The Reformed Doctrine as to the Nature of the Atonement Proved to Have Been the Faith of the Entire Christian Church Through All Ages

In this chapter I propose to prove that the doctrine which has been in the preceding chapters set forth, in connection with its scriptural evidence, has in its essential principles been the faith of the great body of God’s people from the beginning; and especially that this has been the case in every particular age and section of the Church precisely in proportion to its general orthodoxy and spiritual vitality. If truth be an essential prerequisite in order to holiness, the general fact that a given system of belief has been found in association with all the vital godliness that has ever existed, is strong presumptive evidence of the truth of that system. And this presumption is very much strengthened if it can be shown to be historically true that, as a general fact, the evidences of spiritual life are obscured in proportion as the central and characteristic principles of the system are ignored or misconceived, and that they have never continued to exist at all where these principles have been intelligently denied. In order to apply this method of argument to the subject we have in hand, I will attend to the following points in their order. 1. To state precisely the several positions which I believe that the historical evidence accessible to us will full) prove. 2. To present, in as condensed a form as possible, quotations from representative theologians, and Church creeds which establish the points proposed to be proved. And, 3. To apply the historical facts as to the general faith of the Church, thus established, to our main argument, indicating what inferences from the universal consent of the Church of Christ to the truth of doctrine appear to be legitimate.

I. I have, then, in the first place, to state the points which I believe can be established with reference to the faith of God’s people, as a general and characteristic fact, in all ages, with reference to the nature of Christ’s redeeming work.

1. It is not pretended that the doctrine of Satisfaction as received in common by the Lutheran and Reformed Churches was conceived of in all its elements or stated with scientific accuracy in the early ages of the Church, or that in this complete sense it is possessed by all parts of the Church in modern times. Such a statement would not be true either historically or actually of any single doctrine embraced in the entire system of revealed truth. All the elements embraced under the heads of Theology and Anthropology, as well as Soteriology, were at first conceived obscurely, stated vaguely, and mixed with incongruous and even inconsistent elements, and have reached the mature form in which they are at present embraced by all evangelical Christians only through a process of growth. The fact is admitted that die early fathers wrote like children in the childhood of the Church on this as upon all other subjects.

But, 2. We maintain over against the advocates of the

Moral Influence Theory that the following points are susceptible of historical proof, (1.) There is abundant evidence that from the first the faith of the true Church has uniformly embraced Chiist on the cross as a sacrifice expiating sin and propitiating God. It is true that this clement of their faith is often left to a remarkable degree in the background, and mixed up confusedly with other elements of truth or superstition, but indubitable traces of an objective bearing of the passion of Christ upon obstacles in the way of man’s deliverance exterior to himself are always visible. (2.) That the doctrine that the central design of the Atonement is to produce a subjective effect upon the sinner has never prevailed among any considerable number of people for any length of time. That, on the contrary, even every false doctrine which has taken strong and permanent hold upon the human mind has always embraced in it precisely that principle which the theory in question excludes, viz., that the sufferings of Christ were necessary to remove obstacles to our salvation existing exterior to ourselves. This fact is conspicuously illustrated in the prevalence of the eccentric idea that Christ was delivered up as a ransom-price to Satan for the purpose of redeeming sinful men from the power of the usurper, which so long confused and disfigured the ideas of ecclesiastical writers upon the subject of Redemption. (3.) We maintain it can be proved that the doctrine that Christ has redeemed men from the claims of divine justice by his vicarious sufferings has always been more clearly conceived and more frequently and emphatically insisted upon in the exact proportion as the Church has been faithful in the profession of other fundamental truths and abundant in the fruits of the Spirit. The best of the earlier Church teachers teach the truth we contend for. Those who were most eminent in the defence of the truth as to the supreme divinity of our blessed Lord, as Athanasius the Great; those who stood to the last faithful in resisting the inroads of Popery, as Claude, bishop of Turin (821-839); the best of the schoolmen, as Anselm, Hugh St. Victor, Bernard, Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas; both of the two great sections (Greek and Roman) into which the Church divided; the great evangelical teachers who, in the immediately preceding centuries, prepared the way for the Reformation, as Wycliffe and John Wessel; the Vallenses who, isolated among the mountains, preserved the primitive apostolic faith through all the dark centuries of the Papal supremacy; Zwingle and Luther and Calvin, each independent in his origin, drawing from different sources, and marked by many profound characteristic differences from the others; and with them, all the four great spontaneous movements of reform, in Switzerland, Germany, France and Britain, each of which was so truly original, and marked by characteristic differences, which still survive after three centuries of change; and finally, all of the great evangelical denominations into which the Churches of the Refoimation have been developed, who now embrace the sum total of Christ’s kingdom on the face of the earth; — all these, and whatsoever persons or bodies of this kind have ever existed, in whatever else they have differed, have agreed in maintaining that the virtue of the redemption of Christ resides in its power to expiate sin and thus to propitiate God. (4.) We maintain also, in the fourth place, that true religion has never flourished when this doctrine of expiation has been explicitly denied, but that the invariable sequence, if not consequence, of its denial may be read in the history of the ancient Gnostics and Arians, in that of such heretics as Scotus Erigena and Abelard during the Middle Age, of the Socinians of the sixteenth century, and of their successors, the Unitarians of England and America, and the Neologians of Germany, during the eighteenth and nineteenth.

3. We maintain over against the advocates of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement: (1.) That it is susceptible of proof that, with few exceptions, the whole Church from the beginning has held the doctrine of Redemption in the sense of a literal propitiation of God by means of the expiation of sin. (2.) That this view of the nature of Redemption has been held most definitely and earnestly, as a general fact, by those men, and in those branches and ages of the Church which have exhibited the most decided evidence of the Saviour’s presence and favour. (3.) That each one of the great sections into which the Christian Church has been divided — the Greek and Roman, Lutheran and Reformed — unite in maintaining that the gospel is founded upon the expiation of guilt. (4.) That all of the later and more perfect Confessions, both o.” the Lutheran and of the Reformed Churches, agree in teaching in the fullest terms the strictly vicarious character of both Christ’s active and passive obedience, and the imputation of that perfect obedience to the believer as the strictly judicial ground of his justification. And (5.) That the origin af the Governmental Theory of the Atonement among kho semi-Socinian Dutch Remonstrants, and its affiliation with the speculations of the heretical French Professors of Saumur, g’ve but a doubtful indication as to its possible connection, for a protracted period, with spiritual health and fruitfulness.

