Now to simplify the argument and at the same time to bring the question to the test, we will confine our attention to the figure last mentioned, viz. the satisfaction of a debt. Passing by our modern _Alogi_ who find nothing but metaphors in either Apostle, let us suppose for a moment with certain divines, that our Lord's words, recorded by John, and which in all places repeat and assert the same analogy, are to be regarded as metaphorical; and that it is the varied expressions of St. Paul that are to be literally interpreted:--for example, that sin is, or involves, an infinite debt, (in the proper and law-court sense of the word debt)--a debt owing by us to the vindictive justice of God the Father, which can only be liquidated by the everlasting misery of Adam and all his posterity, or by a sum of suffering equal to this. Likewise, that God the Father by his absolute decree, or (as some divines teach) through the necessity of his unchangeable justice, had determined to exact the full sum; which must, therefore, be paid either by ourselves or by some other in our name and behalf. But besides the debt which _all_ mankind contracted in and through Adam, as a _homo publicus_, even as a nation is bound by the acts of its head or its plenipotentiary, every man (say these divines) is an insolvent debtor on his own score. In this fearful predicament the Son of God took compassion on mankind, and resolved to pay the debt for us, and to satisfy the divine justice by a perfect equivalent. Accordingly, by a strange yet strict _consequence_, it has been holden by more than one of these divines, that the agonies suffered by Christ were equal in amount to the sum total of the torments of all mankind here and hereafter, or to the infinite debt, which in an endless succession of instalments we should have been paying to the divine justice, had it not been paid in full by the Son of God incarnate!
It is easy to say--"O but I do not hold this, or _we_ do not make this an article of our belief!" The true question is: "Do you take any _part_ of it: and can you reject the rest without being _inconsequent_?" Are debt, satisfaction, payment in full, creditor's _rights_, and the like, _nomina propria_, by which the very nature of Redemption and its occasion is expressed;--or are they, with several others, figures of speech for the purpose of illustrating the nature and extent of the consequences and effects of the redemptive Act, and to excite in the receivers a due sense of the magnitude and manifold operation of the Boon, and of the Love and gratitude due to the Redeemer? If still you reply, the former: _then_, as your whole theory is grounded on a notion of _justice_, I ask you--Is this justice a _moral_ attribute? But morality commences with, and begins in, the sacred distinction between thing and person: on this distinction all law human and divine is grounded: consequently, the law of justice. If you attach any meaning to the term justice, as applied to God, it must be the same to which you refer when you affirm or deny it of any other personal agent--save only, that in its attribution to God, you speak of it as unmixed and perfect. For if not, what _do_ you mean? And why do you call it by the same name? I may, therefore, with all right and reason, put the case as between man and man. For should it be found irreconcilable with the justice, which the light of reason, made _law_ in the conscience, dictates to _man_, how much more must it be incongruous with the all-perfect justice of God! Whatever case I should imagine would be felt by the reader as below the dignity of the subject, and in some measure jarring with his feelings; and in other respects the more familiar the case, the better suited to the present purpose.