Note 217 — VII. THE ATONEMENT.

Mill, Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 103. 'I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.'

[218] Cf. Holland, Logic and Life, pp. 107, 108.

[219] Milligan, The Resurrection, p. 278.

[220] Cf. Mozley, University Sermons, p. 177 (2nd ed.): 'Justice is a fragment, mercy is a fragment, mediation is a fragment; justice, mercy, mediation as a reason of mercy—all three; what indeed are they but great vistas and openings into an invisible world in which is the point of view which brings them all together?'

[221] Cf. Ch. Quarterly Review, xvi. p. 289 on 'Our Lord's Human Example.' 'Christ, of course, had every faculty of human nature, everything that man sins with, and therefore every instrument or faculty of sin.'

[222] In the last two sentences a slight change has been made in consequence of a criticism which showed that it was possible to misunderstand the language originally employed, which however was intended to convey precisely the same meaning, and which could be amply justified by such a passage as e.g. S. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, ii. 10, 'Possumus igitur dicere de Christo quia potuit mentiri, si subaudiatur, si vellet.' Cf. also [Boetius] c. Eutychen et Nestorium, c. viii. (Opuscula Sacra, ed. Peiper, pp. 214 ff.)

[223] Cf. M^cLeod Campbell, The Nature of the Atonement, pp. 117, 118, 119, 127, 347: 'That oneness of mind with the Father, which towards man took the form of condemnation of sin, would in the Son's dealing with the Father in relation to our sins, take the form of a perfect confession of our sins. This confession, as to its own nature, must have been a perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.' 'In Christ tasting death [as] the wages of sin ... was a perfecting of the Divine response in humanity to the Divine condemnation of sin.'

[224] See Dale, Atonement, pp. 49 ff.; Schmidt in Herzog's Real. Encykl. xvi. 403.

[225] De Incarn. Verbi 4, 'Man is by nature mortal.' S. Athanasius held, however, that this 'natural corruption' would have been suspended, but for the Fall, by the help of the Logos empowering man to live the Divine life. See on the whole subject, The Christian Doctrine of Sin, App. ii. p. 536.

[226] It should be remembered that the Church has always regarded the Atonement as having a retrospective effect, extending back to the first representatives of the human race.

[227] Cf. Schmidt in Herzog's Real. Encykl., Art. Versönung, vol. xvi. p. 403.

[228] Irenaeus is full of this thought, though it is not disentangled from other explanations of the death of Christ. Cf. especially V. xxiii. 2: 'Recapitulans enim universum hominem in se ab initio usque ad finem, recapitulatus et mortem ejus.' Cf. also Athanasius, de Incarn. Verbi 9, in which he suggests that it was the Divine power of the Logos in the bodily nature of Christ that made His sacrifice representative, as well as His death victorious over death.

[229] See especially Heb. ix. 28, which is an echo of the LXX. of Is. liii. 12.

[230] Athan. c. Ar. i. 43: 'He put on the flesh which was enslaved to sin.' Cf. also Augustine, de Musica VI. iv: 'Hominem sine peccato, non sine peccatoris conditione suscepit. Nam et nasci humanitus, et pati et mori voluit.' I owe this reference to Norris, Rudiments of Theology, p. 61 n.

[231] Heb. ii. 17; vii. 24, 26, 28: cf. ix. 13, 14, 24, 25, 26; x. 11, 12, 13, 14.

[232] Cf. Athan. c. Ar. ii. 69: 'He sends His own Son, and He becomes Son of Man, by taking created flesh; that, since all were under sentence of death, He, being other than them all, might Himself for all offer to death His own body.'

[233] The two aspects of the Atonement are frequently presented by S. Athanasius, de Incarn. Verbi. Thus (ch. 10) 'By the sacrifice of His own Body He both put an end to the law which was against us, and gave us a fresh beginning of life, in that He bestowed on us the hope of resurrection.' Cf. also chs. 8 and 9. Again (ch. 25), 'As He offered His Body unto death for all; so by it He again threw open the way to heaven.'

[234] Cf. Westcott, Historic Faith, p. 133.

[235] Cf. Magee, The Gospel and the Age, pp. 270 ff. Bishop Magee, however, seems to exaggerate the certainty and relentlessness of the temporal punishment of sin (cf. against this Dale, The Atonement, Lect. viii) and to overlook the force of the analogy from human experience of forgiveness.

[236] Cf. Ath. c. Ar. iii. 34. 'As the Lord in putting on the body, became Man, so we men are made gods by the Word, being taken into Him through His Flesh, and from henceforth inherit life eternal.'

[237] For this thought fully drawn out, see Holland, Creed and Character, pp. 212 ff.

[238] On the truth of the solidarity of all men in Christ, see Westcott, The Victory of the Cross, pp. 6-53.

[239] See e.g. Moule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, p. 185.

[240] Cf. Aug. de Trin. i. 10: 'Tales nos amat Deus, quales futuri sumus, non quales sumus.'

[241] This is well stated by M^cLeod Campbell, l. c. p. 16.

[242] Cf. Athan. de Inc. passim, esp. chs. 20 and 42. Hooker, Eccles. Pol. V. li. 3, 'It seemeth a thing unconsonant that the world should honour any other as the Saviour but Him Whom it honoureth as the Creator of the world.'

[243] Cf. the true reading of S. Mark iii. 29, R.V.

[244] W. R. Greg.

[245] It should be noticed that the Greek Fathers and the English divines for the most part confine themselves to shewing this moral fitness and consonance with God's moral nature in the Atonement, and do not attempt to prove its absolute necessity. Cf. Athanasius, de Incarn. Verbi, ch. 6; Hooker, Eccles. Pol. V. li. 3; Butler, Analogy, pt. ii. c. 5.

[246] Cf. De Incarn. Verbi, chs. 27, 28, 29.

[247] Cf. Carlyle's apostrophe to Marie Antoinette on her way to the scaffold: 'Think of Him Whom thou worshippest, the Crucified,—Who also treading the winepress alone, fronted sorrow still deeper; and triumphed over it, and made it Holy, and built of it a "Sanctuary of Sorrow" for thee and all the wretched.' Miscellaneous Essays, vol. v. p. 165 (ed. 1872).