II. I now proceed to present the evidence which, [ think, proves the points above stated. Let it be remembered that, as a matter of course, all that can be presented here is a mere specimen of much more that remains behind. Let it be remembered, also, that our position, assumed in the first statement of our doctrine, is not that either of the heterodox theories we are hei’e combating is false, but that they are each essentially defective. Hence it will in no way weaken the force of our argument if it be proved that the positive principles maintained by either or both of them have been taught generally or uniformly in the Church. If the principle of literal expiation be admitted at all in connection with those principles specially signalized by each of the other views, then, from the very nature of the case, th( fact of expiation, since it concerns God, must be central; and the other principles, since they concern the creation, must be subordinate to it. It will be abundantly sufficient for all the purposes of my a~ gument, therefore, if I succeed in tracing the principle I contend for as a constant element, more or less clearly discriminated, of the faith of God’s people.*

* I have drawn the testimonies cited from the following sources:

Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines. Edited by Rev. H. B. Smith, D.D., New York.

Shedd’s History of Christian Doctrine. New York.

Dorner’s History of Development of Doctrine of the Person (if Clrrist. Clark’s Edinburgh Edition.

The Rev. Dr. John Young, of Edinburgh, has recently gone over the monuments of Patristic theology, &c., for the purpose of tracing the history of the origin and growth of the doctrine of Satisfaction. He claims that there is no trace of this doctrine in the Scripture; that it has its root in the ignorance and depravity of human nature; that it emerged in the Christian Church as a manifest corruption; and that it was developed into its present portentous form only slowly and after the lapse of centuries. His historical argument may be reduced to two heads. (1.) He draws this conclusion from the comparative silence of the early writers on this subject, even when they were treating of topics which rendered allusions to this doctrine, if it was in fact believed, apparently inevitable. (2.) From the imputed character, intellectual or moral, of certain men to whose agency he refers the origination and diffusion of the corruption; as, for instance, Athanasius and Calvin.

To the first of his points we reply by confessing that to an extraordinary degree his allegation is true, but that (1) it is at best but a negative argument, and avails nothing in opposition to the positive testimony presented

Ullman’s Reformers before the Reformation. Clark’s Edinburgh Edition.

Neander’s Church History. Torrey’s Translation.

Rev. G. S. Faber’s Ancient Vallenses and A.lbigenses.

De Sacrificiis, Gulielmo Outramo Autore.

“The Life and Light of Men,” by John Young, LL.R, Edinburgh.

Comparative Darstellung des Lehrbegriffs der Verschiedenen Christlichen Kirchenparteien. Von Dr. Geo. Bened. Winer.

Hase, Libri Symbolic! Eccie. Evangelicse.

Niemeyer: Collectio Confessionum, &c.

Streitwolf: Libri Symbolic! Ecclesise Catholicse, vol. i. and ii.

pn the other hand. As we have shown above, from the essential nature of the principle involved, if its presence can be traced, however faintly, the conclusion will be inevitable that it is anr essentialy part of the faith of the Church, and the central principle to which all others will ultimately be subordinated when all the elements of that faith are accurately discriminated and adjusted. And (2) that the force of his objection is greatly abated by the consideration of the fewness, and of the fragmentary condition, and the immaturity and confusion characteristic of the writings of the early Fathers, and the crudeness of their views upon many other subjects of Christian doctrine.

To his second point we answer, that the position we assume, as distinctly stated above, is not that certain men have taught the doctrine of expiation, but that it is the doctrine of all the representative Church teachers of all ages; that it has again and again, with amazing coincidence, been revived by great and good men acting entirely independently of each other; and that it has always been the more emphasized the more true spiritual religion has flourished; and, finally, that true spiritual religion has never flourished among those who have explicitly denied it. Very little li.rht can be thrown upon the origin or value of such a doctrine by criticising the spirit or associations of individual men. The broad fact would remain to be accounted for, that the idea to which Athanasius, for the first time, gives a logically defined expression had appeared again and again in the writings of the best men who preceded him, and in the devotional writings of Augustine and his followers; that Claude, Bernard, Wycliffe, Wessel, the Val lenses, and all the best saints of the ages preceding the J&eformation, held the same; that Ansehn, in the Latin Church, and Nicolas of Methone, in the Greek Church, the two great systematizers of the Church’s faith on this subject, wrought entirely independently of each other, although almost cotemporaneously; that not only Luther and Calvin, but Zwingle also, the most independent and rationalizing of the Reformers, and that all the branches of the Church, Greek, Roman, Lutheran and Reformed, in all their subdivisions, hold the same faith. Any attempt to account for such facts as these by reference to the personal character of individual men, however great or numerous, is manifestly absurd.

[A.] The doctrine of Expiation was received, though in a crude, unscientific form and in connection with much error, by the ante-Nicene fathers. With respect to the writers of this period, Young admits that “Injustice would be done to them, unless it be understood that most of them make use, though not frequently, of the New Testament language with regard to the death of the Redeemer, and also that in some instances they apply passages of the Old Testament — such as the liii. chapter of Isaiah, and the xxii. Psalm — to that death. It is fully admitted that the ultimate and real question goes back to the meaning of the Ne-v Testament itself. No one could fairly dispute, that if the doctrine of Satisfaction be there, it is also in the post-apostolic writings. But if it be wanting there, as we have sought to show that it is, then unquestionably it has no place in them.”*

In answer to this position, thus candidly assumed, * “Life and Light of Men,” p. 422

I present the argument to the contrary under the following heads.

