pay it with himself, for all that he has and is he owes to God as his Creator, without any reference to the compensation of sin. And this very inability to pay the debt is not an excuse, but is itself a sin, being caused by his own fault, and therefore is not a ground of free forgiveness. Nor, indeed, is free forgiveness possible. God cannot suffer anything to mar the perfect order of His kingdom. The sinner must either make adequate satisfaction to God, according to the measure of his sin, or endure the penalty. This satisfaction, to be equal to the sin, must be greater than anything outside God; and therefore only God can supply it; but it must be paid by man, or it is not man's satisfaction. "The debt was so great that none but God could pay it, and none but man owes it, therefore One must pay it who is God and man." Hence the necessity for the Incarnation. But the Incarnation would not suffice of itself. The perfect obedience of Christ, as Man, could be no satisfaction for sin, for obedience is due to God from every rational creature. But His death was not due, for death is an obligation incurred by sin; and His death accordingly, as a voluntary offering, is the sufficient and only possible satisfaction, which not only equals, but infinitely exceeds, the payment owed for the sins of the whole world. For this death, freely offered, He deserved a recompense from the Father. But He needed none for Himself, and could receive nothing that was not already His. He claimed, therefore, and justly received from the Father, as a reward, the salvation of those for whom He died. And thus mercy and justice are reconciled. For what more merciful than that the Father should say to the sinner, who has nothing

whereby to ransom himself from eternal punishment, 'Receive My only-begotten, and give Him for thyself,' and the Son say, 'Take Me and ransom thyself?' What more just than that He who receives a payment far exceeding the debt should remit the debt?

Such is a summary of the Anselmic theory of satisfaction. Its whole force hinges on the assumed impossibility of any incongruity (inconvenientia) being tolerated by God. Deum non decet aliquid in regno suo inordinatum dimittere. Both in its negative and positive aspects it differs widely from the patristic conception of the subject. The necessity for the death of Christ becomes for the first time absolute, not indeed any longer as a compensation due to Satan for the power over men acquired by their sin, which he was to lose by their redemption, but as a satisfaction to God for the honour of which sin had robbed Him. Not that Christ's death is regarded by Anselm, any more than by earlier writers, as a punishment inflicted on Him by the Father for our sins, but as a voluntary payment of the debt incurred by us when we could not pay it ourselves. It was essential to the justice or holiness of God, that sin should be either punished or atoned. Only the God-man could make adequate reparation, and He only by His death, for that alone He did not, in His human nature, owe to God.

It is obvious that the Cur Deus Homo, if taken, as the title might seem to imply, for an exhaustive account of the objects of the Incarnation, would be a strikingly defective one; and there are, in fact, many indications in the book itself that such was not the intention of its saintly author. We cannot doubt that he, like those before him, saw more, far more, in that

mystery of love than the mere payment of a debt. But even in the restricted sense, which it is clearly meant to bear, of an explanation of the death of Christ, his argument is open to very serious criticism. With the negative side of his theology, his rejection of Satan's supposed rights, we certainly need not quarrel, and here his judgment has been fully endorsed by the common instinct of the later Church. But, as regards his positive theory, even admitting the assumed premisses (contradicted as they are by the whole course of previous theology), of a debt incurred to God which it is absolutely impossible for Him freely to remit, the account given of the payment is, in more than one point, at issue with itself. I pass over the extreme difficulty of admitting a necessity, though explained as part of the divine nature, which seems to limit omnipotence, and goes far to assimilate the external operations to the immanent acts of God. But the statement of a necessity for the Incarnation is obviously inconsistent with making it also a free exhibition of love. For if God's honour necessarily required reparation, and only one was possible, then it was not for our sakes, but for His own, that He sent His Son into the world to die. Nor can it be replied that, according to Anselm's teaching, the honour of God is not really increased or diminished by anything external to Him, and cannot, therefore, be affected in itself by sin; for it is distinctly said to be essential to His honour that the order of the universe should be preserved, and that this can only be done by the punishment of the sinner, or by an equivalent for the sin.* That order, as we have seen,

See especially Cur Deus Homo, i. 13, 14.

L

is broken if His object in the creation of man is frus-trated, and therefore adequate satisfaction is an internal necessity of His own nature. The author's only attempt to meet this difficulty in fact admits its force.* When it is urged, that God in creating man foresaw both his fall and his redemption, but did not therefore shrink from the obligation He voluntarily assumed in creating him, this of course may show that creation was an act of love, but it implies that creation once premised, the Incarnation was an act of necessity. It was at least not a separate act of love. There is another inconsistency to be noticed. It is essential to the theory, that the death of Christ should be something He did not owe to God. But if satisfaction for sin was absolutely necessary for the divine honour, and His death alone could supply it, it follows, surely, that, as Man, He was morally bound to die, and thus His death ceases to be a voluntary oblation. This difficulty is more than once indirectly touched upon, but is never really answered.†

There was reason for dwelling thus at length on the argument of the Cur Deus Homo, because its author is the founder, or rather harbinger, of the whole scholastic method, and is also the first to explain the death of our Lord by a theory of satisfaction which refers it immediately, not to the rights acquired by the Evil One, but to inherent necessities of the divine nature. The principal succeeding writers of this first period may be considered according to their relations, whether of agreement or difference, with him. Conspicuous among them stand the names of Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux,

* Ib. ii. 5.

↑ Ib. i. 9. ii. 18, b. See on this point Petav. De Incarn. ix. 8.

'the last of the Fathers,' as he has been not unaptly designated, and Abelaird, who may with equal propriety be termed the first of the Schoolmen. The positive side of the Anselmic system is rejected by both. Abelaird's exposition of the grounds of the Incarnation and sufferings of Christ is given in his Commentary on the Romans, chiefly with reference to the famous passage (Rom. iii. 26), that God 'might be just, and justify the believer. in Jesus.'* He not only assents to Anselm's denial of all rights in the Devil, but goes beyond him, urging, that man would rather have a right to punish the seducer, who had betrayed him by a promise of immortality he had no power to fulfil. The elect alone, it is added, were released by Christ, and they never belonged to Satan in this world or the next, which is proved by a strange application of the parable of Dives and Lazarus. Moreover, if no injustice was done to the Devil by the assumption of a sinless humanity, how could injustice have been done him by the far lesser grace of a free forgiveness? Some other reason must be found. To Anselm's view of an all but infinite debt, and the need of a corresponding equivalent, Abelaird replies, that Adam's sin, however great, could not be atoned by the yet greater crime of those who murdered Christ. And further, as Gregory Nazianzen had said before him, how could the blood of an innocent Victim be an acceptable ransom to God, to whom, if to any one, the ransom must be paid? Abelaird therefore seeks the ground

This verse has been sometimes taken to imply the necessity of Christ's sacrifice, as a matter of justice, for our forgiveness. But if so, we must read kaiπep instead of kaì. It clearly means, that He who is holy might bestow sanctification on believers,'