Having given this specimen of Mr B.'s answers to my instances, as an addition to the former explication given of my judgment in this business, I shall not farther trouble the reader with the consideration of what of that same kind ensues.
To tell the whole truth, I expressed the effects of the death of Christ in the manner above mentioned, to obviate that stating of his satisfaction and the use of it which I had observed to be insisted on by the Remonstrants in their Apology, and in other writings of theirs, but especially by Episcopius. For some time I met not with any great opposition made to the expressions of their imaginations in this business, but only what was briefly remarked by the Leyden professors in their " Specimina." Of late I find Voetius reckoning it among the principal con- troversies that we have with the enemies of the cross of Christ. I shall set down his words about it, and leave them to the consideration of them who may think themselves concerned in them.
His words in his disputation " de Merito Christi," anno 1650, are: —
" Secunda controversia capitalis quaj Christianismo cum quibusdam heterodoxis (Piemonstrantibus scilicet in Belgio, viris, si non Socinianse, saltem dubise theologite) intcrccdit, est de merito Christi pro nobis, hoc est, vice et loco nostro, et sic in bonum nostrum actualiter prrestito, seu de satisfactione plena ac proprie dicta a Christo spon- sore, loco nostro justitise divinte prscstita : illi satisfactionem et meritum sic accipiunt quasi nihil aliud sit, quam partis offensse talis placatio qua offense hactenus satisfit, ut
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in gratiam redii-e velit cum eo qui offendit, et per quain Christus Deo Patri jus et Toluntatem acquisiverit no^Tim focdus ineundi cum hominibus."
So he. The expression of our dying with Christ is fallen upon again, p. 226; of which he desires leave to speak as confidently as myself. Truly, I thought he had not been to ask leave for that now. But why may he not use it without leave as well as others ? Some perhaps will say, " Mira edepol sunt, ni hie in ventrem sumpsit confidentiam," to consider what he hath wi'itten already. But with this leave he falls a conjecturing at what I mean by that expression, to no purpose at all, as may be seen by what I have delivered concerning it. The like I may say, by the way, to the passage mentioned of the right which ariseth from the decree of God. It seems to me that what God hath decreed to do for any, that is or may be a real privilege to him, it is jus, ex justitia condecentice, that in the appointed season he should receive it. If Mr B. be otherwise minded I cannot help it; " habeo aliquid magis ex memet et majus," than that I should attend to the dis- putes thereabout; nor will I stand in his way if I can choose, for he seems to cry, "Ad terram dabo et dentilegos omnes mortales faciam quemque offendero," Plaut. cap. iv. 1, 29.
After this I find not myself particularly smitten, until he comes, at the close of the chapter, to talk of idem and tantidem, unless it be in his passage, p. 274. That which makes me suspect that I am there intended is his former imputation of some such thing unto me, namely, that I should say that the deputation of Christ in our stead is an act of pardon. But I suppose that I have so fully satis- fied him as to that surmise, by showing that not only my sense, but my expres- sions were, not that the deputation of Christ was our pardon, but that the freedom of pardon did in part depend thereon, that I will not take myself in this place to be concerned, because I cannot do it and prevent the returnal of a charge of some negligence on this person, whose writings seem sufiiciently to free him from all just suspicion thereof. In the close of this discourse (with the method of a new line) Mr B. falls upon the consideration of the payment made by Christ in our stead, or the penalty that he underwent for us, and pleads that it was not the idem that was due to us, but tantundem. Although some say this difference is not tantidem, as some speak, it seems yet he is resolved of the contrary, and that this one assertion is the bottom of all Antinomianism. Seeing I profess myself to be contrary minded, I suppose it will be expected that I should consider what is here to the purpose in hand insisted on by Mr B. What I intend by paying the idem, or rather undergoing the idem, that we should have done, I have so fully elsewhere expressed that I shall not stay the reader with the repetition of it. But, says Mr B., this subverts the substance of religion: iS«u 'PaSos, iSou ^^^v/ict. Now you shall have the proofs of it. Saith he, —
" The idem is the perfect obedience or the full punishment of the man himself, and in case of personal disobedience, it is personal punishment that the law requires, — that is, supplicium ipsius delinqucntis."
Ans. But the idem that we should pay or undergo is perfect obedience to the law, and proportionable punishment, by God's constitution, for disobedience. This Christ paid and underwent. That the man himself should undergo it is the law originally, but the undergoing or doing of it by another is the undergoing of the idem, I think. It is personal punishment that the law originally requires ; but he that undergoes the punishment (though he be not personally disobedient) which the law judgeth to him that was personally disobedient, undergoes the idem that the law requires.