Christ's satisfaction would be thoroughly exposed and would vanish.” * Priestley says that “justice in the Deity can be no more than a modification of that good- ness or benevolence which is his sole governing prin- ciple.” + Young{ denies that there is any such thing as rectilineal justice in our sense in God at all. He admits that God is just in the sense of never defrauding any one of any good thing due to him, but he denies utterly that any moral excellence demands the infliction of evil upon a repentant sinner. In like manner Bush- nell § through all his dishonouring caricatures of the faith of the Church, denies that there is any excellence in the divine nature determining God to treat sin accord- ing to its intrinsic ill-desert, and that the punishment which he inflicts upon sin is in any way different from paternal chastisement, designed for the good of the offender.
(2.) All the advocates of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement, although they talk of justice in a manner very different from the class just referred to, yet hold an opinion which in its last analysis comes to the same thing. They both deny that the disposition to treat sin as it deserves, because of its own intrinsic evil, is an excellence, or that it belongs to God. They both hold that the sole motive for the penal evils attached to the violations of the divine law is that simple benevo- lence “‘ which,” in the words of Priestley, “is God’s sole governing principle.” The only difference is that the advocate of the Moral Influence or Socinian view of the Atonement makes the good of the individual concerned, in every given case, the absolute end of the benevo- lence of God in his chastisement; while the Govern- mental Atonement Theory makes the good of the subjects
* De Servatore, iii., 1. { Life and Light of Men, chap. iv. t Theol. Rep., 1., 417. ? Vicarious Sacrifice, part. ili., chaps. i.—iil.
OHAPTER xx.
The Go- vern- mental Theory comes to the same thing.
CHAPTER xx.
282 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
of God’s moral government in general the absolute end of that benevolence. Dr. N. W. Taylor says:* “ Justice, on the part of a perfect moral governor, is a benevolent disposition to maintain, by the requisite means, his authority as the necessary condition of the highest hap- piness of his kingdom.” ‘Justice always implies a cor- respondent right somewhere to some good or benefit which is the object of the right... .. As punishment is in no respect a good to the transgressor, it can in no respect be the object of a right on his part; and there- fore cannot in this respect be an act of justice to him, nor an. act of justice to him in any sense, except that he, by his act of transgression, has created a right to his punishment on the part of the public,’’—that is, because his punishment will directly or indirectly contribute to the happiness of the public.
That is, both of these false theories of the Atonement resolve justice into benevolence. We hold this to be a metaphysical absurdity. We challenge the world either (a) to prove that mankind are destitute of the ideas of “right,” of ‘ oughtness,” of “justice,” &¢., or (b) to trace the generation of either one or all of these ideas from the ideas of benevolence or of happiness. We agree that benevolence respects the happiness of others, and that benevolence is a moral excellence which ornaments the divine nature, and which men ought to possess and to exercise. But the idea of oughtness is more ele- mental than the idea of benevolence, and it cannot be analyzed into anything more elemental. It is an inde-~ pendent and ultimate idea which stands by itself. But if the idea of moral obligation is ultimate and inde- pendent, it follows, from its very nature, that it is im- trinsically supreme and absolute. Its dictates may coincide with those of benevolence, but if not, they must
* Moral Government, vol. ii., p. 280.
OBJECTIONS STATED AND ANSWERED. 283
take precedence of: them. The man would prove him- carrer self to be a moral idiot who could question whether that 2 which is right ought to be done in preference to that which is the cause of happiness, no matter to whom. Besides this fact, that no metaphysician has ever been
able to trace the genesis of the ideas of “rightness,” ‘“oughtness,” “justice,” out of either of the ideas of “benevolence” or “happiness,” every sane man in the | spontaneous judgments of his life distinguishes between benevolence and justice, as things generically distinct. Every human being judges practically of sin in himself
and others that it is intrinsically ill-deserving, A re- pentant sinner would deserve punishment as much if he
were the only creature in the universe as he would in a thronged world.