John L. Dagg (1794–1884) on Christ Suffering So Much for So Much Sin: Speculation Taking Us Down the Wrong Road

An unrestricted invitation to all who hear the gospel, to come to Christ for life, seems to imply that universal provision has been made in him; and in order to the making of universal provision, it appears necessary that he should have borne the sins of all men.

But the supposition that he bore the sins of the whole human race, is attended with much difficulty. Multitudes died in impenitence before he came into the world, and were suffering for their sins in the other world, while he was hanging on the cross. How could he be a substitute for these, and suffer the penalty for their sins, when they were suffering it in their own persons? And if he endured the penalty for the sins of all who have since died, or shall hereafter die in impenitence, how shall they be required to satisfy justice a second time by personal suffering?

For a solution of this difficulty, with which the minds of many have been much perplexed, it has been supposed that the amount of suffering necessary to make an atoning sacrifice, is not increased or lessened by the amount of sin to be atoned for. This hypothesis is entitled to respect, not only because of the relief which it affords the mind, but also because it has recommended itself to the general acceptance of learned and pious men. Nevertheless, like every other hypothesis invented for the removal of difficulty, it should not be made an article of faith, until it has been proved.

In support of the hypothesis, it has been argued that since the wages of sin is death, Christ must have died for a single sin, and he needed only to die, in making atonement for the sins of the whole world.

This argument does not sustain the hypothesis, unless it be assumed that death is the same in every supposable case. But death may be an easy and joyful transition from this world to the world of bliss. Such was not the death of Christ. Death, as the wages of sin, includes more than the mere dissolution of the body: and Christ, in dying for sin, endured an amount of sorrow which was not necessary to mere natural death. In this suffering, the expiatory efficacy of his death chiefly consisted; and we dare not assume that the amount of it must be the same in every supposable case. The sufferings of Christ derive infinite value from his divine nature; but, being endured by his human nature, their amount could not be infinite; hence it is supposable that the amount might have been different in different circumstances. The inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah will, in the last day, be doomed to the second death, equally with the more guilty inhabitants of Chorazin and Bethsaida: but the anguish attendant will be more intolerable in one case than in the other. Analogy would seem to require, that Christ, suffering for the sins of the whole world, must endure more than if suffering for only one sin.

The advocates of the hypothesis urge, that the atonement is moral, and not commercial; and they object, that the notion of so much suffering for so much sin, degrades it into a mere commercial transaction. According to an illustration before given, if twenty men owe one hundred dollars, commercial justice is satisfied when each man has paid five dollars; but when twenty men have conspired to commit murder, moral justice, or rather distributive justice (for commercial justice is also moral), holds every man guilty of the deed, and as deserving of capital punishment as if he alone had committed the crime. On the same principle, it is maintained, moral justice does not divide the death of Christ into parts, accounting so much for each offence; but regards it as equally sufficient for many offences, as for one; and equally sufficient for the sins of the whole world, as for the sins of the elect.

The argument is not conclusive. It is not true, that the principle of distributive justice repels the notion of so much suffering for so much sin. Justice has its scales in government, as well as in commerce; and an essential part of its administration consists in the apportionment of penalties to crimes. It does not account the stealing of herbs from a neighbor’s garden, and the murder of a father, crimes of equal magnitude; and it does not weigh out to them equal penalties. The justice of God has a heavier penalty for Chorazin and Bethsaida, than for Sodom and Gomorrah. Everything of which we have knowledge in the divine administration, instead of exploding the notion of so much suffering for so much sin, tends rather to establish it. The objection that it is commercial, is not well founded. Though justice in government, and justice in commerce, may be distinguished from each other, it does not follow, that whatever may be affirmed of the one, must necessarily be denied of the other. Distributive justice is not that which determines the equality of value, in commodities which are exchanged for each other: but it does not therefore exclude all regard to magnitudes and proportions. In the language of Scripture, sins are debts,¹ the blood of Christ is a price,² and his people are bought.³ This language is doubtless figurative: but the figures would not be appropriate, if commercial justice, to which the terms debt, price, bought, appertain, did not bear an analogy to the distributive justice which required the sacrifice of Christ.

In the case adduced for illustration, every accomplice in the murder is held guilty of the crime, because every one has the full intention of it. Justice, viewing the crime in the intention, accounts each one guilty, and requires the penalty to be inflicted on him. It does not admit that the punishment of one will be equivalent to the punishment of all: but, in this very case, employs its scales to give to every one his due, and apportions the amount of penalty inflicted, to the amount of crime.

This examination of the argument discovers, that it is not conclusive. If the atonement of Christ excludes all regard to the amount of sin to be expiated, the exclusion does not arise from the abstract principles of distributive justice, as distinguished from commercial, but from something peculiar in the great transaction. No transaction like it with which it may be compared, has ever occurred. The wisdom and justice of God have decided this single case, and have decided it right. Christ did endure just so much suffering, as would expiate the sins that were laid on him. What amount of suffering would have been necessary, if he had expiated but one sin, is a question which, so far as we know, has never been decided in the court of heaven. When we confidently decide it, we are in danger of intruding into those things which do not belong to us. If the Holy Scriptures teach us nothing on the subject, we should not seek to be wise above what is written.

The Scriptures, so far as I know, contain no proof of the hypothesis. The best argument in its favor is drawn from Hebrews 9, in which it is taught that, if the sacrifices of the old dispensation had been efficacious, they would not have needed to be repeated. This seems to involve the principle, that an efficacious sacrifice for sin, when once made, will suffice for all sin, however it may be multiplied in all future time; and this principle, if established, establishes the hypothesis before us. But the clause “then would they not have ceased to be offered,” may be taken without an interrogative point following, and the argument of Paul will be, that the sacrifices of the Old Testament dispensation, if efficacious, would have continued to be offered from year to year, making atonement for the sins of each year as it passed, and would not have been superseded by another covenant, as the Lord had foretold by his prophet. So interpreted, the argument of Paul, instead of establishing the hypothesis, subverts it. But if the clause be read with the interrogative point, it may still be understood to refer to the remembrance from year to year continually of the same sins, that had once been atoned for. When the sins of one year had been atoned for, why should the very same sins be brought into remembrance the second, third, and fourth years, and the offering for them repeated, if the first offering had been efficacious? So understood, the apostle’s argument does not establish the principle involved in the hypothesis.

If, after a thorough examination of the hypothesis, we should, instead of making it an article of faith, be inclined to abandon it; and if the difficulty which it was invented to remove should perplex us; we may obtain relief, as we are compelled to do in other cases, by receiving the whole of God’s truth on his authority, even though the harmony of its parts is not apparent to our weak understandings. In this way, theological difficulties furnish an opportunity for the exercise of confidence in the divine veracity: and our state of mind is never better or safer than when, in simple faith, we take God at his word.

So far as we have the means of judging, the sufferings of Christ, when viewed apart from the purpose of God respecting them, were in themselves as well adapted to satisfy for the sins of Judas as of Peter. But we cannot affirm this of every act which Christ performed in his priestly office. His intercessions for Peter were particular and efficacious; and these, as a part of his priestly work, may be included with his sufferings, as constituting with them the perfect and acceptable offering which he, as the great High Priest, makes for his people. The atonement or reconciliation which results, must be as particular as the intercessions by which it is procured.

Some have maintained that, if the atonement of Christ is not general, no sinner can be under obligation to believe in Christ, until he is assured that he is one of the elect. This implies that no sinner is bound to believe what God says, unless he knows that God designs to save him. God declares that there is no salvation, except through Christ; and every sinner is bound to believe this truth. If it were revealed from heaven, that but one sinner, of all our fallen race, shall be saved by Christ, the obligation to believe that there is no salvation out of Christ, would remain the same. Every sinner, to whom the revelation would be made, would be bound to look to Christ as his only possible hope, and commit himself to that sovereign mercy by which some one of the justly condemned race would be saved. The abundant mercy of our God will not be confined to the salvation of a single sinner; but it will bring many sons to glory through the sufferings of Jesus, the Captain of our salvation. Yet every sinner, who trusts in Christ for salvation, is bound to commit himself, unreservedly, to the sovereign mercy of God. If he requires some previous assurance that he is in the number of the elect, he does not surrender himself to God, as a guilty sinner ought. The gospel brings every sinner prostrate at the feet of the Great Sovereign, hoping for mercy at his will, and in his way: and the gospel is perverted when any terms short of this are offered to the offender. With this universal call to absolute and unconditional surrender to God’s sovereignty, the doctrine of particular redemption exactly harmonizes.
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1. Matt. 6:12.
2. 1 Cor. 6:20; 1 Pet. 1:18.
3. 1 Cor. 6:20.

J. L. Dagg, Manual of Theology and Church Order (Harrisonburg, VA: Gano Books, 1982), 326–31. [Footnotes and values original; italics original; and underlining mine.] 

See also J. L. Dagg, Manual of Theology, First Part: A Treatise on Christian Doctrine (Charleston, SC; Richmond, VA; Macon, GA; Selma, AL; New Orleans: Southern Baptist Publication Society; S. S. & Publication Board; B. B. & Colporteur Society; B. B. & Book Depository; B. B. Depository, 1859), 326–31.

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Notes: 1) Premise i) Dagg affirms that the expiation of Christ is adaptable to all men. Premise ii) Dagg affirms that Christ suffered that Christ suffered enough to expiate all the sin imputed to him. Premise iii) Dagg affirms that it is more likely the case that had more sin been imputed to Christ, Christ would have had to suffer more in order to expiate this extra imputed sin. 2) Given his premises, it is a clear contradiction for Dagg to assert that the death of Christ is adaptable to all sin. In this world, 2000 years ago, a certain amount of sin was imputed to Christ, under Dagg’s conception, which required a certain amount of suffering on the part of Christ. How then can the expiation affected in this actual world, be adaptable and offerable to all men, even to men whose sins were never imputed to Christ? Dagg wants to retain the free offer of the Gospel, but has no legal or logical way in which this offer can be made coherent. 3) It is also apparent that Dagg has almost totally misunderstood the intent of Scripture’s redemption language. For more on this point, see here (click). I suspect part of the problem is that Dagg is wrongly reacting to Fuller’s insights and critiques. 4) These comments from Dagg mar an otherwise fine Baptist systematic.

Original post here (click).

Petrus van Mastricht (1630–1706) on Christ Suffering the Just Equivalent Not the Idem of the Law’s Punishment

Is it the same death, or one equivalent to ours?

Nor (2) did he undergo a bare dissolution of body and soul, in which alone our death consists, but that entire misery which was due to his people from sin, or that same evil which burdened his people due to sin, if not in the same in kind, or rather in number, at least the same in weight and value. For he neither received to himself each and every evil that could be imposed upon us on account of sin—for example, disease, blindness, and all those evils recounted in Deuteronomy 28:15ff.—nor could he receive, for example, the deprivation of the divine image and original righteousness, the eternity of death, and other things. Yet with respect to their kinds, he did undertake those same things which were incumbent upon us to endure, which were, at the least with respect to weight and value, equivalent to our miseries. So that in this death, there was not so much a solutio, a payment, according to its true and proper name, wherein, according to the jurists, the idem, the same thing, is rendered that is in the obligation, which payment cannot be refused by the creditor, but rather a satisfactio, a satisfaction, wherein the tantundem, the same value, is rendered, and which can be rejected by the creditor.³⁰ With this one precaution carefully observed, a great number of difficulties in the business of satisfaction will disappear.
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30 For a prominent debate at the time regarding the idem versus the tantundem of Christ’s death, cf. Richard Baxter (1615–1691), Aphorismes of Justification … wherein also is opened the nature of the covenants, satisfaction, righteousness, faith, works, etc. (London: Francis Tyton, 1649), 44–56; and John Owen, Of the death of Christ, the price he paid, and the purchase he made … vindicated from the exceptions and objections of Mr. Baxter (London: Peter Cole, 1650); idem, Works, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1862), 10:437–48. Cf. Patrick Gillespie (1617–1675), The Ark of the Covenant Opened (London: for Thomas Parkhurst, 1677), 406, “Christ paid not the idem, but the tantundem; not the same that was due, but the value: for he suffered not the same pain, numero in number, but specie in kind.”

Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, 7 vols., ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2023), 4:408–409.

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Note: This is new material that is not posted on the original Calvin and Calvinism blog.

Richard Baxter (1615–1691) on Christ Suffering the Tantundem, Not the Idem of the Law’s Punishment

CHAP. V.

Prop. 2: Christ’s sufferings for men’s Sins, were not the Idem, the same thing which the Law threaten to us: Or the fulfilling of the threatening; and discharge of the debt itself in kind. But the Equivalence, or Value, freely paid by him (obliged only by his own sponsion,) and accepted by God, for our not fulfilling the Law, as to its Precept and Commination.

