+522 TILE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. it is not expressly written in scripture, yet the same sense and meaning is so plainly asserted there, that I make no scruple to use it : And to make the innocency and propriety of this word appear, let us consider the ideas that belong to it. Satisfaction is often made to a private person or a public governor. Satisfaction is often made to a private person for an injury done him, by doing or suffering something which shall remove his own personal just resentment against the offender, whether this be done or suffered by the offender himself, or by a friend or surety for him : Now in this case the offended person may ac- knowledge himself satisfied with some very small sort of recoin- pence, according to his own fancy : such as the mere asking par- don, the promising not tooffend again, or the payment of a little money, or some small penalty of pain or loss : But this is not properly the pase here in the satisfaction which Christ made to God his Father for the sins of men. Theother sort ofsatisfaction is, when. a public law is broken, and the governor, though he design to shew mercy to the guilty, yet demands some satisfaction for the offence, something instead of the punishment of the offender, which may equally secure the great ends of government. A-wise governor in this case will usually demand such a satisfaction as may best answer the ends of the law, and maintain the authority of the government, such as may shew the wisdom and justice of the law-giver in making such a law, and appointing such a penalty, and may deter per- sons for the future from the like offences, even though he design to pardon the present offender. In this case,, if a surety be ad- mitted to stand in the room of the criminal, this is a matter of mere favour; and such a satisfaction is generally required of him as comes nearest to the execution of the penalty threatened by the law, if any circumstances should render it not proper for him to sustain the same in all respects. I know not in history a more happy example of this than the case of Zaleucus, a law -giver of the .Locrensians; who having madea law that an adulterer should lose both his eyes, and finding his own son guilty of that crime, he ordered one of his own eyes to be put out, and one of his son's. Thus he rendered to the law, says Valerius Maximus, the punishment which it claimed, with a most admirable temperature ofjustice, dividing himself into a merciful father, and a just law-giver. The eye of Zaleucus was here made a partial sacri- fice of atonement for the offence of the criminal; this loss of his own eye, together with that of his son, gave such a satisfactions to the government, and as effectually secured future obediente to the law, as if the adulterer had lost both his eyes° . w I presnm^ no reader will bè so weak as to strain the simile to an exact parallel iu all things, and to suppose that men are to make half the satisfaction to the justice of God, and Christ make the other half, because this atonement
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=