"d population, but they are destined one day to fill the earth. They are the travail of the Redeemer's soul, with which he shall be satisfied. "When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.”a Instead of confusing the spiritual seed with the seed of the serpent, which embraces incorrigible offenders, the Scriptures contrast them. To the serpent God says, " 1 will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed." If he had intended to embrace both in the promise to Abraham," and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed," he would have given us the word in the plural and not in the singular number. "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made: he saith not, and to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ:" that is, Christ mystical, embracing all the members of that one body of which he is the head; for "Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Saviour of the body." Does this body include that Man of sin, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped? Does this "church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood,"e include the synagogue of Satan? The inspired illustration of the context, makes it as palpable that it does not, as language can make it. "Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it." Here, then, we have the extent of the atonement plainly defined. Our Saviour proves from the very creation of one pair in the beginning, that the connubial attachment should be exclusive. He has therefore pronounced judgment upon every roving emotion of the heart. The more we confine this affection, to its proper object, the more we resemble the Lamb of God in his love to the heavenly bride.g Would this be the case if he had had an indiscriminate attachment to his own church and the synagogue of Satan?-if he had given himself, that is, if he had made an atonement, for the man of sin and his own body indifferently? As, then, his atonement is, in infinite and adorable sovereignty, made for men to the exclusion of devils, so is it made for his own church invisible, to the exclusion of the devil's church among men. It is made for his sheep to the exclusion of the goats; for his people friends and brethren, to the exclusion of those who remain enemies, and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise; for his seed, children, bride, and body, to the exclusion of the seed of the serpent, the generations of Amalek, and those who persevere in loving the creature more than the Creator. The discussion of the above four particulars was intended to facilitate and curtail the explanation of the authorities advanced for a universal atonement. In its progress several of those texts were partly, and some sufficiently cleared. The first of those which remain, was, if I mistake not, used by Dr. Chauncey, that great champion of Universalism, from whom many of the others also were taken. It is 1 Cor. 15: 3, "Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures." Whose sins are these? They are the sins of us; and in what was said in Rom. 8th, in the 3rd head above, it will be recollected that the us for whom Christ died, was composed of believers. In this case the same thing appears from the verse immediately preceding. By which also ye were saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain." By putting these 2d and 3rd verses together, we find that Christ's dying for our sins, is the meritorious cause, and faith the instrumental cause of our salvation. 66 But this is said to be according to the scriptures; that is, of the old Testament: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy, and Moses wrote of him. There, the redemption of Christ is usually adumbrated by a temporal redemption. "What nation in the earth is like thy people, even like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people to himself ?” This temporal redemption, however, was from God's peculiar love to Israel, to the exclusion of other nations, and at their expense. This is attested by the law and the prophets. Moses says "I will put a division, (Engl. margin and Hebr. a redemption,) between my people and thy people." Isaiah says, "Thus saith the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of "Israel; for your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have "brought down all their nobles and the Chaldeans whose cry "is in the ships." "For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy "One of Israel, thy Saviour. I gave Egypt for thy ransom, "Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee; "therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life." 66 This love of God to Israel caused him so to redeem them, that this redemption served as a division or distinction between them and other nations. It is so peculiar that other nations, with their men and people, are said to be given for the ransom of the Israelites. In 1 Cor. 5: 7, Paul plainly alludes to the Old Testament istory, in such a way as to shew us what he meant by saying that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scrip"tures." "For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for " us." This is our Passover, the Passover of us; which us he speakes of in the next verse as keeping the ordinance "with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth," and as differing very widely from some who had the old leaven of malice and wickedness, like the Egyptians of old, between whom and the Israelites, God made the typical Passover a redemption or mark of distinction. He said to Moses, "It is "the Lord's passover. For I will pass through the land of "Egypt this night, and will smite all the first born in the "land of Egyt, both man and beast: and against all the "Gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. "And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses "where you are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over "you, and the