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meekness and love; and, in illustration of the love to men which he manifested, he says, "Christ's love to men that He shewed when upon earth, and especially in going through His last sufferings, and offering up His life and soul under these sufferings, which was His greatest act of love, was far beyond all parallel." This, as a part of Christ's righteousness, is clearly here love to men as men; not love to the elect as the elect. The specifying, as illustrating His love to men, those sufferings of Christ, and that offering up of His life and soul, which the system assumes had reference to the elect only, is indeed a manifest contradiction; but it seems to have arisen from his looking at the righteousness of Christ as the meeting of the demand for righteousness which the law makes on man, and not as the revelation of the heart of the Father by the Son. For Edwards did not doubt that the righteousness which Christ fulfilled, and with which, by imputation, believers are clothed, included love to all men; -any more than that the example which He left for the guidance of His followers, was that of love to all But the legal reference to man in which alone the atonement has been viewed, has caused that neither Christ's sufferings for our sins, nor His own righteousness, reveal anything of God by what they are in themselves beyond what the law testifies ;-being, simply, the meeting of the demands of the law; the former an awful, the latter a glorious seal put to the law by the Son of God, and no more.

men.

Justification by faith is so closely related to that work of Christ which the faith that justifies apprehends, that an error in regard to the nature of the atonement must affect that doctrine. But there will be some advantage in postponing the consideration of the teaching of the earlier Calvinists on this subject, so

far as the object of this volume calls for the consideration of it, until I have first directed attention to the great modification which Calvinism, as taught by the theological school to which I have referred above, has recently undergone.

CHAPTER IV.

CALVINISM, AS RECENTLY MODIFIED.

CALVINISM, as recently modified, differs from the

earlier Calvinism in these points:-First, as to the reference of the atonement, which is held to have been for all men, and not for the elect only. Secondly, as to the need be for an atonement, which is not regarded as arising out of the demands of distributive and individual justice, requiring that each man should receive his due desert, according to an eternal necessity in the divine nature, as maintained by Owen and Edwards; but is held to arise out of the demands of rectoral and public justice, which necessitate God, as the moral governor of the universe, if He extend mercy to sinners, to do so only in a way that will preserve inviolate the interests of His moral government. Thirdly, as to the nature of the atonement, Christ's sufferings for our sins not being held to be the endurance, on the part of the Saviour, of the same punishment, or of punishment equivalent in amount of suffering, with that to which those for whom He suffered were exposed, but to be the substitution of other sufferings for the threatened punishment, which substituted sufferings were equivalent in reference to the result in relation to God's moral government;and Christ's meritorious obedience not being held to be the fulfilling of the law in our room and stead, so as to provide us with a righteousness to be imputed to us, investing us with a right to the reward of righteousness, but a moral excellence giving a moral virtue to the atonement whereby it is made a fit ground on which may be rested all acts of grace and clemency towards sinners, and all bestowal of favours upon them.

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Fourthly, as to the results of the atonement, that it does not of itself, and by its own nature, secure salvation to any, but only is an adequate provision for the salvation of all, free to all, effectual to salvation in the case of those who are disposed by the sovereign grace of God to avail themselves of it.

These points of difference involve others as implied in them. Thus the idea of imputation of guilt and righteousness, viz. of our guilt to Christ, and of Christ's righteousness to us, as this imputation was held by Owen and Edwards, is rejected as untenable;—“ Guilt and merit not being transferable,—but only their consequences." (Payne, 254.) The idea of a legal claim to salvation, which we have just seen commended as the full meaning of the instinctive legalism of the human heart, is rejected as destroying the gracious character of the gospel dispensation;--and, most important of all-the relation of the atonement to the divinity of Christ, is altogether differently conceived of; for whereas, in the earlier Calvinism the divinity of the Saviour is contemplated as making possible infinitely great sufferings endured in time,-the needed substitute for sufferings that would have been infinite in that they would have been eternal, on this system the divinity of Christ is regarded as giving infinite value to any suffering of His; so that the value of the sufferings would be infinitely great though its amount were infinitely small.

The assumed advantages of this system as a modification of the earlier Calvinism are chiefly these,First, as to the extent of the atonement. To teach that Christ died for all is consonant with the most obvious meaning of the language of the inspired writers,—which cannot be brought to utter a limited atonement without much forcing. While, besides, an

universal atonement is an adequate, and the only adequate foundation for the preaching of the Gospel as good news of salvation to all :-and they dwell with much force on the kind of mental reservation which the older system ascribes to God in inviting all to partake in what is only prepared for some, because the some only will accept the invitation. Secondly, as to the need be for atonement. A necessity for an atonement arising out of rectoral or public justice, is felt less repulsive than one that implies a demand in the divine nature for a certain amount of suffering as the punishment of a certain amount of sin. Thirdly, as to the nature of the atonement. All that men have revolted from in the idea of the Son of God being actually in His Father's eyes as a criminal through imputation of man's sin, and being punished accordingly, is thought to be avoided; as well as all that is of the nature of legal fiction in imputation of guilt to an innocent being, or of righteousness to a guilty being. Fourthly, as to the results of the atonement. They dwell largely on the manifestation of the divine character, and on the vindication of the divine judgment on sin, as well as of the divine sovereignty in the salvation of those who are saved, seeing that those who perish, perish, not because a salvation was not provided for them, but because they would not accept of it. Owen had said in a passage already quoted, that "to affirm Christ to die for all men, is the readiest way to prove that He died for no man in the sense Christians have hitherto believed, and to hurry poor souls into the bottom of Socinian blasphemies." Here, that Christ died for all men is maintained; but, at the same time, "the objections of the Socinian" to "redemption through the merits of Christ," are held to be "all silenced."-" If he is not allowed for his weapons the wrath of a God of

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