are; for blood it defileth the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it." And Lev. xxiv. 15.

Yet because these murderers, blasphemers, idolators, adulterers, &c. could not have the privilege of sin-offerings or sacrifice, by which their sins might be purged, borne away, or pardoned by law, or that they might be freed from the suffering of temporal death; yet we are not to suppose that all these persons were doomed to suffer eternal death in the future world, without mercy or forgiveness; for such of them as truly repented were forgiven by the great God of the universe, not by the law of Moses, but by the law or covenant of Abraham. Ezek. xviii.; John viii. 3-11, &c.

7th. That the common meaning of the word nasa is to take away, to carry away, to bear away, I refer to the following texts, in which the word is so translated in our English Bibles:

Gen. xlvii. 30.; Exod. x. 19.; Lev. x. 4.; Num. xvi. 15.; 1 Sam. xvii. 34.; 1 Kings xv. 22., and xviii. 12.; 2 Kings xxiii. 4.; 1 Chros. x. 12.; 2 Chron. xiv. 13., and xvi. 16.; Job xxiv. 10., and xxvii. 20.; and xxxii. 32; Eccles. v. 15.; Isai. viii. 4., and xv. 1., and xi. 24., and xli. 16., and lvii. 13., and lxiv. 6.; Ezek. xxix. 10., and xxxviii. 13.; Daniel i. 16., and xi. 12.; Hosea i. 5., and v. 14.; Amos iv. 2.; Miɔah ii. 2; Malachi ii. 3., and many others.

I have been thus particular on the word nusa, to bear sin, to show how weak, how inconclusive, and unfounded is the argument drawn from Isaiah liii. iv. 12. "He bore the sins of many." It cannot mean that he bore the punishment due to the sins of many. The arguments above forbid the idea. Can we think that God himself bore the punishment due to sin? or that the angel in the wilderness bore the punishment due the sins of the congregation? or that the priesthood bore the punishment due the sins of Israel? or one man bore the punishment due the sins of another? or that the scape-goat bore the punishment of all the sins of Israel, when it was neither slain nor suffered any thing? The pardonable sinner must bear away his own sin by the blood of the offering. So is the will of God.

No one will affirm that either God, the angel, the priesthood, ever bore the punishment due to the sins of Israel. Why, then, will they affirm that Christ bore the punishment due to the sins of many, when the very same word and expressions are also applied to God, to the angel, to the priesthood, and others? Besides, this same expression of Isaiah respecting Christ, is fully explained in the New Testament, to mean to take away, o bear away; and so have you translated the word in your version, as seen above; and so has Thompson, and Taylor, the Hebrew critic, and Dr. Doddridge, and a host of others. I have wondered why divines, leaving the plain explanation of the word in Isaiah liii., as given by Christ and his Apostles, should yet be continually pressing that chapter in support of the imputation of sin, and vicarious punishment in the sense of the Westminster Divines. Is it safe to build a system on an exposition of one text, which is unsupported by another passage in the entire Bible? And which text is explained by divine authority to have a different meaning from that they

attach to it?

The doctrine of vicarious, or substituted punishment, is the funda

mental of orthodox divinity. Where, brother Campbell, shall we find the term substitute with application to Christ? Did he, as such, satisfy the demands of law and justice against the sinner, and reconcile or propitiate God to a sinful world? Does law or justice admit of such substituted punishment? Where is it required, or found in the Bible? The contrary appears to be plainly taught in Deuteronomy xxiv. 16.; 2 Kings xiv. 6.; 2 Chron. xxv. 4.; Jeremiah xxxi. 30.; Ezekiel xviii. Could a holy and righteous law be satisfied and pleased with the wicked-the most wicked and lawless act ever commited-the death of the innocent Saviour by the hands of wicked men? If the claims of law and justice against the sinner be death temporal and eternal, and if Jesus suffered the penalty against us, is he not yet suffering eternal death? Or has an endless thing come to an end? If the penalty be temporal death, why have the world yet to suffer it? If the debt of suffering be fully paid by the substitute, where is grace seen in the pardon of the debtor? Many such inquiries will pass in the mind of the diligent inquirer, who will not be satisfied with the ipse dixit of uninspired man.