Some think this Question, whether Christ paid the Idem or Tantundem? To be not Tantidem, not worth the disputing. Mr O[wen], (against me) seems stiffly to maintain it to be the Idem, but yielding it to be not per eundem, and the law to be relaxed so far, does yield as much as I need, and gives up the whole cause; and made me think it a useless labor to reply to him. As small as this question seems, I think the main body of divinity stands or falls according to the resolution of it. For understanding the meaning of it, you must know, 1. that it is not the quality of the suffering that we enquire: Whether Christ suffered the same kind of pain, or loss that we should have suffered? Nor of the quantity of torment, for intension or duration? For I am willing to believe as much as identity in these as I can see any ground of probability to encourage me: Though yet I know how hard it is, for them that say, by [death]¹ in the threatening, was meant, death, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, to prove that the loss of God’s image was none of the penalty; (for I hope none will say, that Christ lost God’s image) or that Christ’s temporary sufferings, were the Idem with our eternal, quaod quantitatem; and not the want of duration made up by the intension, or dignity, or the person, as being equivalent: (which is our ordinary doctrine, and I think sound): Or yet that the eternity of the punishment was not in the threatening, but was accidental: Either as, some Schoolmen think, for want of power to deliver or overcome; or as others (and with them Parker and Sanford, I think, not soundly), because of the everlastingness of sinning. I think none of these much worth the disputing, comparatively: Nor 2. Is it de personâ naturali, who he was naturally that paid the debt, or made the satisfaction. It is not therefore de materia debiti, that we enquire, but de formâ: Whether it were the same formally which we owed, and the obligation required? Or only the value, and not the same full debt? Also you must know that, though we may well use the word [debt] in this Case, because the Scripture does, yet we must acknowledge it but a metaphor, and the proper terms are, whether Christ’s sufferings were the same thing that the law in its threatening required, i.e., obliged unto, and made due? And so a fulfilling of that threatening? And this with great averseness I deny. The question is determined on the determination of the former, having necessary dependence on it, and being tantum non in sense the same. And therefore all the arguments which I used for the former will serve to this; and therefore I need not repeat any of them, but refer you to them, desiring you to peruse them and apply them to this; for all the same absurdities (or near all) do follow upon this as on the other. Indeed there two together (that Christ paid the Idem, the debt it self and not the value, by personating us in his sufferings, so that in law sense, we satisfied in him) are the very foundation of the whole frame of that religion commonly called Antinomian, but much more fitly Anti-evangelical. To touch again on some few. It is evident that this doctrine utterly destroys all possibility of pardon of sin, and consequently all repenting and believing, praying for pardon, all thankfulness for it, all Testamental or Evangelical conveyance of it by the promise, all Gospel and ministerial tenders of pardon; all sacramental exhibition and obsignation of pardon; and a Christians enquiries, examination, and seekings after pardon, and his comforts living or dying in assurance of pardon; and instead of all, asserts us to righteous, that we need no pardon. You will sure confess, that if this will follow, then almost all religion is overthrown at a blow. And that it follows, seems to me past doubt. For what can any law in the world require or any lawgiver, in exact justice, but that the law be perfectly fulfilled? What can any creditor require, but the Idem, the very debt it self which the obligation did contain? Can he have all his debt, and remit it too? Is the obligation fulfilled, and remitted or relaxed too? Does the Judge execute all the penalty; and yet forgive it? Is not he unjust that denies him an acquittance and the cancelling of the obligation, who hath fully paid him all his due? If any shall conceive, with the Socinians, that the same inconveniences will follow, upon the asserting of Christ’s full satisfaction for us, I answer, Not one of them: Nay there is no way, I think, but this that I now maintain to confute a Socinian, and defend Christ’s satisfaction. Were it well used, it is a key into a great part of the Body of Divinity, and helps to resolve solidly and satisfactorily a multitude of difficult objections, which without this admit not of solution (though Mr. O. call it my πρῶτον ψεῦδος [first lie, or basic error]) The Idem, or full debt or suffering, is solutio non recusabilis the value in another kind or way, is solutio recusabilis, (stricte dicta satisfactio) more plainly, the proper penalty, which is supplicum delinquentis, is all that can be required to satisfy the Legislator or Law: But that an innocent person should suffer for our sins, is quid Recusabile; the Legislator may refuse it. If therefore we had paid the Idem, the very debt we had been acquitted or to be acquitted ipso facto, as presently righteous, without remission; but when another pays it (even the Son of the Law-giver sent by his own love and mercy, who is nearer him then us ) there two things follow, 1. That the supreme Rector may accept it on what terms he please, or nor accept it: And that accordingly God did accept it on terms most fitted to his blessed ends in governing the world: Among others, that man should have the special benefits of this satisfaction conveyed to them only in a legal way, in time; on such and such terms or conditions as he saw meet, and as is expressed in the tenor of the Covenant of Grace.² &c. Nay it was the desire of Christ the satisfier, that these benefits should only thus be conveyed to the Redeemer: That so though the impetration were wholly by him, and absolutely wrought, yet the Application might be in part by themselves and conditional; and the mercy might not cross Gods ends by making them independent and secure, but might further his ends, in drawing them to him, and engaging them to repent, believe, seek, strive, fear, care, &c.

If the Idem, were paid, that is, the delinquent himself had suffered, there had needed no New Covenant,³ to apply the Benefits, or convey them: But now there doth.

Object. But it may be the Idem, the full due, though not per eundum, by the same person.

Ans. Distinguish (as before) between the Idem Materialiter and Formaliter, also between the full debt and a part. And so, if it were a debt of money or the like 1. It may be fully the same materially, and not formally: As a man may steal that same Money which you owe another, and pay it to that other as his own debt: 2. Here you must distinguish between Personam Naturalem & Civilem vel Legalem: If you pay all that was in the obligation, by your Servant, friend or any delegate or vicar, the law will say, yon have paid it your self. It was your delegates person naturally, but yours legally or rather your instrument, because the obligation required but the thing to be paid in your name, by what hand soever; and so you are acquitted without remission: For you have discharged the proper debt, and the creditor can demand no more.

But now in criminals its otherwise: Because the very person offending is in the obligation as the subject of the penalty: Noxa Caput sequitur. So that formaliter it is not the suffering which was due to you, which another suffers for you. This I add as a main argument for my proposition.

If the law do require only supplicium ipsins delinquentis, then Christ’s sufferings were not the Idem, the same thing which the law required: Nor is the law fulfilled thereby. But the law doth require only supplicium ipsius delinquentis: Therefore, &c. For the major, or its consequence it needs no proof; for Christ was not ipse delinquens; He was made sin, that is, one punishable and punished for sin; but not really, nor in law a sinner. The law never took any man for a sinner that did not sin. Of this more anon. The Minor is proved from the words of the law [In the day thou eat thou shalt dye] [Cursed is he that continues not in all things] It says, [Thou shalt dye] not [another shall dye] for them that say, it means [thou or thy surety] 1. They add to God’s law, out of their own brain, 2. They make the law to know a surety before sin; 3. They confound hereby Law and Gospel: For it is only the Gospel that revealed a surety. 4. They make the law to curse the innocent, and to threaten Christ for our sin dangerously. 5. They make Christ a surety â parte ante, and not ex post facto, and so corrupt the doctrine of his office. Let them therefore prove it before they affirm it. I conclude therefore in this case (as Grotius, Essenins, &c.) Dum alius soluit, simul aliud solvitur. And therefore Mr. O. and others that grant alius soluit, must needs grant that aliud solvitur. It was us and not Christ that the law threatened, and therefore it is not Christ’s sufferings that is the Idem, the thing threatened, but ours; nor that is a proper fulfilling of the commination in the execution. So that the obligation is not ipso facto, in justice void on Christ’s satisfaction, as it would have been on our payment (had ours been possible,) and on the payment of the proper debt.

Again I argue, as before, that is not true doctrine which denies Christ’s proper satisfaction: But so does the opposed doctrine directly. Ergo, &c.

For satisfactio (strictè sumpta) & solutio stricte sumpta, are thus different; satisfactio is solutio tantidem, & solutio stricte sumpta est ejusdem. He therefore that affirmeth that Christ paid our proper debt, denies him to have made proper satisfaction for our non-payment.

Lest you should think me singular herein, I think it meet to show you in some few testimonies, what our greatest divines say in this point.

1. Great Camero says, (page 363 Operum folio.) Objectio qui pro alio satisfecit, is soluit quod ille debet At Christus non soluit quod nos debebamus: Ergo Resp. Ad majorem per distinctionem: Id soluit quod alius debet Pondere & Valore, concedo: Id soluit specie; nego. Jam vero Christus id soluit quod nos debebamus, pondere & valore; quod satis est.

2. Rivet Disput. de satisfact. pag. 253, 254 &c. that which he disputeth for the law’s relaxation, makes wholly for this.

3. Mr. Ball of the Covenant, page 290. There is a twofold payment of Debt: One of the thing altogether the same which was in the Obligation; and this ipso facto frees from punishment, whether it be paid by the debtor himself, or by his Surety. Another of a thing not altogether the same which is in the obligation, so that some act of the creditor or Governour must come unto it, which is called remission: in which case deliverance doth not follow ipso facto, upon the satisfaction. And of this kind is the satisfaction of Christ.

4. Grotius in his Excellent Treatise De satisfactione, hath the same more fully.

5. Essenius defends it in Grotius against the cavils of Crellius at large.

6. Bilson of Christ’s Descent, page 45. and 262. (as cited by Parker.)

7. And Parker that opposes him, says as much as I do: de Descensu Christi, lib. 3. page 108, 109.

Argu. 2. If Christ paid the Idem, or fulfilled the law’s threat, then we who were the persons obliged, may be truly said to have fulfilled it in him. But that is false, therefore I mean the law is not fulfilled by Christ’s sufferings. Of which see the next question.
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1. [Bracketed inserts original to the text.]

2. [Here Baxter means something like the new conditions of salvation, namely faith in Christ, under the terms of the New Covenant.]

3. [Here Baxter seems to indicate that if Christ paid the Idem, then the sinner, for whom he suffered, would be saved under the very terms of the previous legal covenant. Baxter is highlighting an important point here.]

Richard Baxter, Universal Redemption of Mankind by the Lord Jesus Christ (London: Printed for John Salusbury at the Rising-Sun in Cornhill, 1694), 78–85. See also his Aphorismes of Justification … wherein also is opened the nature of the covenants, satisfaction, righteousness, faith, works, etc. (London: Francis Tyton, 1649), 44–56. [Some reformatting; some spelling modernized; all bracketed inserts original; footnotes mine, and underlining mine.]

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Note: What is historically and theologically significant here is that echoes of Baxter’s key points can be seen in Charles Hodge’s criticism of the double payment argument. By Hodge’s time, the classical distinctions of idem versus tantundem had been dropped in many circles having been replaced with the broader categories of pecuniary versus penal satisfaction. Thus by Hodge’s time, the notion of a pecuniary satisfaction functioned in the same way, and to the same effect as the older quantitatively identical payment view of Owen; namely, the payment of the idem, the solutio ejusdem.

Original post here (click).

Patrick Gillespie (1617–1675) on Christ Suffering the Tantundem, Not the Idem of the Law’s Punishment

Now to die ὑπερ ἑαυτί. for us, is to die in our stead, vice nostra: which is so abundantly proved in the learned treatises1 of other men more worthy to hold forth light in this point, that I judge needless to insist upon it, but rather do defer you to them. Only ere I leave this, let me leave with you these thee advertisements concerning Christ’s satisfaction for our violation of the Covenant of Works.

1. Though our punishment and suffering should have been eternal, because we could never out-satisfy; yet the sufferings of Christ, because of the dignity of the person, God-man, were perfectly satisfactory in a short time.

2. Christ paid not the idem, but the tantundem; not the same that was due, but the value: for he suffered not the same pain, numero, but the specie in kind.

3. Ye its one and the same satisfaction in the Law’s sense, which Christ paid, and which we owed, in respect that the Law does not require the Surety to pay the same sum in number, which the debtor borrowed: ‘tis satisfaction in the same in specie, in kind, or in value be paid.
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1. Mr Rutherf. Treatise of the Covenant, pag. 2.t.3.; Brinsl. Of the Mediator, pag. 72, &c.; Dr. Owen.

Partick Gillespie, The Ark of the Covenant Opened: Or, A Treatise of the Covenant of Redemption Between God and Christ, as the Foundation of the Covenant of Grace (London: Printed for Tho. Parkhurst at the bible and three Crowns in Cheapside, near Mercers Chapel, 1677), 406. [Some spelling modernized; italics original; marginal reference cited as footnote; and underlining mine.]

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Note: One should keep in mind that adherence to the so-called Covenant of Works is optional in terms of classic Reformed theology, and that the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction does not stand or fall upon it.

Original post here (click).

George Payne (1781–1848) on the Distinction Between Pecuniary and Penal Satisfaction

Secondly, we proceed to notice the nature of that satisfaction which was rendered to God as the moral Governor of the world. As we proceed, it will be found that the various parts of this great subject illustrate each other. The statements concerning the necessity of the atonement, for instance, partially explain its nature; an exhibition of its nature proves, on the other hand, its necessity. In like manner, the nature of that satisfaction which it is now proposed to investigate, must have received some elucidation from the account just given of the displeasure, on the part of God, which rendered the satisfaction necessary. The correctness of this statement will more fully appear in the course of the following remarks.

