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Sir , IS it permitted to an anxious and ( I trust ) sincere inquirer after religious truth , to submit to the advocates of Uiritarianism a few difficulties which embarrass him in their
explication of the Christian doctrine of Atonement ; a solution of which he should be much gratified to obtain through the medium of your highly respectable publication ? Unitarians ( I believe ) reject the Orthodox doctrine of the Atonement ,
because they conceive that it is totally inconsistent with the justice and equity of the Supreme Being to * punish sin in a surety ; and appoint such a way of salvation as requires an innocent person to suffer in order that the guilty may go unpunished /* And it must be allowed that such conduct is
directly opposed to all our ideas of justice . Yet they allow that Christ did actually suffer for our benefit : — that by his death , " not as the suffering of a substitute but as the seal and ratification of a better covenant /* ( vide Improved Ver . Matt . xx . 28 , ) we are ransomed or delivered from the
power of sin , and consequently from final perdition . Now , 1 . Is it not as inconsistent with the justice and equity of God to permit that an innocent person should suffer
for the benefit of a criminal , as that he should suffer in his stead ? Or , if the injustice in the former case be not as great ( in degree ) as in the latter , is it not equally an injustice ?
2 . Does not the moral government of the world present similar instances of seeming injustice , —nay , even of vicarious sufferings ? " Men by their follies" ( says Bishop Butler ) " rua themselves into extreme distress , which would be fatal to them were it
not for the assistance of others - God commands by the law of nature that we should afford them this assistance in many cases where we cannot do it without very great pains , and labour and sufferings to ourselves : and we
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see in what a variety of ways the personal sufferings of one contribute to the relief of another ... * so ttwtf ; vicarious punishment is a providential
employment of every day ' s experience /' ( Analogy of Nat . and Rev . Religion , Pt . II . 2 . ) Are not children often punished ( and that before they have done either good or evil ) for the sins of their parents ?
3 . Is not the whole animal creation , though iunocent of moral guilt , made subject to pain and death ? If , then , Unitarians admit that the world is under the moral government of a holy and just Being , notwithstanding those seeming anomalies in
its administration , why should they reject the Orthodox doctrine of Atonement ( certainly the raost agreeable to the language of Scripture ) on account of similar anomalies , which we find it impossible to reconcile with our notions of the justice and equity of the Almighty ?
As these objections , which I have endeavoured to state as briefly as possible , have been often urged , it is not impossible but that they have been satisfactorily answered by some of the able defenders of Unitarian
sentiments ; in which case it would answer every object which the writer of this has in view , if some of your contributors would point out in what publications they are to be met with , and where they are to be procured . Note . Would it not be
advantageous to the cause of truth , ( on which ever side it may rest , ) if the principal works in defence of Unitarianism were presented to the National Library at the British Museum ? At present only a few of them are to be found in its catalogue , while ail that
has been written against it are mus tered on its shelves . 'EEcTaryq .
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Sir , Penzancc . f i ^ HE occasional , and in some cir-JL cumstances , even the habitual attendance of Unitarians on the religious services of the Establishment would be a matter of more doubtful
propriety than it now is , if that Establishment were more consistently Tri * nitarian . But , for a just view of the Liturg y of the Ohurrli of England in
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D \ fficuUie $ in Unitarian Scheme of Atonement . 539
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Nothing is wanting but a wiLt . " fEdtmrds , as re / J Nature and ex * perience , reason and revelation , combine to say , " It is GOD that worketh in you , both to will and to do , of his good pleasure . " A CALVINIST .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1824, page 539, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2528/page/27/
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