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always embodied in the dialogues or colloquies which writers frequently introduce between justice, mercy, etc. etc., about the salvation of man.

It is true that the inspired writers often speak of the indignation, the wrath, the anger, and the fury of Jehovah against his foes; and of his being reconciled towards an offender, and of his being propitiated through the atonement. Such a figurative, and metaphorical language as employed by these holy men of God when speaking of him is bold, elegant, and suitable. But a literal construction of them would not only offend against every good canon of Biblical interpretation, but would lead to every species of absurdity. These anthropopatheia of the scriptures, these figurative expressions concerning wrath, indignation, reconciliation, etc., refer to the aspect of the divine dispensations, and to their effects upon the offender, and never to the properties, affections, and dispositions of the divine nature. When the aspect and effects of the divine dispensations alter, the change is not in the infinite and eternal mind, but in the state and relations of the offenders towards the divine government. The cloudy pillar had an aspect towards the Egyptians very different from that which it had towards the Israelites. A change in the aspect of it would have been produced, not by a change in the pillar, but by a change in the relations of the two different nations.

When a change is produced in the aspect of the divine administrations; that is, when God is said to be propitiated or reconciled through the atonement; it is not meant that the atonement made him propitious, or rendered him favorable and kind: but it is meant that the atonement was the ground on which he declared himself propitious, and the medium through which he expressed himself gracious. The actual change is in the state of the sinner. The atonement places the sinner on a ground where the divine administrations may have a favorable aspect on him. It should, however, be never forgotten that until the sinner himself person

ally avail himself of the atonement, and plead it in his own behalf; that until his moral relations be changed, God will not express himself propitiated towards him. God was, indeed, reconcilable and propitious to the three friends of Job, yet he would not express himself propitious, and declare himself reconciled, until the three friends had offered their sacrifices. Then, after a change in them, there was a change in the aspect of the divine dispensations towards them. God was still unchanged, and therefore they were not consumed. Their sacrifices produced no change in him, but they were expressive of a change in their moral relations towards him. Just so is the act of a sinner pleading the atonement of Christ in his personal behalf expressive of a change in his state and moral relations towards God.

The word of God never represents the atonement as restraining or preventing the free exercise and expressions of any divine perfection.

It cannot be concealed that some human systems of theology represent the atonement as an effectual barrier raised against the operations of infinite justice. Our books and our discourses abound with such statements as the following:-that the Lord Jesus Christ endured. or paid to infinite justice the utmost farthing of its demands against a certain number of offenders;-that he endured the identical amount of the punishment due for their sins; that it is a grievous wrong to exact the same punishment once of the surety, and again of the offenders: and that, consequently, justice can now lay nothing to their charge, can never proceed against them in judgment, and that they are within the enclosures of the atonement, where justice cannot reach them. Thus, the atonement is frequently represented as the city of refuge, and infinite justice as the avenger of blood, thirsting for the death of the sinner.

It is not a likely way to promote reverential piety, to represent infinite justice as an infinitely dreadful and unlovely attribute; nor can it promote practical holiness

to represent our salvation as secured, not only in direct opposition to divine justice, but, also in manifest superiority and triumph over it. This species of atonement would entirely subvert all moral government. The language of the scriptural atonement is, that the blood of Christ redeemed us to God, not from God.

The claims of infinite justice are as honorable as unabated, and as unimpaired with an atonement, as without it. Eternal righteousness has not resigned a single demand, nor relaxed a single bond, nor withdrawn a single threatening. Every iota and tittle of the law is as much in force and honor after the atonement as before it; with it, as without it. Atonement has no ground enclosed out of the domains of justice.

No sinner pleading the atonement before the throne of God shall be accepted, unless he also distinctly acknowledge and own that the claims of justice on him are right and true. Under this practical acknowledgment every good man is to live as one that must give an account to infinite righteousness. And eventually all the despisers of salvation will feel that the operations of justice towards them are free and unshackled, notwithstanding the splendid atonement once offered for them.

We have now brought under notice three representations of the atonement in connection with the divine attributes, which we deem incorrect and unscriptural. The atonement that is exhibited as exciting, changing, or restraining the exercise of any perfection in God, is not the atonement of the scriptures.

It ought to be remarked that these three representations of atonement originate in the conception that the atonement is of the nature of a commercial transaction, the payment of a debt, or the literal endurance of a threatened punishment. A commercial atonement is the prov feudos of every error connected with unscriptural views of redemption. This is the only principle that can maintain that God is, by the atonement, induced to be merciful, just as a creditor is induced to release his

debtor upon the full payment of his debts. This is the only principle that can aver that the atonement effects a modification or change in the divine feelings or dispositions towards the sinner, just as a judge would be disposed to remit a criminal's punishment, after his severity had spent itself in the unmitigated lashes inflicted on the criminal's friend. This is the only principle that can assert that the atonement restrains and checks the operations of infinite justice, just as a creditor cannot again imprison a debtor for a debt once discharged-or as a tyrant cannot claim a captive for whom he has received a ransom price. And I must add, this is the principle, that unnerves our ministerial addresses, that jaundices our view of Christian doctrines, that drives its thousands to apostasy, and lulls its millions into a false and fatal security.

Since the atonement does not produce the effects and modifications above mentioned, it may be asked, what is the relation which the atonement sustains towards the divine perfections? The reply is, that the atonement does not affect or modify the character of any of the perfections of God; but it is a medium capable of giving a full expression to them all. It is a public expression, display, and vindication of all the divine attributes.

SECTION III.

The Divine Perfections honored by the Atonement.

In the evangelical history of the sufferings of the Son of God, we often meet with the remark, that in them or by them "God glorified his name." The name of God is the entire character of all his perfections. It is the purpose of this section to shew how this has been fully honored in the atonement.

In the first place,-The atonement shews that no divine perfection was implicated in the intrusion of sin into the universe,

The revolters against the divine government are loath to ascribe their disaffection entirely to themselves; and many have roundly asserted that the origin of evil is in God himself. Reflections have been cast upon infinite wisdom for contriving a moral system capable of evil, upon infinite power for permitting the entrance of sin, upon infinite rectitude for suffering the continuance of sin, and upon infinite benevolence for preserving tem in which evil is so prevalent. But the atonement shews that God was in no wise accessory to the intrusion of sin, neither by secret decree, by arbitrary withdrawment of influences, nor by any deficiency in gov

ernment.

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The atonement demonstrates that God has done every thing to oppose sin which could be done in a moral government. The language of God in the atonement is, "What could I have done more unto my vineyard, that I have not done in it?" By the publication of the moral law, by the sanction of rewards and punishments, by the execution of judgments, by solemn oracles through prophets, and by sacrificial institutions, God has borne a constant and unvarying testimony against sin. The whole of this testimony is most amply corroborated by the atonement; for it magnifies the law, enforces the legal sanctions, justifies all judicial inflictions, confirms divine revelations, and verifies all sacrificial types and shadows.

The atonement itself is the greatest and the clearest proof of God's abhorrence of sin, and of his determination to oppose and to punish it. In the atonement God has "condemned sin;" and by condemning sin he has vindicated every attribute from the suspicion of being implicated in it. God could never have been accessory to an evil which he has been at such cost and expense to oppose and remove.

It vindicates infinite wisdom by shewing that it introduced into the system nothing calculated to produce evil, but every thing to prevent it. It vindicates infinite power by shewing that omnipotence never was, and never could be made, the rule or the measure of the

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