The previous definition of the atonement exhibits it in the light of a moral satisfaction. It was stated to be a satisfaction for sin, rendered to God as the moral Governor of the world. Now a moral satisfaction is one entirely sui generis. We must be especially cautious not to identify it in our conceptions with a pecuniary satisfaction. The common and popular phraseology on this subject exposes us to the danger of doing this. Sin is frequently described as a debt, and the atonement as the payment of this debt; and, if we were careful to recollect that these are symbolical or figurative terms, we should not be misled by the phraseology. But the misfortune is, that words which are really figurative, and which are employed for the sole purpose of illustration, have been under. stood and explained literally. Sin has been represented as a real debt, and the atonement as a real payment of that debt; and the unhappy result is, that darkness of the densest kind has been made to envelop the whole subject. There are individuals who imagine that Christ rescues his people from the claims of Divine justice in precisely the same way in which a generous friend delivers a debtor from captivity, by advancing the necessary sum on his behalf. Now I would not affirm that it is impossible for such persons to be saved by an humble hope in the mercy of God, through Jesus Christ; but I can have no hesitation in expressing the opinion, that they do not understand the atonement. A pecuniary satisfaction, and a moral satisfaction, differ essentially in their nature, and proceed on radically different principles. Perhaps no man has set this difference in a clearer light than the late Mr. Fuller, whose words I quote :—“I apprehend,” says this excellent writer, “that very important mistakes have arisen from considering the interposition of Christ under the notion of paying a debt. The blood of Christ is, indeed, the price of our redemption, or that for the sake of which we are delivered from the curse of the law; but this metaphorical language, as well as that of head and members, may be carried too far, and may lead us into many errors. In cases of debt and credit among men, when a surety undertakes to represent the debtor, from the moment his undertaking is accepted, the debtor is free, and may obtain his liberty, not as a matter of favour, at least on the part of the creditor, but of strict justice. But who in his sober senses will imagine this to be analogous to the redemption of sinners by Jesus Christ? Sin is a debt only in a metaphorical sense; properly speaking, it is a crime, and satisfaction for it requires to be made, not on pecuniary, but on moral principles. If Philemon had accepted of that part of Paul’s offer which respected property, and had placed so much of it to his account as he considered Onesimus to have owed him, he could not have been said to have remitted his debt, nor would Onesimus have had to thank him for remitting it. But it is supposed of Onesimus, that he might not only be in debt to his master, but have wronged him. Perhaps he had embezzled his goods, corrupted his children, or injured his character. Now for Philemon to accept that part of the offer were very different from the other. In the one case, he would have accepted of a pecuniary representative; in the other, of a moral one; i.e., of a mediator. The satisfaction, in the one case, would annihilate the very idea of remission; but not in the other. Whatever satisfaction Paul might give to Philemon respecting the wound inflicted upon his character and honor, as the head of a family, it would not supersede the necessity of pardon being sought by the offender, and freely bestowed by the offended.

The reason of this difference is easily perceived. Debts are transferable, but crimes are not. A third person may cancel the one, but be can only obliterate the effects of the other; the desert of the criminal remains. The debtor is accountable to his creditor as a private individual, who has power to accept of a surety; or, if he please, to remit the whole without any satisfaction. In the one case, he would be just; in the other, merciful; but no place is afforded by either of them for the combination of justice and mercy in the same proceeding. The criminal, on the other hand, is amenable to the magistrate, or to the head of a family, as a public person; and who, especially if the offence be capital, cannot remit the punishment without invading law and justice; nor, in the ordinary discharge of his office, admit of a third person to stand in his place. In extraordinary cases, however, extraordinary expedients are resorted to. A satisfaction may be made to law and justice, as to the spirit of them, while the letter is dispensed with. The well-known story of Zaleuchus, the Grecian lawgiver, who consented to lose one of his own eyes, to save one of his son’s eyes—who, by transgressing the law, had subjected himself to the loss of both-is an example. Here, as far as it went, justice and mercy were combined in the same act; and had the satisfaction been much fuller than it was—so full that the authority of the law, instead of being weakened, should have been abundantly magnified and honored, still it had been perfectly consistent with hee forgiveness. Finally, in the case of the debtor, satisfaction being once accepted, justice requires his complete discharge; but, in that of the criminal, where satisfaction is made to the wounded honor of the law and the authority of the lawgiver, justice, though it admits of his discharge, yet no otherwise requires it, than as it may have been matter of promise to the substitute (Fuller’s Works, vol. iv., pp. 101–4).

The preceding statements prove that a broad line of distinction exists between a moral and a pecuniary satisfaction. They exhibit very clearly the nature of the latter kind of satisfaction, and show that the satisfaction of Christ cannot have been of this description. The amount of the statements may be thus shortly given. A pecuniary representative cannot be refused—a pecuniary satisfaction is made to an individual in! his private character–it precludes the possibility of forgiveness—and, consequently, gives the individual represented a right to demand his discharge. What sober-minded man, to adopt Mr. Fuller’s language, will venture to say that any of these notions accord with the Scripture representations of the substitution and satisfaction of Christ? The passing remark of this writer, that if sin were literally a debt, it might have been remitted by God without any satisfaction, is especially worthy of attention. Such a representation of sin does most certainly destroy the necessity of atonement altogether! For what is there to forbid the most honorable and upright judge in the world to remit any personal debts which an individual may have contracted with him? In no degree would his character, as a lover of integrity and moral virtue in general, be compromised thereby; because a man may always forego his own private rights, if he chooses so to do: or, if he be restrained on the ground that his family and friends would suffer were he to forego them, he ceases to act as an individual. The rights which he struggles to retain are no longer his own personal rights. He acts as a public character; and his conduct is governed by the principles which regulate moral government in general.

George Payne, Lectures on Divine Sovereignty, Election, the Atonement, Justification, and Regeneration (Hamilton, Adams, and Co . and Roberts, Exeter, 1836), 142–45. [Some reformatting; footnote values modernized; some spelling modernized; and underlining mine.]

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Andrew Robertson on the Distinction between Pecuniary and Penal Satisfaction: In Relation to the Sufficiency of the Atonement

The following is a short essay on the sufficiency of the atonement while setting out the proper distinctions between pecuniary and penal categories.

Appendix G.

We insert here the following Extract from a Draft of an Overture pared and published by a Committee of the Associate Reformed Synod, America, for the purpose of illustrating and defending the Doctrine of the Westminster Confession of Faith. The Committee were, Rev. Dr John Mason, Messrs Robert Annan and John Smith. The writer appears to be Mr R. Annan, Philadelphia. 1787.

That there is a sufficiency in the atonement of Jesus Christ for all men, is undoubtedly a great and glorious truth. But the sufficiency of his death, and extent of it, must be considered in a twofold light; first, either with relation to the nature of sin; or, secondly, the number of sinners pardoned and saved. That the necessity of Christ’s infinite atonement does not arise from the number, but the nature of sin,—or that the very nature of sin itself requires an infinite atonement in order to its honorable remission, cannot be denied by men of sound understandings. Such an atonement is indispensably necessary to the pardon of one act of sin, and the salvation of one sinner, consistently with the glory of the Supreme Lawgiver, the obligation of his law, and sustentation of his government; and the end thereof may be completely gained in the salvation of one. Sin, though distinguished into various acts, is in itself one thing,—one corrupt principle—one vicious habit; it is enmity against God,—it is spiritual darkness, spiritual death, spiritual bondage. Therefore the infinite sufficiency of Christ’s death is necessary to the pardon of one sin, and the salvation of one sinner; and, indeed, if this were not the case, it would not be necessary to the pardon of any supposed number, because numbers do not vary nature, nor degrees alter species or kind.

The dispute about the extent of the death of Christ, therefore, can take place only on the second question, to wit, the number of sinners to be saved by it. That it is sufficient for the salivation of all men is not denied by any; and doubtless all men would be saved by it, if it were accepted by them. The sacred writings clearly teach this; and on this ground the revelation and offer of it to all men must rest.

When we speak of the sufficiency of the death and satisfaction of Christ in this last sense, perhaps we err in regulating our ideas on this great subject by the idea of commutation or commercial justice among men. As a thousand pounds in specie, by whomsoever paid, whether by the surety or debtor, is sufficient to cancel a bond or discharge a debt of that amount. But it is manifest no such ideas, strictly taken, ought to be admitted here. Let us say it with reverence, God is not a merchant. Transferable property is out of the question. The rectoral justice of the Supreme Governor of the universe is the subject to which we must fix our attention. And the only proper idea we can form of the sufficiency of the atonement of Christ is this—Is it a sufficient display of the glory of the Divine character,—of his holiness, justice, hatred of sin, and goodness as a moral Governor? Is it sufficient to maintain the authority and obligation of his law, sustain the moral system, and give energy to his government over rational and free agents, while he pardons sin and receives the rebel into favour? After forming this idea of it, which is certainly the true and just one, there arises another question: In the room of what creatures is it morally fit and proper to admit this atonement? In answer to the question, let it be observed, that as all men were comprehended in Adam, in a double sense, both as the natural root from which they all proceed, and as their representative in the. first covenant,—as they are all originally under one law or covenant, as sin is one and the same thing in them all, and as one and the same penalty is due to them all; and furthermore, as the Son of God assumed the common nature of them all—was made under the very same law which they had all broken, and not only fulfilled the obedience required by the precepts, but also endured the penalty of that very law which they had violated, and to which penalty they had by transgression exposed themselves,—there is doubtless a sufficiency in his death for them all, that is, it would comport with the glory of the Divine character, the sustentation of his government, the obligation and honor of his law, and the good of the rational and moral system, to save them all, provided they all accepted of Christ’s atonement, yielded submission to him, and returned to God by him. In the sense it may be said, “Christ tasted death for every man—is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world and God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And this lays a sufficient foundation for that injunction, “Go, preach the gospel to every creature: he that believeth shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned. Go, speak to the people all the words of this life.” Every legal bar and obstruction in the way of the salvation of all men is removed; let them only accept and submit to Jesus Christ as their Prophet, Priest, and King. All things are ready, and all are made welcome to the marriage and the marriage supper.

But while we allow the sufficiency of the atonement of Christ for the salvation of all men, at the same time, it is absolutely certain, both from the testimony of God’s word, and from fact and experience, that many men reject it, and die rejecting it. Now, did God design to save, by the death of his Son, those who finally reject it? Is there a sufficiency in the death of Christ to save men, whether they receive or reject the benefit of it? Most certainly not. The gospel constitution assures us, that such, instead of being saved by it, will find this rejection infinitely to aggravate their guilt and condemnation. Christ will profit them nothing. “He that believeth not shall be damned.” Did Christ, then, die at an absolute uncertainty whether any should be saved by his death or not? Surely not. A number have been saved by it, and many more shall be so. “But known unto God are all his works from the beginning.” The Scriptures most f d y declare that a number were predestinated to life by Jesus Christ; a number were given to Christ, ” and all that the Father hath given to him shall come to him.” God determined such, not only the offer of Christ and salvation, but also grace to believe and accept. In respect of its sufficiency, then, the death of Christ bears a relation to all men. The door of hope has been opened to all to enter, or to believe and accept; and he that believeth shall be saved” But in respect of the intention of real and actual salvation, he died only for the chosen, or those who were given to him, and whom the Father will draw, by rich, free, and unmerited grace. In virtue of the atonement of Christ, it is consistent with the honor of God, yea, redounds much to his glory, to save all who believe and obey the gospel, and none else. But shall we suppose he did not know who should finally do so? How can that be possible, since, it is certain, whenever any does so, it is owing to the interposition of sovereign grace? “By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” As for the others, he determined to leave them finally to their own free choice, except that he strives with them in the dispensation of his word and ordinances, and by the more ordinary operations of hi Spirit, still declaring that whosoever believeth on Christ shall not perish. They are thus inexcusable; for the gospel is as rational an address to the rational powers of men, as ever was made to rational creatures; and the only reason why they are not saved, is became they will not. “Ye will not come to me,” says Christ, “that ye might have life.”

Andrew Robertson, History of the Atonement Controversy, in Connexion with The Secession Church, From its Origin to the Present Time (Edinburgh: William Oliphant and Sons, 1846), 365–68.

Note: We have seen a few references to the proper distinctions between pecuniary and satisfactions coming out of Marrow and early Secession literature. Clearly thinkers at this time had become sensitive to the problematics of converting the penal categories into pecuniary ones.

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Edward D. Griffin (1770–1837) on the Danger of Conflating Pecuniary and Penal Categories

What bearing these sentiments have on the limitation of the atonement, will still more distinctly appear by the following quotations. “That there is as truly a federal relation between Christ and the members of his mystical body, the church [the elect antecedent to their faith], as there was between Adam and his natural descendants, the Scriptures abundantly manifest: and it is this federal relation which laid the foundation for the imputation of their sins to Christ. But according to the sentiments opposed,—no such relation ever existed; there was no real imputation of sin to Christ, nor any proper punishment inflicted on him for it: consequently the penal sanction of the law, with reference to those who are saved, has never been endured. For were these important facts admitted, it is easy to perceive that redemption must of necessity be limited; because no one could righteously perish for whose sins plenary satisfaction had been made to divine justice.” “They insist that what Christ paid for our redemption was not the same with what is in the obligation, and that therefore his dolorous sufferings were not a proper payment of our debt; and consequently a proper and full satisfaction for our sins could not arise from his death to the law and justice of God. For were this satisfaction conceded, they see at once that the delinquents for whom it was made must inevitably be saved” (Geth. p. 10, 11, 20, 21).

