barely delivers a message from his sovereign? This we might safely say, even if there were no other passage than the present which inculcated the doctrine of the atonement. But numerous and most explicit are the passages, which abundantly lead us to understand the meaning of the Apostle. We are elsewhere taught, in almost every method that could be devised to prevent any other than wilful misapprehension, that what St. John means, by our living through the Son and by the Son's being the propitiation for our sins, is this: that the only-begotten of the Father, the promised Seed of the woman, after assuming our nature and undergoing a life of voluntary poverty and humiliation, at length was pleased to become our substitute; that he submitted to death, in order that we might be saved from the unspeakable horrors of the second death; that, like the typical sacrifices under the two preparatory Dispensations, he stood in our place and was made our surety, thus bearing in his own person that tremendous burden of the divine wrath justly due unto sin which we must otherwise have borne; and that, by thus diverting the anger of God from us and by making full satisfaction to his offended justice, he brought about a reconciliation between fallen man and his Creator.

4. This plan of our redemption St. John adduces, as a most remarkable instance of God's love displayed in actual exercise. And such undoubtedly it must be deemed, whether we con

sider the dignity of the agents or the low condition of the persons interested in it.

The Son of God stooped from the excellency of that glory, wherewith he had been clothed from all eternity, not merely to support in full magnificence the character of an ambassador from heaven; but to take upon him the form of a servant: nor yet merely to take upon him that despised form, nor yet merely to encounter the unmerited contempt of those whom he came to rescue from the dominion of sin; but to lay down his very life for them, but to bear in their behalf the utmost extremity of God's curse and indignation.

No greater attestation surely of the divine love to lost mankind can be given than this: that the Supreme Lord of all spared not his own Son, but for us delivered him up to a painful and ignominious death; that the Son freely and voluntarily devoted himself for our sakes, for our sakes expired in agonies on the cross, expired deserted (so far as a perfectly holy nature can be thus deserted) of the presence of his heavenly Father; and that this should have been done for us, not while we were striving to please God but while we were yet his enemies, not while we were labouring to turn ourselves to purity of conversation but while we were alienated in our mind by wicked works. Had we first loved God, it might have seemed that there was some extraneous impelling cause for his loving us but the Apos

tle assures us, that the order of things was precisely the reverse. Herein is love: not that we loved God; but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

5. Now, whatever degree of mystery and difficulty there may be in the scheme of man's redemption, if we attempt to view it abstractedly in its different bearings, if we attempt to argue and reason upon its fitness, if we attempt to diseuss the grounds on which it may be supposed to rest: whatever difficulty, I say, may attend it in the form of metaphysical speculation, there can be none in comprehending the import of a simple statement of the scheme itself.

For who cannot readily conceive, that God is unable, consistently with the plan of moral government which he has laid down for himself, to bestow his love upon sinful and rebellious man otherwise than through the medium of one who should be employed to effect a reconciliation between the parties? We every day see something of a similar nature among ourselves: it must therefore be sufficiently easy to understand the purport of such a transaction between God and man'.

'The whole analogy of nature removes all imagined presumption against the general notion of a Mediator between God and man. For we find all living creatures are brought into the world, and their life in infancy is preserved, by the instrumentality of others and every satisfaction of it, some way or other, is bestowed by the like means. So that the visible

:

So again: who cannot readily comprehend what is meant by one person voluntarily offering himself to undergo the punishment due to another? In all instances of suretiship, we behold something closely parallel: and he, who knows what every bondman does when he pledges himself to be answerable for a neighbour's debt, can find no difficulty in extending the idea from a debt to a trespass; can find no difficulty in figuring to his mind the case of a bondman, who (supposing that the laws allowed such a thing) had pledged his life for the moral conduct of a neighbour that proved to be a robber or a murderer.

I mean not to say, that the analogy is perfect: but this I will say, that he, who finds it easy to comprehend the civil case, can scarcely find it difficult to comprehend the theological case. So

government, which God exercises over the world, is by the instrumentality and mediation of others. How far his invisible government be or be not so, it is impossible to determine at all by reason. And the supposition, that part of it is so, appears, to say the least, altogether as credible as the contrary. There is then no sort of objection, from the light of nature, against the general notion of a mediator between God and man, considered as a doctrine of Christianity or as an appointment in this dispensation: since we find by experience, that God does appoint mediators to be the instruments of good and evil to us; the instruments of his justice and his mercy. And the objection, here referred to, is urged, not against mediation in that high, eminent, and peculiar, sense, in which Christ is our Mediator; but absolutely against the whole notion itself of a mediator at all. Bishop Butler's Anal, part ii, chap. 5. § 1.

far as the mere supposed matter of fact is concerned, there can be nothing beyond the limits of the meanest capacity thoroughly to understand this matter of fact itself: namely, that man had sinned against God; that he was therefore justly liable to punishment; that God nevertheless so loved him as to send his only-begotten Son into the world for the express purpose of enduring such punishment in the stead of man; and that the only-begotten Son so testified his own love, that he freely and voluntarily, without the least shadow of constraint, undertook to bear, and actually did bear, the punishment due to man, thereby reconciling him to his offended Creator.

With the proof of these positions, or with the abstract difficulties that may attend some of them, I am in no way at present concerned: we of the Church of England, in common with the great body of the Catholic Church, fully admit their truth; and I have only to assert, that, as positions, they contain nothing whatsoever which may not not be understood with perfect facility by the most unlettered hind.

II. It is, in short, on the full presumption of their easy general intelligibility, that the Apostle employs them as involving a very strong motive to the practice of universal holiness.

1. For let us observe the use which he makes of them. He does not consider them as a mere string of theological subtleties, curious indeed to