1848.] The Guilt of Sin proved by the Judgment. 509 ed. The latter depends upon the principle of selfishness, by which the will has striven to give a direction to those faculties corresponding to this principle. In its moral character, the sinful action is to be ascribed to its subject alone. According to its natural character, the sinful action is done by the Divine co-working. The powers of the human will were not only created by God, but by him they are continually preserved and supported. The omnipresent agency of God does not disdain to join itself to the self-movement of the human will, even in its course of perverseness, and to follow it with its upholding influence. And herein lies a distinction between the Divine co-working in its general sense and the efficacy of Divine grace. The one leaves man considered as a moral being as it finds him, while the other imparts a new principle of holy life. Therefore, however elevating and quieting the consciousness must be to any one to be supported and surrounded by the omnipresent agency of God, yet it were a pernicious error, if one should suppose to have embraced in this feeling the true meaning of religion. The consciousness of that communion with God which is given by justifying faith in Christ, is infinitely higher than the consciousness of a communion with God, in which the wicked share as well as the righteous, and the irrational creation as well as the rational. There are two fundamental doctrines of Christian theology which unequivocally confirm the testimony of conscience respecting the reality of human guilt, the doctrine of the judgment and of the atone ment. In the judgment, according to the original meaning of xoiois, separation, the union which to some extent necessarily exists in this life between the righteous and the wicked, will be taken away, and the essential difference between them which is now in some degree concealed, will then be clearly manifest. Where there is a difference between persons in their relation to God, every other band which may unite them must be transitory. Without doubt there is already in this life a beginning of the separation. They who believe in Christ have everlasting life, have passed from death unto life, have now the fruits of the Spirit, which are joy and peace. On the other hand, he that believeth not, is condemned already. Whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin. Punishment begins in the disquietude of the conscience and in the experience that sin is a tyrannical power, and submission to it a bondage. Yet neither the Holy Scriptures, any more than experience, allow us to be deceived as to the fact that the inner peace of the Christian in this life is prevented from pervading his whole being by hindrances independent of his own control, and on the other hand, it is not true that even in the inner domain of the heart and conscience, punishment always follows immediately upon the commission of sin. Often rather does the sinner escape it, and so much the easier, the more decided he is in the service of sin. The history of the world is the judgment of the world, as it regards nations, but this principle does not admit of an unlimited application to individuals. The good and the bad are here so interwoven that the blessings of Divine grace bestowed upon the former, are not altogether unexperienced by the latter. Not till the end of the history of the world will the disharmony between the inner character and the outward condition be entirely removed, the perpetual continuance of which would be a disorder inconsistent with the sovereignty of God over the world. Opposition to the will of God is possible, but it is not possible for that opposition to maintain itself in a system created and governed by God. To make this fact manifest is the design of punishment. He who has acted sinfully is subjected to a corresponding suffering. By this punitive justice, the majesty of God is attested, upon which rests the authority of law, and the inviolability of which is the safeguard of all his creatures. The assault upon the majesty of God which sin has attempted, can in fact not violate it, for the assault has returned upon the sinner in his punishment. The punishment of the sinner is the expression of the inviolability of the authority of the Divine law.1 It seems hardly necessary minutely to apply the argument from the doctrine of judgment to prove that man is guilty for his sin. If sin were a necessary element in the development of human nature, would not God in punishing it condemn his own work? And were there ever so many intermediate members between the creative will of God and the origin of sin, still, if no one of them has a causality independent even in relation to God, must not the guilt of sin be ulti 1 A common opinion that the proper design of punishment is the reformation of the criminal arises from confounding punishment with chastisement, aideja. In Scripture, Divine chastisement is very distinctly referred only to those who have received the renewing grace of God and are become his children (Heb. xii.), and has for its object their sanctification (1 Cor. 3: 11-15. Rev. 3: 19), while the punitive justice of God is upon those who refuse to render to the gospel the obedience of faith, (2 Thess. 1: 8, 9). Both relations appear, (1 Cor. 11: 32). If punishment were a suitable means to effect a renovation of character, what would have been the need of redemption, or rather the reverse, if this renewal is to be obtained by redemption, for what purpose the severe instrument of punishment? or, is the relation of this kind, that when redemption cannot avail to renovate man, he shall be renovated by punishment? Then it would follow that punishment is a more powerful means towards regeneration than redemption. 1848.] The Guilt of Sin is proved by the Atonement. 