Introduction. -- Plan unfolded. -- The subjects of six sections announced. -- Section first: Law immutable in its authority. -- Dogma of man's inability discussed. -- Three theories in support of it: The Augustinian, the Arminian, the Edwardian. -- These theories discussed. -- Section second: The law immutable in its claim. -- Claim defined. -- Can never be satisfied In owe of disobedience. -- Neither by the infliction of penalty, nor by repentance, nor by an atonement

 

 

I HAVE attempted to establish from the Scriptures, the general FACT of God's moral government over men, and given what I consider the true view of the Mosaic law or Jewish theocracy. By this discussion the way is prepared, as otherwise it could not be, to show

 

THE NATURE of God's moral government over men, as exhibited by Revelation.

 

What I maintain and hope fully to evince is, generally speaking, that the Scriptures exhibit God as administering over men a perfect moral government under an economy of grace.

 

A perfect moral government, as before defined, is the influence of the rightful authority of a moral governor on moral beings, designed so to control their action as to secure the great end of action on their part through the medium of law.

 

Law, in this general forensic import, is an authoritative, perfect rule of moral action, fully sustained in its authority by the requisite sanctions. In this general forensic import of the word, law is essential and common to every form of a perfect moral government.

 

There are two kinds of a perfect moral government. Law as above defined, is common and essential to both. In the one, this law is also the rule of judgment, according to which the transgressor must be condemned to bear its penalty. In the other, another rule of action under an economy, of grace, is the rule of judgment. The one may be called a system of mere law; the other, a system of law and grace combined. The former was adopted in Eden in respect to our first parents, before their apostasy; the latter, after their apostasy, was adopted in respect to them and all their descendants. It is this particular form of a perfect moral government which, as I maintain, God is shown by revelation to be administering over men, namely, a perfect moral government under an economy of grace.

 

This system of God's moral government may be justly viewed as consisting of two great and essential parts, which, while sustaining to each other the most important relations as parts of one system, may with advantage be separately considered. The nature of the system can be unfolded only by the exhibition of the law which is included in the system, and also of the economy of grace which is included in it. The latter, with the many great and prominent facts and truths with which it is connected, on which it depends, and which it impliesfacts and truths which are commonly called the doctrines of grace -- I design to make the subject of future investigation. The former, the law of God's moral government -- law as essential and common to every system of perfect moral government is the subject of our present inquiry.

 

So different are the two particular forms of God's moral government to which I have referred, that to form just views of either, they need to be clearly and accurately distinguished, especially by precise conceptions of law as a general forensic term, or in that import of the word in which the thing is common to both forms of a perfect moral government. Indeed, on this subject I am constrained to say that to my own mind the views of theologians are in a high degree unsatisfactory, and wholly inadequate to a consistent system of Biblical theology. So little attention has been given to the essential nature and principles of a perfect moral government, both by theologians and interpreters, that while they have seen that an economy of grace must greatly modify the law of a merely legal system of moral government, they have not seen that an economy of grace can in no respect modify law as an essential, eternal, immutable element of such a government.

 

The inquiry now before us is, What, according to scriptural usage is the divine law in the general import of the term, and when employed to denote the perfect law of God's perfect moral government over men? Law, under a merely legal system, specifically differs in some respects from law under an economy of grace, while yet it has a meaning which is common to both cases. What then is law as common to both a merely legal system and a system of grace? I propose to answer this inquiry, in the following sections, by considering law in this import:

 

1. As immutable in its authority, its claim, and its sanctions.

2. As a rule of action, and not a rule of judgment.

3. In its requirement as a prohibition of its opposite, and vice versa.

4. In the sum of its requirements.

5. In the import of its sanctions.

6. As an expression of the lawgiver's preference of obedience to disobedience.

 

 

Sect. 1. -- Law as immutable in its authority, its claim, and in its sanctions.

 

I proceed to show that in the sense in which the language is now used, the law of God is immutable in the three respects now specified.

 

(1.) In its authority.

