Reason against railing, and truth against fiction being an answer to those two late pamphlets intituled A dialogue between a Christian and a Quaker, and the Continuation of the dialogue &c. by one Thomas Hicks, an Anabaptist teacher : by W. Penn.

Consequences Irreligious and Irrational.

1 That it's Unlawful and Impossible for God Almighty to be Gracious and Merciful, or to par∣don Transgressors; then which what's more Un∣worthy of God?

2 That God was inevitably compell'd to this way of Saving Men; the highest Affront to his in∣controleable Nature.

3. That it was Unworthy of God to Pardon, but not to inflict Punishment on the Innocent, or require a Satisfaction, where there was nothing due.

4. It doth not only disacknowledge the true Virtue, and real Intent of Christ's Life and Death, but intirely deprives God of that Praise which is owing to his greatest Love and Goodness.

5. It represents the Son more Kind and Com∣passionate than the Father; whereas if both be the same God, then either the Father is as Loving as the Son, or the Son as Angry as the Father.

6. It robs God of the Gift of his Son for our Redemption (which the Scriptures attribute to the unmerited Love he had for the World) in affirming the Son purchased that Redemption from the Fa∣ther, by the Gift of himself to God, as our com∣pleat Satisfaction.

7. Since Christ could not pay what w•••• not his own, it follows that in the Payment of his own, the case still remains equally grievous; Since the Debt is not hereby absolv'd or forgiven, but trans∣fer'd only; and by consequence we are no better

provided for Salvation than before, owing that now to the Son, which was once owing to the Father.

8. It no way renders Men beholding, or i•• the least oblieg'd to God; since by their Doctrine, he would not have abated us, nor did he Christ the last Farthing, so that the acknowledgments are pe∣culiarly the Sons: which destroys the whole cur∣rent of Scripture Testimony, for his Good Will to∣wards Men.— O the Infamous Portraiture this Do∣ctrine draws of the Infinite Goodness! Is this your Retribution, O Injurious Satisfactionists?

9. That God's Justice is satisfied for Sins past, present, and to come, whereby God and Christ have lost both their Power of injoyning Godliness, and Prerogative of punishing Disobedience; for what is once paid, is not revokeable; and if Pu∣nishment should arrest any for their Debts, it ei∣ther argues a Breach on God's or Christ's part, or else that it hath not been sufficiently solv'd, and the Penalty compleatly sustained by another; for∣getting that every one must appear before the Judgment-Seat of Christ,* 1.1 to receive accor∣ding to things done in the Body: Yea, eve∣ry one must give an account of himself to God. But many more are the gross Absurdities and Blasphemies, that are the genuine Fruits of this so confidently believ'd Doctrine of Satisfaction.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Rom. 14.12. 2. Cor. 15.10.