APHORISM XIV.

Leighton.

As in great maps or pictures you will see the border decorated with meadows, fountains, flowers, and the like, represented in it, but in the middle you have the main design: so amongst the works of God is it with the foreordained Redemption of Man. All his other works in the world, all the beauty of the creatures, the succession of ages, and the things that come to pass in them, are but as the border to this as the mainpiece. But as a foolish unskilful beholder, not discerning the excellency of the principal piece in such maps or pictures, gazes only on the fair border, and goes no farther—thus do the greatest part of us as to this great Work of God, the redemption of our personal Being, and the re-union of the Human with the Divine, by and through the Divine Humanity of the Incarnate Word.

APHORISM XV.

Luther.

It is a hard matter, yea, an impossible thing for thy human strength, whosoever thou art (without God's assistance), at such a time when Moses setteth on thee with the Law (see Aphorism XII.),—when the holy Law written in thy heart accuseth and condemneth thee, forcing thee to a comparison of thy heart therewith, and convicting thee of the incompatibleness of thy will and nature with Heaven and holiness and an immediate God—that then thou shouldest be able to be of such a mind as if no Law nor sin had ever been! I say it is in a manner impossible that a human creature, when he feeleth himself assaulted with trials and temptations, and the conscience hath to do with God, and the tempted man knoweth that the root of temptation is within him, should obtain such mastery over his thoughts as then to think no otherwise than that from everlasting nothing hath been but only and alone Christ, altogether Grace and Deliverance!

Comment.

In irrational agents, namely, the brute animals, the will is hidden or absorbed in the law. The law is their nature. In the original purity of a rational agent the uncorrupted will is identical with the law. Nay, inasmuch as a Will perfectly identical with the Law is one with the divine Will, we may say, that in the unfallen rational agent the Will constitutes the Law.[122] But it is evident that the holy and spiritual power and light, which by a prolepsis or anticipation we have named law, is a grace, an inward perfection, and without the commanding, binding and menacing character which belongs to a law, acting as a master or sovereign distinct from, and existing, as it were, externally for, the agent who is bound to obey it. Now this is St. Paul's sense of the word; and on this he grounds his whole reasoning. And hence too arises the obscurity and apparent paradoxy of several texts. That the Law is a Law for you; that it acts on the Will not in it; that it exercises an agency from without, by fear and coercion; proves the corruption of your Will, and presupposes it. Sin in this sense came by the law: for it has its essence, as sin, in that counter-position of the holy principle to the will, which occasions this principle to be a law. Exactly (as in all other points) consonant with the Pauline doctrine is the assertion of John, when speaking of the re-adoption of the redeemed to be sons of God, and the consequent resumption (I had almost said re-absorption) of the Law into the Will (νομον τελειον τον της ελευθεριας, James i. 25.,)—he says—For the law was given by Moses, but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ. That by the Law St. Paul meant only the ceremonial law, is a notion that could originate only in utter inattention to the whole strain and bent of the Apostle's argument.

APHORISM XVI.

Leighton and Coleridge.

Christ's death was both voluntary and violent. There was external violence: and that was the accompaniment, or at most the occasion, of his death. But there was internal willingness, the spiritual Will, the Will of the Spirit, and this was the proper cause. By this Spirit he was restored from death: neither indeed was it possible for him to be holden of it; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, says St. Peter. But he is likewise declared elsewhere to have died by that same Spirit, which here, in opposition to the violence, is said to quicken him. Thus Hebrews ix. 14. Through the eternal Spirit he offered himself. And even from Peter's words, and without the epithet, eternal, to aid the interpretation, it is evident that the Spirit, here opposed to the flesh, body or animal life, is of a higher nature and power than the individual soul, which cannot of itself return to re-inhabit or quicken the body.

If these points were niceties, and an over-refining in doctrine, is it to be believed that the Apostles, John, Peter and Paul, with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, would have laid so great stress on them? But the true life of Christians is to eye Christ in every step of his life—not only as their Rule but as their Strength: looking to him as their Pattern both in doing and in suffering, and drawing power from him for going through both: being without him able for nothing. Take comfort then, thou that believest! It is he that lifts up the Soul from the Gates of Death: and he hath said, I will raise thee up at the last day. Thou that believest in him, believe him and take comfort. Yea, when thou art most sunk in thy sad apprehensions, and he far off to thy thinking, then is he nearest to raise and comfort thee: as sometimes it grows darkest immediately before day.

APHORISM XVII.

Leighton and Coleridge.

