points are its certainty and the description of that wherein it consisted.

That Jesus did 'truly die' is asserted from the testimony of His worst enemies, of nature itself, and of the water and blood which flowed from His wounded side.

Death in Him consisted in the same fact as in other menthe separation of the soul from the body. This appears from the expressions of the Evangelists who describe His death. For this there was an adequate cause in the anguish, bodily and spiritual, which He endured.

It must further be understood that His death was voluntary (John x. 18), in the sense that of His own will He submitted Himself to that which would cause death. It was involuntary in the sense that, without divine interposition, the human frame subjected to such anguish must suffer dissolution; and also that He did not anticipate the natural moment of death. Otherwise the actual death itself would not have been the deed of His enemies, but His own.

The fact of the burial of our Lord, omitting the circumstances relating to it recorded in Scripture, may here be chiefly noticed as sealing the truth of His death.

V. The Purpose of the Sufferings of Christ.

'To reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men.'

It will be noticed that the doctrine here set forth is the more abstract one of the general nature and purport of Christ's sufferings; not the particular and individual one of the application of the merit of those sufferings to a sinful soul. This latter will find its place further on, under the Articles on sin, justification, &c.

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And it is also this more general view of the subject that Pearson chiefly treats when commenting on the clause 'The forgiveness of sins.' Pearson there deduces from the consideration of many passages of Scripture that the forgiveness 'containeth in it a reconciliation of an

of sins promised to us

offended God, and a satisfaction to a just God: it containeth a reconciliation, as without which God cannot be conceived to remit; it comprehendeth a satisfaction, as without which God was resolved not to be reconciled.' These are the two particulars of the present section of our Article.

On the first of these two points, 'The reconciliation of His Father to us,' Pearson proceeds thus: Christ by His death hath reconciled God unto us, who was offended by our sins; and that He hath done so we are assured, because He, which before was angry with us, on the consideration of Christ's death becomes propitious to us, and did ordain Christ's death to be a propitiation for us. For we are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in His blood" (Rom. iii. 24, 25). "We have an Advocate with the Father, and He is the propitiation for our sins" (1 John ii. 1). For God "loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John iv. 10). It is evident, therefore, that Christ did render God propitious unto us by His blood (that is, His sufferings unto death), who before was offended with us for our sins. And this propitiation amounted to a reconciliation, that is, a kindness after wrath. We must conceive that God was angry with mankind before He determined to give our Saviour; we cannot imagine that God, who is essentially just, should not abominate iniquity. The first affection we can conceive in Him upon the lapse of man is wrath and indignation. God, therefore, was most certainly offended before He gave a Redeemer; and though it be most true that He " so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" (John iii. 16), yet there is no incongruity in this, that a father should be offended with that son which he loveth, and at that time offended with him when he loveth him. Notwithstanding, therefore, that God loved men whom He created, yet He was offended with them when they sinned, and gave His Son to suffer for them, that through that Son's obedience He might be reconciled to them. This reconciliation is clearly delivered in the Scriptures as wrought by Christ; for "all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to

Himself by Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. v. 18), and that by virtue of His death, for "when we were enemies we were reconciled unto God by the death of His Son" (Rom. v. 10).'

This doctrine needs close attention in the present day, when much is made of what Pearson calls the Socinian exception, that in the Scriptures we are said to be reconciled unto God, but God is never said to be reconciled unto us.' He shows from the language of Scripture, in many instances (e.g. 1 Cor. vii. 11), that to be reconciled to a person implies that person becoming favourable to the other. We turn to the second part of the present section—the death of Christ viewed as a sacrifice for all sin.

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The definition of sin, based on 1 John iii. 4, given by Pearson, is this: Whatsoever is done by man, or is in man, having any contrariety to the law of God, is sin.' And after including in this definition all acts of omission or commission contrary to God's law, and 'every evil habit contracted in the soul,' he says that any corruption or inclination in the soul to do that which God forbiddeth, and to omit that which God commandeth, howsoever such corruption and inclination came into the soul, whether by an act of his own will, or by an act of the will of another, is a sin, as being something dissonant and repugnant to the law of God.'

