 2 Cor., chap. vy.
e s OI Nn es!
HISTORY OF OPINION. 261
Nevertheless, as Young candidly acknowledges, “ we find, especially in his Confessions, and in the touching utter- ances of his religious experience, that which plainly involves the idea, though the distinctive term is not employed, of a satisfaction to divine justice on account of human sin.” * As quoted by Milner: ‘He was made sin: as we are made righteousness, not our own, but of God, nor in ourselves, but in him ; as he was made sin, not his own, ce ours, nor was fe appointed so in him- self, but in us.” +
“ But Christ without guilt [personal] took upon him- self our punishment, in order that he might thus expiate our guilt, and do away with our punishment.” }
‘All men are separated from God by sin. Hence they can be reconciled with him only through the remission of sin; and this only through the grace of a most merciful Saviour, and this grace through the one only Victim of the most true and only Priest.” §