Would any of you be cured of that common disease, the fear of death? Yet this is not the right name of the disease, as a mere reference to our armies and navies is sufficient to prove: nor can the fear of death, either as loss of life or pain of dying, be justly held a common disease. But would you be cured of the fear and fearful questionings connected with the approach of death? Look this way, and you shall find more than you seek. Christ, the Word that was from the beginning and was made flesh and dwelt among men, died. And he, who dying conquered death in his own person, conquered Sin, and Death which is the Wages of Sin, for thee. And of this thou mayest be assured, if only thou believe in him, and love him. I need not add, keep his commandments: since where Faith and Love are, Obedience in its threefold character, as Effect, Reward, and Criterion, follows by that moral necessity which is the highest form of freedom. The Grave is thy bed of rest, and no longer the cold bed: for thy Saviour has warmed it, and made it fragrant.

If then it be health and comfort to the Faithful that Christ descended into the grave, with especial confidence may we meditate on his return from thence, quickened by the Spirit: this being to those who are in him the certain pledge, yea, the effectual cause of that blessed resurrection, for which they themselves hope. There is that union betwixt them and their Redeemer, that they shall rise by the communication and virtue of his rising: not simply by his power—for so the wicked likewise to their grief shall be raised: but they by his life as their life.

Comment.

On the three Preceding Aphorisms.

To the reader, who has consented to submit his mind to my temporary guidance, and who permits me to regard him as my pupil, or junior fellow-student, I continue to address myself. Should he exist only in my imagination, let the bread float on the waters! If it be the Bread of Life, it will not have been utterly cast away.

Let us pause a moment, and review the road we have passed over since the transit from Religious Morality to Spiritual Religion. My first attempt was to satisfy you, that there is a Spiritual principle in Man,[123] and to expose the sophistry of the arguments in support of the contrary. Our next step was to clear the road of all counterfeits, by showing what is not the Spirit, what is not Spiritual Religion.[124] And this was followed by an attempt to establish a difference in kind between religious truths and the deductions of speculative science; yet so as to prove, that the former are not only equally rational with the latter, but that they alone appeal to reason in the fulness and living reality of their power. This and the state of mind requisite for the formation of right convictions respecting spiritual truths, afterwards employed our attention. Having then enumerated the Articles of the Christian Faith peculiar to Christianity, I entered on the great object of the present work; namely, the removal of all valid objections to these articles on grounds of right reason or conscience. But to render this practicable it was necessary, first, to present each article in its true Scriptural purity, by exposure of the caricatures of misinterpreters; and this, again, could not be satisfactorily done till we were agreed respecting the faculty entitled to sit in judgment on such questions. I early foresaw, that my best chance (I will not say, of giving an insight into the surpassing worth and transcendent reasonableness of the Christian scheme, but) of rendering the very question intelligible, depended on my success in determining the true nature and limits of the human Understanding, and in evincing its diversity from Reason. In pursuing this momentous subject, I was tempted in two or three instances into disquisitions, which if not beyond the comprehension, were yet unsuited to the taste, of the persons for whom the work was principally intended. These, however, I have separated from the running text, and compressed into notes. The reader will at worst, I hope, pass them by as a leaf or two of waste paper, willingly given by him to those for whom it may not be paper wasted. Nevertheless, I cannot conceal, that the subject itself supposes, on the part of the reader, a steadiness in self-questioning, a pleasure in referring to his own inward experience for the facts asserted by the author, which can only be expected from a person who has fairly set his heart on arriving at clear and fixed conclusions in matters of Faith. But where this interest is felt, nothing more than a common capacity, with the ordinary advantages of education, is required for the complete comprehension both of the argument and the result. Let but one thoughtful hour be devoted to the pages 143-165. In all that follows, the reader will find no difficulty in understanding the author's meaning, whatever he may have in adopting it.

The two great moments of the Christian Religion are, Original Sin and Redemption; that the Ground, this the Superstructure of our faith. The former I have exhibited, first, according to the scheme of the Westminster Divines and the Synod of Dort; then, according to the[125] scheme of a contemporary Arminian divine; and lastly, in contrast with both schemes, I have placed what I firmly believe to be the Scriptural sense of this article, and vindicated its entire conformity with reason and experience. I now proceed to the other momentous article—from the necessitating Occasion of the Christian Dispensation to Christianity itself. For Christianity and Redemption are equivalent terms. And here my Comment will be comprised in a few sentences: for I confine my views to the one object of clearing this awful mystery from those too current misrepresentations of its nature and import that have laid it open to scruples and objections, not to such as shoot forth from an unbelieving heart—(against these a sick bed will be a more effectual antidote than all the argument in the world)—but to such scruples as have their birth-place in the reason and moral sense. Not that it is a mystery—not that it passeth all understanding;—if the doctrine be more than an hyperbolical phrase, it must do so;—but that it is at variance with the Law revealed in the conscience; that it contradicts our moral instincts and intuitions—this is the difficulty, which alone is worthy of an answer. And what better way is there of correcting the misconceptions than by laying open the source and occasion of them? What surer way of removing the scruples and prejudices, to which these misconceptions have given rise, than by propounding the mystery itself—namely the Redemptive Act, as the transcendent Cause of Salvation—in the express and definite words, in which it was enunciated by the Redeemer himself?

