What this learned writer farther adds in support of his argument is founded on a mistaken idea of the subject in question; for as the necessity of punishing sin arises from the right and justice of God, it is by no means necessary that he should punish it in one subject more than in another, but only that he should punish it, and that thereby his right may be restored and his justice satisfied.
The second argument of this learned writer is this: "As God freely has mercy on whom he will, — for he is under obligation to none, and yet mercy is essential to him, — so God does not by any necessity of nature owe punishment to a sinner. Although, then, man owe obedience to God, or a vicarious compensation by means of punishmejit, from the necessity of a decree, yet those who say that God, by necessity of nature, owes the good of punitory justice to the universe, which were he not to execute he would not be God, — those, I say, indirectly deny the existence of a God."
Although any one may perceive that these assertions are unsub- stantial, unfounded, and more obscure than even the books of the Sibyls, we shall, however, make a few observations upon them. In the first place, then, it must be abundantly clear, from what has been already said, that mercy and justice are different in res23ect of their exercise, nor need we now farther insist on that point. But how this learned man will prove tliat sparing mercy, — which, as not only the nature of the thing itself requires, but even the Socinians with the orthodox agree, ought to be viewed in the same light as puni- tory justice, — is essential to God, when he affirms punitory justice to exist in God freely, I cannot conjecture. But as tliere is no one
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who doubts but that God does all things for the glory and manifes- tation of his own essential attributes, why it should be more accept- able to him, in his administration respecting sin committed, to exer- cise an act of the will purely free, no excellence of his nature so requir- ing, than of an essential property,^ to do in all respects whatsoever he pleaseth, and to spread abroad its glory, it will be difficult to assign a reason. God, I say, has a proper regard for the glory of his attributes; and as mercy earnestly and warmly urges the free pardon of sins, if no attribute of the divine nature required that they should be punished, it is strange that God, by an act of his will entirely free, should have inclined to the contrary. But we have shown before that the Scrip- tures lay a more sure foundation for the death of Christ.
Secondly, God does not owe to the sinner punishment from a necessity of nature, but he owes the infliction of punishment on account of sin to his own right and justice, for thence the obligation of a sinner to punishment arises; nor is the debt of obedience in rational creatures resolvable into a decree in any other respect than as it is in consequence of a decree that they are rational creatures.
In the third place, the conclusion of this argument would require even the Delian swimmer's abilities to surmount it. So very puzzling and harsh is the diction, that it is difficult to naake any sense of it ; for what means that sentence, " That God, by a necessity of nature, owes the good of punitory justice to the universe ?" The good of the universe is the glory of God himself To owe, then, " the good of punitory justice to the universe," is to owe the good of an essen- tial attribute to his own glory. But, again, what is " the good of punitory justice?" Justice itself, or the exercise of it? Neither can be so called with any propriety. But if the learned author mean this, that God ought to preserve his own right and dominion over the uni- verse, and that this is just, his nature so requiring him, but that it can- not be done, supposing sin to exist, without the exercise of punitory jus- tice, and then that those Avho affirm this indirectly deny the existence of God, — this is easy for any one to assert, but not so easy to prove.
This learned author's third argument is taken from some absurd consequences, which he supposes to follow from our opinion ; for he thus proceeds to reason : " Those who teach that sin merits punish- ment from a necessity of the divine nature, without any interven- tion of a free decree, teach, at the same time, that God cannot for- bid sin to man Avithout necessarily forbidding it under the penalty of eternal death. As if," says he, " when God forbids adultery or theft, in a human court he forbids them with a modification of the punishment, — namely, that theft should not be punished with death, but by a quadruple restitution, — he could not forbid them without any sanction of a punishment ; and as he commands these to be * Namely, mercy. — Tn.
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punished by men because tliey are sins, why cannot he for the same reason manage matters so in his own internal court/ and sus23end all punishment, and nevertheless forbid the same transgressions f