1. It is unquestionably a strong presumptive evidence in favour of the truth of our position, that the most learned, impartial and minute students of the original sources of all knowledge on this subject, such as Neander, Dorner, Faber,* Shedd, SchafF, &c., all in effect bear independent testimony to the substantial truth of the judgment pronounced by the first named in his Church history. “As it regards the work of Christ as the Redeemer of mankind, we find already in the language used by the Church fathers on this point, in the period under consideration, all the elements that lay at the basis of the doctrine as it afterwards came to be defined in the Church. “j~

2. Young confesses that the early Fathers applied to the work of Christ the ordinary sacrificial language borrowed from the Old and New Testaments. But in chapter viii. I showed that Outram has presented evidence to saturation that the heathen, Jews and Christians of that age all agreed in understanding this sacrificial language as signifying, in a strict sense, the vicarious suffering of penal evils on the part of the victim in behalf of the transgressor. It will suffice for our purpose, at present, to cite only the testimony of the great Metropolitan, Cosmopolitan, learned Controversialist and Church Historian, Eusebius, Bishop of Csesarea. His words are as follows: “An attentive observer may learn this very thing also from the law respecting sacrifices; which enjoins every one who offers a sacrifice, to lay his hands on the head of the victim, and holding it

* George Stanley Faber’s “Primitive Doctrine of Justification.” f Neander’s Church History, vol. i., p. 640.

by the head to bring it to the priest, as offering the animal instead of his own head. Wherefore its language respecting every victim is, Let the offerer present it before the Lord, lay his hands upon the head of his offering; and this was observed in every sacrifice, 110 victim being offered in any other way; whence it is concluded that the lives of the victims were given instead of the lives of the offerers.... For as pious persons, who were familiar with God, and had their minds enlightened by the Divine Spirit, saw that they needed a great remedy for the expiation of deadly sins, they concluded that a ransom for their salvation ought to be presented to God, the disposer of life and death.... As long as men had no better victim, none that was great, valuable and worthy of God, it behooved them to offer him animal sacrifices in ransom for their own life, and as substitutes for their own nature,”*

3. I proved, also, in chapter viii., by arguments drawn directly from the Scriptures, that the Old Testament sacrifices did actually expiate offences by means of vicarious penal sufferings, and that they, by God’s appointment, were eminent types and symbols of the redemptive work of Christ. It hence follows that the conditional admission of Young, that “if the doctrine of Satisfaction be there [in the sacrificial institutions and language of the Old Testament], it is also in the post-apostolic writings,” becomes a simple statement of unquestionable fact

4. In connection with and in addition to the foregoing .evidence, our allegati m is conclusively proved by the

* Demonstr. Evang., L 1. c. 10, pp. 270-340. Quoted by Outram, Dis. 1., chup. xvii.

positive statements of many of these early writers, which, as will be seen, involve in explicit terms the essential elements of the doctrine of expiation.

Polycarp (a pupil of John), in his Epistle to the Philippians,* quoted by Shecld, says: “Christ is our Saviour; for through grace are we righteous, not by works; for our sins he has even taken death upon himself, has be come the servant of us all, and, through his death for us, our hope and the pledge of our righteousness. The heaviest sin is unbelief in Christ; his blood will be demanded of unbelievers; for to those to whom the death of Christ, which obtains the forgiveness of sins, does not prove the ground of justification, it proves a ground of condemnation. Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered him self to be brought even to death for our sins; .... lei us, therefore, without ceasing, hold steadfastly to him who is our hope and the earnest of our righteousness, even Jesus Christ, ‘who bare our sins in his own body on the tree.7 “f

Clement Romanus, a disciple of Paul, died drawn A. D. 100. In his Epistola ad Corinthos (quoted by Dorner), he writes thus: “His blood has been shed for us, for our salvation; he has, according to God’s will, given his body for our body, his soul for our soul.” “Every interpretation of this passage/7 says Dorner,” is forced which does not recognize in it the idea of substitution, and that as well subjective, Christ’s substitutionary design, as objective, the actual fulfilment of that design, and its objective results. There is connected therewith the fact that with Clement, as in the Epistle

* Chapter i. 8. f Shedd’s History of Christian Doctrine, p. 168.

to the Hebrews, the name ‘High Priest7 is frequently applied to Christ.”

Jus4. in Martyr (A. D. 114-168), quoted by Neander, says: “The law pronounced on all men the curse, because no man could fulfil it in its whole extent. Deut. xxvii. 26. Christ delivered us from this curse in bearing it for us.”*

Tht author of the Epistle to Diognetus, which is admitted by all to date from the early part of the second century, consequently, in the generation immediately succeeding the death of the Apostle John, and which is usually published among the works of Justin Martyr, says, as quoted by Dorner: “Thus God delayed, that we might be made conscious of our own guilt and impotency. But as that was filled up, and it was rendered manifest that punishment and death duly awaited us, the one love continued true. It hated not, it departed not, it remembered not evil; but was long-suffering and bore; nay, itself took on our sins. It gave his only Son as a ransom for us; the holy for the unholy, the sinless for the wicked, the pure for the vile, the immortal for the mortal. For what else could cover our sins than the righteousness of him? Whereby could the unholy and ungodly be justified but by the Son of God? Oh! sweet substitution! Oh! what an unsearchable device, what unexpected blessing! The unrighteousness of the many to be hid by the righteous of the One; the righteousness of the One to justify many sinners!”

[B.] The doctrine of vicarious expiation accomplished by the sufferings of Christ was professed yet more explicitly, thoucjh still in a crude form and mixed with much error, by

* Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. c. 30, f. 322.