This whole system goes upon the principle that the atonement was a legal transaction, partaking of a commercial nature, as if money had been paid for the redemption of so many captives and no more, or for the discharge of the debt of so many imprisoned bankrupts and no more; in which case, as all can see, the ransomed captives or exonerated debtors would have a legal claim to a discharge. To make out a parallel case in a transaction where no money was paid, it is necessary to establish a personal identity (for I can call it by no other name), between the representative and the represented, which they denominate a legal oneness (the justice of which depended on his previous consent), and to make him legally guilty by imputation, and legally and justly adjudged to punishment in the room of those whom he represented, and to make him suffer a literal and legal punishment, the same in kind and degree that the law had threatened to that particular number. In this way law and justice were literally satisfied and could demand no more; and those whose debt was thus discharged can claim of law and justice a release, and cannot legally or justly be punished again, but have a righteousness legally their own by imputation, and which legally and justly entitles them to justification; and yet not a legal claim to justification in their own persons, but in their Surety; they virtually possessing two persons, one demanding of the law condemnation, the other demanding of the law justification: and all this not depending on their faith; for one of the blessings to which (though unconscious of it) they have this legal claim, is the gift of faith. The result is, that Christ was a surety, sponsor, or representative for none but those who will be saved, and could not justly suffer for any whose sins were not thus finally taken from them and laid upon him.

Had a legal oneness between Christ and believers (as relates to justification, not to the amount of his sufferings) been asserted, it would not have limited the atonement; for it would still have left to all a chance to come into this relation to him by believing; and that would have been an atonement for all as moral agents. It was necessary to extend the oneness so far as to limit the sufferings: for had they been sufficient for all, it must be acknowledged, since the benefit is offered to all, that they change the relations of all, so that they can be pardoned if they will believe; which again makes out an atonement for all as moral agents. And if the oneness must be so extended as to affect the amount of sufferings, it cannot lie between Christ and those indiscriminately who would believe, but between him and a certain number of designated individuals, whose sins could be exactly weighed. And the oneness must have been established before he suffered, as his sufferings were to be their legal punishment. In every point of view the system must take this precise shape, in order to bear upon a limited atonement, which, as the author of Gethsemane conclusively pleads, can be supported on no other ground. The oneness must be legal to limit the sufferings; and when their limit is to be fixed, the number and individuals for whom they are to be endured must be known; and since the infliction is to be legal, it cannot take place till the union is first formed. It is of course a vital principle of the system that a legal oneness was established in the covenant of redemption between Christ and the elect, which exists of course before they believe, and existed before he died, and was the ground of the imputation of their sins to him; that the elect as elect were regarded in the covenant as his body, his members, his church, his spiritual seed, standing in the same relation to him that the posterity of Adam do to their federal head; in short, that antecedent to all faith, a complete legal oneness existed between the elect and Christ. He was legally bound to suffer their punishment both in measure and kind; and bonds being given to that effect, they had, though unknown to themselves, a legal claim to a discharge.

There are, I conceive, two errors in this system. The first is, that it makes the union which really subsists between Christ and believers to lie between Christ and the elect. The second is, that it supposes a legal oneness, a legal imputation, a legal obligation to suffer, a legal punishment, a legal satisfaction, and a legal claim on the part of the redeemed. We admit a very intimate union between Christ and believers, and that kind of imputation both of sin and righteousness which consists in treatment, and a bond on him to suffer imposed by a divine command, and the infliction of that which answered every purpose of a legal punishment, and a full satisfaction yielded to the Protector of the law, and the claim of believers on the promise of God. But we deny that either of these is legal. The mistake of supposing them such has wholly arisen from drawing literal conclusions from figurative premises. Because Christ is said to be one with believers or his church, he is legally one with the elect. Because he is said to have been made sin for us (by which is meant that he was treated as a sinner), he became legally guilty by imputation. Because the Lawgiver demanded satisfaction of him by commanding him to die, law and justice made the demand. Because the iniquity of all is said to have been laid on him, he sustained the literal and legal punishment of sin. Because he was dragged to execution like a criminal, and fell under the stroke of him who was wont to act as the legal Executioner, law and justice were literally executed upon him. Because he rendered full satisfaction to the Protector of the law, by securing its authority as fully as though it had been literally executed, he satisfied both law and justice. Because by a covenant claim he bound the arm of the Lawgiver and Executioner not to strike believers, he bound the law itself not to strike the elect. Because we are said to be made the righteousness of God in him (by which is meant that we are treated as righteous, or have the complete use of a righteousness, or possess a gracious title to justification through the righteousness of the Redeemer), we are considered in the eye of the law as righteous. Because by his obedience he fulfilled all the demands of the law against himself, and answered all the purposes of our perfect obedience, and by his death accomplished all the ends of a literal execution of the penalty, and thus became the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth, he wrought out a legal righteousness for the elect. And because God, having thus secured the authority of the law, can be just to himself, to his government, and to every interest, while yet he is the justifier of him that believeth, the justification of the elect is an act of distributive justice to them. Thus by pressing, in some instances, the figurative language of Scripture into a literal meaning, and by twisting the truth a very little in others, they arrive at all the conclusions which have been enumerated.

In proceeding to detect the mistakes of this system, I must begin by remarking, that the atonement had none of the attributes of a commercial transaction. Christ paid no money for us, he only suffered. There are two figures of a commercial nature which are commonly applied to the subject. The first represents Christ as paying a ransom for the redemption of captives, or purchasing his church; the second exhibits him as discharging the debts of imprisoned bankrupts. The former is derived from the Scriptures. I have already admitted that the higher ransom, which involved the service of his obedience “unto death,” was limited to the elect. Their salvation was promised him as the reward of that service. When he had fulfilled his part of the contract, he became justly entitled to the recompense, as a man is to an article which he has purchased. In this sense he may be said to have purchased the elect. And though the price is represented to be his blood, yet it was the merit of obedience in laying down that blood which really earned the reward. But this is altogether different from the atonement. When the atonement is spoken of as a ransom, it is only a price laid down to enable captives to come out if they will. If this distinction is kept in mind, all the appeals to our sense of commercial justice respecting the ransom will come to nothing.

The other figure, so far as I recollect, is purely of human invention. The Scriptures, I believe, nowhere speak of Christ’s paying the debt even of believers, much less of the elect as such. They speak of the debt as still remaining, and as being, after repentance and faith, gratuitously forgiven. They teach us to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” They illustrate our discharge by the case of a servant who owed his lord ten thousand talents and had nothing to pay, to whom, in answer to his entreaties, his lord forgave the whole. Nor can it be overlooked, that this notion of paying our debt stands diametrically opposed to every idea of pardon, and to all those representations of a free and gracious justification with which the Scriptures abound. What remission or grace can there be in discharging a bankrupt when his debts are paid? You say there was grace in providing the bondsman. Granted. But when the bondsman has discharged the whole score, there is no grace in letting the debtor go. At least, there is nothing which answers to the scriptural idea of pardon.

All the popular arguments, then, which are drawn from the figure of paying debts, are not only unscriptural and of human invention, but directly opposed to the Word of God. There was nothing in the atonement of such a commercial nature. And yet the whole system which we are considering is built on the assumption that this august measure had all the attributes of a money transaction. There is only one way in which the resemblance can be at all maintained; and that is by establishing a personal identity between the representative and the represented. If this could be done, I admit that all the principles of a pecuniary payment would apply to the case. Whether, therefore, any of the arguments founded on commercial figures are at all applicable, depends on the single question of that personal identity.

Edward D. Griffin, “An Humble Attempt to Reconcile the Differences of Christians Respecting the Extent of the Atonement,” in The Atonement: Discourses and Treatises (Boston: Congregational Board of Publication, 1859), 220–24.

Notes: 1) After the above quoted selection, Griffin goes on to discuss the correct and incorrect nature of Christ’s federal and legal union with his people. These sections are also well worth reading. 2) While one may not agree with all of Griffin’s positive theological assertions and terms, his critiques are sharp and accurate. 3) Griffin rightly challenges the notion that legal union entails a strict identity of persons, entailing a sort of “transfer” of sins to Christ, rather than the proper idea of Christ being treated as though he were a sinner (J. Edwards, C. Hodge). 4) And Griffin is exactly right to acknowledge that this confusion rests upon the conflation of the pecuniary efficacy with penal efficacy, such that Christ’s penal satisfaction obtains exactly the same sort of efficacy one finds in a pecuniary satisfaction. 5) Lastly, Griffin is exactly right that commercial categories destroy grace in the Redemption of Christ.

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Samuel Spear (1812–1891) on Pecuniary and Penal Satisfaction

Note: I am not in agreement with everything Spear says regarding the atonement; however, some of his comments here are insightful and instructive. His footnotes have not been reproduced.

Spear wrote:

Thirdly, it is further admitted that the figure of paying a debt is a very inadequate and defective exhibition of the work of Christ. “At the same time, we shall be careful not to push this similitude (of debtor and creditor) to an unlawful extreme, nor to represent the satisfaction of Christ as tallying in all respects with that which is made in human transactions.” “But pecuniary transactions, we not only admit but insist, can furnish no perfect parallel to the mysterious transaction of saving sinners.” “This does not make redemption a commercial transaction, nor imply that there are not essential points of diversity between acquiring by money, and acquiring by blood. Hence our second remark is, that if Dr Beman will take up any elementary work on theology, he will find the distinction between pecuniary and penal satisfaction clearly pointed out, and the satisfaction of Christ shown to be of the latter, and not of the former kind.” Thus it appears that the figure of paying, a debt by a surety, is defective; and that a “penal satisfaction only is meant by it. The analogy between sin and a debt is very remote, and equally so that between a “penal satisfaction” and the payment of a debt. It is by unduly pressing this analogy, that errors have arisen in respect to the atonement. “The supposition of an exact and perfect resemblance between the atonement and the payment of a pecuniary debt, might lead us to deny the full extent of the provision made by the death of Christ for the salvation of mankind; or it might lead us to believe that all men will finally be saved; or what is a still more shocking error, to believe that sinners are under no obligation to obey the divine law, and cannot be justly required to endure its penalty.” Strictly speaking, the atonement pays no debt; neither is Christ a surety for a literal debtor….

Fifthly, the term surety is applied but once to the Saviour in the New Testament, and not at all in the Old. “By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament” Heb. 9:22. In this chapter the apostle shows the superiority of Christ’s Priesthood over that of the Mosaic system. He refers to the solemnity of His appointment: Thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchisedec.” He then reasons—“And inasmuch as not without an oath he was made priest, * * * By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament.” The apostle does not say, surety of the elect undertaking to pay their “boundless debt,” but “surety of a better testament”—meaning the gospel dispensation placed in contrast with the Mosaic, which he speaks of a being disannulled. In precisely what sense Christ is a surety, does not appear, except from the word itself. The term means a bondsman, a security, one who pledges himself for another. What the apostle says is, that Christ is the bondsman, so to speak, of the Covenant, the “better testament.” To continue the figure, (for it is plainly a metaphor.) He signs the covenant and seals it with His own blood–stands pledged for it. The commercial idea of’ a debtor and a creditor, and of Christ as stipulating to pay to the latter the debt of the former, is almost infinitely removed from what the apostle said. True, “the Redeemer is expressly called a surety; but of what? “Of a better testament,” and not the elect undertaking to pay their “boundless debt.”

Sixthly, the commercial metaphors of the Bible used to describe the work of Christ, have no analogy to the idea of a debt paid by a surety. Christians are said to be bought with a price—redeemed with the precious blood of the Saviour. These are confessedly metaphorical expressions, though teaching the delivery of His people from the curse of the law by the death of Christ. In the language of metaphor His blood was the price of their redemption; by it they have been released from the curse of a violated law. But these metaphors are not analogous to the proper idea of a surety. This is a very different metaphor. A surety does not redeem him for whom he is surety; he pays no price for him; he simply pays his debt, or stands pledged for it. The metaphor of a redeemer respects the persons of the redeemed; that of a surety respects not the persons, but merely a pecuniary liability. Hence when Christ is said to redeem us, and His people to be bought with a price, the idea of a surety is not at all contained in the figure. It is, therefore, illogical, not authorized by the Scriptures, to say that Christ is a surety stipulating to pay the “boundless debt” of the elect, and then refer to tho terms price, bought, redeemed, ransom, in confirmation of this proposition. The terms do not imply the idea figuratively–much less, literally.