 

The authority of the divine law, or the authority of God as a lawgiver, is his right to command which imposes an obligation to obey, and results from his, infinitely perfect character. That God possesses this character, is here to be assumed. That on the ground of this character, he claims authority over men, as their moral governor or lawgiver, we have attempted to prove in a former lecture (Lect. I.) from the Scriptures. When, in the account of his giving law to man in Eden, we read that "The Lord God COMMANDED the man;" when we read that he said to Abraham, "I am the ALMIGHTY GOD, walk before me, and be thou perfect;" and again, when giving his law to Israel, "I am the LORD THY GOD, &c., thou shalt have no other gods before me;" and when in the New Testament we find the first and great commandment to be, "Thou shalt love the LORD THY GOD;" and again, "GOD now COMMANDETH all men to repent;" we cannot fail to see God presenting himself throughout his entire revelation, in the character of infinite perfection, and on this ground resting his rightful authority over men as their lawgiver. Nor can we, admitting the reality of such a Being and of his revelation, question his authority.

 

Nor is it supposable that any Christian theologian should directly deny or imagine himself to deny, that God reigns in this unabated, rightful authority over men. But there are strange things in the theology of man's devising. And here l am constrained to ask, Whether in all this theology both Catholic and Protestant, theologians, in maintaining the doctrines of grace, have not extensively maintained opinions -- philosophical dogmas, unscriptural principles -- and held them as essential doctrines of the word of God, which are palpably inconsistent with and utterly subversive of God's authority as a lawgiver? Without referring to more remote incongruities on this subject, may it not be said to be a prevalent doctrine of the Christian Church from the time of Augustine, and emphatically in the two great divisions of the Reformed Church known as the Calvinistic and Arminian, that "God commands what man cannot perform;" "that man by the fall lost all ability of will to any thing spiritually good;" "that God did not lose his right to command, though man lost the power to obey?"

 

Nor have any attempts of theologians to justify, to palliate, or to conceal this doctrine of man's inability, been even plausibly successful. There are but three theories on the subject which I deem worthy of notice -- the Augustinian or Calvinistic, the Arminian, and the Edwardian. According to the first, we are told, and this on the pretended authority of the word of God, but without a text to prove it, that all mankind, as they were created one moral person in Adam, had this power to obey God, but that they utterly lost it by sinning in him, and that all his descendants thus created and existent in Adam, are born without this power as truly as the beasts of the field, and yet are responsible for the use of it. This dogma involves the absurdity of saying, that power which is necessary to the beginning and essential to the very existence of moral obligation, is not necessary to its continued existence, and that it is fit and what ought to be, that power which has no existence, should be used; and that when all the responsibility in such a case pertains to the single act of destroying the power, men axe responsible for not using it after it is destroyed. The Arminian theory of man's inability or want of power is the same, excepting a vain attempt to conceal its revolting aspect by the still greater absurdity of what is called a gracious ability. The advocates of this theory plainly subvert and virtually deny the grace of God, in their very attempt to magnify it; for if man has not ability or power to obey God without grace, then he does not sin in not obeying, since a being who cannot act morally right cannot act morally wrong. Such a being cannot be truly said to receive or be capable of receiving grace, for grace is favor to sinners. Besides, what does the supposed grace of God do? Does it give man power to obey, then man has power to obey as he must have before he obeys. But even this is no security that he will obey. Adam sinned with this power. The grace then does not meet the exigency of the case. Is it said he has power to use the grace furnished? But what power is this? Until man has power to obey, it is absolutely inconceivable that he should obey, for the act of obedience is his own act, done in the use or exercise of his own power to obey. Thus the grace of God according to this scheme, must by a direct act of creation impart some new essential mental faculty or power to the soul of man, to qualify man to act morally right or wrong. Without the grace of God man has not a human soul, for he has not the true and essential nature of such a soul -- the power requisite to moral action. He cannot be a sinner, and of course grace to him cannot be favor to a sinner. Grace is no more grace.

 