But here, in addition to the three Aphorisms preceding, I interpose a view of redemption as appropriated by faith, coincident with Leighton's, though for the greater part expressed in my own words. This I propose as the right view. Then follow a few sentences transcribed from Field (an excellent divine of the reign of James I., of whose work on the Church it would be difficult to speak too highly)[127] containing the questions to be solved, and which is numbered, as an Aphorism, rather to preserve the uniformity of appearance, than as being strictly such. Then follows the Comment: as part and commencement of which the Reader will consider the two paragraphs of pp. 135 136, written for this purpose and in the foresight of the present inquiry: and I entreat him therefore to begin the Comment by re-perusing these.

APHORISM XVIII.

Stedfast by Faith. This is absolutely necessary for resistance to the Evil Principle. There is no standing out without some firm ground to stand on: and this Faith alone supplies. By Faith in the Love of Christ the power of God becomes ours. When the soul is beleaguered by enemies, weakness on the walls, treachery at the gates, and corruption in the citadel, then by Faith she says—Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the World! thou art my strength! I look to thee for deliverance! And thus she overcomes. The pollution (miasma) of sin is precipitated by his blood, the power of sin is conquered by his Spirit. The Apostle says not—stedfast by your own resolutions and purposes; but—stedfast by faith. Nor yet stedfast in your Will, but stedfast in the faith. We are not to be looking to, or brooding over ourselves, either for accusation or for confidence, or (by a deep yet too frequent self-delusion) to obtain the latter by making a merit to ourselves of the former. But we are to look to Christ and him crucified. The Law that is very nigh to thee, even in thy heart; the Law that condemneth and hath no promise; that stoppeth the guilty Past in its swift flight, and maketh it disown its name; the Law will accuse thee enough. Linger not in the Justice-court, listening to thy indictment! Loiter not in waiting to hear the Sentence! No! Anticipate the verdict! Appeal to Cæsar! Haste to the King for a pardon! Struggle thitherward, though in fetters; and cry aloud, and collect the whole remaining strength of thy Will in the outcry—I believe! Lord! help my unbelief! Disclaim all right of property in thy fetters. Say, that they belong to the old man, and that thou dost but carry them to the Grave, to be buried with their owner! Fix thy thought on what Christ did, what Christ suffered, what Christ is—as if thou wouldst fill the hollowness of thy Soul with Christ! If he emptied himself of glory to become sin for thy salvation, must not thou be emptied of thy sinful Self to become Righteousness in and through his agony and the effective merits of his Cross?[128] By what other means, in what other form, is it {210} possible for thee to stand in the presence of the Holy One? With what mind wouldst thou come before God, if not with the mind of Him, in whom alone God loveth the world? With good advice, perhaps, and a little assistance, thou wouldst rather cleanse and patch up a mind of thy own, and offer it as thy admission-right, thy qualification, to Him who charged his angels with folly![129] Oh! take counsel of thy Reason! It will show thee how impossible it is, that even a world should merit the love of Eternal Wisdom and all sufficing Beatitude, otherwise than as it is contained in that all-perfect Idea, in which the Supreme Spirit contemplateth itself and the plenitude of its infinity—the Only-Begotten before all ages! the beloved Son, in whom the Father is indeed well pleased!

And as the Mind, so the Body with which it is to be clothed! as the Indweller, so the House in which it is to be the Abiding-place![130] There is but one wedding-garment, in which we can sit down at the marriage-feast of Heaven: and that is the Bridegroom's own gift, when {212} he gave himself for us that we might live in him and he in us. There is but one robe of Righteousnes, even the Spiritual Body, formed by the assimilative power of faith for whoever eateth the flesh of the Son of Man and drinketh his blood. Did Christ come from Heaven, did the Son of God leave the glory which he had with his Father before the world began, only to show us a way to life, to teach truths, to tell us of a resurrection? Or saith he not, I am the way—I am the truth—I am the Resurrection and the Life?

APHORISM XIX.

Field.

The Romanists teach that sins committed after baptism (that is, for the immense majority of Christians having Christian parents, all their sins from the cradle to the grave) are not so remitted for Christ's sake, but that we must suffer that extremity of punishment which they deserve: and therefore either we must afflict ourselves in such sort and degree of extremity as may answer the demerit of our sins, or be punished by God, here or in the world to come, in such degree and sort that his Justice may be satisfied. [As the encysted venom, or poison-bag, beneath the Adder's fang, so does this doctrine lie beneath the tremendous power of the Romish Hierarchy. The demoralizing influence of this dogma, and that it curdled the very life-blood in the veins of Christendom, it was given to Luther beyond all men since Paul to see, feel, and promulgate. And yet in his large Treatise on Repentance, how near to the spirit of this doctrine—even to the very walls and gates of Babylon—was Jeremy Taylor driven, in recoiling from the fanatical extremes of the opposite error!] But they that are orthodox, teach that it is injustice to require the payment of one debt twice. * * * It is no less absurd to say, as the Papists do, that our satisfaction is required as a condition, without which Christ's satisfaction is not applicable unto us, than to say, Peter hath paid the debt of John, and He, to whom it was due, accepteth of the same payment on the condition that John pay it himself also. * * * The satisfaction of Christ is communicated and applied unto us without suffering the punishment that sin deserveth, [and essentially involveth,] upon the condition of our faith and repentance. [To which I would add: Without faith there is no power of repentance: without a commencing repentance no power to faith: and that it is in the power of the will either to repent or to have faith in the Gospel sense of the words, is itself a consequence of the redemption of mankind, a free gift of the Redeemer: the guilt of its rejection, the refusing to avail ourselves of the power, being all that we can consider as exclusively attributable to our own act.][132]