Finally, the similitude between the payment of a debt by a surety, and the work of Christ as a Saviour, besides being not at all Scriptural, is in almost all respects defective. A debt infers no fault or crime; a debtor as such is no violator of law; but Christ’s work is in behalf of sinners, and on account of sin. A debt infers no penal exposure ; but sinners are in danger of eternal damnation. A creditor is not a public, but a private person: he may remit the debt without satisfaction, and is bound to cancel it when paid by a surety. God is not the sinner’s creditor, but his lawgiver; and the work of Christ in his behalf has reference to the government of a sovereign ruler. In it are obstacles to the sinner’s pardon, which have not the faintest analogy to the relation of a creditor. A debt is transferable; a surety may assume it and pay it. Sin is not transferable; it belongs inalienably to the being who committed it. Neither is the ill-desert of sin transferable [On this, see Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 2:476–77]: and if, as the reviewer of Beman on Atonement declares, and as we firmly believe, “ill-desert * * * is the ground of just liability to punishment,” then this “liability” is not transferable. Hence, to quote the words of President Dwight, “All that, in this case, can be done by a substitute of whatever character, is to render it not improper for the lawgiver to pardon the transgressor.”

Samuel T. Spear, “The Atonement and the Penalty of the Law,” The American Biblical Repository, ed. J. M. Sherwood, 3rd series, January No. (New York: Published by the Proprietor; London: John Snow, 1850), 138–40 (italics original); or Samuel T. Spear, “The Atonement and the Penalty of the Law,” The Biblical Repository 3rd Series 6, no. 1 (1850): 138–40; italics original.

Caleb Burge (1782–1838) on the Distinction between Pecuniary and Penal Satisfaction

CHAPTER V

Full Atonement, and Salvation Wholly By Grace, Consistent with Each Other
The Scriptures plainly teach, that though Christ has made a full and complete atonement for sin, yet the salvation of sinners is entirely of grace. “By grace ye are saved.” Eph. 2:5. Many, however, have found it difficult to treat the subject as though these doctrines were reconcilable, the one with the other. But this difficulty has probably arisen from mistaken views of the nature of the atonement which Christ has made. Understanding the atonement to be, literally, a purchase, or the payment of a debt, some have inferred from it, that, since Christ is represented as a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, all men must be saved; others, that, inasmuch as it is evident that all will not be saved, the atonement could not be made for all; and others, again, that, if sinners are saved on account of the atonement, their pardon and salvation cannot be of grace.

These conclusions are much more consistent with the premises, from which they are respectively drawn, than either the premises or conclusions are with the truth. For, if the atonement did consist in the payment of a debt literally, it seems very obvious that there could not be any grace exercised in the acquittance of sinners, and that atonement and actual salvation, must be co-extensive. If Christ has really paid the debt of sinners, they, of course, must be free. Justice must be satisfied, and can make no further demand. On this ground it must, indeed, follow, that if Christ died for all, then all will be saved; and that if all are not saved, then he could not have died for all. And it equally follows, that none can be saved by grace. Their debt being paid, it cannot be forgiven.

Since, therefore, the Scriptures represent the pardon and salvation of sinners as being wholly of grace, we may be certain that the atonement cannot be the payment of a debt, nor, strictly, of the nature of a purchase. This, too, it is apprehended, has already been made evident, in what has been shown concerning the necessity and nature of atonement. But since many, at the present day, have adopted this scheme of the atonement, and have deduced sentiments from it which are of the most dangerous tendency, it may not be improper to examine, a little more directly, the reasoning by which they endeavor to make their scheme consistent with the exercise of grace, in the actual bestowment of pardon and salvation.

The Scriptures are so very explicit and particular, respecting the terms of pardon and justification, that few believers in divine revelation can be found, who do not appear anxious to have it understood that, in some way or other, they hold the doctrines of grace. It has been said by some, that though atonement be the payment of a debt, yet the pardon of a sinner may be called an act of grace, because it is founded in other acts, which certainly are acts of grace. God’s giving his Son to make atonement, and his actually making it, are acts of grace. And since the pardon of sinners has its foundation on these gracious acts, it may be called an act of grace itself. But this is, certainly, strange reasoning. To say that pardon is an act of grace, only because it is grounded on other acts which are gracious, is nothing less than to say, that it is an act of grace, though it is not an act of grace.

Besides, on the ground of the scheme in question, it is futile to talk of pardon. When a debt is paid, what can remain to be forgiven? The notion, however, is not more inconsistent with itself, than it is with Scripture. “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.” Eph. 1:7. “Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Rom. 3:24. These passages of Scripture, and many others of similar import, plainly imply, that forgiveness and justification are themselves acts of grace, and not merely that they are grounded on other acts of this nature.

Nor is this all. Pardon, or forgiveness, in its very nature, implies grace. So far as any crime is pardoned at all, it is pardoned graciously. It is impossible to forgive in any other way. Pardon, on the ground of justice, would be a contradiction in terms. To pardon a sinner is to treat him more favorably than he deserves; to release him from a punishment which he has justly merited; and to confer on him a favor, to which he has no claim. Pardon always implies this. If a criminal be pardoned, he is treated more favorably than he deserves. His release from punishment is a favor which he can have no right to demand. This circumstance, that he cannot demand it, constitutes his release an act of grace; and the same circumstance renders it an act of forgiveness. Without this circumstance, no acquittal can be an act, either of pardon or grace.

Others, again, among those who consider the atonement as the payment of a debt, have attempted to solve the difficulty by saying that, though the pardon of the sinner is not an act of grace to Christ, since he has paid the debt; yet it is an act of grace to the sinner, because the debt was not paid by himself, but by Christ, his surety.

It may be observed in reply, that as to the release of the debtor, it makes no difference who pays the debt. Whoever may make the payment, if the debt is paid, it can never be forgiven. If a creditor has received payment of his demand, he is under obligation to discharge his debtor, whether he paid the debt himself or some other person paid it for him. This must be evident to every candid mind. No creditor can refuse to give up an obligation after it is fully paid, without the most manifest injustice. But an act of grace is what no being can be under obligation, to him who receives it, to perform. If a being is under obligation to another to perform an act in his favor, that act must be an act of justice, and not of grace. Hence there can be no grace in giving up a demand which is fully satisfied.

What, then, becomes of the boasted arguments of those who plead for universal grace, on the ground that Christ has paid the debt for all men. Alas, what gross delusion! They talk about grace, free grace for all men, and yet exclude every idea of grace in the pardon of sinners, by alleging that Christ has paid their debt. If their debt is paid, they can never be pardoned. But if sinners may be pardoned for Christ’s sake, then their debt is not paid; and, consequently, God is under no obligation to exercise pardon on account of the atonement. Thus it appears that the argument for universal salvation, deduced from the notion that Christ has paid the debt for sinners, is totally groundless. Take it which way we will, it is mere delusion.

The truth is, Christ has paid no man’s debt. It is true, indeed, that our deliverance is, in Scripture, sometimes called a redemption; and this word refers to the deliverance of a prisoner from captivity, which is often effected by the payment of a sum of money. Christ is also called “a ransom,” and we are said to be “bought with a price.” But it must be remembered that these are figurative expressions. They are designed to communicate this idea, that as the payment of money as the price of liberty is the ground on which prisoners are released from captivity, so the atonement of Christ is the ground on which sinners are pardoned, or set free from a sentence of condemnation. These passages, thus understood, appear intelligible and consistent; whereas, understood literally, they would contradict other plain declarations of the Word of God. For sinners are certainly represented in Scripture as being pardoned of free grace; which, it is evident, cannot be said with propriety of captives whose liberty is purchased. Besides, these passages literally bring into view the payment of money and the discharge of debt. But surely no one will suppose that sinners have literally plundered the treasury of heaven, and deprived God of property, and that the business of the Redeemer was to refund the money which they had thus wrongfully taken away. We have not been “redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold; but with the precious blood of Christ.” It is evident, therefore, that these are metaphorical expressions, and were never designed to be taken in a sense strictly literal.

The Scriptures, indeed, use a variety of metaphors in describing the necessity and nature of atonement. When sin is represented under a figure, we find the Saviour introduced under a corresponding figure. If sin is a disease, and “the whole head sick, and the heart faint,” Christ is a physician. There is balm in Gilead, and a physician there. If sin is hunger and thirst, Christ is the bread and water of life. If sin is error, in a road or path, Christ is then the way. And if sin is a debt, Christ is then a price.

Let passages of this description be understood literally, and they immediately become not only unintelligible, but plainly contradictory. But let them be understood metaphorically, as was evidently designed, and they are intelligible, consistent, and fraught with instruction. If sin is called a disease, we are not to understand that it may be healed as easily as bodily diseases are, or in the same manner; but we are rather to infer, from this representation, the greatness of the evil; and that as diseases of the body which are not healed bring forth, so sin, if it be not destroyed in us, will inevitably issue in a more dreadful death of the immortal soul. If sin be spoken of as a debt, it is not to show us that it may be paid by another; but it is rather to signify to us that our sins render us accountable to God, though not precisely in the same manner, yet as certainly as debtors are to their creditors, and that a day of reckoning must come. If sin is a debt, and also a disease, and Christ a price to pay the debt, and a physician to heal the disease, we are no more authorized to infer that he has paid the debt, than we are to conclude that he has healed the disease, which we know is not the fact. The truth is, neither debt nor disease does specifically describe the nature of sin. Nor does the payment of a debt, nor the healing of a disease, with any greater literal correctness describe the work of the Redeemer.

From what has been shown concerning the necessity and nature of the atonement, it is evident not only that it does not at all consist in the payment of a debt, but that it is perfectly consistent with free grace in the pardon of sinners. Grace and justice may be considered as opposite terms. Where one begins, the other necessarily ends. That action which justice requires cannot be of grace. An action, to be gracious, must be unmerited; and, if unmerited, it must be what no being is under obligation to perform. An act of grace is what may be performed, or not performed, without any injustice. The bestowment of a favor, which might have been withholden [withheld] without any injustice, is an act of grace; but nothing short of this can be grace. The term justice is used in three different ways.

1. It is used in relation to the property of individuals.
2. It is used in relation to the moral character of individuals.
3. It is used in relation to the interest and well-being of society at large.

The first kind of justice, which has respect to exchanging property, consists in giving every man his own without respect to moral character. To be just in this sense of the word, debtors must satisfy the equitable demands of their creditors, and creditors, when these demands are satisfied, must give up their obligations. That grace which would be opposed to justice in this sense, would consist in giving money where it is not owed, or in giving up obligations without receiving their value. But, as the controversy between God and sinners is not concerning property, this kind of justice and grace is not at all concerned in the present inquiry.

It is the second kind of justice which relates to the treatment of moral beings, in regard to their character, to which this inquiry has respect. To treat moral beings exactly according to their real character, is an act of justice. To treat them more favorably than is correspondent with their character, would be an act of grace. To treat them more severely than is correspondent with their character, would be an act of injustice. Now, this kind of justice has not been satisfied, in the least degree, by the death of Christ. His sufferings have made no alteration, at least no favorable alteration, in the character of sinners. Their personal demerit is as great as it would have been if no atonement had been made. Indeed, in a multitude of instances, it is much greater. For if Christ had not come, they had not had so great sin; but now, they have both seen and hated, both him and his Father. Mankind are now by nature, subjects of the same evil heart of unbelief of which they were the subjects, before Christ appeared to make atonement for sin. It is still true that their throat is an open sepulchre, the poison of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to do mischief [to shed blood], and the way of peace they have not known. It is still true, that their whole head is sick, and their whole heart faint. In point of personal merit, even now they deserve the damnation of hell. Should God now send them to that place of torment and confine them there for ever, he would treat them according to their personal character, and, consequently, do them no injustice. But if, instead of sending them to hell, he is pleased to pardon them and restore them to his favor, he treats them more favorably than is correspondent with their moral character, and, consequently, their salvation must be entirely of grace.

And, since it is evident that the moral character of sinners is not made better by the atonement of Christ; and, of course, that this kind of justice, which consists in treating moral beings according to their character, is not in the least degree satisfied; it must follow, that there is as much grace exercised in pardoning sinners out of respect to the atonement, as there could possibly have been in case they had been pardoned without any atonement. Indeed, it was utterly impossible, in the nature of things, that this kind of justice could be satisfied. Nothing which Christ did, either in obedience or sufferings, could possibly alter the moral deserts of sinners. Nor was it, in the least, necessary that justice, in this sense of the term, should be satisfied. The moral desert of the sinner, considered in itself, presented no obstacle in the way of his salvation. If it had, it would have been an obstacle in the way of grace; and if it had been removed, grace would have been excluded.

It is the third kind of justice mentioned, which has been satisfied by the death of Christ. This, if it be proper to call it justice, is fully satisfied. For, by the sufferings and death of Christ to atone for sin, God has fully manifested a proper respect for his law, has made it evident that he loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity, and has done what was needful to deter his other subjects from disobedience; so that he may now pardon sinners without doing any injustice to his kingdom in general. He may be just, and the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus. But while the obstacles arising from the regard which God had to his own character, and the highest good of his kingdom, which, without atonement, opposed the salvation of sinners, are all happily removed by the propitiation of Christ; still, as has been shown, the moral character of sinners remains unaltered, their personal ill-desert the same. Hence, notwithstanding God may pardon them without injuring his kingdom, yet he is under no more obligation to do it as it respects them, than he would have been, if no atonement had ever been made; nor will he do them any more injustice in sending them to hell, than he would have done in doing the same thing, if Christ had never died. It is evident, therefore, that there is as much grace exercised in the pardon of sinners, as there would have been, if they had been pardoned without any atonement whatever.