The Edwardian theory of inability, what is it? The inability to love God, which it maintains, is the inability to love and hate the same object at the same time, or the inability to will opposites at the same time. The ability which this scheme affirms, to soften it may be, the revolting aspect of the inability which it maintains, is the wonderful power of man not to will, or to avoid willing opposites at the same time, or power to will without willing against his will. Now as to this inability, it is an absolutely fatal possession, for God can never remove it, i.e., he can never impart power to man to will opposites at the same time, any more than he can impart power to a body to move in opposite directions at the same time. And then again, as to the ability or natural ability of this scheme, there is the same difficulty; for the mind neither has nor can have in the nature of things, the power or ability specified. It has doubtless power to will, but has not power in willing to avoid willing against its will, any more than a part has power to be less than the whole, or than two and two not to be four. There is a possibility, in the nature of things, in each of the three cases, that the thing affirmed should be; but this possibility does not result from power to make it so. A part is less than the whole, in the nature of things, and not as the result of power. So man in willing, wills without willing against his will in the nature of things; but not as the result of power, either natural power or any other power. That he wills is owing to his power to will; but that he wills without willing opposites at the same time, is not owing to hip, power. Such power or ability is inconceivable. Power to cause that to be which is necessary in the nature of things, as power to make two and two to be four, can have no existence, nor pertain to God or man. God can give no such ability to man. The natural ability of man to obey God, as defined by Edwards and others, has no existence and can have none. It is an essential nothing. Thus according to this Edwardian theory, while there is not the shadow of ability or of power on the part of man to obey God, the moral inability of the theory, the inability to love and hate the same object at the same time, though undeniable, is unchangeable either by man or his Maker. Nor is this all. Such an inability furnishes not the slightest evidence, that when one wills morally wrong, he has not in the proper and true use of language, power or ability to will morally right; nor that when he has willed morally wrong, he has not power or ability to will morally right the next moment.

 

It is worthy of remark, that the theologians who have denied man's ability as a moral being and a sinner, have felt themselves obliged to base his moral responsibility in something which they call ability to obey. The Augustinian rests it on ability created in man when Adam and all his posterity in him were created, but lost or destroyed by their sinning in Eden; the Arminian devises the solecism of a gracious ability; and the Edwardian a natural ability, which is utterly inconceivable in rerum naturâ. All this clearly shows how impossible it is for the mind to assent to the absolute, unqualified proposition that man's obligation to obey is not founded in his ability to obey. These assertions of ability indeed, amount to nothing which can be real or true as the basis of moral responsibility; while the doctrine of an inability which is subversive of all moral responsibility, is constantly inculcated.

 

I shall hereafter attempt to show, that the Scriptures always proceed on the assumption of man's ability or power to obey God; that there is not a passage in the sacred volume which teaches or implies any inability of man to act morally right; that the passages commonly relied on to prove man's inability to act morally right assert no such inability, but all inability in respect to something widely different; and particularly an inability or impossibility with a morally wrong heart to act right in subordinate or executive action, which is not moral action. This inability is inculcated to show how vain the hope is of pleasing God with a wrong heart, and as a reason for changing the heart; thus clearly implying, not that the sinner cannot change his heart, but that he can. (Rom. viii. 7, 8; Matt. vii. 18; xii. 33, 34; John, xv. 4, 5.)

 

What philosophy has taught on this subject we have to some extent seen already. What the Scriptures teach respecting it, I propose to inquire more fully hereafter. I will only call attention to some general features of their testimony. We find, that in all cases the Scriptures exhibit the moral change in man, either as that which man is bound to accomplish in the use of his own power, as in the command, "Make you anew heart and a new spirit;" or as that which he has accomplished in the use of his own power, as in the assertion, "Ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man;" or as that which through a divine influence they are required to perform in the use of their own power, as in the requirement, "Work out your own salvation," &c., "for it is God which worketh in you to will and to do of his good pleasure;" or as that which they through a divine influence, have accomplished in the use of their own power, as in the assertion, "Ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit." Thus, in all these prominent forms, and I might say in other forms, this great moral change in man is presented in the most guarded manner as his own act -- done of course from its very nature proximately and necessarily in the use or exercise of his own power. It is his heart with which he is required to exercise new and holy affection; it is himself who has changed his own character as his own doing; it is his will which is "to will," and his power to work or do, which is to work and do; it is his power to abandon sin and to obey God, with which he purifies his soul and actually obeys the truth. What if the change is "through the Spirit" -- this fact no more interferes with the fact that it is accomplished in the use of the sinner's own power, than were it done without the Spirit in view of truth and motives. On the contrary, the very work of the Spirit in this change consists in bringing the sinner to use his power in morally right action. Even could we suppose new mental power to be given to the sinner, something more -- certain mental states, antecedent thoughts, desires, &c. -- would be necessary to give certainty to the right use of the power. The mere power, whether given in the creation of the soul or afterward, cannot supersede the necessity of that peculiar interposition of the Spirit, by which alone the right use of the power is made certain. Thus in what the Scriptures teach respecting the work of the Spirit, the power of man to act morally right is presupposed. If it were not so, what would there before the Spirit to do? Do you say to create new powers in man? But if this were all, it might only make the matter worse. I only add --

 