Comment.

(Containing an Application of the Principles laid down in pp. 135, 136.)

Forgiveness of sin, the abolition of guilt, through the redemptive power of Christ's love, and of his perfect obedience during his voluntary assumption of humanity, is expressed, on account of the resemblance of the consequences in both cases, by the payment of a debt for another, which debt the payer had not himself incurred. Now the impropriation of this metaphor—(that is, the taking it literally) by transferring the sameness from the consequents to the antecedents, or inferring the identity of the causes from a resemblance in the effects—this is the point on which I am at issue: and the view or scheme of redemption grounded on this confusion I believe to be altogether un-Scriptural.

Indeed, I know not in what other instance I could better exemplify the species of sophistry noticed in p. 147, as the Aristotelean μεταβασις εις αλλο γενος, or clandestine passing over into a diverse kind. The purpose of a metaphor is to illustrate a something less known by a partial identification of it with some other thing better understood, or at least more familiar. Now the article of Redemption may be considered in a two-fold relation—in relation to the antecedent, that is, the Redeemer's act as the efficient cause and condition of redemption; and in relation to the consequent, that is, the effects in and for the Redeemed. Now it is the latter relation, in which the subject is treated of, set forth, expanded, and enforced by St. Paul. The mysterious act, the operative cause is transcendent. Factum est: and beyond the information contained in the enunciation of the Fact, it can be characterized only by the consequences. It is the consequences of the Act of Redemption, which the zealous Apostle would bring home to the minds and affections both of Jews and Gentiles. Now the Apostle's opponents and gainsayers were principally of the former class. They were Jews: not only Jews unconverted, but such as had partially received the Gospel, and who, sheltering their national prejudices under the pretended authority of Christ's original apostles and the Church in Jerusalem, set themselves up against Paul as followers of Cephas. Add too, that Paul himself was a Hebrew of the Hebrews; intimately versed in the Jews' religion above many, his equals, in his own nation, and above measure zealous of the traditions of his fathers. It might, therefore, have been anticipated, that his reasoning would receive its outward forms and language, that it would take its predominant colours, from his own past, and his opponents' present, habits of thinking; and that his figures, images, analogies, and references would be taken preferably from objects, opinions, events, and ritual observances ever uppermost in the imaginations of his own countrymen. And such we find them;—yet so judiciously selected, that the prominent forms, the figures of most frequent recurrence, are drawn from points of belief and practice, forms, laws, rites and customs, that then prevailed through the whole Roman world, and were common to Jew and Gentile.

Now it would be difficult if not impossible to select points better suited to this purpose, as being equally familiar to all, and yet having a special interest for the Jewish converts, than those are from which the learned Apostle has drawn the four principal metaphors, by which he illustrates the blessed consequences of Christ's redemption of mankind. These are: 1. Sin-offerings, sacrificial expiation. 2. Reconciliation, atonement, καταλλαγη.[133] 3. Ransom from slavery, Redemption, the buying back again, or being bought back. 4. Satisfaction of a creditor's claims by a payment of the debt. To one or other of these four heads all the numerous forms and exponents of Christ's mediation in St. Paul's writings may be referred. And the very number and variety of the words or periphrases used by him to express one and the same thing furnish the strongest presumptive proof, that all alike were used metaphorically. [In the following notation, let the small letters represent the effects or consequences, and the capitals the efficient causes or antecedents. Whether by causes we mean acts or agents, is indifferent. Now let X signify a transcendent, that is, a cause beyond our comprehension and not within the sphere of sensible experience; and on the other hand, let A, B, C, and D represent each some one known and familiar cause, in reference to some single and characteristic effect: namely, A in reference to k, B to l, C to m, and D to n. Then I say X + k l m n is in different places expressed by A + k; B + l; C + m; D + n.—And these I should call metaphorical exponents of X.]

