(_Containing an Application of the Principles laid down in pp. 135, 136._)
Forgiveness of sin, the abolition of guilt, through the redemptive power of Christ's love, and of his perfect obedience during his voluntary assumption of humanity, is expressed, on account of the resemblance of the consequences in both cases, by the payment of a debt for another, which debt the payer had not himself incurred. Now the _impropriation_ of this metaphor--(that is, the taking it _literally_) by transferring the sameness from the consequents to the antecedents, or inferring the identity of the causes from a resemblance in the effects--this is the point on which I am at issue: and the view or scheme of redemption grounded on this confusion I believe to be altogether un-Scriptural.
Indeed, I know not in what other instance I could better exemplify the species of sophistry noticed in p. 147, as the Aristotelean μεταβασις εις αλλο γενος, or clandestine passing over into a diverse kind. The purpose of a metaphor is to illustrate a something less known by a partial identification of it with some other thing better understood, or at least more familiar. Now the article of Redemption may be considered in a two-fold relation--in relation to the _antecedent_, that is, the Redeemer's act as the efficient cause and condition of redemption; and in relation to the _consequent_, that is, the effects in and for the Redeemed. Now it is the latter relation, in which the subject is treated of, set forth, expanded, and enforced by St. Paul. The mysterious act, the operative cause is _transcendent_. _Factum est_: and beyond the information contained in the enunciation of the _Fact_, it can be characterized only by the _consequences_. It is the _consequences_ of the Act of Redemption, which the zealous Apostle would bring home to the minds and affections both of Jews and Gentiles. Now the Apostle's opponents and gainsayers were principally of the former class. They were Jews: not only Jews unconverted, but such as had partially received the Gospel, and who, sheltering their national prejudices under the pretended authority of Christ's original apostles and the Church in Jerusalem, set themselves up against Paul as followers of Cephas. Add too, that Paul himself was _a Hebrew of the Hebrews_; intimately versed _in the Jews' religion above many, his equals, in his own nation, and above measure zealous of the traditions of his fathers_. It might, therefore, have been anticipated, that his reasoning would receive its outward forms and language, that it would take its predominant colours, from his own _past_, and his opponents' present, habits of thinking; and that his figures, images, analogies, and references would be taken preferably from objects, opinions, events, and ritual observances ever uppermost in the imaginations of his own countrymen. And such we find them;--yet so judiciously selected, that the prominent forms, the figures of most frequent recurrence, are drawn from points of belief and practice, forms, laws, rites and customs, that then prevailed through the whole Roman world, and were common to Jew and Gentile.