That the law of God, in the very terms of it, settles the question. How does it read? "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." And is this God's right to command, without man's power to obey? Is this the doctrine of man's inability to obey God, an inability to be removed by an ability through grace; an inability because ability was lost in Adam; an inability to effect the metaphysical impossibility of loving and hating at the same time; ay, inability in man to do what he can do? Or is it the fullest and most unqualified recognition of man's power to obey his God which language can furnish? Is not this law of God the standard of absolute moral excellence in man? Is not the man who should obey it absolutely, morally perfect? And is not its entire claim on man limited to a specified use of his power -- his power of heart, soul, mind, and strength? If this use of his own power is not claimed in the law, what is claimed?. Is it possible in the nature of things, that man should comply with the claim of this law except in the use of his own powers? or as some imagine, in the use of any other power than his own -- his own as existent under the claim and its obligation? And has man not power or no power, to obey a law which claims nothing but the use of his own power -- can he not love God as much as he can love him? Is man, by this law, required to love God in the use of the high powers which exalt him into a resemblance of God himself -- are these the powers which the divine Lawgiver specifies in the very words of his law as mail's powers, and yet does the same Lawgiver affirm nothing so often as that man has not power to obey his law? Have men made after the similitude of God, no power to love God? Any conscience, from above or beneath, call answer this question. Shall all theology then, venture to teach and inculcate the doctrine that man cannot love the all-perfect God?

 

After all the attempts that have been made to vindicate this doctrine -- whether on the theory of our identity in Adam, or on that of a gracious ability, or on that of a natural ability and a moral inability -- is it not true that that ability on the part of men which is necessary to moral responsibility, has been and is still denied by the evangelical and orthodox ministry and Church? Are they not in fact and justly, understood by the people to teach and maintain an inability on the part of men to obey God without grace, which exempts them from all moral obligation to obey God, without grace to furnish ability? If their language on the subject is such that, de usu loquendi, or when justly and properly interpreted, even with all their vain attempts at explanation, it means and is understood by the people to mean, an inability without grace on the part of men to obey God, as real as that of an inanimate substance, or as that to make a part equal to the whole, then are they not justly charged with teaching this doctrine? It is on this ground -- that of the proper meaning of the language that I claim that they maintain and teach that man, without the grace of God, has not that ability or power to obey God which is requisite to moral responsibility.

 

It is this doctrine which I claim to have shown extensively prevails, and which carries with it the subversion of God's authority as a lawgiver. Shall the Christian ministry then, continue to assert man's inability to obey God, and in words only assert, or rather faintly assume God's authority without assertion and without proof? Is this to make the just, the true, the useful impression of God's authority on the human mind? Is this after the manner of God? When "the Lord God" gave law to man in Eden, was there a doubt or a question concerning his right to reign -- I do not say warranted but possible -- in the mind of a creature formed in the image of himself? Was there any thing in the promise of a Redeemer; any thing in the expulsion of our first parents from the garden; any thing in the sentence pronounced on the race; any thing in the history of Cain and Abel; any thing in the whole patriarchal dispensation, in the destruction of the world by the deluge, in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire and brimstone, in the calling of Abraham, and the covenant with him; any thing so fitted to arrest and absorb human thought, as God in his supreme and rightful authority as a lawgiver? When God delivered Israel from their Egyptian bondage, when he led them through the wilderness, when be lifted his voice of authority amid the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai, spreading terror and dismay among the assembled hosts and constraining their vows of allegiance, was his right to reign obscured or relinquished? Did even his attendant proclamation of "keeping mercy for thousands of them that love me," produce this effect? In their subsequent history, under the administration of the Mosaic theocracy as a representative system, amid altars smoking with expiatory victims, and shaking heaven and earth in execution of his law as the tutelary deity and national king of this people, and thus shadowing forth his higher relation of the moral governor of men, who or what was to be thought of, but God in his supreme and rightful authority?

 

If we appeal to the New Testament, what meets us in this meridian light of revelation but the long-promised Messiah, the incarnate Logos, God manifest in the flesh, King of kings and Lord of lords -- who came, not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill, i.e., to accomplish the whole design or end of God's revelation -- to consummate all God's prior dispensations (Heb. ix. 26)? I need only refer to what every reader of the Gospels must know, to show how He to whom was given all power in heaven and on earth, always and in all things exalted God's authority as a lawgiver (Luke, xxii. 36). And what appears in equal fullness in the rest of the New Testament, in the life and labors, in the preaching and the writings of apostles, especially in those of the apostle Paul, is the same God in the same supremacy and splendors of his moral dominion. To deny this manifestation of God throughout the New Testament is scarcely less than to deny that God is therein revealed at all.

