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it that , as a part of natural religion , the forgiveness of sins was surrounded with too much uncertainty to be the source of any comfort , or the spring of any exertion in the human breast . But tha » t there are solid foundations of truth and justice laid for it , cannot , I think , be doubted : it seems absurd to think otherwise- For if the venerable attributes of the Almighty stood opposed to the forgiveness of the penitent ; if his holiness , for instance , admitted not of the exercise of his clemency ; or justice , in regard to the whole of his moral creation , forbade the extension of mercy to a part ; nothing could , nothing ought to prevent the punishment of offenders . In this
case , the Divine goodness would acquiesce in the execution of a sentence calculated to repress disorders , and establish the influence of just and salutary laws . It is most certain that the covenant of mercy would never have been offered to the acceptance of sinners , if it were not strictly consistent with the natural principles of equity and justice . That men were unable to make this application of them , is a proof of the weakness of their judgment , rather than of any inherent intricacy or difficulty in the subject itself . Yet this fact of the hesitation
of unassisted reason in regard to the forgiveness of the penitent , has often been adduced as an argument that the exercise of pardon is something extrinsic from the original plan of the Divine government , and that our Maker constructed his laws upon a principle
that would have consigned us to hopeless perdition , had not other provisions been made , by which the strictness of the original law was modified and , as it were , evaded . Nothing can well be plainer ( considered in the abstract ) than that creatures who are by nature ignorant and imperfect , are by their very constitution intended for a state
of trial , and therefore are of course proper objects of pardon upon repentance . It is true that when men have not enjoyed the blessing of revelation , their cruel rites have testified the fears with which their guilt has inspired them ; but shall we argue that their fears were just in their full extent , and that the authors of such odious modes of worship are to be consulted for proper conceptions of that holy Being m whom all venerable and
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all amiable attributes tmite ? Because poor ignorant Heathens , overwhelmed by a sense of the vagt and irresistible power of the Deity , from which their fear taugbt them to argue the existence of cruel purposes and severe vengeance , have gone into his
presence with every mark of terror and apprehension , and have sought to appease him by the immolation of innocent victims , and by the groans of their fellow-men inhumanly sacrificed upon their altars , are we to believe that God is really a Being of that implacable disposition , or that he
regards his offending creatures with that severity , which is by these disgusting rites implied ? God forbid . Reason overcome by fear might thus err ; but the voice of revelation speaks very differently . Witness that noble passage in which Micah reports the answer of Balaam the son of Beor : " Wherewith
shall I come before the Lord , and bow myself before the high God ? " &c . Nothing can more finely or distinctly express the impartial goodness of God than this passage . And the Old Testament abounds in passages that
express tke same sublime and admirable sentiments : so that the Jews appear to have been preserved from entertaining any of those terrific conceptions of the Deity , which have given so much disturbance to the other nations of the
world ; or at least if in any case they gave way to them they generally fell into Heathenism , which afforded rites of worship more expressive of such terror than any thing contained in the Mosaic ritual . For , however
burdensome , and even disgusting , some of the Mosaic ceremonies may appear , yet , when we compare them with the details of heathen worship , they will be found comparatively reasonable and becoming - , and a just examination of them will shew them to have been
framed on a model as rational and spiritual , as the crude , unformed dispositions of that stubborn and carnal people would admit of . Why even amongst the Jews , the doctrine of the
forgiveness of sins was still attended with difficulties , admits of the following explanation : Moses was not commissioned to publish the doctrine of a resurrection from the dead . And when men were assured of no other state of being to succeed the present , there was some force in the objection ,
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144 On the Forgiveness of Sins .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1821, page 144, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2498/page/16/
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