Now John, the beloved Disciple, who leaned on the Lord's bosom, the Evangelist κατα πνευμα, that is, according to the Spirit, the inner and substantial truth of the Christian creed—John, recording the Redeemer's own words, enunciates the fact itself, to the full extent in which it is enunciable for the human mind, simply and without any metaphor, by identifying it in kind with a fact of hourly occurrence—expressing it, I say, by a familiar fact the same in kind with that intended, though of a far lower dignity;—by a fact of every man's experience, known to all, yet not better understood than the fact described by it. In the Redeemed it is a re-generation, a birth, a spiritual seed impregnated and evolved, the germinal principle of a higher and enduring life, of a spiritual life—that is, a life the actuality of which is not dependent on the material body, or limited by the circumstances and processes indispensable to its organization and subsistence. Briefly, it is the differential of immortality, of which the assimilative power of faith and love is the integrant, and the life in Christ the integration.

But even this would be an imperfect statement, if we omitted the awful truth, that besides that dissolution of our earthly tabernacle which we call death, there is another death, not the mere negation of life, but its positive opposite. And as there is a mystery of life and an assimilation to the principle of life, even to him who is the Life; so is there a mystery of death and an assimilation to the principle of evil; a fructifying of the corrupt seed, of which death is the germination. Thus the regeneration to spiritual life is at the same time a redemption from the spiritual death.

Respecting the redemptive act itself, and the Divine Agent, we know from revelation that he was made a quickening (ζωοποιουν, life-making) spirit: and that in order to this it was necessary, that God should be manifested in the flesh, that the Eternal Word, through whom and by whom the world (κοσμος, the order, beauty, and sustaining law of visible natures) was and is, should be made flesh, assume our humanity personally, fulfil all righteousness, and so suffer and so die for us as in dying to conquer death for as many as should receive him. More than this, the mode, the possibility, we are not competent to know. It is, as hath been already observed concerning the primal act of apostacy, a mystery by the necessity of the subject—a mystery, which at all events it will be time enough for us to seek and expect to understand, when we understand the mystery of our natural life, and its conjunction with mind and will and personal identity. Even the truths that are given to us to know, we can know only through faith in the spirit. They are spiritual things which must be spiritually discerned. Such, however, being the means and the effects of our Redemption, well might the fervent Apostle associate it with whatever was eminently dear and precious to erring and afflicted mortals, and (where no expression could be commensurate, no single title be other than imperfect) seek from similitude of effect to describe the superlative boon by successively transferring to it, as by a superior claim, the name of each several act and ordinance, habitually connected in the minds of all his hearers with feelings of joy, confidence, and gratitude.

Do you rejoice when the atonement made by the priest has removed the civil stain from your name, restored you to your privileges as a son of Abraham, and replaced you in the respect of your brethren?—Here is an atonement which takes away a deeper and worse stain, an eating canker-spot in the very heart of your personal being. This, to as many as receive it, gives the privilege to become sons of God (John i. 12); this will admit you to the society of angels, and insure to you the rights of brotherhood with spirits made perfect.—(Heb. xii. 22.) Here is a sacrifice, a sin-offering for the whole world: and a High Priest, who is indeed a Mediator, who not in type or shadow but in very truth and in his own right stands in the place of Man to God, and of God to Man; and who receives as a Judge what he offered as an Advocate.

Would you be grateful to one who had ransomed you from slavery under a bitter foe, or who brought you out of captivity? Here is redemption from a far direr slavery, the slavery of sin unto death; and he, who gave himself for the ransom, has taken captivity captive.

Had you by your own fault alienated yourself from your best, your only sure friend;—had you, like a prodigal, cast yourself out of your father's house;—would you not love the good Samaritan, who should reconcile you to your friend? Would you not prize above all price the intercession, which had brought you back from husks, and the tending of swine, and restored you to your father's arms, and seated you at your father's table?

Had you involved yourself in a heavy debt for certain gew-gaws, for high seasoned meats, and intoxicating drinks, and glistering apparel, and in default of payment had made yourself over as a bondsman to a hard creditor, who it was foreknown, would enforce the bond of judgment to the last tittle;—with what emotions would you not receive the glad tidings, that a stranger, or a friend whom in the days of your wantonness you had neglected and reviled, had paid the debt for you, had made satisfaction to your creditor? But you have incurred a debt of Death to the Evil Nature! you have sold yourself over to Sin! and relatively to you, and to all your means and resources, the seal on the bond is the seal of necessity! Its stamp is the nature of evil. But the stranger has appeared, the forgiving friend has come, even the Son of God from heaven: and to as many as have faith in his name, I say—the Debt is paid for you. The Satisfaction has been made.