 

In accordance with what has been said, I now ask, Is there any way to magnify the grace of God in this world's redemption from the power and the doom of sin, except by unfolding his rightful authority as a lawgiver? Can any adequate manifestation of the riches of his grace and mercy -- an object so dear to the heart of all who love him -- be made, while the Church and its ministry deny to men that essential characteristic of every subject of law -- the ability to obey it? Can this be done, and God's authority as a lawgiver be apprehended and felt? Shall the friends of God and of his truth forever reiterate man's inability without grace to obey the living God, and not so much as tell us what they mean by grace to a being so utterly devoid of all moral responsibility without the grace? Or shall they maintain and teach that men are made after the image of God, and with that power either to obey or disobey their Maker which qualifies them to be subjects of his perfect moral government? Shall they or shall they not honor and magnify the grace of God "favor to sinners -- to moral beings who can and who ought, and yet who in fact never will obey God without the supernatural grace of his Holy Spirit? Shall they or shall they not enthrone God in his supreme and rightful authority as the moral governor of men, without a shadow to obscure its cloudless majesty?

 

On this subject I cannot but suggest the most cautious reflection and thorough reconsideration of the views and opinions of the most distinguished theologians who have gone before us. Grateful to God for their labors, I do not forget that the greatest and best of men are "but darkly wise," and that in the word of God there are rich treasures of knowledge yet to be revealed. How desirable that the whole Church should, in faith, apprehend God in the unimpaired glories of his justice and his grace! How much is lost, if one truth concerning God in these high relations is lost to a sinful world!

 

I proceed, as proposed, to show that the law of God's moral government is immutable --

 

(2.) In its claim.

 

By the claim of law, I intend its claim on the subject for that action which is to be performed by the subject., God as a lawgiver has specified such action, and claims its performance by every subject on the ground of his rightful authority. It is this claim in his law which I now say is immutable. This is at once obvious from the essential nature of all that was ever called law in the forensic use of the word. Law in this use of the word, which should express no claim on subjects for action or conduct with the design of the lawgiver thereby to regulate such action, would be an anomaly. More need not be said to convince any reader of the Scriptures, who believes that God is what he is and that man is what he is, that the claim of God's law as exhibited in the Scriptures, is and must be, like its author, absolutely immutable. Nor is there any occasion for saying any thing on this important part of our subject, in addition to what has been already said in preceding lectures, except what arises from what a large class of Christian theologians maintain. I allude to their favorite and frequently repeated theological dogma, that the law and justice of God are satisfied by the atonement of Christ, in respect to all those for whom it is made. I shall not stop to inquire whether this or equivalent language can be true, in some arbitrary and unauthorized meaning which may be given it. The meaning of those who employ it is, for the most part, too obvious to be mistaken. They mean, that every claim of the law and justice of God in respect to the elect, is as fully satisfied by the atonement of Christ, as had they sinlessly and perfectly obeyed the law, so that the penalty of the law cannot be inflicted on them, nor its reward withheld from them, according to any principle of justice.

 

It is not my present design to examine fully what the advocates of this view of the atonement allege in its support. This belongs to another part of our course of lectures. I can only say here, that in my view, when the subject is thoroughly examined, it will be found that the doctrine of Christ's satisfaction has resulted solely from a false philosophy respecting the principles of law and moral government, which has not the least plausibility or support from the Scriptures. I know of no passage in the word of God which expresses even a semblance of the idea of an atonement, as a satisfaction of the claim of law and justice on the transgressor of law. The Hebrew word ___, copher, I am aware is rendered in Numb. xxxv. 31, 32, by the word satisfaction, which ought to be rendered by the word atonement. To render it satisfaction, however, is even worse than a mere begging of the question, for the connection shows decisively that there may be a copher which shall not be taken or accepted, and which of course could not be a satisfaction. But my present object is not to examine the pretended scriptural arguments for this view of the atonement, but rather to show its inconsistency with the known nature and principles of law. I proceed then on this ground, to show that --

 

The claim and only claim of the divine law on its subject, can, in case of disobedience, never be satisfied.

