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    Providence and the moral government of God , it is equally true that they are owing to the tender mercy of our God , it is equally true that God hath set forth Christ Jesus as a mercy-seat , it is equally true that in him we have redemption , through his blood , the forgiveness of sins .

    It is , indeed , a distinction which few are competent to discern , whether God forgives sins immediately in consequence of what Christ hath done , or in consequence of the effects ( remote or immediate ) of the death of Christ on the minds of men : and , to the individual , that is most important which most affects his mind with a sense of the inestimable value of the blessing , and produces the greatest effect on his faith and obedience .

    The apostles , accustomed to refer every thing to divine agency , did not make , or perhaps fee ) , our refined distinctions . They were satisfied with the fact that we have redemption through Christ Jesus ; and nothing but the fearful departures from Christian truth on this subject , which have led men to represent the Father of Mercies as the stern Avenger , and Christ alone as

    the Source of mercy , —or to suppose that he who under the Old-Testament dispensation did forgive sins for his own mercy ' s sake , needed the death of Christ to enable him to forgive sins under the new dispensation , —would have rendered it necessary to go beyond the obvious fact . To confute error we have refined and refined , till sometimes we have hardly left the sun of divine truth sufficient vividness to affect the frozen heart . I feel little

    solicitude for the pursuit of the subject beyond the essential truths that it is entirely from the mercy of God that redemption springs , that his justice requires no satisfaction to enable him to exercise his mercy toward the brcfken and contrite spirit , that it condemns none but the guilty , and that mercy cannot spare those who do not repent and turn to God , and do works meet

    for repentance . When these are received fully and faithfully , all is right . The rest is more of the nature of philosophy , and is worth pursuing principally for the sake of shewing that the foundation of opinions opposing those fundamental truths is not in the Scriptures , and to give a resting-place to the inquiring mind , which is not easily to be satisfied without knowing what is really the fact as well as what is not .

    If , however , the death of Christ produced its all-important effects in the usual order of the divine government in one respect , and we can trace the mode of connexion between it and the forgiveness of sins , yet in its relations , this event , with its efficacy in the redemption of mankind , was absolutely supernatural ; inasmuch as the whole of the ministry of Christ which led to it , and the whole of his message or covenant which it was to ratify , and the power to which it led him , and the communications which he made to h \ i disciples in consequence of that power , were all supernatural .

    Many analogies and illustrations have occurred to my mind while Writing , but I feel no disposition to pursue them . In the spirit of your note , and almost in the theory , as respects these great points , I accord with you . I rejoice that you are where you are : and if you should lose any of the simple earnestness of faith , love , and gratitude , by going farther in refinement , you will lose more than you will gain . But you need ndt do this . It would

    not make the splendour of the transfiguration less divine , if it could be shewn that it was produced by means of some natural cause : the thunder is not less felt by the habitually religious person to be the voice of God , because he knows that it is produced by the electric matter acting upon the contents of the air . But / am illustrating ; and here the simple fact is the most important , perhaps the plainest . If God has seen Jit to declare * that under the new covenant he forgives

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    Papers tin the Atonement . 671

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1828, page 671, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2565/page/15/