plague shall not be upon you, to destroy you, "when I smite the land of Egypt." a For whom was this typical passover sacrificed? Was it for all men universally? It was for the Israelites alone, to the exclusion of those stubborn foes who sank to the bottom of the Red Sea. For whom is Christ our antitypical Passover sacrificed? For whose sins did he die according to the scriptures? For the spiritual Israel who believe in his name, and not for those incorrigible enemies, who sink, in just judgment, to the bottomless pit. 24. The next passage which claims our attention is Dan. 9; 66 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and "upon thy Holy City, to finish the transgression, and to "make an end of sins, &c." Its being said here that the Messiah comes to finish transgression, and to make an end of sins, is considered evidence of universal salvation, be cause there can be no state of eternal sin and misery, after all transgression and sin shall have been finished and brought to an end. But according to their explanation, this text not only proves that there will be no sin nor punishment af a Ex. 12. 11-13. ter death, but that there has been no sin nor punishment for near two thousand years past; for it was then that the Messiah came and fulfilled this prophecy. The word here translated finish, is, in one of the Psalms,h correctly rendered refrain. "I have refrained my feet from every "evil way, that I might keep thy word." My opponent himself will admit that David did not mean that he had finished his feet by annihilation, or that he had obtained a perfect deliverance from sin and sorrow in this life. In other places a it is rendered stay or restrain. "Therefore "the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is "stayed from her fruit." "So the people were restrained "from bringing work for the offering of the sanctuary." Would my opponent understand from these passages, that the heavens and the earth and the people were finished by annihilation? Neither did the Messiah come to finish transgression in this sense, but to restrain it, as our translators have rendered it in the margin of the text under consideration. What is meant by his making an end of sins, or sinofferings as it is elsewhere rendered, bis made clear in the close of the chapter, where it is said, "he shall cause the "sacrifice and the oblation to cease." These typical sins or sin offerings were of no farther use, after God bad" made him "who knew no sin, to be sin or a sin offering for us, that we "might be made the righteousness of God in him." To say that he made an end of sins, so that no sin should be afterward committed or punished, is not only contradicting the scriptures, but contradicting palpable matter of fact. d Other passages are in the writings of John, where Christ is represented as "the Lamb of God which taketh away the "sin of the world:"e that is the sins of believing Gentiles; whereas the typical lamb was slain for Jews only, and that not to cleanse the conscience. In this sense the same writer tells us that "the Father sent the Son to be the Sa"viour of the world." Whether this embraced stubborn unbelievers, our Saviour himself declares. "For God so "loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that "whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have "everlasting life." This is as much as to say that the Father gave the son to die for those who should believe. a Ex. 36 6. Hag. 1. 10. o 2 Cor. 5. 21. h 119, 101. d See Dr. Wylie's numbers on Universalism, in the Presbyterian Magazine. e John 1. 29. f 1 John 4. 14. g John 3. 16. A few passages of Paul's writings yet remain, which contain the same doctrine. One represents God as the "Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe." This shows that there is a salvation peculiar to believers. It is true, God is the Saviour of unbelievers who forget him but he is only their Saviour from temporal calamities, such as the bondage in Egypt. The Psalmist says that the idolatrous Israelites "forgat God their Saviour, which had done great things in Egypt." But although God saved them from the tyranny of Pharaoh, he says concerning some of them, "so I sware in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest." b с "And to "whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but "to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief." Although they had hardened their hearts through the deceitfulness of sin, God was still their Saviour, Deliverer, Preserver. But in the same sense, the Psalmist says, "Lord thou savest man and beast."d This is a literal translation of the original and the Septuagint. Although God was the Saviour of the godly and ungodly, believers and unbelievers, Paul makes a great distinction between them. He says, concerning those who believed the gospel, "there remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God:" Whereas "they to whom it was first preached, entered not in because of unbelief." This is a comment upon the same Apostle's declaration that "God is the Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe." But we have a similar comment in the context of the passage itself: where he says "godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.' Thus God is the Saviour or preserver of all men in this life, but especially of those that believe, because they are preserved and blessed forever. The context will also explain the general expressions used in 1 Cor. 15: 22. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." The next verse says, "But every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming." The all that are made alive in Christ are here said to be "they that are Christ's," that is, all who belong to Christ. Now does not the same Apostle tell us that none belong to Christ, but those who have his Spirit? "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is a 1 Tim. 4. 10. b 106. 21. e Hebr. 3; 11. 18. 19. d 36. 6. |