Now to simplify the argument and at the same time to bring the question to the test, we will confine our attention to the figure last mentioned, viz. the satisfaction of a debt. Passing by our modern Alogi who find nothing but metaphors in either Apostle, let us suppose for a moment with certain divines, that our Lord's words, recorded by John, and which in all places repeat and assert the same analogy, are to be regarded as metaphorical; and that it is the varied expressions of St. Paul that are to be literally interpreted:—for example, that sin is, or involves, an infinite debt, (in the proper and law-court sense of the word debt)—a debt owing by us to the vindictive justice of God the Father, which can only be liquidated by the everlasting misery of Adam and all his posterity, or by a sum of suffering equal to this. Likewise, that God the Father by his absolute decree, or (as some divines teach) through the necessity of his unchangeable justice, had determined to exact the full sum; which must, therefore, be paid either by ourselves or by some other in our name and behalf. But besides the debt which all mankind contracted in and through Adam, as a homo publicus, even as a nation is bound by the acts of its head or its plenipotentiary, every man (say these divines) is an insolvent debtor on his own score. In this fearful predicament the Son of God took compassion on mankind, and resolved to pay the debt for us, and to satisfy the divine justice by a perfect equivalent. Accordingly, by a strange yet strict consequence, it has been holden by more than one of these divines, that the agonies suffered by Christ were equal in amount to the sum total of the torments of all mankind here and hereafter, or to the infinite debt, which in an endless succession of instalments we should have been paying to the divine justice, had it not been paid in full by the Son of God incarnate!

It is easy to say—"O but I do not hold this, or we do not make this an article of our belief!" The true question is: "Do you take any part of it: and can you reject the rest without being inconsequent?" Are debt, satisfaction, payment in full, creditor's rights, and the like, nomina propria, by which the very nature of Redemption and its occasion is expressed;—or are they, with several others, figures of speech for the purpose of illustrating the nature and extent of the consequences and effects of the redemptive Act, and to excite in the receivers a due sense of the magnitude and manifold operation of the Boon, and of the Love and gratitude due to the Redeemer? If still you reply, the former: then, as your whole theory is grounded on a notion of justice, I ask you—Is this justice a moral attribute? But morality commences with, and begins in, the sacred distinction between thing and person: on this distinction all law human and divine is grounded: consequently, the law of justice. If you attach any meaning to the term justice, as applied to God, it must be the same to which you refer when you affirm or deny it of any other personal agent—save only, that in its attribution to God, you speak of it as unmixed and perfect. For if not, what do you mean? And why do you call it by the same name? I may, therefore, with all right and reason, put the case as between man and man. For should it be found irreconcilable with the justice, which the light of reason, made law in the conscience, dictates to man, how much more must it be incongruous with the all-perfect justice of God! Whatever case I should imagine would be felt by the reader as below the dignity of the subject, and in some measure jarring with his feelings; and in other respects the more familiar the case, the better suited to the present purpose.

A sum of £1,000 is owing from James to Peter, for which James has given a bond. He is insolvent, and the bond is on the point of being put in suit against him, to James's utter ruin. At this moment Matthew steps in, pays Peter the thousand pounds and discharges the bond. In this case, no man would hesitate to admit, that a complete satisfaction had been made to Peter. Matthew's £1,000 is a perfect equivalent for the sum which James was bound to have paid, and which Peter had lent. It is the same thing: and this is altogether a question of things. Now instead of James's being indebted to Peter for a sum of money, which (he having become insolvent) Matthew pays for him, we will put the case, that James had been guilty of the basest and most hard-hearted ingratitude to a most worthy and affectionate mother, who had not only performed all the duties and tender offices of a mother, but whose whole heart was bound up in this her only child—who had foregone all the pleasures and amusements of life in watching over his sickly childhood, had sacrificed her health and the far greater part of her resources to rescue him from the consequences of his follies and excesses during his youth and early manhood; and to procure for him the means of his present rank and affluence—all which he had repaid by neglect, desertion, and open profligacy. Here the mother stands in the relation of the creditor: and here too I will suppose the same generous friend to interfere, and to perform with the greatest tenderness and constancy all those duties of a grateful and affectionate son, which James ought to have performed. Will this satisfy the Mother's claims on James, or entitle him to her esteem, approbation, and blessing? Or what if Matthew, the vicarious son, should at length address her in words to this purpose:—"Now, I trust, you are appeased, and will be henceforward reconciled to James. I have satisfied all your claims on him. I have paid his debt in full: and you are too just to require the same debt to be paid twice over. You will therefore regard him with the same complacency, and receive him into your presence with the same love, as if there had been no difference between him and you. For I have made it up." What other reply could the swelling heart of the mother dictate than this? "O misery! and is it possible that you are in league with my unnatural child to insult me? Must not the very necessity of your abandonment of your proper sphere form an additional evidence of his guilt? Must not the sense of your goodness teach me more fully to comprehend, more vividly to feel, the evil in him? Must not the contrast of your merits magnify his demerit in his mother's eye, and at once recall and embitter the conviction of the canker-worm in his soul?"

