If, in advocating this hypothesis, any regard be paid to consistency of sentiment, you must of course relinquish the imputation of sin to Christ, and the federal relation that subsists between him and his church: for if these, together with his plenary satisfaction to divine justice, be admitted, redemption must be particular; and those who stand thus related to him will undoubtedly be saved.

These important branches of theology are frankly denied by the Socinians: they have sagacity to perceive that if the imputation of the sins of one man to Christ be necessary to his redemption, it must be equally necessary for the redemption of every other sinner who is to participate of salvation.

The redemption of men, according to your views, does not consist in the undertakings, or in the actual sufferings of Christ, as made sin and a curse in their room and stead; but in the sovereign will of God, who is pleased to accept his death, not as an adequate price paid to divine justice by penal sufferings, but as a medium

through which he is reconciled to sinners, and in consequence of which they are pardoned and made everlastingly happy.

If this statement be admitted, (to which a Socinian would not have much to object) it will, I think, be difficult to prove that the death of Christ was indispensably requisite to forgiveness: for if any thing short of plenary satisfaction to divine justice could be consistently allowed as a ground of pardon; surely it must be obvious that the same power which could righteously dispense with an adequate recompense for crime, might, if such had been the divine pleasure, have fixed on any other medium for the same purpose..

But if our blessed Lord would not have suffered more, had the number to be saved been much greater than it eventually will be, why should he have suffered so much as he actually did suffer? For if the mere consideration of the dignity of his person, and not the weight of his sufferings, be thought a sufficient reason for extending the benefit of his death to an indefinite

number; the least possible degree of suffering would, according to this notion, have answered the same end. But surely He who is infinitely wise and infinitely good: and who doth not 'afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men,' would not without necessity have inflicted on his own Son such bitter and unparalleled sufferings as he evidently underwent. For, as M'Laurin remarks, infinite justice will never inflict the least degrees of undeserved punishment.' Yet, though he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth, it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief.' Allow, with the inspired writers, that he was made sin for us-that the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all-that he was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquitiesthat he redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us; and there will appear ample ground for all he suffered; nor shall we wonder at the dread commission. Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.'

With respect to the degree of intensity in the sufferings of Jesus,' says Dr. Pye Smith,' it could not have been less than it actually was, or assuredly it would have been. When the Righteous Father was pleased to crush him with that dreadful and fatal stroke, he still ceased not to delight in the Son of his love. One shade of grief would not have passed over his soul, which infinite holiness and wisdom did not perceive to be necessary.'

Our blessed Lord himself hath told us, 'That he came into the world to do the will of his Father;' one branch of which was, That he should give eternal life to as many as he had given him.' These were the sheep for whom he laid down his life, and concerning whom he said, 'They shall never perish.' But that numbers of our apostate race do perish, is evident beyond contradiction; we are therefore compelled from his own testimony to believe that he never laid down his life for them: and if he never laid down his life for them, how could he suffer for them? The righteous God, as Mr. Hurrion expresses it, did not lay upon his own Son more

than was right; he did not spare him, or abate him any thing, nor did he inflict more punishment upon him than sin deserved.'

That the death of Christ was a death of unexampled sufferings cannot be doubted; but they were sufferings to which he became liable as a surety, and to which, in virtue of his own voluntary engagement, he was righteously adjudged by the law and justice of God. The persons for whom he died, were redeemed from the curse of the law by his being made a curse for them. The punitory sanction, with reference to them, had its full accomplishment in his expiatory sufferings and death; but surely this cannot be said concerning those who suffer that curse in their own persons.

That there may be advocates for the doctrine of election-of substitution-of imputation, and other important truths connected with them, who think that our Lord's sufferings would not have been more intense had the number of his elect been much greater, I have no intention to deny; but to show that such a notion has any relation to those fundamental articles of the christian