died only for the elect, and the subjective assurance of salvation on which he insists more consistently than Luther, Calvin's language on the Atonement comes much nearer on the whole than Luther's to that of Catholic theology. The value of Christ's death is derived, with St. Bernard, from its voluntary character. The new ideas of a substituted obedience and punishment are, however, retained in their fulness, and Calvin seems to regard the condemnation and execution of Christ by a regular legal tribunal as essential for this end. He expressly asserts, that our obligation of punishment and the curse of sin was transferred to the Son of God, and does not, as we have already seen, shrink from the terrible consequence of this view, that He suffered in His descent into Hell the actual torments of the damned.' On the other hand, Calvin denies the absolute necessity of the Incarnation, but regards it as the best method for restoring fallen man, and even maintains that, if we had never fallen, the mediation of the God-Man would have been needed to bring us into intimate communion with God and make us His children. He, moreover, in his treatise on the Sacraments, ascribes a life-giving power to the flesh

1 Calvin Inst. i. 15, 4; 12, 18; ii. 3, 6; 16, 5. "Hæc nostra absolutio est, quod in caput Filii Dei translatus est reatus qui nos tenebat pœnæ obnoxioз....... Peccati vim abolebat Pater, cum in Christi carnem translata est ejus maledictio.” Ib. ii. 16, 6, 7. Cf. ii. 16, 10. For the logical connection between the theory of literal substitution and the Calvinist notion, that Christ died only for the elect, because it would be unjust that any whose punishment He really endured should be themselves punished, see Campbell's Nature of the Atonement, ch. iii. It appears from an extract given (p. 58) that Edwards taught explicitly, in the last century, that our Lord "underwent the pains of Hell;" but the opinion has been suffered to drop out of later Calvinist theology.

of Christ, not only as having suffered for us once, but as still infusing life, derived from the fountain of Godhead, into those who are engrafted in His mystical body. This is said partly in connection with the Eucharist, on which Calvin held a much higher belief than Zwingle's. And he even admits, in one passage, when replying to Osiander, who taught a higher doctrine than his own, that "we participate in the righteousness of Christ, not by an external imputation, but because we put on Christ, and are inserted into His body, and He has vouchsafed to make us one with Himself." So far, then, Calvin's system is a reaction in the Catholic direction. With his distinctive theory of absolute predestination we are not further concerned here. It may suffice to observe, that in not shrinking from the full statement of what it implies, he shows more consistency, let me add more reverence also, than do those who put forward one side of the doctrine, while seeking through some paltry trick of language to veil its naked deformity by concealing the other. But this is all that can be said for him. The more thoroughly the dogma itself is realized, the more clearly will it be seen to be subversive of the first principles of morality, and therefore of theism. It has, indeed, been modified in some later Calvinist systems, by the admission that Christ died-objectively so to say -for all men. But as His death is only supposed to

' Ib. ii. 12, 1; iii. 11, 10. Defens. Orth. Doct. de Sacram. Opp. t. viii. p. 658. Hallam observes (Lit. of Europe, vol. i. p. 300) that "the Calvinistic churches generally make a better show in this respect," of morality, than the Lutheran.

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profit those who are predisposed to receive its benefits by the sovereign grace of God, which is confined to the elect, the distinction is practically without a difference.

A writer whose name has just been mentioned, Osiander, deserves a passing notice here. Though himself a professed Lutheran, and not the founder of any new system or sect, he was one of the first to protest against Luther's characteristic tenet, that justification means, not "really and truly to make just, but only to account and pronounce a man just," which he calls a forensic and sophistical theory, contrary to Scripture and verging on blasphemy. For this the strict Lutherans accused him of trampling under foot the Passion and death and precious Blood of Christ. He says expressly that God justifies by imparting to us His righteousness.' After making due allowance for some confusion, both of language and thought, it seems most probable that he meant by the substantial indwelling of Christ's Divine nature something different from the Catholic doctrine, as being a righteousness imputed and external to us (though in a different sense to Luther's) and not an actual renewal of our nature, making us righteous. Still his protest against the Lutheran error of confounding justification with redemption, and its antinomian results, is important. In a separate treatise, specially devoted to the inquiry whether the Son

1 Conf. Andr. Osiandri. Regiomonte, Prussia, 1551, pp. 42, 189; Theses de Justif. 120. There is some difference between Döllinger (Die Reformation) and Möhler in their way of understanding him.

of God would have been incarnated, if there had been no sin, he adopts and defends at length, on Scriptural grounds, the Scotist opinion, and insists that the predestined Humanity of Christ was the image on which ours was formed.' Another Lutheran divine, Karg of Ansbach, about ten years later, protested against the doctrine of vicarious obedience to the law, but afterwards retracted. At the close of the century, John Piscator elaborately discussed and condemned the notion, making justification consist simply in the remission of sin for the sake of Christ's sufferings, after which the imperfect obedience of the regenerate is accepted, and its imperfections condoned through the Blood of Christ, as long as it is sincere. His views, however, were vehemently opposed among the Reformed, and the tenet he rejected found a place in the Formula Consensus Helvetica of 1675.

2

The treatise of Grotius on the Satisfaction of Christ, written early in the seventeenth century against Socinus, deserves a more extended notice, both from the author's high reputation and from his having struck. out a theory of his own on the subject. It will be convenient, therefore, to reserve it for separate examination further on. Meanwhile we may glance at the teaching of the principal sects which branched off from the original Lutheran or Calvinistic stock, so far as it bears on the Atonement; and, as their systems were

1 An Filius Dei fuerit incarnandus si peccatum non introivisset in mundum? Monteregio, Prussia, 1550.

2 John Piscat. Thes. Theol. Herborn. 1618.

partly shaped by historical circumstances, it will be best to take them in chronological order.

The earliest organised protest against the new doctrine of justification came from the Anabaptists, who insisted on the necessity of good works; and this, as Justus Menius truly enough observed, in a Refutation published with a preface by Luther, is inconsistent with the doctrine that faith alone saves. It was only, however, in their second stage, as 'Mennonites," that the community can be said to have had any definite creed. In a Confession, drawn up in 1580, original sin and justification are described in language substantially accordant with that of the Council of Trent; free-will is expressly affirmed to have survived the Fall, and justification is ascribed to the 'effusion or infusion' of real righteousness through Christ by the co-operation of the Holy Ghost, while justifying faith is said to be that which works by charity, the fides formata of Catholic, as opposed to the fides informis of Lutheran theology.

The next great movement among the Reformed was a still more direct and vehement recoil from received opinions, confounding in an indiscriminate hatred the original Christian dogma with the newer glosses which had been put upon it. If Luther maintained, in his Commentary on the Galatians, that Christ only accidentally discharged the office of a Teacher and Law

So called from Menno Simonis, a Catholic Priest of Friesland, who joined the sect in 1536. I need scarcely remind the reader, that they must not be confounded with the English 'Baptists,' who came into existence as a distinct community in 1633.