carter pendence of each other, in each of the two great divisions a of) the Church—by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the West ; and Nicholas, Bishop of Methone, in Mes- senia, in the East. From the fact that the essential principles involved in Christ’s work of vicarious expiation were, by these men and their successors during the entire era of scholasticism, made the subjects of a more thorough and systematic investigation than ever before, the ene- mies of the truth have often pretended to believe that these principles were inventions of the schoolmen, and have disparagingly designated our doctrine the ‘“ Scholas- tic Theory of Satisfaction.” This notorious fact makes it unnecessary for me to quote the words of the repre- sentative theologians of those ages to prove that they understood the work of Christ in the same sense as our- selves. Anselm of Canterbury and Nicholas of Methone acted as the organs of a spontaneous movement of the whole Church. It is undeniable, also, that the advocates of the doctrine of the literal satisfaction of divine justice by Christ—-such as Anselm, Bernard, Hugh St. Victor,* Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, &c.—were, with all their faults, the best, in every Christian sense, of the school- men. It was the Pantheistic John Scotus Erigena (corcum 860) who denied this truth. It was the semi- Pelagian Duns Scotus (4.p. 1265-1308) who depreciated the value of Christ’s vicarious sufferings, and the neces- sity for satisfaction——placing that necessity in the optional will instead of the immutable justice of God, and making the satisfaction of Christ but putative only— a satisfaction (so called) of love, and not of justice. And it was the infamous Abelard (A.D. 1142) who taught in precise terms the Moral Influence Theory of Socinus and Bushnell and Young and others. As we might expect,
* Christus ergo nascendo debitum hominis Patri solvit et moriendo reatum hominis expiavit—De Sacram. cap. iv. Hagenbach.
HISTORY OF OPINION. 265
the latter was earnestly combated on this, as upon other cmarrar points involving deadly error, by the deeply religious Bernard of Clairvaux (A.D. 1153), quoted by Milner and by Hagenbach. After noticing Abelard’s Moral Influence Theory, he says: ‘Is this the whole, then, of the great Bernara mystery of godliness—this which any uncircumcised and 00" unclean person may easily penetrate? What is there in this beyond the common light of nature?” “For if one died for all, then were all dead, that the satisfaction of one might be imputed to all, as he alone bore the sins of all; and now he who offended, and he who satisfied divine justice, are found the same, because the head and the body is one Christ.”
Of such ‘‘ Reformers before the Reformation” as Wy- cliffe (A.D. 1324-1384), and Wessel (A.D. 1419-1489), Hagenbach* testifies “That they attached importance to the theory of Satisfaction in its practical bearing upon evangelical piety, and thus introduced the period of the Reformation.” Wycliffe, quoted by Baur, says: ‘“ And wyclitte. since, according to the third supposition, it behoves that satisfaction should be made for sin, therefore it behoves that the same nature of man should satisfy forasmuch as it had become indebted in its great progenitor; which no man was able to do, unless he was at the same time both Ged and man.” “It is a light word to say that God might, of his power, forgive this sin [Adam’s] with- out the aseeth [satisfaction] which was made for it, for God might do so if he would ; but his justice would not suffer vt, but requires that each trespass be punished either on earth or in hell, And God may not accept a _ person to forgive him without satisfaction.”{ Milner quotes the following sentences from an Apology for Wy-
* History of Doctrines, vol. ii. p. 47. + De Incarnatione et Morte Christi. } Tracts and Treatises of Wycliffe, p. 84.
CHAPTER XIX,
John Wessel.
266 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
cliffe, preserved in the library of the Cathedral of York, by Dr. Thomas James, some time librarian at Oxford, the contents of which are chiefly extracts from Wycliffe’s own manuscripts: “He persuaded men to trust wholly to Christ, to rely altogether upon his sufferings, and not to seek to be justified m any other way than by his justice.” ‘That unbelievers, though they might per- form works apparently good in their matter, still were not to be accounted righteous men ; that al! who followed Christ became righteous through the participation of his righteousness, and would be saved.”