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the opposite school, nor is it to be imagined, that so great a mind as his would rest in any exclusive system. In their view of the satisfaction of Christ the Nominalists and Franciscans for the most part followed Duns Scotus, while the Dominicans naturally ranged themselves under the banners of Aquinas, but not without exceptions or modifications on either side. Thus the Dominican Durandus of St. Pacian denies that Christ satisfied in strict rigour of justice, because all He had, as Man, was already owed to God; Raymund Lully, the Franciscan, goes beyond, or rather against Scotus, in maintaining the necessity of the Incarnation, assuming the creation of man, as the perfection and crown of human nature. But we need not examine in detail the later scholastic writers, who add little new to what the great masters had said before them. It is worth while to observe that Wicliffe, the precursor of the Reformation, recurred to the Anselmic view of an absolute necessity for the Incarnation, as the only adequate satisfaction for Adam's sin, though his argument differs in some respects from that of the Cur Deus Homo.† He gives a strange reason why Satan cannot be saved. As it was needful for the Second Person of the Trinity to be incarnated for man's redemption, who had sinned against the Wisdom of God, the Third Person must have been incarnated for the redemption of Satan, who had sinned the sin against the Holy Ghost, which is therefore unpardonable, because no such Incarnation can possibly take place!

Thus, e. g. he calls our Lord, 'similitudo exemplaris totius naturæ.' Summa, Pars III. Quæst. i. Art. 8.

John Wicliffe Trialog. iii. 24, 25. De Inc. et Morte Christi. He considers all God's external operations, and the Incarnation among them, absolutely necessary.

To sum up the Scholastic period; we have found, at its commencement, the idea of an absolute necessity for the Incarnation and death of Christ, as the only possible means of restoring fallen man, put forward for the first time by Anselm, but very generally rejected by subsequent writers of whatever school. On the other hand, the doctrine of satisfaction first distinctly enunciated by him becomes the subject of elaborate discussion, and branches out eventually into the two -opposite theories of a superabundant satisfaction which had an inherent claim to be accepted, and a satisfaction, sufficient indeed, but relying for its efficacy on a free acceptance from the mercy (not the justice) of God. Meanwhile, underlying these notions, two opposite views of the motive of the Incarnation develope themselves, destined to exercise an influence on the course of later theology, which only the next great epoch in Church history will adequately reveal. We shall then find the more rigid and technical notion of satisfaction, already adopted by Wicliffe, assuming a critical importance in the Lutheran and Calvinistic systems, where the Scotist view of the Incarnation could have little meaning, while as that view gradually spreads among Catholic theologians, the broader and nobler idea of sacrifice predominates within the Church.

Two writers of the fifteenth century may be briefly noticed in conclusion, who, though following to a great extent scholastic opinions, can hardly be reckoned among the Schoolmen, because their method is entirely different-the Spanish Raymund of Sabunde, and Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa. The former has composed a Theologia Naturalis (which I need hardly remind the reader does not mean what we understand by 'Natural

Theology') designed to exhibit in detail the conformity of Christian doctrine with our natural anticipations, and the eternal fitness of things. His results do not greatly differ from those of St. Thomas; but he follows the reasoning, and not unfrequently uses the language, of the Cur Deus Homo, rather than of the Summa. Man owed to God a natural debt of perfect obedience as His creature, and since the Fall he owes a second debt of satisfaction for sin. Merit is measured by the person towards whom an act is done; and as obedience to God deserved an infinite recompence, the enjoyment of Himself, disobedience incurred an infinite debt. This no man could pay, being himself involved in the guilt, and no angel, who himself is finite; God alone can pay what only man owes, therefore He who pays must be God and man. To restore man, against the resistance of his corrupt will, is a greater work than to create him out of nothing. But all the requisite conditions meet in Christ. His death is necessary, because that alone He does not owe as man to God; but He cannot kill Himself, and must therefore endure it at the hands of others, whose sinful life is rebuked by the unfailing holiness of His teaching and example, and whom Satan instigates to slay Him. The merit of His acts is doubly infinite, both from His own nature and from that of God, to whom they are offered, but He needs and can receive no reward for Himself, and therefore accepts as His reward our redemption; and thus mercy and justice are reconciled. His death was necessary for the satisfaction of sin, and it is against the wisdom of God for all mankind to perish. There is much in this to remind us of St. Anselm, but the treatment is partly different, and there is no such

stringent statement of the absolute necessity of satisfaction.*

Nicolas of Cusa has not written a system of Theology, but he deals with several detached questions, partly metaphysical, partly theological. In speaking of the 'mystery of Christ's death' he dwells chiefly, like the Fathers, on His human nature containing in itself that of all men, and thus atoning for all, as all are baptized into His death, and united with Him in His resurrection. Elsewhere he refers with approval to the Cur Deus Homo, though somewhat modifying its statements. But he does not treat the question at length, or in a systematic way.†

419.

Raim. de Sabund. Theol. Nat. Solisb. 1852, Pars vi. pp. 412, sqq.
Nic. de Cus. Opp. Basil. De Doct. Ignor. iii. pp. 50, 51. Exercit. iii. 418,'

CHAPTER V.

THEORIES OF THE REFORMATION PERIOD.

We have now reached the period of the Reformation, and it therefore becomes necessary to exhibit at some length the views of the Atonement put forward by the various Protestant leaders, in so far as they are based on an acceptance of the traditional belief of Christendom about the Person of our divine Lord. Where that is rejected, as by the Socinians and later Rationalists, the terms for a comparison are wanting, and we should be led aside from our proper subject into the wide question of the limits and nature of revelation. Moreover Socinianism, like its Arian prototype, has never been able to construct a theology for itself, as was sorrowfully confessed not long since by its greatest representative in this country, whose own published Sermons, I may venture to add, sufficiently attest its failure to satisfy such minds as his.* On the Socinian

"I am constrained to say, that neither my intellectual preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with the Unitarian heroes, sects, or productions of any age. Ebionites, Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavourably with their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought far less worthy on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity. I am conscious that my deepest obligations are in almost every department to writers not of my own creed. In philosophy I have had to unlearn most that I had imbibed from my early text books, and the authors most in favour with them. In Biblical interpretation I

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