How the death of Christ bears away our sins, or takes them away, I will endeavor to illustrate by a figure. In the early settlement of Kentucky a colony resided on the border of that country, continually exposed to the bloody incursions of the Indians. In this colony was a man of marked benevolence and goodness: he was wealthy, and had a care over all, that none should want the necessaries of life. He had a son, the very image of himself. Among them also lived a man of opposite character-of marked malevolence and wickedness. He hated this good man and his son, and endeavored to injure them in their persons, property, and character, though of their beneficence he shared in common with others. A banditti of Indians passed by, and apprehended this wicked man, and hurried him off to the wilderness. The good man with pain and sorrow heard the news: he called his son and told the distressing situation of his neighbor. My son, will you at the exposure or sacrifice of your own life, rescue him? I go, father; and instantly started-found the trace-rapidly pursued, and overtook them. He saw the trembling wretch bound to a tree, and the pile of wood around him ready to burn him, and the Indians preparing to dance to his shrieks and cries. The son rushes to the tree, cuts with his tomahawk the cord that bound him: in an instant the man flees and evades the torture. But the son is apprehended and burnt.

The wicked man now sees the great love and goodness of the father and of the son. He is convinced of his sins against them, and repents; he hates his sins, and his hatred to the good man and his son is slain, taken away he is reconciled. He feels constrained to go to the father, confess his sins, and plead forgiveness. He goes weeping, humbly confessing his sins, and asks forgiveness. I forgive you, said the father joyfully, well knowing when he gave his son that nothing else could save the poor man, destroy his enmity, and reconcile him. Surely it was the love and goodness of the father and his son, and this love seen in the death of the son, that effected this great change in the man-that brought him to repentance, and consequently to forgive

ness.

Now what effects did the death of the son produce in the father?

Did it produce in him love, favor, or good will to the wicked man? No: these were in him before. Did it dispose, or make him more willing to pardon him? No: he was always willing to pardon him whenever he repented or came within the sphere of forgiveness. It had no direct effect on the father; it directly effected the wicked man to a change and repentance; it indirectly effected pleasure and joy in the father at the change and repentance directly effected in the man by the death of his son.

The application to our heavenly Father and to his Son is easy, and shows how repentance, forgiveness, redemption, sanctification, and the bearing away of sin, are effected by love to the believing obedient soul. This figure is introduced only to show what principle leads to repentance and forgiveness-the goodness of God.

I will further remark, that forgiveness, and grace, or favor, are eternal attributes of God; they are therefore not effected in him by any thing in the universe. They, like every other perfection in him, flow to the proper object. Now the proper object of forgiveness is a pení tent soul. As you say, the favor of God is like water dammed up-a way must be made for it to flow, or it must remain dammed up. Now say that the impenitence of the sinner is the dam that prevents the forgiveness of God to flow to him. As soon as he repents the dam is removed, and God's forgiveness flows to him. An impenitent sinner is never pardoned. The grace of God flowed in the gift of Christ to the world; and the great work of Christ is to bring mankind to repentance or reconciliation. "Whom God has exalted to give repentance and remission of sins" and "God was by Christ reconciling the world to himself." This was the ministration of the Apostles, and this the great design of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, which they every where preached. Faith in the gospel hegets repentance, and forgiveness flows. Christ therefore has removed the dam which prevented the forgiveness of God flowing. The dam, the obstruction, was in the breast of the sinner, not in God. The death of Christ influences the sinner alone, but produced no direct effect on God.

We are directed to forgive even as God forgives. But whom are we to forgive? "If thy brother repent, forgive him." "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us." Now if God will not forgive us till the claims of law and justice are fully satisfied by a substitute-then, as we are to forgive even as God for gives, we must not forgive till all legal and just claims are satisfied by our debtor, or his substitute or surety. Is this forgiveness at all? But as our surety has paid our debts, are we not indebted to him? How, then, can he forgive us, even as God forgives, till the debt is paid to him? We or another substitute must pay it. And yet we remain in debt to the second substitute, and so on forever. In fact, on this plan there can be no forgiveness forever. How unlike to this is the forgiveness of God! See Matth. xviii. 24.; Luke xv., et passim. The government of God is the true model of all good civil governments among men. Mercy is always vested in the Executive by the supreme law of the land. Though a man be condemned to death by law, yet it is in the power of the Executive to forgive him, or remit the penalty. This is done when the Governor is assured by respectable

petitioners for his pardon, that they believe he is penitent. Is this pardoning act against law? No: it is done according to the supreme law of the land. And is the law of God against his promises? Is not mercy in him from eternity? What shall hinder him from pardoning the penitent? Man by feigned repentance may deceive man, but God, who knows the heart, cannot be deceived.

In my next I will notice your objections to my views from the beginning. B. W. STONE.

BROTHER STONE:

LETTER V.—T‰. B. W. STONE.