 

Law has but one claim on its subject. It claims his obedience to law, and it claims of him nothing else. The lawgiver does not claim punishment of the subject in case of transgression, as the act of the subject nor indeed in any sense whatever. The lawgiver threatens punishment for transgression, and executes the threatening if it be executed at all, as his own act, and not as the act of the disobedient subject fulfilling a claim on him. The same is true of law and of justice, for though they may be said to require or to claim the punishment of the transgressor as the necessary means, under a system of mere law, of sustaining the authority of law or of the lawgiver, this claim for punishment is not a claim on the subject for an act on his part, but solely a claim on the lawgiver as his act -- his act of justice to vindicate his own rights and the rights of his kingdom. Under any other aspect or relation, punishment could make no expression of supreme disapprobation of sin, and of course could not sustain his authority nor be a legal penalty. Besides, it is inconceivable and impossible that a perfectly benevolent lawgiver should be satisfied with sin, and with the infliction of the legal penalty on transgressors, as a substitute for their perfect obedience and consequent perfect blessedness. In the one case, with all the miseries involved, he would simply sustain his authority or vindicate his justice, as a lawgiver; while in the other, not only the same result would be secured, but his own perfect blessedness would also be secured by the perfect holiness and perfect blessedness of his kingdom. And could perfect benevolence be satisfied with the former result instead of the latter? And if benevolence could not be satisfied with the former result, then neither the claim of law nor the claim of justice for obedience could be satisfied with it. Neither justice nor law ever claimed the perfect obedience of every subject of law, except as such obedience was necessary to secure the rights of God and of his kingdom in their perfect blessedness. In case of transgression, neither law nor justice can execute the legal penalty as the means of the perfect blessedness of all. It is too late for this. And can the claim of law and justice be satisfied by an act of the lawgiver sustaining his authority, and showing him to be just when every claim of law and justice on his subjects in respect to its object and end is utterly frustrated by so much sin and misery, instead of satisfied by the perfect holiness and happiness of all? Can a benevolent lawgiver, a perfect law, inflexible justice, be satisfied with such results of a moral government? It is impossible. The lawgiver, his character his law, his authority, his justice, are maintained in their unobscured perfection -- shining in cloudless glory; but their every claim on the subjects of law is by sin utterly and forever unsatisfied in its object and end.

 

