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

2ynmington on the Atonement.
Every one would pronounce it to be perfectly absurd. The
king of Moab when he saw that his city was likely to be
taken, took his own son and hung him on a gibbet from the
wall in the sight of the enemy. But what did it effect-? It
might indeed teach his own desperation and folly, but nothing
more. Such a transaction cannot prove that the wicked will
be certainly punished. As far as actions speak it will make
the impression, that under this government the innocent may
suffer. And in the case of our Saviour, while the innocent
suffer, the guilty are exempt. Though deserving to die,
they are pardoned; and instead of their being punished, an
innocent person suffers a cruel death. Surely this can never
make the impression that the guilty will in time to come be
punished. The suspension of a just penalty never can have
the effect of convincing the universe that God is determined
to execute it. The infliction of undeserved punishment upon
an innocent person never can make the impression that God
is righteous, or that the innocent are safe. If it be alleged,
that an innocent person did suffer, and the guilty escape as
all acknowledge; we reply that according to our theory
the innocent suffered the penalty due to the guilty; the just
for the unjust. In this transaction the law, instead of being
disregarded and its penalty set aside, was gloriously honoured.
It received a perfect obedience from one such as never in
any other case was subject to its authority. Christ was made
under the law to redeem them that were under the law.
And he fully bore its tremendous penalty. The cup of
wrath due for sin could not pass away from him. He therefore submitted to drink it, bitter as it was. "The cup which
my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" Truly he
did magnify the law and make it honourable. "Christ,"
says Paul, "hath redeemed us from the curse of the law
being made a curse for us." Was there no enduring of the
penalty here? What is a curse, but the awful penalty which
the law denounces? It is a remarkable fact that the defenders
of this scheme scarcely ever appeal to scripture in support of
their views. They depend on their own reason to prove that
the death of Christ was no satisfaction to law and justice, and
in examining the objections we were struck with the fact
that the advocates of the new theory make use of the same
arguments and resort to the same evasions which were employed by Faustus Socinus and his coadjutors in opposing
the doctrine of atonement, in the-sixteenth century. Indeed,
we see not why he might not have called the death of Christ
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