death of Adam, but a faith in Christ's imputed and vicarious righteousness.

The Calvinistic Trinitarians hold that God, by his fore-counsel and absolute will, ordained some men to certain destruction from the womb, that they might glorify his name by their everlasting misery; that holiness is the result of God's election, and wickedness of his reprobation: GoD himself blinding men, that they might not be saved. According to the Calvinistic scheme, therefore, the vicarious sufferings of an incarnate God were of no avail, nor intended to be so, as to the generality of mankind: and even the elect of God, whom God had thought fit to make righteous, would have lain under his everlasting wrath, had not a person in the Deity condescended to be punished in their stead.

The scheme of Calvinism, as is familiar to medical experience, has tended to propagate insanity; but every scheme of the modern Atonement, even that modified form of it which is adopted by the Arians, has been found to depress the mind, and secretly alienate its first affections from "the Father of mercies and God of comfort."

As the departure from the primitive worship of the "One God and Father of all" opened the way to the worship of "the Mother of God" and of "All Saints;" so the divesting the Deity of his attribute of essential mercy has led to doctrines which poison the very sources of human charity and kindness, weaken self-vigilance, inflate the imagination, check the growth of practical piety and usefulness, and loosen all the ties of moral and social obligation: it has led to the doctrines of a malevolent God, of faith above works, of faith without works, of conversion, not effected by gradual discipline and effort under the fear of God, but by a momentaneous conviction of sin, and a

new birth to holiness through the sudden selfappropriation, by faith, to the sinner, of Christ's. vicarious merits. The doctrine of the necessity of faith beyond all good works whatever, although directly opposed to the plain letter as well as the spirit of Scripture, and to the recorded Christian opinions of the first and best ages, forms the prin cipal feature in the prevalent theology of the times. On this system it is contended that "the ungodly and sinners, unholy and prophane, murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, men-slayers, whore-mongers, and them that defile themselves with mankind," (1 Tim. i. 9, 10,) if they can, even in the very hour preceding their dissolution, appropriate to themselves by a strong internal persuasion the vicarious righteousness of Christ, are more worthy in the sight of God, than they who have walked all their lives in his fear and love, and "have kept themselves unspotted from the world." This system has reached its maturity in the doctrine of Antinomianism; which, leaping at once to the logically pursued consequence of a substi→ tuted righteousness, proclaims the abolition of the moral law, and holds forth impunity to past and future sin, through the new creatureship in Christ.

Hâc fonte derivata clades

In patriam populosque fluxit.

Whether we regard the triad in the Godhead as three different characters under which God acts, or as three attributes of his nature, or as three intelligences or essences, distinct from each other, yet united by a common consciousness, each being equally by himself God, yet all three together constituting but one single God, the satisfaction on the Trinitarian scheme is made by God to God; in other words, God, demanding a victim, becomes himself his own victim,10 and appeases himself by himself, and thus saves his justice by a fiction!

But it must be asked, which of the natures, joined in Jesus Christ, offered up this infinite satisfaction?-Was it the divine nature? or the human nature? If the divine nature, then the Godhead, or a portion of the Godhead, immortal and impassible, suffered death. If the human nature only, then an infinite satisfaction was not effected; and the purpose might equally have been obtained by a perfectly righteous man, as Enoch.

The Atonement is commonly thought to be interwoven with the divinity of Christ, but erroneously; for the Arians admit it in a certain sense, who yet deny his divinity. The question must stand on its own independent merits, and is not necessarily connected with the absurd theory of an infinite satisfaction. The atonement or propitiation, whichever we call it, does not of itself prove Christ's divinity, or his super-angelic nature. The simple humanity of Christ's nature does not of itself disprove the atonement.

"If GOD," says Dr. Watson," thought fit to accept for our redemption any price, there is nothing that we know of but his own wisdom, which could determine what price he would accept. Hence I see no difficulty in admitting that the death of an angel, or of a mere man, might have been the price which God fixed upon."

The Arians confess the Scripture that Christ was sent from God, and was a gift from God. They do not look upon the death of Christ in the light of substitution or vicarious punishment, but only as a voluntary sacrifice, which obtained God's favour, and procured his mercy to mankind. They do not believe in original or inherited sin, or imputed righteousness, but think the atonement. called for by the actual sins of mankind, and the merits of Christ efficacious in rendering repentance available. In this less unreasonable scheme there are still inconsistency and contradiction. If

Christ were a gift of GOD, he was the voluntary effect of his love, and not the procuring cause. When Christ is said to have "obtained eternal redemption for us," (Heb. ix. 12,) it cannot consistently be interpreted to mean that he effected a change in the will of God in our favour; for. it was in the free will of God that the Gospelmessage of mercy and immortality through Christ originated; but that he "finished the work" of redemption "which the Father had given him to do.".

The strict Unitarian, or Humanitarian as to Christ's nature, believes the declarations of the Old Testament, that God is of himself essentially merciful, and that repentance and reformation are the sole conditions of his mercy,-declarations which he sees to be confirmed by Christ Jesus; who was commissioned to bear the strongest attestation to the merciful nature of God, in submitting to death, the penalty of sin, that he might become the first-born of the resurrection; and that the "sufferings," by which he was "made perfect," might be rewarded by the glory to which he was raised, at the right hand of God, as the delegated judge of mankind, and the head of God's spiritual creation. That "in being declared the Son of God, with power by his resurrection from the dead," "he became the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him," as the influential cause of their forsaking sin and being "reconciled to God;" and that thus through him we receive "the reconciliation." That his death was a sacrifice only as it was a gift offered up in voluntary obedience to the will of his God and Father; and as the means of moral purification and of re-admission to forfeited privileges, by bringing those who were in the state of sinners under the death in Adam, into the state of righteous persons through Christ's immortality.

EXAMINATION

OF

The supposed Scriptural Grounds for a Vicarious Satisfaction, or a Propitiatory Sacrifice.

The Scripture testifies, Rom. v. 14-18, that "Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come: But not as the offence, so also Is the FREE GIFT. For if through the offence on one, [the] many be dead; much more the GRACE of God, and the GIFT by GRACE, which is by ONE MAN, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto [the] many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift; for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the FREE GIFT is of many offences unto justification; for by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of GRACE, and of the GIFT of righteousness, shall reign in LIFE by [dix, through] one Jesus Christ. Therefore as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation [of death]; even so by the righteousness of one [the righteous obedience of Christ unto the death of the cross], the FREE GIFT came upon all men unto justification of LIFE."

From this passage it is plain, (1) That the posterity of Adam, in coming under the mortal penaity of sin, had no share in the sin itself; (2) That the favour or grace of God to man, in removing this