My dear Sir-PERMIT me, with all respect for your superior years, to make a few suggestions on some points of order:

1st. The numeration and titles of our letters are out of order. For example, the first article in your November Christian Messenger, is a letter to me, titled "Atonement-No. IV." The next article is my letter to you, titled "Letter III.-To B. W. Stone." The next is your letter to me, titled "Atonement-No. III." In this way receding, a few more essays and you will get back to No. I.! This, in my optics, is all confusion. Neither we ourselves nor our readers can refer to any of these essays with accuracy or intelligibility. I may be to blame for so much of this as arose from the loss of your third article. But I move an amendment. I have therefore placed at the head of these articles their proper caption, and intend to do so hereafter.

2d. It also appears to me that there is a series of letters on hand without any connecting thread of argument: for example, instead of replying to my Letter IV., printed in your last, you print a new letter on a new subject. In this way we might print each a score of letters and develope no point, except how far we agreed or disagreed upon one of the most vital points in the Bible. True, you inform us at the close of your last, that you intend in your next to notice my objections to your views from the beginning." I suggest to your experience whether a detailed and regular reply to each letter would not be better than a wholesale replication once in a long time.

3d. With all deference I would add a third suggestion. You sometimes seem to be fighting over the battles which some thirty years ago you waged against Kentucky orthodoxy, instead of endeavoring to come to an understanding among ourselves on what the scriptures teach on atonement. For example, at the close of the first paragraph of your last letter you say, "So the blood of the Lamb of God is the means appointed of God, by which he cleanses and forgives the penitent obedient believer." "This," you add, "I will now endeavor to make appear." But who of us doubts or denies this!! Then come six pages of your Messenger filled with references to the Hebrew nasa, and the Greek anaphera, in proof that nasa signifies not to bear punishment of sin, but to bear sin away, to forgive it. This affects the questions debated by you thirty years ago, but is not called for in the present discussion. I have not introduced either nasa or anaphero into this investigation. But all this seems to me irrelevant to any thing yet between us; for whether correct or incorrect, it demonstrates 6*

VOL. V.-N. 8.

not in what way the blood of Christ is the means of pardon. That it is the means of pardon we both agree, and you need not prove it. But in what way is it the means of pardon? This you have not yet shown. and your six pages of criticisms and references reach not this point at all.

4th. Hear me once more upon your illustration, as also partaking somewhat of the same ambiguity and irrelevance. You introduced it for one purpose, and then command us to apply it to another. The first sentence is, "How the death of Christ bears away our sins, or takes them away, I will endeavor to illustrate by a figure;" and at the end of the figure you tell us, "This figure is introduced only to show what principle leads to repentance and forgiveness-the goodness of God." Unless you mean the death of Christ bears away our sins by bearing repentance to us, I can see no relevancy between the introduction and application of your figure. May I be permitted to add, that in the six pages of Hebrew and Greek references, as well as in the illustration which follows them, the grand point is strangely forgotten or overlooked. The difficulty is not about the necessity of his death in order to reconciling us to God; but it is about the necessity of his death in order to God's pardoning us. Would you have one to believe that you make our repentance or reconciliation to God the only reason why he should forgive us! One might suppose that the drift of your letter before indicated the following to be the philosophy of your atonement:-The death of Christ is to be contemplated merely as a proof of God's goodness-that his goodness perceived in the death of his son, induces repentance; and that this repentance superinduces the pardon of sin. Hence the only necessity for the death of Christ to have occurred, is its superior fitness to produce repentance, which of itself alone when called into being constrains forgiveness. And would you have any one to think that Christ's death occurred simply to demonstrate God's goodness; and that this demonstration occurred simply to induce repentance, and that repentance alone superinduces forgiveness? Brother Stone, you must be explicit in this point, else we shall be greatly misunderstood, if not traduced by our opponents. For my part, I will stand up before the universe of God, not only in affirming, but in attempting to prove, that the death of Jesus Christ our blessed and only Lord, was, and is, and evermore shall be, AS NECESSARY TO DEMONSTRATING THE JUSTICE AS THE GOODNESS OF GOD IN FORGIVING SIN. To unite merey and justice in forgiving the sinner, was, in my view, the supreme end of God's sparing not his own son; and I trust on this vital point there will be no difference between us. Come up to it frankly and explicitly, brother Stone; the brethren and the community desire to understand us clearly on this great subject.

After the pains you have taken in this long epistle to enlighten the community upon nasa and anaphero, it will be expected that I should write something less than six or sixty pages indicative of my views. Allow me, then, to make a few remarks on the inductions you have laid before us. Time was when such array did intimidate your old antagonists, and awe into acquiescence the uneducated and specula tive community. But in this more sceptical and inquisitive age we may concede all, at least much, of what you have advanced, (and cer