And further, while law and justice do not claim the punishment of the transgressor of law as an equivalent for his not satisfying the claim by obedience, neither do they claim repentance after sin as a satisfactory substitute for perfect obedience. Nor do they claim the obedience or the imputed righteousness or any sacrifice by an atonement, or any thing else on the part of another, as a satisfactory substitute for the obedience of the subject. Law and justice are enthroned in a perfect moral government to define, protect, and enforce rights. This is an absolutely universal principle, which must be carried out unless the possessor of a right consents, or chooses for good and sufficient reasons to waive or abandon his right. The moral governor has rights. His kingdom has rights. Every subject has rights as an individual. It is important here to contemplate some of them. The moral governor then, in addition to such rights as the right to reign, the right to give and uphold law, has the right to claim of each and every subject of law his perfect and perpetual obedience to law. To deny this, is to say that the rights of God and of his kingdom -- the rendering to all their due from every subject -- can in case of transgression, or without universal perfect obedience to God's perfect law, be secured by some other means or method than by such obedience. Bur if this be too absurd to be said, then how shall the claim of law and justice without the perfect obedience of every subject of law, ever be met and satisfied? Will it be said that such is not the necessary and only means of the end specified, and that the existence and miseries of sin with the atonement of the Son of God, were as good a means of this end as the supposed obedience? I answer, that this is utterly impossible and inconceivable; for how can a system of means, involving sin and its miseries with the sufferings and sacrifices involved in atonement for sin, produce as good a result as the highest conceivable happiness -- the necessary result of universal and perfect obedience? Besides, to suppose otherwise is to suppose that the Lawgiver had no right to claim such obedience. This claim on his part, if it is any thing, is a declaration that such obedience is the necessary and only means of the end specified, and that nothing else can be substituted for it as such a means. If therefore, it is not such a means, the claim of law is not true nor just -- is not dictated or demanded but is forbidden by justice. Law could not be law, unless obedience to it were the necessary means of the highest conceivable good. If it is such a means, then its claim for universal perfect obedience is dictated and demanded by justice; and without such obedience, this claim can never be satisfied. It must remain, if once violated, and to any extent in which it is violated, remedilessly and forever unsatisfied. The Lawgiver indeed, in his claim for universal perfect obedience, plainly declares that he will be satisfied with such obedience. But in the sanctions of his law, he says as plainly that he cannot be satisfied with any thing but such obedience. How can he be? What else will secure the rights of all; not only the rights of the Lawgiver himself, and of his subjects, but the voluntarily surrendered but otherwise the inviolable rights of the eternal Logos? What else will secure to the Lawgiver himself, and to his kingdom, the highest possible blessedness, but the universal perfect obedience of his kingdom and its result in this blessedness? Not sin followed by repentance; for then the law would not claim obedience or forbid sin, but only claim repentance after sin: not sin and the execution of its fearful penalty; for. how could the infliction of such miseries be, to the infinite benevolence of the Lawgiver, a satisfactory substitute for the perfect obedience and blessedness of his kingdom: not sin and an atonement made by the agonies of the Son of God on the cross, and the sacrifice of the Father in delivering the Son to these agonies, or rather in inflicting them; for what satisfaction from all this, compared with that of the fulfillment of the claim of law, in the perfect holiness and blessedness of its subjects: not sin, and the so called imputed righteousness of Christ to the elect or to believing sinners; for how can the mystical absurdity of imputing and thereby making the righteousness or obedience of one subject of law, which could only answer the claim of law on himself, the righteousness or obedience of others, satisfy a violated claim for their own personal absolute moral perfection? It is true, that if sin occurs, God can, and God only can sustain his authority or right to reign, and this either by the execution of the penalty or by an atonement, and that can be done by either. But what has this to do with satisfying the claim of law for obedience under this sustained authority an& its influence? Obedience which alone satisfies the claim, presupposes the validity of the claim; the validity of the claim presupposes the authority of the Lawgiver; and the authority of the Lawgiver presupposes the manifestation by himself of his perfect character, or perfect qualification to govern. What the Lawgiver is, and what he does, is the sole basis and source of his authority, and it is his exclusive prerogative to sustain it. He neither derives it from the acts or the doings of his subjects, nor intrusts its support or continuance to them. The obedience of the subject though it satisfies the claim of law, is not that on which the authority of the Lawgiver in the least degree depends. The want of obedience, that is, the act of transgression, unpunished or unatoned by the Lawgiver himself, would result in the subversion of his authority. This result would follow the want of obedience, not because obedience is the source of the Lawgiver's authority, but solely because the Lawgiver would neglect by his own act either to execute the penalty, or as an equivalent to provide an atonement. But neither of these acts of the Lawgiver, in case of transgression, satisfies the claim of law on the subject of law. They are the acts of the Lawgiver himself, and not the sinless perfect obedience of the subject. Such obedience, had it been rendered, could neither originate nor sustain the Lawgiver's authority, by satisfying the claim of law; for his authority, as we have said, must exist and be fully sustained prior to being satisfied by obedience, or there could be no authoritative claim, that is, no claim of law to be satisfied. In the administration of his government by authority therefore, it is alike his prerogative and his function as a moral ruler, to perpetuate the authority which has its origin in his own character, exclusively by his own acts and doings. Thus he shows his supreme approbation of obedience, by conferring the requisite reward on the obedient subject, as the necessary and only means in this case of sustaining his authority. Thus he shows his supreme disapprobation of disobedience, by inflicting the requisite penalty on the disobedient, or by providing an atonement, as the necessary and only means in this case, of sustaining his authority. His authority is thus sustained by his own acts, and not by the acts of the subject. His own perfect obedience, though it satisfies the claim of the law, does not, as such a satisfaction, sustain its authority, but the Lawgiver's act in conferring the reward. But neither an atonement nor imputed righteousness, can do or effect any thing more than the perfect obedience of the subject of law in satisfying its claim or sustaining its authority. Of course nothing, as such a satisfaction, can sustain this authority. In case of transgression, neither subsequent perfect obedience, nor the execution of the penalty, nor the atonement, nor the so called imputed righteousness of Christ, nor his active or passive obedience, nor any of these things, nor all of them together, can satisfy the claim of law on the subject. Nor if they could, could they thereby sustain the authority of the law. Nor is there the least necessity of satisfying this claim of law or of justice, that its authority may be perfectly sustained.