the Nicene Fathers and their successors up to the time of th( Schoolmen. From the commencement of this period it is well known that a strange fancy, entertained by Origen (A. D. 185-254) and Irenasus (f200), to the effect that Christ was provided by God to ransom his people out of the hands of Satan, as captives are ransomed by friends from the hands of pirates, continued for a long time to tinge the meditations of Christian writers upon the subject of Redemption. This fact, both curious and lamentable, is, of course, made much of by all those whose interest, for any reason, it is to show that the Church of Christ has never been committed to any fixed view as to the nature of Redemption, but has always drifted among various opinions of human origin, more or less rational. With respect to this view I would remark (a) that there is no evidence that it represented the definite and total conception of any one of the ancient Fathers as to the nature of Christ’s work. It was a general and indeterminate form in which that work was conceived of in one of its aspects, suggested by such scriptural passages as Col. ii. 15, and Heb. ii. 14; and however inconsistent as a matter of logic, nevertheless coexisting in the same mind also with vague conceptions of the very views which are common to the modern evangelical Churches. (6.) This view, grotesque as it is, involves, in common with the orthodox Satisfaction Theory, a principle which is utterly inconsistent with the Moral Influence Theory, and that principle is, that the direct design and effect of the sufferings of Christ were to redeem sinners from an obstacle to their saKation exterior to themselves. The prevalenct of this fancy, therefore, in connection with more correct views as to the nature of Redemption, contributes to prove the truth of our allegation that all Christians have from the beginning, without exception, felt the need of being ransomed from a power under which they were held, and which they were impotent to resist. The following witnesses also make it evident that, in spite of the general prevalence of this form of error for a time, the true doctrine of the need of propitiating divine jus-; tice was. never absent from the faith of the Church.

Irenseus (f202) says: “We were God’s enemies and debtors, as Christ in his priestly work fulfilled the law,”* And again, “And on account of this in the last times the Lord, through his own incarnation, restored us into friendship, having been made Mediator between God and man; truly propitiating the Father, against whom we had sinned, in our behalf.”f

Eusebius of Oesarea (A. D. 270-340), quoted by Shedd, says: “How then did he make our sins to be his own, and how did he bear our iniquities?... The Lamb of God did not only these things for us, but he underwent torments, and was punished for us; that which he was no ways exposed to for himself, but we were so by the multitude of our sins; and thereby he became the cause of the pardon of our sins; namely, because he under went death, stripes, reproaches, transferring the thing which we had deserved to himself; and was made a curse for us, taking to himself the curse that was due to us; for what was he but a price of redemption for oui souls?”J

Athanasius ^fche Great — champion of the absolute

* III. 18; cited frcm Thormsius (iii. 176) by Hagenbach, vol. i.t p. 184. f Ibid., xvii. 1.

;j; Demonstratio Er angelica. Lib. x. c.

divinity of Christ (A. D. 278-373), leading and reproseniing a Church party very different from that represented by the former witness, the compromising Eusebius of Csesarea(as quoted by Dorner) — says: “The death, which is termed his, the death of the Logos, was a ransom for the sins of men, and a death of death,”* “Laden with guilt, the world lay under the condemnation of the law; but the Logos took the judgment (krima) up into himself, and suffering in the flesh for all, he bestowed salvation upon all.”t “The first and principal ground of the Logos’ becoming man was that the condemnation of the law, by which we are burdened with guilt and eternal punishment, might be removed by the payment of the penalty.”!

Cyril of Jerusalem (|386), quoted by Shedd, says: “Christ took sin upon his own body. He who died for us was no insignificant creature, he was no mere animal victim, he was no mere man, he was not an angel; but he was God incarnate. The iniquity of us sinners was not so great as the righteousness of him who died for us; the sins we have committed are not equal to the Atonement made by him who laid down his life for us.”§

Chrysostom (A. D. 354-407), quoted by Milner, says: “What a saying? What mind can comprehend it? He made a just person a sinner that he might make sinners just. But the apostle’s language is still stronger. He doth not say he made him a sinner, but sin, that we might be made, not righteous, but righteousness, even the righteousness of God.”T

* Contra Arianos, 1, 45. g Catcchesea, lib. 13, sec. 33.

f Ibid., 1, GO. K Horn, ii., on 2 Cor., chap. v.

J De Incarnatione, c. 11-14.

The great and good Augustine (A. D. 354-430), spending his whole strength upon the defence of the truth revealed in Scripture as to human sin and divine grace, against able and active opponents, was undeniably, to a great extent, in the dark as to the true nature of the piacular work of Christ. He generally uses the term justification in the general and indefinite sense in which it is now used by the Roman Catholic theologians, as including the remission of sins and the infusion of grace. Nevertheless, as Young candidly acknowledges, “we find, especially in his Confessions, and in the touching utterances of his religious experience, that which plainly involves the idea, though the distinctive term is not employed, of a satisfaction to divine justice on account of human sin.“* As quoted by Milner: “He was made sin, as we are made righteousness, not our own, but of God; nor in ourselves, but in him, as he was made sin, not his own, but ours, nor was he appointed so in himself, but in

us.”f

“But Christ without guilt (personal) took upon him self our punishment, in order that be might thus expiate our guilt, and do away with our punishment.”!

“All men are separated from God by sin. Hence they can be reconciled with him only through the remission of sin, and this only through the grace of a most merciful Saviour, and this grace through the ou( only Victim of the most true and only Priest.”§

Gregory the Great (f604), the most distinguished and

* Life and Light of Men, p. 445.
f Enchirid. ad Lauren., c. 41.

t Contra Faust. Munich, 14, 1, quoted by Hagenbach. Augustinus, DC pe .«. iner., I. lvi. U * influential representative of the Latin Church of his age. in his Moralia in Jobum,* quoted by Shedd, says: “Guili can be extinguished only by a penal offering to justice. But it would contradict the idea of justice if, for the sin of a rational being like man, the death of an irrational animal should be accepted as a sufficient atonement. Hence a man must be offered as the sacrifice for man; so that a rational victim may be slain for a rational criminal. But how could a man, himself stained with sin, be an offering for sin? Hence a sinless man must be offered. But what man descending in the ordinary course would be free from sin? Hence, the Son of God must be born of a virgin, and became a man for us. He assumed our nature without our corruption. He made himself a sacrifice for us, and set forth for sinners his own body, a victim without sin, and able both to die by virtue of its humanity, and to cleanse the guilty upon grounds of justice.”

