to man. The party offended must be reconciled as well as the offender, before any real or permanent friendship can be effected; and this we contend is what the language we have quoted above is designed to express. The reconcili. ation or atonement spoken of, is said to be effected by the death of Christ; whereas the removal of the enmity of man's heart is more properly the work of the Holy Spirit. It is also represented as something synonymous with the non-imputation of trespasses, which itself is decisive of the sense in which it is to be understood; for, while the impu tation of guilt presents a legal barrier to reconciliation on the part of God, it interposes no moral barrier on the part of man. Besides, the phraseology of the first of the texts is itself sufficient to determine the point :-' by whom we have now received the atonement.' To speak of a person's receiving the boon of reconciliation to God, in the sense of the removal of all legal offence, is intelligible enough; but to speak of his receiving the laying aside of his own enmity to God is, to say the least, uncouth and unnatural phraseology. Allied to these, and to much the same purpose, are those texts which ascribe propitiation to the work of Christ :Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation (iλaothρlov) through faith in his blood.** Jesus Christ the righteous -he is the propitiation (ixaoμós) for our sins.'† • Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation (ixaoμóv) for our sins.‡ The corresponding verb is also used:- God be merciful (iáoonri) to me, a sinner.' 'A merciful and faithful high. priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for (iáckoba-to propitiate) the sins of the people.' use of these terms by the Septuagint translators of the old testament, to denote the mercy.seat, and the taking away of wrath by means of sacrifice, has already been mentioned. Nor does this application rest solely on their author. ity, for the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews gives it his high sanction, when, treating of the furniture of the ancient tabernacle, he speaks of the cherubims of glory overshadowing the mercy-seat (rò ixaorpiov).'¶ The mercy. * Rom. iii. 25. + 1 John ii. 2. 1 John iv. 10. Il Heb. ii. 17. ¶ Heb. ix. 5. The seat sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice, was that to which the pious Israelite looked when imploring the pardon of sin. Over it hovered the Shekinah, or symbol of the divine presence, with reference to which Jehovah, as propitiated by sacrifice, was understood to dwell between the cherubim, and to commune with his guilty children from above the mercy-seat. Can any thing more satisfactorily determine the sense in which we are to understand the work of Christ? His death is that by which the wrath of God is appeased; by which Deity is propitiated; the grand propitiatory, with reference to which alone it is, either that God can regard man with benignity, or that man can ever approach God in the hope of being accepted. To the same purpose are all those passages before cited, in which ransom and redemption are spoken of in connexion with the work of Christ. These terms are correlative in their import, the former denoting the sum paid for the emancipation of a prisoner or captive, the latter marking the deliverance or escape which is thus effected. The use of them with reference to man's salvation, of which we shall adduce instances immediately, shows that this salva. tion is brought about by the interposition of a substitute who procures the liberation of the prisoner by paying his debts, or the emancipation of the captive by tendering his ransom. Men by their sins are brought under obligations to the law and justice of God, which God can neither gra. tuitously fall from demanding, nor men of themselves ever implement, for reasons that have been already assigned. To the law of God they are debtors; they are the prisoners of divine justice. Their salvation is not a simple discharge without compensation--not a mere manumission without price. Neither is the salvation of guilty men an act of power only, effected by the interposition of an arm full of night to secure their escape. Gratuitous favour and almighty power are both, doubtless, concerned in it; the grace of God being perfectly free as regards the persons saved, who themselves give no price for the redemption of their souls; and the omnipotence of Christ being exert, ed on the footing of his legal purchase to rescue them from the thraldom of sin. But there is more than grace and power. There is a price paid, a ransom laid down-a price, a ransom, every way equivalent to the redemption for which it is offered. In proof of these assertions, ob. serve the following texts: The Son of Man came-to give his life a ransom (λúrçov) for many.' 'Justified freely by his grace through the redemption (διὰ τῆς ἀπολυτρώσεως) that is in Christ Jesus.' 'In whom we have redemption (droλurpwo) through his blood.' Who gave himself a ransom (avríλurpov) for all.'§ 'Who gave himself for us that he might redeem (Avrowonrai) us from all iniquity.'|| 'Ye know that ye were not redeemed (¿λurpwenre) with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.'