But these are not the only adversaries we have to do with: tliere are others, pious, worthy, and very learned divines, who, respecting the point of Christ's satisfaction, are most strictly orthodox, and who, though they cannot find in their hearts directly to deny that such an attribute or power is essential to God, yet maintain all its egresses and its whole exercise resjiecting sin to be so free and dependent on the mere free motion and good pleasure of the divine will, that should not that oppose, God might by his nod, by his word, with- out any trouble, by other modes and ways besides the satisfaction of Christ, if it only seemed proper to his wisdom, take away, pardon,
DISTINCTIONS RESPECTING JUSTICE. 507
and make an end of sin, without inflicting any penalty for the trans- gression of his law; and this, it is said, was the opinion of Augustine. By which, I will say, rash and daring assertion, — be it spoken with- out offence, for they are truly great men, — -by their nod and breatb, they suspend and disperse the very strongest arguments by which the adversaries feel themselves most hardly pushed, and by which the belief of Christ's satisfaction is strongly supported, and deliver up our most holy cause, I had almost said defenceless, to be the sport of the Philistines. Nay, not very long ago, it has been dis- covered and lamented by the orthodox, that very considerable assist- ance has been imprudently given by a learned countryman of our own to these aliens, who defy the armies of the living God. " For if we could but get rid of this justice, even if we had no other proof," says Socinus, " that human fiction of Christ's satisfaction would be thoroughly exposed, and would vanish," Soc. of the Saviour, book iii. chap. 1, etc.
Of our own countrymen, the only one I know is Rutherford, a Scotch divine, who roundly and boldly asserts '^punitive justice to he a free act of the divine will." Nor is he content with the bare assertion, but, supported chiefly by his arguments to whom the schoolmen are so much indebted, he defends the fallacy against both Cameron and Voetius, those two thunderbolts of theological war; though, in my opinion, neither with a force of argument nor felicity of issue equal to his opponents. But both the one and the others grant that God hath decreed to let no sin pass unpunished without a satisfaction ; but that decree being supposed, with a law given, and a sanction of the same by threatenings, that a satisfaction was necessary. But that punitive justice necessarily requires the punish- ment of all sins, according to the rule of God's right and wisdom, this is what they deny, and endeavour to overturn.
But to me these arguments are altogether astonishing, — namely, " That sin-punishing justice should be natural to God, and yet that God, sin being supposed to exist, tnay either exercise it or not exer- cise it." They may also say, and with as much propriety, that truth is natural to God, but, upon a supposition that he were to converse with man, he might either use it or not; or, that omnipotence is natural to God, but upon a supposition that he were inclined to do any work without himself, that it were free to him to act omnipo- tently or not; or, finally, that sin-punishing justice is among the primary causes of the death of Christ, and that Christ was set forth as a propitiation to declare his righteousness, and yet that that jus- tice required not the punishment of sin, for if it should require it, how is it possible that it should not necessarily require it, since God would be unjust if he should not inflict punishment? Or farther, they might as well assert that God willed that justice should be
608 A DISSERTATION ON DIVINE JUSTICE. [PART I.
satisfied by so many and such great sufferings of his Son Christ, when that justice required no such thing; nay more, tliat setting aside the free act of the divine will, sin and no sin are the same with God, and that man's mortality hath not followed chiefly as the conse- quence of sin, but of the will of God. These and such like difficul- ties I leave to the authors of this opinion (for they are very learned men) to unravel; as to myself, they fill me with confusion and astonishment.
But this I cannot forbear to mention, that those very divines who oppose our opinion, when hard pushed by their adversaries, perpe- tually have recourse in their disputations to this justice as to their sacred anchor,^ and assert that without satisfaction God could not pardon sin consistently with his nature, justice and truth. But as these are very great absurdities, it would have seemed strange to me that any men of judgment and orthodoxy should have been so entangled in some of these sophisms as to renounce the truth on their account, unless I had happened at one time myself to fall into the same snare ; which, to the praise and glory of that truth, of which I am now a servant, I freely confess to have been my case.
But to avoid mistakes as much as possible in discussing the nature of this justice, we will make the following observations:—