If indeed by the force of Matthew's example, by persuasion or by additional and more mysterious influences, or by an inward co-agency, compatible with the existence of a personal will, James should be led to repent; if through admiration and love of this great goodness gradually assimilating his mind to the mind of his benefactor, he should in his own person become a grateful and dutiful child—then doubtless the mother would be wholly satisfied! But then the case is no longer a question of things, or a matter of debt payable by another. Nevertheless, the effect,—and the reader will remember, that it is the effects and consequences of Christ's mediation, on which St. Paul is dilating—the effect to James is similar in both cases, that is, in the case of James the debtor, and of James the undutiful son. In both cases, James is liberated from a grievous burthen; and in both cases he has to attribute his liberation to the act and free grace of another. The only difference is, that in the former case (namely, the payment of the debt) the beneficial act is singly, and without requiring any re-action or co-agency on the part of James, the efficient cause of his liberation: while in the latter case (namely, that of Redemption) the beneficial act is the first, the indispensable condition, and then the coefficient.

The professional student of theology will, perhaps, understand the different positions asserted in the preceding argument more readily if they are presented synoptically, that is, brought at once within his view, in the form of answers to four questions, comprising the constituent parts of the Scriptural Doctrine of Redemption. And I trust that my lay readers of both sexes will not allow themselves to be scared from the perusal of the following short catechism by half a dozen Latin words, or rather words with Latin endings, that translate themselves into English, when I dare assure them, that they will encounter no other obstacle to their full and easy comprehension of the contents.

Synopsis of the Constituent Points in the Doctrine of Redemption, in Four Questions, with Correspondent Answers.

Questions.

Answers.

I. The Agent and Personal Cause of the Redemption of Mankind is—the co-eternal Word and only begotten Son of the Living God, incarnate, tempted, agonizing (agonistes αγωνιζομενος), crucified, submitting to death, resurgent, communicant of his Spirit, ascendent, and obtaining for his Church the Descent, and Communion of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.

II. The causative act is—a spiritual and transcendent Mystery, that passeth all understanding.

III. The Effect caused is—the being born anew: as before in the flesh to the world, so now born in the spirit to Christ.

IV. The Consequences from the Effect are—Sanctification from Sin, and Liberation from the inherent and penal consequences of Sin in the World to come, with all the means and processes of Sanctification by the Word and the Spirit: these Consequents being the same for the Sinner relatively to God and his own Soul, as the satisfaction of a debt for a debtor relatively to his creditor; as the sacrificial atonement made by the priest for the transgressor of the Mosaic Law; as the reconciliation to an alienated parent for a son who had estranged himself from his father's house and presence; and as a redemptive ransom for a slave or captive.

Now I complain that this metaphorical naming of the transcendent causative act through the medium of its proper effects from actions and causes of familiar occurrence connected with the former by similarity of result, has been mistaken for an intended designation of the essential character of the causative act itself; and that thus divines have interpreted de omni what was spoken de singulo, and magnified a partial equation into a total identity.

I will merely hint, to my more learned readers, and to the professional students of theology, that the origin of this error is to be sought for in the discussions of the Greek Fathers, and (at a later period) of the Schoolmen, on the obscure and abysmal subject of the divine A-seity, and the distinction between the θελημα and the βουλη, that is, the Absolute Will, as the universal ground of all Being, and the election and purpose of God in the personal idea, as the Father. And this view would have allowed me to express what I believe to be the true import and scriptural idea of Redemption in terms much more nearly resembling those used ordinarily by the Calvinistic divines, and with a conciliative show of coincidence. But this motive was outweighed by the reflection, that I could not rationally have expected to be understood by those to whom I most wish to be intelligible: et si non vis intelligi, cur vis legi?

Not to countervene the purpose of a Synopsis, I have detached the confirmative or explanatory remarks from the Answers to Questions II. and III., and place them below as scholia. A single glance of the eye will enable the reader to re-connect each with the sentence it is supposed to follow.

SCHOLIUM TO ANSWER II.

Nevertheless, the fact or actual truth having been assured to us by Revelation, it is not impossible, by stedfast meditation on the idea and super-natural character of a personal Will, for a mind spiritually disciplined to satisfy itself, that the redemptive act supposes (and that our redemption is even negatively conceivable only on the supposition of) an agent who can at once act on the Will as an exciting cause, quasi ab extra; and in the Will, as the condition of its potential, and the ground of its actual, being.

SCHOLIUM TO ANSWER III.

Where two subjects, that stand to each other in the relation of antithesis or contradistinction, are connected by a middle term common to both, the sense of this middle term is indifferently determinable by either; the preferability of the one or the other in any given case being decided by the circumstance of our more frequent experience of, or greater familiarity with, the Term, in this connexion. Thus, if I put hydrogen and oxygen gas, as opposite poles, the term gas is common to both; and it is a matter of indifference, by which of the two bodies I ascertain the sense of the term. But if for the conjoint purposes of connexion and contrast, I oppose transparent crystallized alumen to opaque derb, or uncrystallized alumen;—it may easily happen to be far more convenient for me to show the sense of the middle term, that is, alumen, by a piece of pipe-clay than by a sapphire or ruby; especially if I should be describing the beauty and preciousness of the latter to a peasant woman, or in a district where a ruby was a rarity which the fewest only had an opportunity of seeing. This is a plain rule of common logic directed in its application by common sense.

