On the Atonement and Intercession of Jesus Christ. By Rev. William Symington [pp. 201-233]

Synmington on the dtonement.
gate from his veracity. " Ilath he spoken, and will he not
do it?" It ought to be considered also, that this principle
would go far to render all divine threatnings nugatory. The
certainty of-punishment is found to have more effect than
its severity. But this doctrine renders it altogether uncertain, when a penalty is denounced, whether it will ever be
executed. It spreads uncertainty over the future punishment
of the guilty. Who knows but that the Judge of all the
earth will at the day of judgment remit the penalty incurred
by all sinners, men and angels? This principle is eminently
calculated to subserve the cause of the Universalists, but
we do not know that they have had the boldness to avail
themselves of it. And it does away at once all necessity
of atonement; for if the penalty of the law may be remitted, and is often remitted, there can be no absolute need
that any one, much less a divine person, should suffer a cruel
and ignominious death, to open a way for pardon.
As one consequence of this doctrine, referred to above, is,
that God may, for aught we know, omit to inflict the penalty
now threatened upon any transgressor, and as this is a very
grave objection, we have understood that the advocates of
the tenet endeavour to evade it, by making a distinction between a threatening and a prediction, that while the former
may be changed for good reason, the latter must be verified,
for the prophecies must be fulfilled. To us there appears
no difference, except that threatenings are not absolute but
conditional. In a prophecy an event is usually foretold as
certain; in a threatening it is made to depend on the disobedience of the creature. A penalty is only incurred where
there is transgression; but on the supposition that the law is
broken, it is a prediction of what will be done with the sinner. If it is not, it has no force, and cannot be even a terror to evil doers. Besides, the reason assigned why God
may omit to execute a threatening when incurred, will equally
apply to a pre-diction. If the thing predicted be an evil,
no one will be injured by omitting to bring it about.
The cases from Scripture which have been adduced to
support this hypothesis will not sustain it. The threatenings
against Nineveh were obviously conditional. Within forty
days this great city would have been destroyed had not the
inhabitants repented. That it should be thus understood is
evident from commissioning a prophet to go and preach to
them. If the prediction had been absolute there would have
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