John of Damascus (f 750), the greatest representative of the Greek Church in his age, in his Expositio Fidei, quoted by Shedd, says: “He who assumed death for us, died, and offered himself a sacrifice to the Father; for we had committed wrong towards him, and it was necessary for him to receive our ransom, and we thus be’ delivered from condemnation. For God forbid that the blood of the Lord should be offered to the tyrant.”f

[C.] The doctrine of Redemption by the expiatory sufferings of Christ was held, in common by all the prominent witnesses for pure Christianity during the Dark Ages, including the Vallenses of Piedmont and the immediate forerunners of the Reformers; and it was positively rejected * xvii, 46. f Expositio Fidei, iii. 27.

only by such o% en heretics as Scotus Erigena and Abelard. Claude, Bishop of Turin (A. D. 821-839), the faithful champion of the truth against the inroads of the ever growing Papal superstitions and doctrinal and ritualistic corruptions, is a witness of special interest, because he is supposed to have been immediately associated with those heroic mountaineers (the Val lenses) who profess to have preserved their doctrine unchanged from the days of primitive Christianity. He says, in his Commentary upon the Epistle to the Galatians,* as quoted by Neander: “Christ underwent the penalty designed for those who failed to obey the law, that he might liberate those believing upon him from all fear of such penalty.’7 “Gal. iii. 16. They are forced to confess that man is justified not by works of the law, but by faith.” “Gal. v. 4. Now he,” the apostle, “comprehends the whole law generally, by saying that they will profit nothing by the work of Christ who believe themselves to be justified by any kind of legal observance whatsoever.”

The Vallenses, whom this faithful Bishop of Turin in his day nourished and encouraged, existed as a small but precious body of evangelical witnesses long before, nnd they continue essentially unchanged to the present time, with their head-quarters in the same mountain city. In the year 1530 their teachers sent a deputation to CEcolampadius, at Basle, making, in their Confession, presented on that occasion, the following declaration: “In all things we agree with you, and from the very time of the apostles, our sentiments respecting the same have been the same as your own.” In 1544 they presented a Confession of their Faith to Francis I., King * Fol. 151.

of France, through Cardinal Sadolet. Concerning it, they aflirm, that “this Confession is that which we have received from our ancestors, even from hand to hand, according as their predecessors in all times and in every age have taught and delivered.” As to the nature of the Atonement, they say: “We believe and confess that there is a free remission of sins, proceeding from the mercy and mere goodness of our Lord Jesus Christ; who died once for our sins, the just for the unjust, who took away our sins in his own body on the cross; who is our Advocate with God, the price of our reconciliation; whose blood cleanses our consciences from dead works, that we should serve the living God; who alone made satisfaction for the faithful, so that their sins are not imputed to them, as to the unbelieving and to the reprobate.”

The first attempts to develop the doctrine of Redemption in a manner scientifically accurate and complete were made almost at the same time, yet in entire independence of each other, in each of the two great divisions of the Church, by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the West; and Nicholas, Bishop of Methone, in Messenia, in the East. From the fact that the essential principles involved in Christ’s work of vicarious expiation were, by these men and their successors during the entire era of Scholasticism, made the subjects of a more thorough and systematic investigation than ever before, the enemies of the truth have often pre tended to believe that these principles were inventions of the Schoolmen, and have disparagingly designated our doctrine the “Scholastic Theory of Satisfaction.” This notorious fac*. makes it “nnecessary for me to quote the words of the representative theologians of those ages to prove that they understood the work of Christ in the same sense as ourselves. Anselm of Canterbury and Nicholas of Methone acted as the organs of a spontaneous movement of the whole Church. It is undeniable, also, that the advocates of the doctrine of the literal satisfaction of divine justice by Christ, such as Anselm, Bernard, Hugh St. Victor,* Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, &c., were, with all their faults, the best, in every Christian sense, of the Schoolmen. It was the Pantheistic John Scotus Erigena (circum 860) who denied this truth. It was the semi-Pelagian Duns Scotus (A. D. 1265-1308) who depreciated the value of Christ’s vicarious sufferings, and the necessity for satisfaction — placing that necessity in the optional will instead of the immutable justice of God, and making the satisfaction of Christ but putative only — a satisfaction (so called) of love, and not of justice. .And it was the infamous Abelard (A. D. 1142) who caught in precise terms the Moral Influence Theory of Socinus and Bushnell and Young, and others. As we might expect, the latter was earnestly combated on this, as upon other points involving deadly error, by the deeply religious Ben ard of Clairvaux (A. D. 1 1 53), quoted by Milner and by Hagenbach. After noticing Abelard’s Moral Influence Theory, he says: “Is this the whole then of the great mystery of godliness — this which any uncircumcised and unclean person may easily penetrate? What is there in this beyond the common light of nature?” “For if one died for all, then were all dead, that the satisfaction of one might be imputed

* Christus ergo nascendo debitum hominis Patri solvit et moriendoreutum hominis eriavit. — De Sacrum, cap. 4. Hagenbach.

to all, as he alone bore the sins of all; and n pw he who offended, and he who satisfied divine justice, are found the same, because the head and the body is one Christ.” Of such “Reformers before the Reformation “as Wycliffe (A. D. 1324-1384) and Wessel (A. D. 1419-1489) Hagenbach* testifies” that they attached importance to the theory of Satisfaction in its practical bearing upon evangelical piety, and thus introduced the period of the Reformation.” Wycliffe f (quoted by Baur) says: “And since, according to the third supposition, it behooves that satisfaction should be made for sin, therefore, it behooves that the same nature of man should satisfy for as much as it had become indebted in its great progenitor, which no man was able to do, unless he was at the same time both God and man.” “It is a light word to say that God might, of his power, forgive this sin (Adam’s) without the aseeth (satisfaction) which was made for it, for God might do so if he would; but his justice would not suffer it, but requires that each trespass be punished either on earth or in hell. And God may not accept a person to forgive him without satisfaction.” J Milner quotes the following sentences from an Apology for Wycliffe, preserved in the library of the Cathedral of York, by Dr. Thomas James, some time librarian at Oxford, the contents of which are chiefly extracts from Wycliffe’s own manuscripts: “He persuaded men to trust wholly to Christ, to rely altogether upon his sufferings, and not to seek to be justified in any other way than by his justice.” “That unbelievers, though they might

* History of Doctrines, vol. ii., p. 47.

j-, De Ir carnatione et Morte Christi.

f Tracfs and Treatises of Wycliffe, p. 84.

perform works apparent! y good in thcii matter, still were not to be accounted righteous men; that all who followed Christ became righteous through the participation of his righteousness, and would be saved.”