 

Nothing can be plainer than that the authority of law may be sustained by the acts of the lawgiver, though its claim on the subjects be wholly unsatisfied and violated by the acts of the subjects. The law may be transgressed by every subject, and yet authority sustained by the execution of its penalty or by the provision of an atonement. By either, the lawgiver would fully express his supreme disapprobation of transgression, reveal his perfect character, and establish his authority. He would thus establish his right to reign as a moral ruler, and also, in the plenitude of his power, secure the object of this right, by still holding his throne in unobscured, unimpaired, rightful dominion. But in case of transgression he cannot secure the objects of other rights, the securing of which depend on the perfect obedience of all his subjects, viz., of his right to the highest conceivable blessedness, and of his right to the highest conceivable blessedness of his kingdom. One sin impairs this blessedness -- much more the sins of a world. Some of the most momentous rights in the universe, rights of God, and I may add, rights of his moral kingdom involving reciprocal obligation on the part of every subject, must be waived in respect to their objects, if his authority be sustained, whether by the execution of the penalty or by the provision of an atonement; for these rights are irretrievably violated by sin, and their objects hopelessly and forever sacrificed and lost. Such is a part of the work of sin. God is not as blessed -- his kingdom is not as blessed, as law and justice claimed of every subject, that they should be as the effect of obedience; not as blessed as they might and would have been, had there been no Bin violating every principle of law and justice, and thus impairing the amount of blessedness. This deficiency, greater or less, is to be traced only to the offense and fault of each transgressor of law -- each violator of the immutable claim which law and justice held in respect to him. And now, how can eternal Justice -- the watchful, inflexible, benevolent guardian of the rights of God and of his moral universe ever be satisfied with the irretrievable violation of such rights, with its irretrievable results, or with these guilty authors? God indeed, as we have said, can sustain his authority or his right to reign, and secure the only object of this particular right in the glories of a perfect dominion, either by the execution of penalty or by an equivalent sacrifice in an atonement. But how much better had it been -- how much more grateful to infinite benevolence and perfect justice -- bad this authority been upheld without sin, with the rewards of the perfect and universal obedience of his moral kingdom! Such a result would have satisfied every claim of eternal law and eternal justice, which nothing else could satisfy God has done, in this view of the subject, as I have before shown, what he could as a perfect moral governor, to secure all the objects and ends of the best conceivable system of means, and of course of perfect benevolence and perfect justice. But he has been crossed and thwarted in this highest, greatest design, by sin. He is indeed truly said to be perfectly blessed, because he secures to himself the highest blessedness, which, in the nature of things, he can secure; because in a moral system the best conceivable, Omnipotence, by the mere dint of power could not avail to prevent an infringement of his rights, and the marring of his own highest blessedness, as well as that of his kingdom by sin; because when sin took the responsibility of this fearful achievement, he did what he could to counteract and redress the remediless calamity by an atonement. By this measure however, he has not satisfied his justice as a lawgiver, so that justice cannot punish the sinner. The perfect obedience of the sinner would have so satisfied law and justice, that justice could not punish. This effect could not be produced by an atonement, nor by any thing else, except by perfect obedience to the claims of law and justice. But while justice as the attribute of the lawgiver, is not under an atonement compelled to pardon or justify any sinner, neither is it compelled to condemn and punish. It can do either the one or the other, as the highest general good shall dictate or demand. What the atonement does, and all that it does as an atonement, is to render it consistent with justice to pardon the sinner, by fully sustaining even in such a case, the authority and the justice of the lawgiver in the best manner possible to him. Still this is not done in absolutely the best manner possible; nor could it be, without the perfect obedience of his whole moral kingdom. This, with its results -- his supreme approbation of it expressed in its rewards -- would have not only vindicated his right to reign, sustained his authority and justice as a lawgiver, but have vindicated all other rights -- the right of his kingdom to the highest conceivable blessedness, and especially his own right to his own highest conceivable blessedness -- for it would have fully secured the objects of these rights; rights which in respect to their objects, he has consented, in compassion to a sinful race, to waive, that he might accomplish the highest good possible to him in view of existing sin. It is by such a sacrifice, with all it involves, that God sustains his authority and his justice as a lawgiver, through an atonement in the pardon or justification of the sinner. How then can it be pretended that his claim of law and of justice for the perfect obedience of his subjects, is or can be satisfied in view of universal sin, and that on the ground of such a satisfaction, sin is or can be pardoned or the transgressor justified? Plainly the claim of his law for the perfect and uninterrupted obedience of his disobedient subjects never has been and never can be satisfied. It is immutable like its author, and so long as he is what he is, and his subjects what they are, there can be no satisfaction for one violation of this high and holy claim of this eternal and immutable and perfect rule.