demption, on the other hand, must agree in maintaining that God provided the Atonement for the good of all men indiscriminately, and that election comes in sub- ordinately to redemption, either conditioned on foreseen faith (so the Arminians), or as a sovereign purpose, upon the part of God, to make certain the success of the general purpose of redemption at least in the case of the persons elected (so the Calvinistic Universalists). Jenkyn* represents the dispensation of sovereign electing grace as supervening to prevent the failure of redemption, so far at least as the elect are concerned: “The entire failure of the Eden dispensation would have clouded the divine character if it had not been rescued The entire failure of the Sinai experiment would have reflected dishonour upon the divine glory, but it was redeemed by the establishment of a better hope..,... The whole mediatorial work of Jesus Christ is so worthy and so meritorious that it deserves that measures should be taken to inswre it from entire failure.” The italics are his, On this theory, since so many of God’s “ ew- * Jenkyn on the Extent of the Atonement, pp. 824, 325.
STATEMENT OF DOCTRINE. 335
periments” “entirely fail,’ and since even the awful cmrrse sacrifice of his own Son is barely prevented from entire —“_ failure by special intervention, and after all is an utter failure as to the larger part of all it was set to do, who shall insure us that heaven shall not fail, or that the sal- vation of the saints may not be at last confounded? Be- hold also what this redemption, which these men so glory in, is worth. It saves no single soul. It is prevented from being an absolute failure by a divine intervention. This view gives all the glory of salvation to election. The measure of the virtue of this redemption may be seen in the fate of the non-elect. (2.) Was the motive which prompted God to give his
Son to die for men, and which prompted Christ to die, the highest conceivable love which God can. have for a creature, making it certain that he will also with him freely give the objects of that love all things, and was it a personal love of certain definite individuals foreknown from eternity ; or, on the other hand, was it a general and impersonal philanthropy, or love of mankind in general, coexisting with a good pleasure to allow the majority of those so loved to perish, some without even the knowledge of the redemption provided at such cost, and others without any saving interest in it? All the teformed Churches believe that the former of these al- ternatives is the true statement of the motive prompting the Father and the Son in the work of redemption ; while all the advocates of a general and indefinite Atonement necessarily maintain that the latter is the true statement.
(3.) Did Christ die with the design and effect of mak- ing the salvation of all men indifferently possible, and the salvation of none certain; or did he die in pursuance of an eternal covenant between the Father and himself for the purpose as well as with the result of effecting the salvation of his own people ? | 22
CHAPTER 7K,
336 THE DESIGN OF THE ATONEMENT. |
(4.) Is the impetration (sacrificial purchase—merito- rious procurement) of salvation so connected in the plan of salvation with its gracious application that they re- spect specifically the same persons, and the latter follows certainly upon the former; or is the impetration general and indefinite, while the application is personal and limited? This is the precise form in which the question was debated by Testardus, Amyraldus, Daillé, Spanheim, Rivetus, Du Moulin, Richard Baxter, and John Owen. Hence this is the precise issue met by the deliverance of the Westminster Assembly in the very midst of these controversies: “To ALL those for whom Christ hath purchased redemption, he doth certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same,’ &c.*
(5.) And finally, Did the Lord Jesus Christ impetrate or purchase the gracious influences of the Holy Ghost and all the fruits of the Spint for those for whom he died ; or did he effect, by his sacrifice, nothing more
than the removal of legal impediments out of the way.
of their salvation, either leaving them to provide their own faith and repentance, or sovereignly providing for an exceptional few, selected out of the mass of those for whom he died, out of a benevolent principle altogether different from that exercised in the gift of redemption ? The Reformed Churches uniformly hold the former, while the advocates of universal redemption necessarily hold the latter of these alternatives.
* Westminster Confession, chap. vili., 7 8.
iat oe
CHAPTER III.
THE QUESTION, WHAT IS THE TRUE RELATION WHICH THE PROBLEM AS TO THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT SUSTAINS TO THAT AS TO ITS DESIGN, EXAMINED.