Sin thus regarded manifestly comprehends under one term. the double expression of our present Article, 'original guilt' and 'actual sins of men.' For sin, in this comprehensive sense, Christ's death was a sacrifice. In proof of this, Pearson alleges many passages of Scripture, such as these, which may be easily multiplied: Once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself' (Heb. ix. 26); 'He was delivered for our offences' (Rom. iv. 25); 'He died for our sins, according to the Scriptures' (1 Cor. xv. 3). Pearson further shows how the life of Christ was laid down as a price: 'Ye are bought with a price (1 Cor. vi. 20); 'We are not redeemed with corruptible things. . . but with the precious blood of Christ' (1 Pet. i. 18, 19). Now, as it was the blood of Christ, so it was a price given by way of compensation and as that blood was precious, so it was a full and

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perfect satisfaction. For as the gravity of the offence and iniquity of the sin is augmented and increaseth, according to the dignity of the person offended and injured by it, so the value, price, and dignity of that which is given by way of compensation is raised according to the dignity of the person making the satisfaction. God is of infinite majesty, against whom we have sinned; and Christ is of the same divinity, who gave His life a ransom for sinners; for God "hath purchased His Church with His own blood" (Acts xx. 28). Although, therefore, God be said to remit our sins by which we were captivated, yet He is never said to remit the price without which we had never been redeemed; neither can He be said to have remitted it, because He did require it and receive it.'

Before we dismiss this important Article, which deals with the very foundation of the Christian hope, a few words of caution may be needful. That side of the atonement which looks towards God, rather than towards man, is confessedly mysterious. In other words, any doctrinal statement is so which seeks to answer the question, 'Why God required and accepts the atonement on man's behalf,' rather than the practical question, 'How man may obtain the benefit of that atonement.'

On that mysterious side, the analogy of revelation will not permit us to expect more information than may satisfy us that God's attributes are really united in the mode of salvation He has provided. The origin of evil, its permitted existence, the extent to which it has permeated the whole of human nature, and, as Scripture intimates, spiritual regions of unknown amplitude besides, are appalling, and to us unintelligible subjects. They render it absolutely impossible for us to attempt to account for the present immense scope and sway of evil in the universe of God. We may further consider, that to prevent its grosser and more ruinous manifestations in human society is the very utmost which the effort of man has attained, and scarcely attained; and that the absolute conquest of evil in a single human heart has never yet been accomplished. Hence we may well hesitate in presuming to judge of the

means by which it has pleased God to deal with this gigantic enemy, initially for the present, and completely, as He has intimated to us, in the future. The dealing of God with sin, whether through His attribute of Love or of Justice, is therefore beyond human criticism. The past and the future are alike beyond our ken. The subjection or destruction of evil, in the establishment of the great kingdom of God that is to be, will be accomplished, but we cannot judge of the necessary means. Meanwhile we are able to say that Christianity, of which the atonement is the animating principle, has, in point of fact, proved itself the most powerful agent yet known in overcoming sin.

But if all this is undeniable, it is manifest that great caution is needed in stating the doctrine of the atonement. It is in theology, as a science, as it is in other sciences. In astronomy the results of multitudinous observations give certain facts, which must be all accounted for and included in any theory of the science which claims acceptance. In theology each passage of Scripture is a fact; and the undoubtedly ascertained qualities of man's nature are other facts. Any doctrinal theory, in order to be true, must unite in itself, and take account of, all these facts. If itf ails to unite them (within those limits which are possible to man), it is not a true doctrine. If the results of our induction, carefully conducted, lead to two apparently conflicting doctrines, it does not follow of necessity that either is false. For example, the free-will of man, to such an extent at least as to make him responsible, is an unquestionable fact of Scripture and experience. The foreknowledge of God, and His universal sovereignty, are necessary deductions of reason and clear assertions of Scripture. Perfectly to reconcile these with man's free-will may be impossible. This need not distress us when we have carefully followed our facts to the verge of the infinite or the unknown. There we must leave them, and we need have little difficulty in feeling assured that the missing facts which would reconcile the apparent contradictions in our deductions lie within, and probably not many steps within, the dark margin it which we pause.