The manner of it — What this learned author understands by the "internal
court" of God — This learned author's foiu-th argument — All acts of grace have a respect to Christ — His fifth argument — The answer — A dissertation of the various degrees of punishment— For what reason God may act unequally with equals— Concerning the delay of punishment, and its various dispensations.
The consideration of the ai'guments advanced by Mr Samuel
608 "^ A. DISSERTATION ON DIVINE JUSTICE. [PART II.
E-utherford^ against this truth which we are now maintaining shall conclude this dissertation. He maintains, as I have observed before, " That punitory justice exists not in God by necessity of nature, but freely;" and he has said that Twisse hath proved this by a variety of arguments, one of which, in preference to the others, he builds on, as unanswerable.
But, with this great man's leave, I must tell him that Twisse hath never even said, much less proved, " That punitory justice exists freely in God, and not from a necessity of nature;" nor, indeed, can it be said by any one, with any show of reason, for punitory justice denotes the habit of justice, nor is it less justice because it is puni- tory. But be assured the accurate Twisse hath never maintained that any habit exists in God freely, and not from a necessity of nature. We have before accounted in what sense habits are ascribed to God. Even the more sagacious Socinians do not fall into such a blunder; but they deny such a habit to exist in God at all, and entirely divest him of this justice. Twisse, indeed, maintains that the exercise of that justice is free to God, but grants that justice itself is a natural attribute of God; the Socinians, that it is only a free act of the divine will. Which party this learned author favours appears not from his words. If by justice he mean the habit, he sides with the Socinians; if the act and exercise, he is of the same opinion with Twisse, although he expresses his sentiments rather unhappily. But let us consider this learned writer's arguments: —
The first, which he acknowledges to be taken from Twisse (the same thing may be said of most of his others), and which he pronounces unanswerable, is this: "God gave up his most innocent Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to death, in consequence of his punitory justice, and it was certainly in his power not to have devoted him to death, for from no necessity of nature did God devote his Son to death; for if so, then God would not have been God, which is absurd, for of his free love he gave him up to death, John iii. 16; Rom. viii. 32."
As there is no need of a sword to cut this " indissoluble knot," as he calls it, let us try by Avords what we can do to untie it. I answer, then. The devoting of Christ to death is taken in a twofold sense: — 1. For the appointment of Christ to the office of surety, and to suffer the punishment of our sins in our room and stead. 2. For the in- fliction of punishment upon Christ, now appointed our surety, and our delivery through his death being now supposed.
The devoting of Christ to death, considered in the first sense, we deny to be an act of punitory justice, or to have arisen from that justice; for that act by which God destined his Son to the work of mediation, by which, in respect of their guilt, he transferred from us all our sins and laid them upon Christ, are acts of supreme dominion, ' la his book on Providence, clinp. xxii. page 345, OFsert. C.
RUTHERFORD REVIEV/ED. 609
and breathe love and grace ratlier than avenging justice. But tlie IDunishment of Christ, made sin for us, is an act of punitory justice; nor, upon the supposition that he was received in our room as our surety, could it be otherwise. And although, in drawing such conse- quences, I think we ought to refrain as to what might be possible, I am not, however, afraid to affirm that God could not have been God, — that is, just and true, — if he had not devoted to death his Son, when thus appointed our mediator.
What shall we say? — that even this learned man was aware of this twofold sense of the phrase, "The devoting of Christ to death?" He either had not thoroughly weighed that distinction, or else he is incon- sistent with and shamefully contradicts himself; for in the beginning of the argument he asserts, that " the devoting of Christ to death had its rise ixom punitory justice," but in the end he says it was from "free love." But certainly punishing justice is not free love. He must, then, either acknowledge a twofold appointment of Christ to death, or he cannot be consistent with himself But the passages of Scrip- ture that he quotes evidently mean the appointment of Christ to death, as we have explained it in the first sense of the phrase.
What reason this learned man had for so much boasting of this argument as unanswerable, let the reader determine ; to me it ap- pears not only very easily answerable, but far beneath many others that one disputing on such a subject must encounter.