Now let us apply this to the case in hand. The two opposites here are Flesh and Spirit, this in relation to Christ, that in relation to the World; and these two opposites are connected by the middle term, Birth, which is of course common to both. But for the same reason, as in the instance last mentioned, the interpretation of the common term is to be ascertained from its known sense, in the more familiar connexion—birth, namely, in relation to our natural life and to the organized body, by which we belong to the present world.—Whatever the word signifies in this connexion, the same essentially (in kind though not in dignity and value) must be its signification in the other. How else could it be (what yet in this text it undeniably is), the punctum indifferens, or nota communis, of the thesis, Flesh; or the World, and the antithesis Spirit; or Christ? We might therefore, upon the supposition of a writer having been speaking of river-water in distinction from rain-water, as rationally pretend that in the latter phrase the term, water, was to be understood metaphorically, as that the word, birth, is a metaphor, and means only so and so, in the Gospel according to St. John.

There is, I am aware, a numerous and powerful party in our Church, so numerous and powerful as not seldom to be entitled the Church, who hold and publicly teach, that "Regeneration is only Baptism." Nay, the writer of the article on the Lives of Scott and Newton in our ablest and most respectable Review[134] is but one among many who do not hesitate to brand the contrary opinion as heterodoxy, and schismatical superstition. I trust, that I think as seriously as most men, of the evil of schism; but with every disposition to pay the utmost deference to an acknowledged majority including, it is said, a very large proportion of the present dignitaries of our Church, I cannot but think it a sufficient reply, that if Regeneration means Baptism, Baptism must mean Regeneration; and this too, as Christ himself has declared, a Regeneration in the Spirit. Now I would ask these divines this simple question: Do they believingly suppose a spiritual regenerative power and agency inhering in or accompanying the sprinkling a few drops of water on an infant's face? They cannot evade the question by saying that Baptism is a type or sign. For this would be to supplant their own assertion, that Regeneration means Baptism, by the contradictory admission, that Regeneration is the significatum, of which Baptism is the significant. Unless, indeed, they would incur the absurdity of saying, that Regeneration is a type of Regeneration, and Baptism a type of itself—or that Baptism only means Baptism! And this indeed is the plain consequence to which they might be driven, should they answer the above question in the negative.

But if their answer be, "Yes! we do suppose and believe this efficiency in the Baptismal act"—I have not another word to say. Only, perhaps, I might be permitted to express a hope, that for consistency's sake they would speak less slightingly of the insufflation, and extreme unction, used in the Romish Church; notwithstanding the not easily to be answered arguments of our Christian Mercury, the all-eloquent Jeremy Taylor, respecting the latter, which, "since it is used when the man is above half dead, when he can exercise no act of understanding, it must needs be nothing; for no rational man can think that any ceremony can make a spiritual change without a spiritual act of him that is to be changed; nor work by way of nature, or by charm, but morally and after the manner of reasonable creatures."[135]

It is too obvious to require suggestion, that these words here quoted apply with yet greater force and propriety to the point in question: as the babe is an unconscious subject, which the dying man need not be supposed to be. My avowed convictions respecting Regeneration with the spiritual Baptism, as its condition and initiative (Luke iii. 16; Matt. i. 7; Matt. iii. 11), and of which the sacramental rite, the Baptism of John, was appointed by Christ to remain as the sign and figure; and still more, perhaps, my belief respecting the Mystery of the Eucharist, (concerning which I hold the same opinions as Bucer,[136] Peter Martyr, and presumably Cranmer himself)—these convictions and this belief will, I doubt not, be deemed by the Orthodox de more Grotii, who improve the letter of Arminius with the spirit of Socinus, sufficient data to bring me in guilty of irrational and Superstitious Mysticism. But I abide by a maxim, which I learnt at an early period of my theological studies, from Benedict Spinoza:—Where the alternative lies between the Absurd and the Incomprehensible, no wise man can be at a loss which of the two to prefer. To be called irrational, is a trifle; to be so, and in matters of religion, is far otherwise: and whether the irrationality consists in men's believing (that is, in having persuaded themselves that they believe) against reason, or without reason, I have been early instructed to consider it as a sad and serious evil, pregnant with mischiefs, political and moral. And by none of my numerous instructors so impressively, as by that great and shining light of our Church in the æra of our intellectual splendour, Bishop Jeremy Taylor: from one of whose works, and that of especial authority for the safety as well as for the importance of the principle, inasmuch as it was written expressly ad populum, I will now, both for its own intrinsic worth, and to relieve the attention, wearied, perhaps, by the length and argumentative character of the preceding discussion, interpose the following Aphorism.[137]