What, then, must be the disappointment of those, who flatter themselves that all mankind must be saved, because Christ has made atonement for their sins. How inconsistent must it be, to talk of salvation by grace, and yet suppose, that God is under obligation to save all mankind on account of Christ’s death! As well might it be argued, that God is under obligation to save fallen angels, for whom Christ never died.

Caleb Burge, “An Essay on the Scripture Doctrine of Atonement: Showing Its Nature, Its Necessity, and Its Extent,” in The Atonement: Discourses and Treatises (Boston: Congregational Board of Publication, 1859), 488–93.

Original post here (click).

John Smalley (1734–1820) Eternal Salvation on No Account a Matter of Just Debt

SERMON I

JUSTIFICATION THROUGH CHRIST, AN ACT OF FREE GRACE

Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.—Romans 3:24.
The point labored in the preceding part of this epistle, is the impossibility of salvation for any of mankind, on the footing of mere law, or of personal righteousness. The apostle hath proved that both Jews and Gentiles were all under sin; and hence he infers, as the necessary consequence, that, “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in the sight of God.” This point being established, that the original way of life was now forever barred against the race of fallen man, the apostle proceeds, for the comfort of sinners, to open to view the gospel method of justification through a Redeemer. See the context, verse 21, and onward. “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all, and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

It is of the last importance that this new way of access into the divine favor, and of obtaining eternal life, should be rightly explained. By many it has been so misunderstood as either to make void the law, or to frustrate the grace of the gospel, or both. Some speculative inaccuracies also, it appears to me, respecting justification through the atonement and righteousness of Christ, have been inadvertently adopted by many, if not most, of the orthodox, of which men of erroneous sentiments have availed themselves to very pernicious purposes.

The great difficulty respecting this subject, to which I design to pay particular attention at present, is, how to reconcile the full satisfaction of Christ, with the free grace of God in the pardon of sin and the justification of sinners. It is proposed, agreeably to the words before us,

1st. To explain gospel justification.
2d. To consider how this is through the redemption of Christ. And,
3d. To show that still it is of the free grace of God.

But on the last of these heads I mean mainly to insist.

I. I shall endeavor very briefly to explain what we are here to understand by being justified.

Justification literally signifies judging one to be just. A man is said to justify himself when he asserts his own innocence, or denies that he has been to blame in any instance. So one is said to justify another when he stands up for him, or undertakes his vindication. Among the Jews this was a law phrase, or was used in reference to their courts of judicature. See Deut. 25:1; “If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them, then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.”

From this judicial use of the word, it came to be applied to the case of mankind, in regard to the sentence of the Supreme Judge. The legal justification of man, had he persevered in perfect rectitude, would have been the sentence of his Maker, pronouncing him righteous, and confirming him in immortal happiness. But gospel justification—the justification of fallen men before a holy and just God, must be supposed to have something peculiar in it. The application of the word to this case, must be understood as borrowed and figurative; yet the thing intended is sufficiently analogous to the primary meaning of the phrase to well warrant this metaphorical use. It bears a resemblance to the legal and literal justification of the righteous in the two most essential points. It implies an acquittance from sin as exposing to eternal death, and the grant of a sure title to everlasting life.

1st. Gospel justification implies an acquittance from all sin, as exposing to eternal death. To this purpose see Acts 13:38, 39; “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.” In the Mosaic law, provision was made for cleansing persons from ceremonial, but not from moral, transgressions. Not from sin, the apostle to the Hebrews observes, “as pertaining to the conscience.” Hence David says, Psalm 51:16, “For thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it.” That is, there were no sin-offerings instituted for such crimes as those of which he had been guilty. But through the atonement of Christ believers are justified from all things. His “blood cleanseth from all sin.” Accordingly we read, Rom. 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” That is, no condemnation to eternal death. Not that there is no kind of condemnation to those who are justified according to the new covenant. The best saints are liable to temporal punishments, notwithstanding their justification. Moses and David and Hezekiah were condemned for their sins, and sorely punished for them in this world, though good men, and interested in the covenant of grace. And St. Paul, reproving the Corinthians for their unworthy attendance on the Lord’s Supper, says, “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.” Believers, by being justified, are not exempted from all expressions of the divine displeasure. The pardon implied in this gracious act of God is only a discharge from the condemnation of the wicked; that is, from future and eternal punishment. But, 2d. Gospel justification implies the grant of a sure title to eternal life.

This is more than merely being delivered from the curse of the law. Adam, before his fall, was perfectly free from all condemnation; but he was not confirmed in the divine favor. He was placed in a state of probation with only a conditional promise of final happiness. If he obeyed he was to live; if he disobeyed he was to die. And he had no assurance of effectual grace to preserve him from final apostasy and perdition. In this last respect, the case of those who are justified through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus is essentially different. Indeed, some have supposed that believers in Christ, have, in this life, only conditional promises of final salvation. Nor can it be denied that persevering obedience of the gospel is made necessary in order to eternal life. It is written, “The just shall live by faith; but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. He that endureth to the end,” says Christ, “the same shall be saved. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”

From such passages as these many have been led to suppose, that all the promises of the second covenant, like those of the first, are only conditional, and depend upon the mutable will of man for their ultimate accomplishment. But texts enough may be produced, which assert the absolute safety of all who are once justified by faith. Justification and glorification are spoken of as infallibly connected, Rom. 8:30; “Whom he justifieth, them he also glorifieth.” And our Saviour says, John 5:24, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my words, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation.”

Nor are these at all inconsistent with those other texts, which imply that none shall be saved at last, but such as obey the gospel to the end of life. For perseverance in faith and holiness may be made absolutely sure in the first justification. And that this is actually the case is most evident from Scripture. Christ says of his sheep—of all who “hear his voice, and follow him, I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.” Those who truly believe, we are taught, are not of them that draw back unto perdition. They are said to be “kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation.” We may be confident of this very thing, according to the apostle, that he who hath begun a good work in any one—a work of faith with power—he will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. From these passages, and many more in the New Testament, it appears evident enough that those who have once obtained Gospel justification, are not only put into a new state of trial upon a milder constitution, according to which it is possible they may be finally saved; but that their salvation is made infallible, by this better covenant, established upon better promises; this everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure.

II. I proceed to speak of the redemption of Christ, the essential ground of gospel justification.

To redeem, signifies to deliver; more strictly, and most commonly, to deliver by ransom. There were various laws in Israel concerning redemptions: the redemption of lives, of lost inheritances, and of persons sold to slavery. Every first-born male, according to law, was the Lord’s; but the first-born of man, and the firstlings of certain beasts might not be sacrificed; provision was therefore made for their being redeemed by the substitution of others in their stead. See Exod. 13:13; “Every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck; and all the first-born of man amongst thy children shalt thou redeem.” With regard to the redemption of inheritances, see Lev. 25:25; “If thy brother be waxen poor, and hath sold away of his possession, and if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his brother had sold.” Of the redemption of Israelites who had sold themselves, see the same chapter, ver. 47–49; “And if a sojourner or stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger; after that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him: either his uncle, or his uncle’s son may redeem him, or any that is nigh of kin unto him of his family may redeem him; or, if he be able, he may redeem himself.”

In allusion to these and such like redemptions in Israel, Christ is called our Redeemer, and is said to be made of God unto us redemption. Agreeably to these different instances and ways of redeeming, the redemption that is in Jesus Christ may be understood as comprehending, both the merit of his obedience, and the manifestation of divine justice made by his sufferings, in our nature and stead. We were waxen poor; our eternal inheritance was alienated; and such was the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who “was rich, that for our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich.” He took upon him the form of a servant—the nature and place of man, and, in that nature and capacity, obeyed perfectly his Father’s law as man ought to have done, that “by his obedience many might be made righteous,” and obtain the inheritance of eternal life. We had sold ourselves; the Son of Man therefore, our kinsman, came to seek and to save—to ransom and redeem us. Hence we are said to be bought with a price; and to be redeemed, not with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. We were devoted to utter destruction; for it is said, “The soul that sinneth it shall die; and, cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them. Christ therefore suffered for us, the just for the unjust. He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.”

What rendered the vicarious obedience and sufferings of our Saviour necessary, was, that we might have remission of sins and the rewards of the righteous, and yet the honor of the divine law and government be maintained. “To justify the wicked, is abomination to the Lord. He will by no means clear the guilty.” This were to countenance iniquity, and to cast an indelible slur on his own glorious character. It were to bring the eternal law of righteousness, and the eternal Lawgiver of the universe into disregard and contempt. God had given a law which was holy and just and good. He had enforced this law with infinite sanctions, that it might be forever observed and had in reverence. This law had not been fulfilled by man, and therefore the reward of righteousness could not be given him. This law had been openly violated by man, and therefore the penalty of transgression and disobedience must be inflicted upon him. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Better never to give a law, than to let the violation of it pass with impunity. But the holy law of God was not rashly given. His own glory, and the good of the moral creation, required that there should be such a law, and that the dignity of it should be supported. A lawless, licentious universe were infinitely worse than none. Hence heaven and earth might sooner pass away, or be annihilated, than the divine law be made void, or one tittle of it fail and not be fulfilled.

But the letter of a law may possibly be deviated from, and yet the spirit of it be supported, and the design of it fully obtained. We are told of a certain ancient king (Zaleuchus, king of the Locrians) who, that he might effectually suppress adultery, which exceedingly prevailed among his subjects, enacted a law that the adulterer should be punished with the loss of both his eyes. His own son was convicted of this crime. The royal father, whose bowels yearned for him, and who could not bear to have one so dear to him forever deprived of the light of day, devised an expedient to soften, in that one instance, the rigor of his own law, and yet not abate its force in future. The king in a most public manner, before all the people, had one of his own eyes plucked out, that so one of his son’s eyes might be saved. By such a commutation as this, by redeeming one eye for his son, at so costly a price as the loss of one of his own, he conceived the law would appear as awful, and be as great a terror to evil-doers, as if the letter of it had been executed. And it must, I think, be acknowledged that, by this means, the king’s inflexible determination to maintain government and punish transgression, was even more strikingly evinced than if he had suffered the law to have its natural course, and neither of his son’s eyes had been spared. For some fathers have been without natural affection, but no man ever yet hated his own flesh. The apple of one’s own eye must certainly be dear to him.

In like manner, we are to conceive of the redemption of Christ, as an astonishing expedient of infinite wisdom and goodness, that we transgressors might be saved, and yet God be just, and his righteous law suffer no dishonor. This is the constant account we have of the death of Christ in the holy Scriptures. Thus immediately after my text, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins, &c. To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus.” Thus Eph. 1:7; “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins,” &c.

But it was not enough that we should be redeemed from death. In order to our being heirs of God, and having an interest in the covenant of grace, it was necessary that the law as a covenant of works should be fulfilled; and so the forfeited inheritance of eternal life be redeemed. This our Saviour did by his active obedience. By his fulfilling all righteousness, a foundation was laid for God, to the eternal honor of his remunerating justice, to give grace and glory to all who believe in Christ and belong to him. Thus it is written, “He is made unto us righteousness.”

These two things are implied in the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. The merit of his obedience, and the manifestation of the inflexibility of divine vindictive justice, made by his sufferings and death. And these two things were necessary in order to our being justified, and yet the spirit of the law be maintained, and God be just.

III. I proceed to show, that notwithstanding this plenteous redemption, we are dependent on the mere mercy of God, and our justification is still freely by his grace.

By grace is meant undeserved favor. This is the common acceptation of the word. The bestowment of any good which might justly not be bestowed, or not inflicting any evil which might justly be inflicted, is a matter of free grace. Indeed, in the New Testament grace may mean, doing good to those who deserve ill; this being actually the case with respect to all exercises of divine goodness towards fallen man. However, if it can be shown that no man has any claim to salvation upon the footing of justice, it will be sufficient to my present purpose. The thing therefore I now undertake to prove, and clear up, is this: That no man deserves eternal life, or even deliverance from eternal death, on account of any merit belonging to him, either personal or imputed.

The idea of personal merit is in general professedly exploded. All will own that the best man on earth, had he no better righteousness than his own, could have no other plea than that of the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” But, on Christ’s account, it has commonly been supposed, believers have a good plea even before the tribunal of divine justice. “It hath been said by them of old time,” and also by some modern writers of very eminent note, that through the atonement of our divine Redeemer, if we have an interest in him, we deserve freedom from all condemnation; and that, through his all-perfect righteousness, we may demand eternal glory as our just due. Very express to this purpose is the following passage, in a late learned and most excellent author.¹ “The justice of God that required man’s damnation, and seemed inconsistent with his salvation, now does as much require the salvation of those that believe in Christ, as ever it required their damnation. Salvation is an absolute debt to the believer from God, so that he may in justice demand and challenge it, not upon the account of what he himself has done; but upon the account of what his surety has done. For Christ has satisfied justice fully for his sin; so that it is but a thing that may be challenged that God should now release the believer from punishment; it is but a piece of justice that the creditor should release the debtor, when he has fully paid the debt. And again, the believer may demand eternal life, because it has been merited by Christ, by a merit of condignity.”

