human depravity that has ever disgraced the earth is more amazing than this denial, that the self-assumption of the penalty of the broken law of God in the stead of his elect is an exercise of sovereign and disinterested love. Christ is the one satisfied as well as the one satis- fying, the one punishing as well as the one punished ; but he loves us enough to punish himself in our place. This is THE wonder of eternity. This is the inexhaust-
:
OHAYTER XX.
The ob- jection that the demands of the law are per- sonal, an- swerec.,
286 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
ible theme of the heavenly song of adoration and grati- tude for ever.
3. By far the most plausible objection that is brought to our doctrine is, that the demands of justice for penal satisfaction are essentially personal. The Church argues that there is an immutable principle in the divine nature, lying back of, not determined by, but itself determining, the optional will of God, demanding the just punishment of all sin, and hence the absolute necessity of a penal solution of the claims of the law in the case of every sinner. But this demand is, that the agent sinning, and not another person, shall suffer therefor. If God is able, in the exercise of sovereign prerogative, to substi- tute person for person, the objectors urge, why is he not able, by the same prerogative, to dispense with the pun- ishment altogether? It is asserted, that in the view of the moral sense of all men there is, and can be, no con- nection between the punishment of the sin of one man and the sufferings of a different person—that vicarious punishment, in the strict judicial sense of these terms, is a simple absurdity. How can the demands of the divine nature be satisfied by pains inflicted upon a person arbi- trarily substituted in the place of the criminal by the divine will ?
There is force in this objection, and, I think, it must be conceded by all that justice cannot demand and exe- cute the punishment of a sin upon any party that is not truly and really responsible for it; and that the sin of one person cannot be really expiated by means of the sufferings of another, unless they be in such a sense legally one that in the judgment of the law the suffer- ing of the one is the suffering of the other. ‘The real- istic doctrine of the numerical oneness of the race, and the actual coagency of all the race in Adam and of all the elect in Christ, was excogitated to meet this difficulty.
OBJECTIONS STATED AND ANSWERED. 287
We object to it because it makes the oneness to be physi- cuarrer eal, and not moral. Now, the eternal Logos, in council * with the Father and Holy Ghost, assumed the responsi- bility of the federal relations of his elect to the law from all eternity. ‘They were created and permitted to fall to the end of their redemption in Christ. All God’s dealing with them, from the very beginning, has had reference to their relation to Christ, and to Christ’s covenant responsibility for them. The conditions are all absolutely unique. The case is without parallel ex- cept in that of Adam, who was made the representative and agent of the whole race, for their benefit, in those transactions upon which their eternal confirmation in holiness and happiness or everlasting loss depended. Surely in a case embracing conditions so unparalleled, it is absurd for human reason to decide that the God- man was not, in the eye of omniscient justice, really and truly penally responsible for the sins of his people, and in such a sense morally one with them—that is, his suffering the penalty due to their sins is in full legal effect equivalent to the execution of the penalty on. them.
In the body of this book I have shown that if the Scriptures are true, then Christ does sustain this unique relation to his people. The negative decision of reason in the case ought to be very direct and certain, if it is to be admitted as of sufficient force to balance reasonably all the external and internal, natural and supernatural, The ob- historical, moral and spiritual evidences of the Christian ie religion. cr 4. Socinus objected that the temporal sufferings .of single er
nm, and Christ were in no sense an equivalent for the execution his suitér- of the penalty of thé law on the persons of all sinners, 7&4? Each and every sinner had incurred the penalty of eter- short
nal death for himself severally. But Christ did not aaaved
19
CHAPTER XA,
288 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.