Let us particularly examine some of this learned gentleman's ar- guments: " If," says he, " God must punish sin from a necessity of nature, he must punish it as soon as committed." Granted, were he to act by such a necessity of nature as denotes a necessary principle and mode of acting; but not if by a necessity that is improperly so called, because it is supposed that his nature necessarily requires that he should so act. As, for instance: suppose that he wills to speak, he must, by necessity of his nature, speak truly, for God cannot lie ; yet he speaks freely when he speaks truly.
Again: " If," says he, " God punished from a necessity of nature, then, as often as he inflicted punishment, he would inflict it to the utmost of his power, as fire burns with all its force; but this cannot be said without blasphemy."
Here again this learned man draws absurd conclusions fi'om a false supposition. The nature of God requires that he should punish as far as is just, not as far as he is able. It is necessary, sin being supposed to exist, that he should inflict punishment, — not the greatest that he is able to inflict, but as great as his right and justice require; for in inflicting punishment, he proceeds freely, according to the
» It is not Piscator's reasoning, but the kind of necessity implied in the reasoning, to wliich Owen takes exception. Tlie words "nature" and "natural" also occasion considerable ambiguity. Justice is natural and nccessan/, according to Owen, in so far as it is not an act of tlie will merely ; but he does not hold it to be natural in Piscator's sense, as operating by a blind and pliysical necessity, apart from the exercise of intel- ligence and volition, and the existence of an object requiring the manifestation of it. We might render the passage above as follows: " To this extent, then, I adopt Piscator's conclusion, — namely, in so far as he maintains the existence of a necessity, but not as regards tlie mode or kind of it." — Ed.
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rule of these. It is necessary that the glory of the divine holiness, purity, and dominion should be vindicated ; but in what manner, at what time, in what degree, or hy lohat kind of punishment, belongs entirely to God, and we are not of his counsels. But I am fully con- fident that the arguments last urged by this learned gentleman may be answered in one word. I say, then, God punishes according to what is due to sin by the rule of his right, not to what extent he is able. As, for instance: God does not use his omnipotence from an absolute necessity of nature ; but supposing that he wills to do any work without himself, he cannot act but omnipotently. Neither, however, doth it hence follow that God acts to the utmost extent of liis power, for he might have created more worlds. We do not, then, affirm that God is so bound by the laws of an absolute necessity that, like an insensible and merely natural agent, it would be impossible for him, by his infinite wisdom, to assign, according to the rule and demand of his justice, degrees, modes, duration, and extension of punishment, according to the degrees of the demerit or circumstances of the sin, or even to transfer it upon the surety, who has volun- tarily, and with his own approbation, substituted himself in the room of sinners : but we only affirm that his natural and essential justice indispensably requires that every sin should have its "just recompense of reward ; " and were not this the case, a sinful creature might emancipate itself from the power of its Creator and Lord. This very learned man having, according to his usual custom, introduced these preliminary observations, at length advances his answers to Piscator's argument, the nature and quality of which we shall particularly con- sider. That which he chiefly depends upon, which he forges from the Scripture, that asserts God, in respect of sin, to be a " consuming fire," we have examined in the proof of our second argument, and have shown of how little weight it is to invalidate the force of our argument.
To that asseveration of Abraham, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" he thus answers, " He will do right certainly, but his own righo, and will exercise it according to his own free appoint- ment. But without the divine appointment I acknowledge no right to the exercise of which God can be influenced by any kind of necessity."
Ans. That God exerciseth his right, or doeth right, according to his own free appointment, may be admitted in a sound sense ; for in that exercise of his right he uses volition and understanding, or, more properly, he hath not appointed or determined so to act, for so to act is natural and essential to him concerning the things about which there is no free determination. It is, indeed, of the free determina- tion of God that any right can be exercised, or any attribute mani- fested, for he freely decreed to create creatures, over which he hath a right, but he might not have decreed it so; and in every exercise of his right there are certain things, which we have mentioned before.