Another extract I will here give you from the writings of a more ancient pious divine, containing the same sentiment, and expressed in still bolder terms. His words are as follows: “He [Christ] fully merited, by way of purchase and complete payment made unto divine justice, the removal of all that evil we had deserved, and the enjoyment of all that good we needed, and could desire; and that by a valuable consideration tendered into the hand of divine justice in that behalf. However it is out of free mercy and rich grace that redemption is given to us (for it is out of mercy that Christ is given, that he gave his life, that both are bestowed upon us and not upon the world); yet in regard to the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and the full payment he hath laid down, out of his own proper cost and charges, his own blood, it is justice it should be bestowed, and by justice it may be challenged, as that which he hath purchased in a righteous proceeding.”

This he afterwards applies in a use of reproof to diffident believers, in the following words: “Why? have you laid down the purchase? Take possession then into your hand. Have you tendered the payment? Take the commodity. It is your own; nay, your due. He that knows at what the purchase will come, and hath the sum in sight, and under his hand, can lay it down upon the nail; pay it, take it; here is one and there is the other. Here is the blood of Jesus which thou art well pleased with, hast accepted of, therefore, Lord, give me my due: that comfort, that peace, that wisdom, that assurance, which I stand in need of.”²

This notion of the atonement and imputed righteousness, it must be acknowledged, is frequently to be met with in our most orthodox books, though it may not be often improved just in the manner last quoted. But we may call no man master, or father. We must “search the Scriptures, whether those things be so.” Where do we find our infallible Teacher, instructing his disciples to make such challenges from the Father, even on his account, of deliverance from all evil, and the bestowment of all good, as their just due? Did he not direct them humbly to pray, for even a competency of outward comforts, as of God’s free gift: and for the pardon of their many offences, of his mere mercy? “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” He encouraged them indeed to seek unto God for all needed good, in his name, with an assurance of obtaining their requests; but he ever taught them to seek in the way of petition, not of demand. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Verily, verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father, in my name, he will give it you.” Did our Saviour, that we find, ever insinuate an idea that the salvation of his redeemed ones was of debt from the Father? Did he not, in the most explicit manner, acknowledge the contrary? “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.”

Do the inspired apostles, in any of their epistles or discourses, teach us that the salvation of believers, or any part of it, is of justice to the exclusion of grace? Do they not constantly express themselves most clearly in opposition to this sentiment? “By the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign, through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord. He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”

The doctrine that justification, and all subsequent as well as antecedent blessings, are free gifts—matters of mere grace, is certainly a doctrine of Scripture. But still the great question remains; how is this doctrine self-consistent? The redemption that is in Jesus Christ implies full satisfaction for sin, and the highest possible merit of eternal life; how then can being justified through this redemption be of free grace? What grace can there be in cancelling a debt when full payment hath been made? or in liberating a captive when an adequate ransom hath been received? or in reconveying an alienated inheritance after ample recompense? how is this difficulty to be removed?

I answer; just as other difficulties are removed into which we are led by following the allusions and metaphors of Scripture too closely. We are not to imagine a resemblance, in all points, between the redemption of Christ, and redemptions among mankind, any more than we are in other instances when divine things are spoken of after the manner of men; any more than we are to imagine that God is angry just as we are, or that he repents just as we do, or that he hath an arm, and hands, and eyes like ours, because these things are ascribed to him in a figurative manner. From the use of the words ransom and redemption, we are no more obliged to suppose a literal purchase, or an obligatory satisfaction in what our Saviour did and suffered, than we are to suppose there was occasion for such kind of satisfaction, and for the same reasons as among men. We are selfish, and looking for gain every one from his quarter: but surely we ought not to form a like idea of the infinitely benevolent and ever-blessed God. Certainly, “He who so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life,” would have pardoned and saved the world without any atonement or vicarious righteousness, had nothing but want of goodness prevented. The thing was, sin could not be pardoned and sinners saved, consistently with just law and good government; and therefore not consistently with the glory of God or the good of the universe. The removal of this just obstacle to the reign of grace, not the laying God under obligation, for value received, was what rendered the redemption of Christ necessary: and the former of these, not the latter, is the end effected by his obedience and death.

It hath indeed been said, in the present dispute, that a door could not be opened for the salvation of mankind, without making it necessary in justice that they should be saved. That justice requires whatever is consistent with justice. But this is a new and strange position. The perfection of justice no more requires that every thing which is just should be done, than the perfection of truth requires that every thing which is true should be spoken. If justice required whatever is consistent with justice, no grace could be exercised—no free favor could ever be bestowed in any instance, either by God or man: nothing more than mere justice could ever be done. That justice which excludes grace, which is the only proper notion of justice, at least the only one now under consideration, certainly doth not require many things which might be just. Justice did not require that God should give his only begotten Son, yet this was consistent with justice. Christ was not obliged in justice to consent to become incarnate and to pour out his soul unto death, yet there was nothing inconsistent with justice in his so doing. In like manner it is now consistent with justice for God to pardon sinners through the propitiation of Christ, yet this is not what justice requires. Grace requires that the guilty should be forgiven, provided it may be done consistently with justice, and without doing hurt upon the whole; but this doth make it no more grace. Wisdom requires whatsoever things are for the best. Goodness requires whatsoever things are for the greatest universal good. But justice, as excluding grace, requires only whatsoever things are deserved.

Still, perhaps, it will be said, Were not the sufferings of Christ really adequate to all the punishment due to us for sin? and did not his obedience actually merit eternal life by a merit of condignity? and have not believers, at least, a just right and title to the atonement and merit of Christ? Is not his righteousness imputed to them so as to become actually theirs? And if these things be so, where can there be any grace in their justification? In answer to all this, let me observe the following things.

1. I do not think that eternal life was merited, even by Christ, by a merit of condignity. A merit of condignity supposes something justly due for service done. But it is impossible, I apprehend, that God should receive any thing for which he is justly indebted. “For who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?” However ancient divines may have discoursed about merit of condignity and merit of congruity, the distinction, I conceive, is properly applicable only to merit at the hands of beings who may receive actual services to which they have no just claim. A merit of condignity can, I am persuaded, have no place in regard to God.

That creatures can merit no good at the hand of their Creator, in this high sense of merit, every one must be convinced, on a moment’s reflection. They can render nothing to God, in a way of love or service, but what is his due from them. Adam would not have deserved any reward as a just debt, had he remained innocent, and fulfilled the law of perfection. He would only have done what it was his duty to do. The highest created intelligences can do no more. As they derive their all from God, so they can render nothing to him but what is of right his.

But, it will be said, Christ was not a mere creature. He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. Consequently his merit must be of a different kind from what Adam’s would have been, and from that of the angels. The labor of a servant cannot bring his master in debt, because it was that to which he had a just right; but if a neighbor, who is upon even terms with us, labor for us, we are indebted to him. He deserves wages, in the proper and strict sense of the word. And why must there not in reality be exactly this difference between the obedience of creatures, and the obedience of Christ?

To this I answer, though Christ was under no obligation to become incarnate, yet when he had assumed the form of a servant, it behoved him to fulfil all righteousness. All he did was obedience;—obedience justly due, on our account at least, if not on his own. God hath not received, even in this way, that to which he had no right, and for which he is really indebted. Did the merit of Christ as properly belong to us as if it had been our personal merit, we should have no ground to challenge eternal life, nor any reward, as our just due. Indeed, in that case, we should not deserve eternal death, nor any punishment. Therefore, I must add,

2. I do not think the merit of Christ is actually transferred to believers; or, that his righteousness is so imputed to them as to become, to all intents and purposes, their own righteousness. It is so far reckoned to them as to render it consistent and honorable for God, as above explained, to be reconciled to them, not imputing their trespasses by a rigorous, or an adequate personal punishment; but it is not so theirs as to render them really deserving of good, or undeserving of evil. The apostle states a distinction between justification by works and by faith, making the former in some sense of debt, but the latter of grace entirely. Rom. 4:2–5; “For if Abraham were justified by works he hath whereof to glory, but not before God. For what saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. By this we are plainly taught that justification by a righteousness reckoned to us by faith, is of grace, in a manner different from justification by our own good works. That the man justified by personal righteousness would have ground for glorying as more deserving than other men, though not before God, as having really merited eternal life, or any good at his hand. Comparatively, the justification of such an one would be of debt; it would indeed be in part of absolute justice to the exclusion of grace: that is, as far as it implies only approbation, and acquittance from the curse of the law. The righteous deserve not to be condemned; and there is no grace in not punishing them. But to him who is personally guilty, and is justified by faith, in the righteousness of another, and in him who justifieth the ungodly, the whole is of grace. The apostle’s reasoning evidently supposes that the righteousness of Christ doth not become, to all intents and purposes, the believer’s own righteousness. For if it did, there could be no difference, as to ground for glorying, between being justified by faith and by works; and one would be just as much of debt as the other: nor could it be true, in any sense, that God justified the ungodly. But that there is not a strict and proper imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer—such an imputation as implies an actual transfer of merit, is plain from the whole tenor of the Scriptures, as far as they have any relation to this subject. It is evident from all that is said of the chastisements of believers, of their confessions, and of the remission of their sins. Were they as righteous as Christ was,—had they, in any way, a perfect righteousness, properly their own, they would have no sins to confess; they would deserve no punishment, and need no pardon. The truth is, our ill desert is not taken away by the atonement of Christ. That can never be taken away. Nor doth the obedience of Christ render us deserving of heaven, or undeserving of hell. When God justifies believers on Christ’s account, he considers them still as ungodly: as ungodly he punishes them still in this world; and as well might he punish them with everlasting destruction in the world to come, were it not for his gracious promise to the contrary. Grace reigns with unabated lustre in our justification, and in the whole of our salvation, notwithstanding its reigning through righteousness, because it is through a righteousness not our own.

Merit is ever personal. In the nature of things it cannot be otherwise. Another’s having been righteous, doth not make me righteous, if I have not been so myself; nor can the sufferings of another make me faultless wherein I have been a sinner. Can a robber or murderer become innocent, because an innocent attorney or friend of his hath suffered the penalty he deserved? Certainly it is impossible. He must be, notwithstanding this, as vile, as great a criminal, as blameworthy, as ever he was. And so are all mankind, notwithstanding the sufferings, and notwithstanding the obedience of Christ.

Debts may be discharged by an attorney. Damages of any kind may be repaired by a third person. But moral turpitude is not to be wiped away in this manner. Ill desert is never thus removed. Merit and demerit, are things not to be acquired or lost by proxy. The consequences of the good or evil actions of one person may devolve upon another; not the righteousness or the criminality of them.

Our crimes were not transferred to Christ; only the sufferings for them. He suffered as a lamb, without blemish and without spot. So his righteousness is not transferred to us; only the benefits of it. He was numbered with transgressors, and treated as a sinner, though innocent. We are numbered with the righteous, and treated as the friends and favorites of the Most High, though ungodly. He deserved the praises of heaven, when he was made a curse—when forsaken and expiring on the cross. We deserve the pains of hell, when delivered from the curse of the law, and received into the embraces of everlasting love. There is no transfer of merit, or of demerit, one way or the other, only of their fruits and consequences.

Justice admitted of laying on Christ the sufferings due for our sins, because it was by his own free consent, and because the necessary ends of punishing would thereby be answered; not because he deserved those sufferings. So, on the other hand, justice now admits of our being saved on his account, not because, on any account, we deserve salvation, but only because by giving us remission of sins and the happiness of the righteous, no injury will be done, no damage will accrue to the universe. There is nothing to oblige God to have mercy on any of mankind, only his own wisdom and goodness. He can do it without any unrighteousness; and therefore, so it seemeth good in his sight. Hence we are pardoned—we are justified—we shall be glorified, freely by the grace of God, notwithstanding the ample foundation laid for all in the plenteous redemption which is in Jesus Christ.

All that now remains, is to point out some of the doctrinal and practical uses, of this important subject.

In the first place; we may hence learn that the argument for the certain salvation of all men, from the sufficiency of the satisfaction and purchase of Christ, is inconclusive. According to the common notion of a literal satisfaction and strict purchase in the atonement and obedience of our Saviour, similar exactly to satisfactions and purchases in matters of meum and tuum (i.e. mine and thine) between man and man, this argument of the Universalists, on which the greatest stress is laid by some, would be exceedingly plausible: to me it appears, it would indeed be absolutely unanswerable. The argument stands thus. God is obliged in justice to save men as far as the merit of Christ extends: but the merit of Christ is sufficient for the salvation of all men; therefore God is obliged in justice to save all. The minor proposition I dare not deny. I question not the sufficiency of the merit of Christ for the salvation of all mankind. I have no doubt but that, in this sense, Christ “gave himself a ransom for all; tasted death for every man; and is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world.” The only thing therefore which I have to dispute in this argument, is the obligatoriness of the Redeemer’s merit, on the Supreme Being: or, that it is of such a nature as to afford any ground to demand salvation from God, as a just debt. Had the believer any right to challenge pardon and eternal life upon this footing, I see not but that all mankind would have the same. If the merit of Christ be such as obliges God, in point of justice to save all believers; and if that merit be sufficient for the salvation of all men; why is not God obliged in justice to save all men, whether believers or not? He may be under engagements to some and not to others by gracious promise, predicated upon faith; but if the obligation be in absolute justice, it must be solely on account of the merit of Christ; and is no greater after a man has faith than before. And if there be merit enough in Christ for all, it obliges and must obtain the salvation of all, though all men have not faith. That alters not the case. Faith, or the want of faith, alters nothing in point of justice; only in point of promise: unless the obligatory merit be in faith itself, not in the atonement and righteousness of Christ. If God cannot in justice lay any thing to the charge of the elect, nor inflict any punishment upon them, because Christ died for them: and if, in point of merit, Christ died for all men; God cannot in justice lay any thing to the charge of any man, nor punish any man.

