CHAPTER X.
The opinion oi' Socinus considered — What he thought of our present question,* namely, that it is the hinge on which the whole controversy concerning the satisfaction of Christ turns — Ilis vain boasting, as if, having disproved this vindicatory justice, he had snatched the prize from his adversaries — Other clear proofs of the satisfaction of Christ — That it is our duty to acquiesce in the revealed will of God — The truth not to be forsaken — Mercy and justice not opposite — Vain distinctions of Socinus concerning divine justice — The consideration of these distinctions — His first argument against vindicatory justice — The solution of it — The anger and severity of God, what — Universal and particular justice, in what they agree — The false reasoning and vain boasting of the adversary.
We come now to Socinus himself In almost all his writings he opposes this punitory justice. We shall consider what he hath
^ Book i. chap, xxiii., p. 180, "Of the Tnie Religion."
- Chap, xxviii. ^ Chap. xxii. 186, and chap, xxviii.
♦ Chap. XXX. 3, 9. « Chap. i. p. 78, of his Answer to CJrotius.
* Namely, Whether vindicatory justice be essential and natural to God, and the ex- ercise of it, or the punishment of sin, consequently necessary ? — Tii.
570 A DISSERTATION ON DIVINE JUSTICE. [PART II.
written against Covetus, in that treatise of his entitled, " Of Jesus Christ the Saviour/' and \Yhat he only repeats in other places, as occasion required. In the first book and first chapter, and also in the third book and first chapter, of that work, expressly, and of set purpose, he opposes himself vehemently and with all his might to the truth on this point. But because he very well understood that by the establishment of this justice a knife is put to the throat of his opinion, and that it cannot be defended (that is, that no reason can be given why Christ our Saviour is called Jesus Christ), he maintains that the whole controversy concerning the satisfaction of Christ hinges on this very question. The reader will perceive, from the arguments already used, that I am of the same opinion : for it being granted that this justice belongs to God, not even Socinus, though doubtless a man of a gi-eat, very artful, and fertile genius, could devise any way of obtaining salvation for sinners without a satisfaction ; for had he either found out one, or even feigned it upon a supposition, he would not have wanted the effrontery of imposing it on the minds of the credulous and fanatic ; which, however, he nowhere hath attempted.
But, on the other hand, gallantly supposing that he had removed this justice out of the way, as if the business were entirely settled, and the strong tower of his adversaries destroyed, ne highly glories in the triumphs acquired for himself and his followers ; " for," says he, " having got rid of this justice, had we no other argument, that human fiction of the satisfaction of Jesus Christ must be thoroughly detected, and totally vanish." This vain boasting of his the learned and pious have long ago sufficiently checked by innumerable testi- monies from Scripture.
And forasmuch as the fact is abundantly clear that Christ bore our sins, God laying them upon him, and that by his satisfaction he purchased eternal salvation, though it had even pleased God to keep the causes and reasons of this infinitely wise transaction hid to all eternity in the abyss of his own goodness and wisdom, it would have been our duty to acquiesce in the infinite holiness and wisdom of his will. So, also, it is beyond any doubt that no helps of our faith are to be despised, and that no revelations of the divine nature and will are to be neglected, by whicli our merciful Father leads us into a more intimate and saving knowledge of this mystery of holiness.
We, also, to whom the most sacred deposit of this divine truth liath been committed, would immediately judge ourselves unworthy of it should we spontaneously betray. any one point or jot of it, much less so strong a pillar of our faith and hope, to its adversaries. Though, then, we have other unanswerable proofs of the satisfaction of Christ, which the gates of hell shall in vain oppose, and numberless testi- monies of the God who cannot lie, so that we may suppose Socinus is only idly insulting those who grant that God might forgive sin
OPINION OF SOCINUS CONSIDERED. 571
without any intervention of a satisfaction, but that he would not, (an expression which I by no means approve), we however think it necessary that this bulwark of punitory justice, a point, beyond all doubt, of the last importance to the cause, however it ^hall be dis- posed of, should be defended from the insults of adversaries.
In the first place, then, in the first chapter of the before-mentioned book, when going to dispute against this justice, he supposes that, according to our opinion, it is opposed to mercy, and that it is con- trary to it, and builds upon this false supposition through the whole of his treatise, both in making his objections and answers, I acknow- ledge that he seized the opportunity of making this blunder from Covetus, against whom he is combating, who improperly and inac- curately hath said that this justice is opposed to mercy, because they have different effects; but we have formerly shown that they are neither essentially, nor actually, nor effectively opposite, as both of them are the very perfection of Deity itself, but that they are only distinguished as to their object, and not as to their subject. In all the sophisms, then, in which he afterward endeavours to prove that the Scripture acknowledges no such justice in God as is opposed to mercy, he trifles, through a perpetual mistake of the argument. But that justice which we mean, he says, is twofold in God. " The first," as he says, " is that by which he punishes and destroys the wicked and ungodly, — that is, those who obstinately persevere in wickedness, and who are not led, from a repentance of their sins, to have recourse to God. The second is that by which even those whom, in his great goodness, he approves as just, were he so to will it, could not stand in his presence."