511 mately referred to God and thereby a most destructive contradiction be introduced into our consciousness of God? The Divine judgment necessarily presupposes in man the presence of a causality of relative independency-of independency, for otherwise it could produce nothing which could be an object of Divine judgment, and relative, for the very fact that it is subject to Divine judgment shows it to be such. Still more clearly is the guilt of sin made manifest by the doctrine of the atonement. Were sin merely a calamity, a malady of the race for which man was not guilty, i. e. of which he was not himself the cause, it might, indeed, be regarded as forming a point of transition in the development of the race, and its removal by Divine interference might still be called redemption; but such a deliverance from sin would be very different from the redemption set before us in the gospel. The difference is this, that salvation through Christ is everywhere in the New Testament represented as an operation of Divine grace, as that to which man has no claim, but which is given to him contrary to his deserts. But had God in his plan of the world placed the yoke of sin upon man, we would not say that it were only an act of Divine justice to take it away, for on such a supposition, both justice and mercy would be emptied of their genuine meaning, and the moral earnestness of repentance on the part of man would be an impossibility. The frequent remark that in redemption we have the justification of the ways of God to man, is, therefore, to be received with some allowance, or otherwise, it may lead to an error subversive of the Christian doctrine of grace. The forgiveness of sins has for its foundation the expiatory sacrifice of the Redeemer. By the commission of sin, man has given himself up to a power from which he cannot free himself without the assistance of the Holy Spirit working within him. He can never in his own strength make the sin which he has committed merely a thing past and gone, but the sin of the past continues to produce itself in the present. But suppose that man were able to sunder the bonds of a sinful nature, and from a certain point in life henceforth by the power of his will to abstain from every sin, yet he could not thereby annihilate his former life of sin, but the past would still be actually present to him as a register of innumerable transgressions. Even though sin when once committed should not continue to set itself forth in the moral condition of the agent, it is not on that account any the less to be imputed to him. It remains upon him as guilt, and he remains responsible for it, and exposed to punishment so long as its guilt is not expiated. If then man is ever to be restored to communion with God, he needs an atonement, which Christ alone can make, because he alone among men is perfectly holy, and he alone as the incarnate Son of God sustains a relation to humanity which embraces the entire race. Uniting himself by the power of his love in the closest ties with that nature which needed an atonement, he becomes capable as the substitute of man to suffer the death to which on his own account he was not subject. And not till this bond of guilt which connects in the life of the sinner the past with the present, was sundered, could also that other bond, consisting of the power of sin in the heart of him who has committed it, be also taken away. For the Holy Spirit as a principle of new life could not take up his abode in man so long as unexpiated sin lay upon him, so long as Christ by his expiatory death had not entered into his glory, John. 7: 39. Had not sins that were past as well as those that are present, the power to separate from God, did they not lay upon man the necessity to render satisfaction to the violated law, the death of Christ upon the cross would have been superfluous. Hence in that locus classicus for the doctrine of atonement, Rom 3: 24 sq., the atoning death of Christ is expressly referred to the προγεγονότα ἁμαρτήματα. Το maintain the authority of the Divine government in view of innumerable sins being left unpunished (zágɛois), it was necessary that God in establishing a new kingdom of love and grace should manifest his justice in the expiatory death of its founder and king. Thus, by the doctrine of the atonement is the truth of our moral consciousness respecting the guilt of sin fully proved. The cross of the Son of God, of him who alone among men was holy, declares more loudly than all the punitive judgments of God, that sins which are done, are still a reality, a power that separates from God, and with good reason did the primitive church acknowledge in the cross of Christ a manifestation of the wrath of God no less than of his love and grace. 1848.] Davidson's Ecclesiastical Polity. 513 ARTICLE VIII. DAVIDSON'S ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. The Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament unfolded, and its points of Coincidence or Disagreement with prevailing Systems indicated. By Samuel Davidson, LL. D. London, 1848, 8vo. pp. 458. It has been understood for some years, that the author of this work, who is widely known as a theological professor in the Lancashire Independent College near Manchester, and one of the most learned and diligent scholars in Great Britain, has been engaged in the preparation of an elaborate treatise on church polity. Proposing to himself to make an investigation de novo of the principles and usages which respect the government of the church, as they are contained in the New Testament, rather than to undertake the defence of any one existing form of ecclesiastical polity, it is not without reason that in view of his known independence the results at which he should arrive have been looked for with no little interest. These results we will now endeavor in a brief compass to state. The main questions in dispute in respect to church polity, it is well known, resolve themselves into these three-what is the meaning of ixxλŋoía, or church; in whom is its government primarily vested; and what relation do its officers sustain towards each other in respect to rank and prerogative. The first of these is fundamental, since upon the solution given to the question, what we are to understand by church as used in the New Testament, the decision of the others in no small degree depends. Does it mean, then, a single visible commonwealth, spread in separate communities over the earth, but possessing a common organization, and recognizing a common ruler, as the Greek and Romish churches claim? or is it the aggregation of a number of congregations within a province or country, united under a mutually recognized government, like the church of England or Scotland, or the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches in the United States? or does it simply mean a local assembly of Christians associated together for the observance of |