¶ These passages, and there are many more to the same purpose,abundantly show that the salvation of sinners is effected by a process of commutation, that it is something for which an adequate price is paid without the payment of which it could not have taken place. It is vain to attempt to throw ridicule on this view of the subject, by representing the idea of a pecuniary compensation as too sordid and degrading a principle for the divine Being to act upon; for the truth is, that commutative equity is involved in the essence of true righteousness. Neither will it avail our opponents to assert that as man is the captive of Satan, if price for his deliverance is paid at all, it must be to the Evil One. Man is certainly the slave of Satan, but this is only a secondary view of his bondage. Who is it that delivers him over to Satan, on account of his sins? Is it not by divine justice that he is bound over to punishment? The prince of darkness is only the executioner of God's righteous sentence. It is to God the debt of obedience or suffering is due. It is God who has the right to detain him in prison. The detaining power is the equity of the divine law and government, but for which Satan could not hold him in thraldom a single moment. The passages, thus, without controversy, prove the fact that salvation is effected by the blood or death of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is offered to and accepted of by God, as a perfect satisfaction, a proper equivalent for the sins of such as are made partakers of redemption. They are not their own, but BOUGHT WITH A PRICE. Can any thing more distinctly express the idea of substitutionary satisfaction, which is just the idea of atonement? There are two texts in the writings of Paul, strikingly * Mat. xx. 28. † Rom. iii. 24. Tit. ii, 14. Eph. i. 7. Col. i. 14. § 1 Tim. ii. 6. 1 Pet. i. 18, 19. analogous, which set forth the doctrine of atonement in the strongest possible manner. The one is :- He hath made him to be sin (àμacríav) for us, who knew no sin." The other :-Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse (karápa) for us.'† In the one, Christ is said to be made sin; in the other, to be made a curse. The former text is often explained to mean only that he was made a sin-offering; and the latter, that he was subjected to the cursed death of the cross. Even in this view, the passages are strong proofs of our doctrine. But we are inclined to take them literally as they stand, and to view them as meaning that sin and guilt were ac tually laid upon Christ, or imputed to him; he was, in law-reckoning, regarded as if he had sinned, treated as if he had been accursed. This, as before remarked, was necessary to the penal character of his sufferings; and with. out it they could have been regarded only in the light of afflictions or calamities, which may, and often do, befall those who are innocent. But if Christ was made sin and a curse, it must have been in the room of others; he had no sin of his own; he knew no sin;' in himself, he ever 'continued in all things written in the book of the law to do them.' Here then again, have we the doctrine of Christ's substitution in the place of others, affirmed in the most forcible manner. The passages in which Christ is said to have been made a sacrifice are not to be overlooked. In some of these the death of Christ is spoken of, in the plainest terms, as being a sacrifice:-Christ hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice (Ovoíav) to God.'‡ 'Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice (Ovoías) of himself.' This man, after he had offered one sacrifice (ovcíav) for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God.' In many more passages than we can quote, is the death of Christ spoken of in the same sacrificial terms, which are elsewhere applied to the offerings of the law. We have already exposed the untenableness of the theory which would account for this, on the principle of its being merely in figurative allusion to the rites of the Mosaic dispensation; and * 2 Cor. v. 21. + Eph. v. 2. Heb. ix. 26. + Gal. iii. 13. || Heb. x. 12. assigned our reasons for believing that the only real sacri. fice, properly speaking, which was ever presented, was the sacrifice of Christ. It will not do to take refuge from the proof for atonement, deduced from the circumstance of which we are now speaking, by referring to the cases in which the moral and religious services of God's people are represented as sacrifices, or things devoted to God, as if the work of Christ was a sacrifice in no other or higher sense than this.* For let it be remarked, that under the law there were other than atoning sacrifices, sacrifices that were eucharistical not expiatory, thank-offerings as well as sin-offerings, in which sense the services of the people of God may receive the same designation. But there were also burnt-offerings, sacrifices for sin, of a distinctly penal, expiatory, substitutionary character; and when what Christ did is spoken of as a sacrifice, it is in language of the same kind that we find used with regard to these. The services of believers are never spoken of as sacrifices for sin, sacrifices offered to put away sin; yet such is uniformly the style in which the death of Christ is alluded to in the new testament. The inference, to every candid mind, must therefore be, that Christ's death is a sacrifice, in no figurative or inferior sense, but as a penal, substitutionary, expiatory satisfaction for the sins of those whom he came to redeem, that is to say, an atoning sacrifice.'t We come now to speak of the language of substitution, which is plainly and directly employed, by the writers of the new testament, in relation to the sufferings and death of Christ. We allude to the frequent use of the preposition FOR, as in the following passages :—' The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom FOR (ávrì) many.—In due time Christ died FOR (UTP) the ungodly. He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up FOR (TEP) us all.-Christ our passover is sacrificed FOR (vrèp) US.—| -He hath made him to be sin FOR (Tip) us, who knew no sin.-Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse FOR (To) us.--Christ also hath loved us and given himself FOR (VTP) us, an offering and a sacrifice to God. Our Lord Jesus Rom. xii. 1. Heb. xiii. 15. 1 Pet. ii. 5. + Smith on Sac., p. 286. |