John Wessel, of Groningen (quoted by Ullman), says: “According to the second or servant form, the Lord Jesus is not only Mediator between God and man, but is rather Mediator for man, between the God of justice and the God of mercy; for it behooved that the whole law of justice should be fulfilled without failure of one jot or tittle; and as this has now been achieved by Jesus, it is easy to find the way in which mercy can flow forth in streams of compassion. The wisdom of the Father, however, made this way by the device of a Mediator.“* “Among all the miracles, not the least is the same justice which is armed with divine and eternal laws against man, not only restrains the sword in judgment, but also the sentence, and not only absolves the criminal whom it had determined to condemn, but orders him to be exalted to dignity, honour and glory. Who is not here surprised to mark how the truth of the threatenings has been changed into the truth of the promises, and upon both sides the truth secured? These things, so contrary to each other, the gentleness of the Lamb alone has blended. For Christ, being himself God, and Priest, and Sacrifice, has satisfied himself, foi himself and by himself.“f “Our loving Father has willed thee his loving Son to be a Surety, Sponsor, Bailsman, for the fully obeying and the fully suffering (satis-

* De Caus. Incarnat., cap. 17, p. 453.
f D( Magnitud. Pass., cap. 14, p. 480.

faciendo et satispatiendo), by an equal pledge on account of all my disobedience and misery,”*

[D.] At the opening of the Reformation, Zwingle, Luther, Calvin, Knox and Cranmer, the organs of independent movements of reform in five different nationalities, differing among themselves in almost everything not essential to the integrity of Christianity, all, without exception, agree in teaching the doctrine of vicarious expiation. And as far as this principle is concerned, the Greek and Roman Churches agreed with the Protestant.

There is no need of illustrating the truth of this position by quotations from the writings of Luther, Calvin or Knox. Their opinions will not be questioned, and it will fully answer our present purpose to show that Zwingle and Cranmer accurately agree with them on the question.

Zwingle (A. D. 1484-1531) was the first, as he was intellectually the most independent and rationalistic, of all the Reformers. In his Expositio Christiana? Fidei De Christo Domino,^ he says: “But he suffered, for the purpose of expiating our crimes, a most humiliating form of suffering.” “Wherever sin is, death of necessity follows. Christ was without sin, and guile was not found in his mouth.... And yet he died this death, he suffered in our stead. He was willing to die, that he might restore us to life; and as he had no sins of his own, the all-merciful Father laid ours upon him.”! “He is the sacrifice and victim, satisfying for the sins of all the world for ever.”§

Archbishop Cranmer (A. D. 1489-1554), in his De-

* Seal. Medit. Exempli., i., p. 544. J Zwingle, Opp., I., p. 204. f Section 6. Ibid., p. 253.

fence of the True Doctrine of the Sacraments,* says: ‘< One kind of sacrifice there is which is called a propitiatory or merciful sacrifice; that is to say, such a sacrifice as pacifies God’s wrath and indignation, and obtains mercy and forgiveness for all our sins, and is the ransom

for the redemption from everlasting damnation

There is but one such sacrifice, whereby our sins are pardoned and God’s mercy and favour obtained, which is the death of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The “Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church” — composed by Petrus Mogilas, Metropolitan of Kiew (A. I). 1642), and sanctioned by the Synod of Jerusalem (A. D. 1672) — says :f “The death of Christ was of a very different kind from that of other men in these respects: first, because of the weight of our sins; secondly, because he wholly fulfilled the priesthood even unto the cross: he offered himself to God and the Father for the ransoming of the human race. Therefore even to the cross he fulfilled the mediation between God and men.”

“Jesus Christ, who, when we were enemies, on account of his great love wherewith he loved us, merited justification for us by his most sacred passion on the tree, and satisfied God the Father for us.“J “The first and most excellent satisfaction is that by which whatever is due by us to God, on account of our sins, has been paid abundantly, although he should deal with us according to the strictest rigour of his justice. This is said to be that satisfaction which we say has appeased God and

* Book v., 3. f Winer, Page 85

J Council of Trent, Session f>, chapter vii.

290 ‘IKE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.

rendered him propitious to us; and for it we are indebted to Christ the Lord alone, who, having paid the,’ price ot our sins on the cross, most fully satisfied God.77*

^EJ] Luther and Calvin, and the fully pronounced Creeds of the Lutheran and. Reformed Churches, all teach the full doctrine embraced in the statement given in the second chapter of this book, to the effect that the Satisfaction rendered by Christ includes both his active and his passive obedience, and infallibly secures for the believer alike remission of the penalty incurred by his sins and, a title to the covenanted rewards of obedience.

“Another principal part of our reconciliation with God was, that man, who had lost himself by his disobedience, should by way of remedy oppose to it obedience, satisfy the justice of God, and pay the penalty of sin. Therefore our Lord came forth very man, adopted the person, and assumed his name, that he might in his stead obey the Father; that he might present our flesh as the price of satisfaction to the just judgment of God, and in the same flesh pay the penalty which he had incurred.’^

“When it is asked, then, how Christ by abolishing sin removed the enmity between God and us, and purchased a righteousness which made him favourable and kind to us, it may be answered generally, that he accomplished this by the whole course of his obedience.... In short, from the moment in which he assumed the form of servant, he began, in order to redeem us, to pay the price of deliverance. Scripture, however, the more certainly to define the mode of salvation, ascribes it

* Catechismus Romanus, 2, 5, 63.

f Calvin’s Institutes, book ii., chapter xii., § 3.

peculiarly and specially to the death of Christ

Still there is no exclusion of the other part of obedience which he performed in life.”*

“A man will be justified by faith when, excluded from the righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and, clothed in it, appears in the sight of God, not as a sinner, but as righteous. Thus we simply interpret justification as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favour as if we ,vere righteous, and we say that this justification consists in the forgiveness of sins, and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.”f “Hence when God justifies us through the intercession of Christ, he does not acquit us on a proof of our own innocence, but by an imputation of righteousness, so that, though not righteous in ourselves, we are deemed righteous in Christ.”J

“By which the apostle means that we are accepted in his (Christ’s) name by God, because he has expiated our sins by his own death, and his obedience is imputed to us for righteousness. For since the righteousness of faith consists in the remission of sin, and gratuitous acceptance, we attain both through Christ.”§

The Heidelberg Catechism — one of the most generally adopted of all the Reformed Confessions, composed in 1563 by Ursinus and Olevianus — in answer to Question 60, “How art thou justified in the sight of God?” says: “Only by a true faith in Jesus Christ; so that though my conscience accuse me, that I have grossly transgressed all the commandments of God, and kept

* Calvin’s Institutes, book ii., chapter xvi., $ 5.

f Ibid., book iii., chap, xi., 2. J Ibid., 3.

