Turning again to the doctrine of the atonement, the greatest care is needed in so stating it that the justice of the Father shall not seem in stern opposition to the love of the Son. The popular opposition to the doctrine of the present Article is mainly fostered either by the incaution of the orthodox divine in so apparently stating it, or else by the misapprehension or disingenuousness of the opponent so invidiously expressing it. We need not particularise names. With varying degrees of refinement or of coarseness, the great doctrine of the atonement is travestied. It is profanely represented as a tyrannical wrath seeking satisfaction with a blind fury, and mitigated at length by exhausting itself even on an innocent victim. If divines of some considerable reputation can be found to make such misrepresentations as this, it behoves us to be very careful in our statements. And the point of all others to be wary upon is that which Pearson (p. 23) presses, that God infinitely loved the Son whom He gave, and man for whom He gave the Son. His justice was offended, and yet He did not cease to love. Let us gather together briefly the facts from which we are to make our induction. If any fact of experience be manifest, this is. There are marks of divine wrath and punishment visible everywhere throughout the whole history of man.1 There are also visible in the world everywhere signs of divine love and care for God's creatures. So also in Scripture there are unquestionable declarations of divine wrath against all unrighteousness of man. There are also most gracious declarations of divine love and care for man. These are our facts, equally unquestionable in nature and in revelation. Any theory which fails to embrace both the wrath and the love must be false. Any theory which either ignores one of these, or so deals with both as to rend them apart, is untrue to the unity and perfection of God, and must be false. The great doctrine of the atonement, truly stated, embraces and harmonises both, so far as we are

* See Butler, part i. chaps. ii. iii.

competent to follow it. It is not that coarse idea of God's justice, rent away from his love, seeking a victim, and finding it in Christ. God is One. He is not made up of conflicting and contending attributes. But His perfection can only be described to us under different names, varying with the action of the divine Will. Towards sin it has the nature of Justice, and can only be described by that name. And yet this is only another phase of that infinite perfection which, looked at another way, is Love, verily such in name and in nature. Thus the atonement may be truly described as God's justice receiving satisfaction, according the full measure of the demands of an infinite wrong. It may also be as truly and more fully described as the last inconceivable effort of Infinite Love. Sin had produced an apparently irretrievable breach between God and man. There was not put forth a destructive vengeful effort of Infinite Power. At least not yet. But instead, Infinite Love, with Infinite Self-Sacrifice, gave itself. He who thinks that he is competent to gage and define all the results in the spiritual world of such a transaction as this, is confident indeed. We are content to believe

that it will take eternity to unfold them.

We may observe, finally, that Pearson's mode of stating this doctrine has something of an antique hardness. The present Archbishop of York, therefore, warns us that in this mode of treatment' there is the danger lest the atonement degenerate into a transaction between a righteous Father on the one side, and a loving Saviour on the other, because in the human transaction from which the analogy is drawn two distinct parties are concerned; whereas in the plan of salvation one Will operates, and in the Father and the Son alike Justice and Love are reconciled.' The student who desires to meet some modern phases of this doctrine may read with instruction the essay of the archbishop above referred to. And it is scarcely necessary to remind him, that in Butler's 'Analogy' 2 he will find the à priori objections against the appointment of a 2 Part ii. ch. v.

'Aids to Faith,' v. ii. 10.

Mediator and the satisfaction wrought by Christ effectually parried, and the right place which human reason may occupy in relation to the divine action accurately defined. The Thirty-first Article returns to the subject of Christ's death as the sacrifice for sin, and the subject will there receive some further notice.

NOTES ON THE TEXT OF ARTICLE III.

The present Article consists of the first clause only of the original Article of 1552. In that formula these words followed: For the body lay in the sepulchre until the resurrection; but His Ghost, departing from Him (ab illo emissus), was with the ghosts that were in prison or in hell (in carcere sive in inferno), and did preach to the same, as the place of St. Peter doth testify.' It must be confessed that we are happily freed from the obligation of maintaining such a comment on that passage.

It appears that controversy had been very busy with this Article. Hence the necessity was felt for stating it in more general terms. Foreign controversies in the time of Edward VI. are spoken of in a letter of Micronius to Bullinger, 1550.1 'The Churches of Bremen and the rest are strengthening themselves; but . . . they are disputing about the descent of Christ into hell, and about the allowance or prohibition of things indifferent. Marvellous is the subtlety of antichrist in weakening the Churches of Christ!' The diocese of Exeter also was harassed with controversy on this subject, as appears from a paper presented to Convocation in 1562 by the bishop

'Original Letters,' p. 561: Parker Society.

of that diocese: 1 'There have been in my diocese great invectives between the preachers, one against the other, and also partakers with them; some holding that the going down. of Christ His soul to hell was nothing else but the virtue and strength of Christ His death, to be made manifest and known to them that were dead before. Others say Thus your wisdoms may perceive what tragedies and dissensions may arise from consenting to or dissenting from this Article.' That this was not limited to the West, or soon appeased, is gathered also from a letter of Secretary Cecil to Archbishop Parker, 1567:2

'It may please your grace to receive my humble thanks for your care taken in the discreet advice given to me concerning the appeasing of the unprofitable rash controversy newly raised upon the Article of the Descent of Christ into Hell.'

OBSERVATIONS ON ARTICLE III.

If the space or object of this work allowed the discussion, it is manifest from what has been so far said that there is abundant scope for investigation into some of the darker passages of Scripture, and for statements of conflicting opinions. But we may well dismiss the greater part of these with the verdict above quoted from the great Cecil, 'unprofitable and rash.' We shall be content, as before, to give an account of Bishop Pearson's discussion of this Article of the Creed.

Three passages, says Pearson, are usually quoted as the basis of this doctrine. First, Eph. iv. 9. There are such conflicting interpretations of the expression in that text, 'the lower parts of the earth” (τὰ κατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς), that it cannot be relied upon as a proof.

2. 1 Pet. iii. 19, has been interpreted of a local descent of the soul of Christ to preach to the souls in hell. Pearson rejects this, as encompassed with difficulties. He takes the meaning to be that Christ by His Spirit spoke to the disobedient in Noah's days, as in all other times of the world.

Strypes' 'Annals,' ch. xxxi. 2 Strypes' 'Parker,' book iii. ch. xviii.