Thus the doctrine of certain universal salvation is established at once; and established upon orthodox principles.

The argument, indeed, proves too much. More a great deal than any good man would wish: more, one would think, than any man in his senses could believe. It turns the tables entirely respecting obligation and grace between God and man. According to it, all the obligation is now on God’s part; all the grace is on ours! He is holden and justly stands bound to us; we are free from all obligation to him! All the debts of all mankind, both of duty and suffering, are forever cancelled! Christ hath done all their duty for them, as well as taken away all possible criminality from them! If they now love or serve God it is of mere gratuity! They are not at all obliged so to do! If he bestow upon them all the good in his power, to all eternity, it is of debt—absolute debt, in the highest sense of the word! He can do no more for them than by a merit of condignity hath been purchased for them, and is of absolute right due to them! These admirable consequences will follow from this notion of the atonement and merit of Christ, as necessarily as the doctrine of universal salvation. An argument which thus overthrows every thing—all law, as well as all grace, must certainly be fallacious, whether we were able to discover the fallacy of it or not. Yet some, it is said, are not to be terrified by such frightful consequences. They admit them, and plead for them. They allow, at least, and maintain, that men are not justly punishable by the Judge of all the earth, whatever iniquities they may commit; and that, in fact, no man is punished of God at all, nor ever will be. So firmly are they established in the belief that the foregoing argument is demonstration, and can never be confuted.

But must not the weak place in this invincible argument be made manifest to all men? I cannot but flatter myself, the attentive, candid Universalist must feel this firm ground give way under him. The hope of salvation built upon the idea that the holy Sovereign of the universe is obliged in justice to pardon and save the vilest of sinners, is certainly a very forlorn hope.

That believers themselves do not deserve eternal life, nor even deliverance from eternal death;—that God is under no kind of obligation, for value received, even to them, on any account whatever, seems plainly implied in our text, and hath been sufficiently illustrated, I conceive, in the preceding discourse. And if so, certainly he cannot be obliged in justice to save all men. Salvation is sincerely offered to all, if they will thankfully receive Christ as their Saviour, and penitently return, through him, to their Creator and their God. With regard to giving them a heart, or making them willing to do these things, God hath mercy on whom he will have mercy. Surely “by sending his Son into the world, that the world through him might be saved,” he hath not brought himself so infinitely indebted to mankind as to be in justice obliged to save all the world, whether they will or not.

Secondly. Hence we may see, that the Socinians have no reason to object against the doctrine of atonement, as though it were irreconcilable with the doctrine of free grace, and represented God the Father as unforgiving, implacable, unmerciful.³

As many have explained the doctrine of atonement, I cannot say that these reproaches cast upon it by its adversaries, are altogether unjust. Were it right to conceive of it under the literal low notion of paying debts, or repairing damages, between man and man, it would indeed seem as if there were no proper remission of sins to believers, nor any mercy in granting them “deliverance from the curse of the law.” But if we consider God as acting, in this great affair, in his own proper character as Supreme Ruler of the world; and requiring atonement in order to the salvation of guilty men, only for the support of public justice, and that he might still be a terror to evil doers, at the same time that he discovers himself “abundant in goodness and ready to forgive;” if we consider, moreover, that the demerit of sin is not at all taken away, nor the need of pardoning mercy lessened by vicarious sufferings; in a word, if the foregoing view of this subject be scriptural and just, what shadow of ground can there be for any such reproaches and objections?

Thirdly. Hence we are furnished with an easy solution of a difficulty which some have imagined respecting our being justified at all, on account of the active obedience of our Saviour. The difficulty is this. Christ, in his human nature, in which only he could obey, owed obedience on his own account, and therefore could have no merit by that means to be placed to the account of his followers as the ground of their justification. Hereupon some have supposed and taught, that the sufferings of Christ, to which he was under no personal obligation, are the only meritorious ground of our acceptance unto eternal life. Or that all further than deliverance from the curse of the law is from the grace of God, and the merit of our own imperfect obedience.⁴

This imaginary difficulty, however, arises entirely from the supposed necessity of merit strictly purchasing good at the hand of God, and a merit properly transferable. According to that conception of the matter, it is certain Adam’s obedience could have availed nothing in behalf of any but himself. He, unquestionably, was under personal obligation to yield the most perfect obedience to his Maker of which he was capable. Therefore had he remained innocent, and continued in all things given him in charge to do them, he could have had no merit of supererogation, to be reckoned to his posterity. Nor do I conceive that the man Jesus Christ, consistently with his personal duty to his Heavenly Father, could have done less than to have fulfilled all righteousness. On supposition a purchasing, transferable merit had been necessary, I do not therefore see how this difficulty could be fairly obviated. But from the things which have been said, it is abundantly evident, I apprehend, that no such merit was necessary, is scriptural, or possible. God may do honor to himself, as one that loves righteousness, by making multitudes happy out of respect to the tried virtue and obedience of one though that one have only done what it was his duty to do. All notions of supererogation, and of a fund of merit to be sold and bought, or any way communicated from one to another, proceed upon the maxims of commercial, not of rectoral justice. Every thing of this kind is going off entirely from the ideas of sin and duty, to those of debt and credit, damages and reparations.

Fourthly. From the foregoing view of the subject, we learn, that those who are justified in the gospel way, have nothing whereof to glory, but have all the reason in the world to be humble before God. They have merely a merit of congruity to plead in his presence; and that merit not at all their own.

Were “salvation an absolute debt to the believer from God, so that he might in justice demand and challenge it,” to be clothed with humility, and to be a prostrate suppliant before the throne of grace, might, indeed, seem unbecoming, and quite out of character. Had Christ “merited, by way of purchase and complete payment, the removal of all that evil we had deserved, and the enjoyment of all the good we needed and could desire, and that by a valuable consideration tendered into the hand of divine justice in that behalf;” and had we this “sum in sight, and under our hand,” we might well assume a high tone, and say, “Here is one and there is the other.” Our beggary would be at an end; nor would it suit with our affluent circumstances, to be so poor in spirit as to petition and pray. We might say to the Almighty, “We are lords, we will come no more unto thee:” or, coming, might be so laconic as only to say, “Lord, give us our due.”

But, my brethren, “you have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus.” Christians have not these heaven-debasing, self-exalting sentiments, in the bottom of their hearts, however they may speak unguardedly, or think inaccurately on some occasions. I dare say the venerable divines above quoted, did not mean so, neither did their hearts think so. They never prayed as though those things were true; they never felt as if they believed them. Such speculative notions of the atonement and imputed righteousness, owing originally to the strong figures of holy Scripture, literally understood, have been exceedingly common; and therefore have been received implicitly as unquestionable truths, by the learned as well as the illiterate; however inconsistent with innumerable other sentiments in which every true Christian is most firmly established. Certainly, by the law of faith, boasting is excluded. Certainly if our justification be freely by divine grace, we have nothing whereof to glory. We have as much reason to be humble—as much cause, with deep abasement, to confess our daily sins, and to implore the free remission of them—as much occasion to say, God be merciful to us sinners, as if we were not justified at all. The blood of atonement only gives us access to the mercy-seat. Let, then, all our feelings and all our thoughts, as well as our addresses to a holy God, be agreeable to this humiliating doctrine of our being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. God thus established his covenant with us, that we may remember, and be confounded, and never open our mouths any more for our shame, when, in this way, he is pacified towards us for all that we have done.

Fifthly. From what hath been said, we learn, nevertheless, that believers have as firm ground for hope and confidence in God, as if their justification were a matter of absolute debt. The new covenant is as everlasting, as well ordered in all things, and as sure, as if it were not at all a covenant of grace. The gospel plan of acceptance unto eternal life, is calculated, not in the least to mar our comfort, only to mortify our pride.

We have seen that there is no want of absolute promises to insure grace and glory to all true believers in Jesus Christ. “All the promises in him are yea, and in him amen, unto the glory of God.” And we know, says the same apostle, “that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have access, through Christ, by faith, into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Believers are as absolutely established in the divine favor and love, as if they were justified by the deeds of the law. Final remission of sins and eternal salvation are as fully secured to them, as if their ill desert were wholly done away, or as if they had even a merit of condignity and the Almighty were actually their infinite debtor. Hence another apostle is very bold, and saith, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Not that, on account of our confessions, or on any other account, we justly deserve to be forgiven. Deserved forgiveness is no forgiveness at all. The meaning can only be, that God will infallibly be just and true to his word. A faithful and just man will fulfil his promises, however gratuitous the things promised: how much more he who “is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent!” But, if his bare word were not enough, as the apostle observes, he hath added his “oath, that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.” We may, if we believe in God, and believe also in Christ, “come boldly (though as humble beggars) unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

Sixthly, and lastly. Hence we should learn to love mercy, as well as to walk humbly with our God.

Had we the righteousness of Christ, as a perfect cloak for all our sins, so as to have no occasion for any forgiveness, it might more reasonably be expected that we should be unforgiving. Did we need no mercy, it would not be so very strange should we show none. But, my brethren, how far otherwise is the case with every one of us! Do we hope we are justified in the sight of a holy God? Be it so, it is “freely by his grace,” even “through the redemption that is in Jesus.” “If I justify myself,” says holy Job, “mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.” And indeed, as the same pious man demands, “How should man be just with God?” By imputation it hath been supposed he might; but we have now seen that even through the atonement and righteousness of Christ, we can have no plea of not guilty: and personally we cannot surely stand in judgment, should he contend with us, “nor answer him one of a thousand.”

Shall we then be strict to mark, and severe to revenge the trivial injuries or affronts we may receive from our fellow-creatures? Read, Christians, the striking parable of the ten thousand talents and the hundred pence; read, and tremble at the awful application of that parable. Remember that most reasonable exhortation of the apostle, which speaketh unto you as unto justified sinners, Eph. 4:23; “And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, hath forgiven you.”
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1. President Edwards. First set of Posthumous Sermons, page 207.
2. Mr. Thomas Hooker, first Minister in Hartford.
3. Dr. Priestley, a celebrated modern writer on the side of Socinianism, has much to say upon this head. He says, “We read in the Scriptures, that we are ‘justified freely by the grace of God.’ But what free grace, or mercy, does there appear to have been in God, if Christ gave a full price for our justification, and bore the infinite weight of divine wrath on our account? We are commanded to ‘forgive others, as we ourselves hope to be forgiven;’ and to be ‘merciful as our Father, who is in heaven, is merciful.’ But surely we are not thereby authorized to insist upon any atonement or satisfaction, before we give up our resentments towards an offending penitent brother. Indeed, how could it deserve the name of forgiveness if we did? It is impossible to reconcile the doctrine of satisfaction for sin by the death of Christ, with the doctrine of free grace, which, according to the uniform tenor of the Scriptures, is so fully displayed in the pardon of sin, and the justification of sinners. It is only from the literal interpretation of a few figurative expressions in the Scriptures, that this doctrine of atonement, as well as that of transubstantiation, has been derived; and it is certainly a doctrine highly injurious to God; and if we, who are commanded to imitate God, should act upon the maxims of it, it would be subversive of the most amiable part of virtue in men. We should be implacable and unmerciful, insisting upon the uttermost farthing.”
4. The above difficulty was started, and the above doctrine advanced, by a divine of some note in Germany the last century; who made a party considerable enough to be taken notice of by Dr. Mosheim, in his Ecclesiastical History. How he was answered, I think the Doctor hath not informed us.

John Smalley, “Two Sermons: Justification Through Christ, An Act of Free Grace,” in The Atonement: Discourses and Treatises (Boston: Congregational Board of Publication, 1859), 45–64. [Footnotes original; footnote values modernized; and underlining mine.]

Notes: 1) The original title for this sermon was: Eternal Salvation on No Account a Matter of Just Debt; or, Full Redemption, Not Interfering With Free Grace: a sermon, delivered at Wallingford, by particular agreement, with special reference to the Murryan controversy. Published with some additions and alterations, that it might be better adapted to general usefulness. 2) Smalley was one of a cluster of American theologians who influenced Andrew Fuller. The main point here is that because of the influence of Smalley and others, Fuller came to see that the satisfaction of Christ related to man’s criminality, not debt.

Bio:
McClintock and Strong
Dictionary of American Biography
Annals of the American Pulpit

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