$ Commentary on 1 Cor. i. 30.

none of them, and am still inclined to all evil; notwithstanding God, without any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ; even so, as if I never had had, nor committed, any sin; yea, as if I had fully accomplished all that obedience which Christ hath accomplished for me; inasmuch as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart.”

The Second Helvetic Confession — composed by Bullinger in 1564, and of very high authority among the Re- ’ formed Churches — says:* “For Christ has taken upon himself and borne our sins, and satisfied the divine justice. God, therefore, on account of Christ as having suffered and risen, is propitiated with reference to our sins, neither does he impute them to us, but reckons the righteousness of Christ as ours, so that we are now not only cleansed and purged, or rendered pure from sins, but are also endowed with the righteousness of Christ, so that we are absolved from sins, death or condemnation; and, in fine, righteous and heirs of eternal life. Properly speaking, therefore, God alone justifies us, and he only justifies us on account of Christ, not imputing our sins, but imputing to us his righteousness.”

The Gallic Confession (A. D. 1559), Article 18, says: “Therefore we utterly repudiate all the other grounds upon which men think they may be justified before God; and every thought of virtues or merits being cast aside, and entirely rely upon the obedience of Jesus Christ alone, which is indeed imputed to us, so that both are all our sins covered, and also we attain to favour before God.”

* Chapter xv, T)e Yera Jnstificatione.

The Bdgic Confession was drawn up by Von Bres, in 1561. “In 1571, it was revised and adopted by the entire Church of Holland in tht sixteenth century. After another revision of the text, it was publicly approved by the Synod of Dort, 1618.” Article 22: “But we by no means understand that it is faith itself, pro-, perly speaking, which justifies us, or that we are justified on account of faith, for that (faith) is only an instrument by which we apprehend Christ our righteousness. There Christ, imputing to us his own merits, and very many most holy works, which he accomplished for us, is our righteousness.”

The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, produced in their present form in 1562, Article 2: ... “One Christ, very God and very man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt (non tantum pro culpa originis), but also for all actual sins of men.” Article 31: “The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone.”

The Formula Concordia? — drawn up by Andrea and others (A. D. 1577), the most scientific of all the Lutheran Confessions — says: “That righteousness which before God is of mere grace imputed to faith, or to the believer, is the obedience, suffering and resurrection of Christ, by which he for our sakes satisfied the law, and expiated our sins. For since Christ was not only man, but God and man in one undivided person, so he was not subject to th3 law, nor obnoxious to suffering and death (ratione suce persona) because he was Lord of the law. On which account his obedience (not merely in respect that he obeyed the Father in his sufferings and death, but also that he for our sakes willingly made himself subject to the law and fulfilled it by his obedience) is imputed to us, so that God, on account of that whole obedience (which Christ by his acting and by his suffering, in his life and in his death, for our sake rendered to his Father who is in heaven), remits our sins, reputes us as good and just, and gives us eternal salvation.”* “We are pronounced and reputed good and just on account of the obedience of Christ, which Christ from his nativity until his ignominious death upon the cross accomplished for the Father in our behalf.”f

The Westminster Confession — (A. D. 1648) which all the Presbyterians of Scotland, Ireland and America profess to embrace sacredly and candidly, as the Confession of their own personal faith — says: “The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he through the eternal Spirit once offered up to God, hath fully satisfied the justice of the Father; and purchased not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto him.”! “Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardon ing their sins, and by accounting and accepting their person as righteous,... not imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to

* Formula Concordise; p. 684, Hase’s Libri Symbolic!.

f Ibid., p. 686.

I Westminster Confession chapter viii., 5.

them as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them.7’*

The Formula Consensus Helvetica — “composed in Zurich (A. D. 1675) by Heidegger, assisted by Francis Turretin of Geneva, and Gereler of Basle/7 and designed to rebuke the errors introduced by the Professors of the French Theological Seminary at Saumur, who taught a mixed system, in general character the same with that system among us styled “New England Theology77 — says: “But by the obedience of his death, Christ, instead of his elect, so satisfied God the Father, that in the estimate, nevertheless, of his vicarious righteousness and of that obedience, all of that which he rendered to the law, as its just servant, during the whole course of his life, whether by doing or by suffering, ought to be called obedience. For Christ’s life, according to the apostle’s testimony (Phil. ii. 7, 8) was nothing but a continuous emptying of self, submission and humiliation, descending step by step to the very lowest extreme, even the death of the cross; and the Spirit of God plainly declares that Christ in our stead satisfied the law and divine justice by his most holy life, and makes that ransom, with which God has redeemed us, to consist not in his sufferings only, but in his whole life conformed to the law.”f

When the name of EDWARDS is spoken, all men think of one man — President Edwards, Sr., the great writer on the Will and Original Sin. Surely all honest use of language demands that if any doctrine be styled the “Edwwdean Theory of the Atonement” it should be his.

* Westminster Confession, chapter xi., $ 1.
f Fc rmula Co census Helvetica, canon 15.

