124 ON THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. [EXERC. XX1X.
the punishment of our disobedience. And so have we closed our first argument in this cause, with our vindication of it.
A DIGRESSION
Concerning the sufferings of Christ, whether they were of the same kind with what sinners should have suffered, or whether he suffered the same that we should have done.
Unto what we have argued in the foregoing Exercitation it is generally objected, “That if the justice of God did thus indispensably require the punishment of sin, which was the ground of the satisfac- tion made by Christ, then it was necessary that Christ should undergo the same punishment that the sinners themselves should have done, namely, that which the justice of God did require. But this was impossible,” as is pretended. And to overthrow this apprehension, that the Lord Christ underwent the same punishment in kind which we should have done, or as was due unto us, they have thus stated the opinion of them whom they do oppose. “Some,” they say, “ do maintain that our sins are to be looked on as our debts, or under the notion of debts, and God as the creditor, requiring the payment of them. Wherefore our Lord Jesus Christ, by his death and suffer- ings, paid this debt; so that his death was ‘ solutio ejusdem,’ or the payment of what was due in the same kind, This, say some learned men, gave great’advantage unto ‘Socinus; who easily proved that there was no necessity for a mere creditor to exact his debt, but that he might at his pleasure ‘ cedere jure suo,’ or forego his own right. And this must needs be supposed of God in this matter, whose love, and grace, and pardoning mercy, are so celebrated therein.” And to confirm this argument it is usually added,—which is the main thing pleaded by Socinus and Crellius themselves,—“ That the Lord Christ neither did nor could undergo the penalty due unto us, because that was eternal death. And to plead that either Christ should have undergone it, if he could not have delivered himself from it, or that what was wanting unto his sufferings as to their duration was com- pensated by the dignity of his person, is to acknowledge that indeed he'did not undergo the same punishment that we are obnoxious unto.”
Learned men, and those sound in the substance of the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ, being differently minded, either in the thing itself or about the sense of the terms whereby it is expressed, I shall endeavour to state right conceptions about it, or at least ex- press my own, without a design to contradict those of any others,
DIGRESS. | ON THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 125
And,—First, For the consideration of our’sins under the notion of debts, and God as a creditor, it is generally known that before the rising of any heresy, the most learned men had expressed them- selves with such’a liberty as advantage hath been thence taken by such adversaries of the truth as afterwards arose. Thus the Scripture having called our sins our debts, and made mention of the payment made by Christ, and compared God to a creditor, before Socinus called the whole matter of the satisfaction of Christ into question, it is no wonder if the truth were commonly expressed under these notions, without such distinctions as were necessary to secure them from unforeseen exceptions. He with whom Socinus first disputed on this subject was Covetus; and he doth indeed make use of this argument to prove the satisfaction of Christ, namely, “That our sins being our debts, justice required that there should be payment made - of them, or for them.” But the truth is, he doth not take his argu- ment from the nature of debts in general, but from the especial nature of these debts, as the Scripture calls them: for he made it appear that these debts are such as are crimes, or transgressions of the law of God; on the account whereof the persons that had con- tracted these debts, or were guilty of these crimes, became liable and obnoxious unto punishment in the judgment of God, who is the sovereign ruler over all. There is, therefore, a distinction to be put between such debts as are civil or pecuniary only, and those which are criminal also. And when the Scripture sets out our sins as debts, with such circumstances as allude unto pecuniary debts and their payment, it is to make the thing treated of obvious unto our understandings by a similitude exposed unto the acquaintance of all men; but as our sins are really intended, the expression is metapho- rical. And Socinus, in his disputation about the nature of debts, creditors, and payments, had no advantage but what he took by a supposition that the terms which were used by his adversary meta- phorically (his argument being taken from the thing intended) were urged by him in their proper sense; which indeed they were not. And so, whereas all his dispute respects civil or pecuniary debts only, he was far enough from triumphing over his adversary, who intended such as were criminal. Wherefore, as this notion, of debts, creditors, and payments, need not yet be forborne in a popular way of teach- ing, because it is made use of in the Scripture to give us a sense of our condition upon the account of our sins, especially a declaration being made that these debts will be exacted of us; so in a disputa- tion about the truth, it is necessary to declare of what nature these debts are, as all generally do, asserting them to be criminal. Secondly, There is much ambiguity in that expression, of “Christ’s paying the same which was due from us.” For that term, “the same,”