He, as all his readers know, maintained on this point precisely the doctrine of Luther, and Calvin, and Turretin. Yet the prestige of his great name has uncandidly been perverted into the support of the Governmental Theory, which he never taught. “As there is the same need that Christ’s obedience should be reckoned to our account, as that his atonement should; so there is the same reason why it should. As, if Adam had persevered and finished his course of obedience, we should have received the benefit of his obedience, as much as now we have the mischief of his disobedience; so in like manner, there is reason that we should receive the benefit of the second Adam’s obedience, as of hi* atonement of our disobedience. Believers are represented in Scripture as being so in Christ, as that they are legally one, or accepted as one, by the supreme Judge: Christ has assumed our nature, and has so assumed all in that nature, that belongs to him, into such n union with himself, that he is become their head and has taken them to be his members. And, therefore, what Christ has done in our nature, whereby he did honour to the law and authority of God by his acts, as well as the reparation to the honour of the law by his sufferings, is reckoned to the believer’s account.”*

III. It remains for us now only to indicate the conclusions as to the truth of the doctrine we advocate, which the historical facts, now approved, appear to sustain.

We have already conceded to our opponents that the facts show that the mind of the Church advanced more slowly in the development of the doctrine of the Atone- * Edwards’ Works, vol. v., pp. 399, 400.

ment than in the case of any other of the great fundamental doctrines of Revelation. But we claim that the men and confessions quoted above truly represented the Church of their respective ages, and that in their character as representatives they fully prove that the Church of Christ had, as a general fact, always understood the redemptive work of the Lord to be a vicarious expiation of sin in order to propitiate a justly-incensed though loving God in behalf of sinners. If this be so, we argue against all who deny this great truth, that it is impossible that Christians should thus have mistaken Christianity. The question is not whether grave, or even fatal, errors have prevailed in the visible Church, nor whether true Christians may or may not fall into grievous misconception as to important truths. But the real question involved is, whether it is possible that the whole Church in all ages, as a general and characteristic fact — and whether with especial uniformity the more spiritual and fruitful portion of the Church — should have entirely mistaken the nature of that foundation upon which their trust reposes, and of that redemption of which they have been the subjects.

As far as the Moral Influence Theory is concerned, the adverse presumption raised by the history of opinion on this subject is overwhelming. The spiritual followers.)f Christ have always lived a life the conscious principle of which was faith in a sin-expiating sacrifice. Socinians and Rationalists have believed in the Moral Influence Hypothesis when they have seen fit to believe anything. Let the doctrines be judged by their fruits, and by the seal of the Holy Ghost on the hearts of their respccti ve profess* prs.

Young says of the Evangelical Churches from the Reformation down to the present hour: “If there has been success anywhere in the spread of Christianity, if there has been manifest power, power for highest good, anywhere, it has been in connection with them. Undeniably God has been in them and with them, and the Spirit of God has marvellously wrought, through them, for the conversion and moral regeneration of the world.7’* Yet he continues a few paragraphs after: “That wild and daring transcendentalism which, in a greater or less degree, essentially affects evangelical theology at this hour, is not by any means the most fatal evil. The doctrine of satisfaction to divine justice is immeasurably worse in its moral tendency.... This, beyond all comparison, is the deadliest error.” f This is a sheer absurdity. The faith in the work of Christ as an expiation of guilt has been a constant element in the living Church. The partial prevalence of the doctrine advocated by Young has been a constant symptom of the decay of spiritual life and fruitfulness when these have reached the crisis of death. Young hates the doctrine of the satisfaction of justice. He will have none of it. But his will, like the Pope’s bull against /he comet, is impotent, as well to expunge it from the page of history as from the page of revelation.

The adverse bearing of this historical review upon the position of those who advocate the Governmental Hypothesis is not less evident. The Governmental, as well as the Moral Theory, necessarily denies that the elFect of Christ’s death was to expiate the guilt intrinsic in sin, or to propitiate the justice intrinsic in God. Both * “Life and Light of Men,” p. 467. f Ibid, p. 476.

these theories agree in making the direct and essential effect of the Atonement to be simply exemplary and moral; a display of principles, not a veritable exercise of divine attributes. On the contrary, the history proves beyond question (1) that the one point held in common by all the people of God in all ages is precisely this, that like the function of the ancient priest and the virtue of the ancient sacrifice, the effect of Christ’s death terminates, not on the sinner nor on the universe, but on God. The simplest and constant form of the Confession is, that Christ, by his sacrifice, has expiated sin and propitiated God. This theory of Satisfaction, as thus generally stated, is the faith of the Greek and Roman, of the Lutheran and Reformed and Arminian Churches in all their branches; and what is true of the Church to-day has been true of the Church from the beginning. (2.) All the creeds of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches teach the full doctrine stated and advocated in this book, and they can, by no amount of ingenuity, however able or unscrupulous, be explained away into even a plausible conformity with the characteristic positions of the Governmental Hypothesis. Nor can its advocates truly claim that while accepting and conserving all that is essential and valuable in the older faith of the Church, their doctrine is simply to be regarded as an “improvement in theology” in the line of legitimate progress. We believe in such progress. We thank God that it has been made by the Church in its comprehension of this very doctrine in the past. We acknowledge that there is both room and need for more such progress just here. We hope that the Spirit may BOOH lead us to more truth in this direction as in all others. But it is absurd to propose that as an improvement which essentially consists in the denial of the original and uniform faith of the Church in the premises.

When Grotius, in his celebrated work, written professedly to defend the common doctrine of the Church from the attacks of the Socinians, first developed the Governmental Theory, and admitted that the Atonement was not designed to satisfy an immutable demand of the divine nature, but to produce a sin-deterring effect upon the universe, all saw that he had betrayed the very life of the cause he had professed to defend. Even the great Arminian theologian, Limborch, saw clearly that this was so, and said, in criticising the work of Grotius,” that the gist of the matter in respect to the doctrine of the Atonement lies in the question, ‘An Christus morte sua, circa Deum aliquid effeceritf vt This is indeed the heart of the question. The whole Christian Church, Apostolic Fathers, Schoolmen, Reformers, Greek, Roman, Lutheran, Reformed, and even the Arminian Churches, all answer in one voice in the affirmative. The Arians, Socinians, Rationalists, and advocates of the Governmental Hypothesis, answer together in the negative. Let them not pretend, therefore, that their doctrine is an improvement of that old theology the root of which it destroys. Their doctrine is as strange to the history of the Church as it is to the page of Revelation.

* Shedd’s History of Christian Doctrine, vol. ii., p. 371.