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 REMONSTRANCE AND COMPLAINT 
 
 ASSOCIATION OF FAIRFIELD WEST, 
 
 HARTFORD CENTRAL ASSOCIATION: 
 
 tO(;f;thf.r with the 
 
 REPLY OF THE HARTFORD CENTRAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE ASSOCIATION OF FAIRFIELD WEST. 
 
 NEW YORK ; 
 
 S. W. BENEDICT, No, 16 SPRUCE STREET. 
 1850. 
 
REMONSTRANCE AND COMPLAINT 
 
 ASSOCIATION OF FAIRFIELD WEST. 
 
 HARTFORD CENTRAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 TOGETHER WITH THE 
 
 REPLY OF THE HARTFORD CENTRAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE ASSOCIATION OF FAIRFIELD WEST. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 S. W. BENEDICT, No. 16 SPRUCE STREET. 
 
 1850. 
 
 DEC f IM2 
 

 
MINUTES. 
 
 The Association of Fairfield West met at the house of Rev. 
 L. H Atwater, in Fairfield, Jan. 8, 1850., at 11 A. M., to con- 
 sider the sentiments of Dr. Bushnell, as published in a book 
 entitled " God in Christ," and also the action of the Hartford 
 Centra] Association thereon. 
 
 Were present — Rev. Elders Nathaniel Hewit, D.D., E. D. 
 Kinney, E. Hall, D.D., T. Smith, L. H. Atwater, C. T. Pren- 
 tice, T. B. Sturges, L. B. Burr, I. Jennings, and S. J. M. 
 Merwin. 
 
 Opened with prayer. Proceeded to consider ihe subject 
 before us. Heard and considered several documents on this 
 subject by members of the Association. Voted, that these 
 documents be referred to a committee consisting of Messrs. 
 Hall, Smith and Atwater, to report thereon at an adjourned 
 meeting. Adjourned to meet at Stamford, at the house of 
 Rev. Isaac Jennings, on the 29th inst., at 11 A. M. Closed 
 with prayer. 
 
 Attest, Theophilus Smith, Scribe. 
 
 The Association of Fairfield West met at Stamford, Jan. 
 29, 1850, at 11 A. M., according to adjournment. 
 
 Wei-e 2>resent, Rev. Elders N. Hewit, D.D., J. H. Lins- 
 ley, U.D., E. D. Kinney, E. Hall, D.D., T. Smith, L. H. At- 
 V water, S. B. S. Bissell, T. B. Sturges, I. Jennings, S. J. M. 
 Merwin, G. M. Porter, A. B. Rich, and G. Hall. 
 
 Opened with prayer. Dr. Hall, in behalf of the committee 
 appointed Jan. 8th, made a report in the form of a Remon- 
 strance and Complaint from this Association to the Hartford 
 
Central Association. Proceeded to hear, discuss and amend 
 this report. The roll was called, and each member expressed 
 his views. Whereupon, it was Voted, that this Remonstrance 
 and Complaint be adopted by this Association ; that it be 
 signed by the Moderator and Scribe, and sent to the Mode- 
 rator of the Hartford Central Association. Adjourned. 
 Closed with prayer. 
 
 Attest, Theophilus Smith, Scribe. 
 
 The Association of Fairfield West met at the house of Rev. 
 Dr. Hall, in Norwalk, March 19th, 1850, at 11 A.M., to hear 
 the answer of the Hartford Central Association to our Re- 
 monstrance and Complaint, and to take such action in the 
 premises as might be deemed expedient. 
 
 "PFere present, Rev. Elders S. Haight, M. Mead, N. Hewit, 
 D.D., E. D. Kinney, E. Hall, D.D., T. Smith, D. Mead, L. 
 H. Atwater, S. B. S. Bissell, C. T. Prentice, T. B. Sturges, 
 I. Jennings, S. J. M. Merwin, and G. Hall. 
 
 Opened with prayer. The Answer of the Hartford Cen- 
 tral Association to our Remonstrance and Complaint, was 
 read. Whereupon it was FoterZ unanimously, that our Remon- 
 strance and Complaint to the Hartford Central Association, 
 and their Answer to the same, be printed, and that a copy be 
 sent to each member of the several District Associations in 
 the State. 
 
 Voted, unanimously, that we address a letter to each Dis- 
 trict Association (excepting Hartford Central), earnestly re- 
 questing them to meet and consider this subject, and let us 
 know the conclusion to which they come. 
 
 The form of the letter to be addressed to each District As- 
 sociation was read and adopted. 
 
 Attest, Theophilus Smith, Scribe. 
 
KEMONSTKAi\OE AiND COMPLAINT 
 
 Dear Brethren : 
 
 Our relation to you as ministers of neighboring churches 
 which have, from their origin, been united in the closest 
 bonds of fellowship with the churches which you serve in the 
 ministry, and that under the acknowledged principle — and for 
 more than one hundred years under the express stipulation 
 [as in Chap, IV. of the Heads of Agreement] — " That they are 
 most ready and wnlling to give an account of their proceed- 
 ings to each other, when desired for preventing or removing 
 any offenses that may arise among them ;" which principle 
 established among the churches must be regarded as equally 
 in force among their ministers ; — also our relation to you as an 
 Association united with you in the General Association of 
 Connecticut, — by which relation we stand or fall with you in 
 the esteem and fellowship of the churches of this country and 
 of the world, and by which we are so far held responsible for 
 acts of yours which may justly be held to forfeit that esteem 
 and fellowship, — these relations not only give us the right, 
 but impose upon us the duty, when we judge your proceed- 
 ings to be at any time greatly injurious to the truth in Christ, 
 to come before you with our earnest but brotherly Remon- 
 strance AND Complaint. From these relations, also, we are 
 under obligation to the churches, to the community, and to 
 God's holy Truth, not to be silent when our silence must ne- 
 cessarily be considered as our acquiescence in proceedings 
 which go to shield or to countenance destructive error. 
 
 We judge that such a duty is imposed upon us by your re- 
 cently published decision in the matter of Dr. Bushnell's book 
 entitled " God in Christ." 
 
The duty appears to us now to be urgent. The doctrines 
 of that book are not only spread abroad in the book itseh, 
 deriving no small celebrity from the celebrity of its author ; 
 but there has also been circulated a reiteration and defense 
 of its main positions under the sanction of honored and in- 
 fluential names. Communications are inserted in religious 
 papers having a wide circulation among our churches, either 
 vindicating those doctrines, or apologizing for them — at times 
 by impugning the faith of our churches — or raising questions 
 as to how it can be decided whether the doctrines treated of 
 in the book (viz., the Trinity, the Atonement, and Justifica- 
 tion.) are fundamental, or so far forth fundamental that any 
 manner of denial or teaching concerning them can be regarded 
 as heresy ; or whether we have any ascertainable standard 
 doctrines on these subjects, by which any possible doctrines 
 concerning the Trinity, Atonement, or Justification may be 
 adjudged heretical. One of these communications, purport- 
 ing to be from a minister of many years' standing in Connec- 
 ticut, declares his doubts concerning the truth of these doc- 
 trines, as held in our churches, and affirms, on his own know- 
 ledge, that many ministers around him are also doubting the 
 same. AH which things, with other considerations which we 
 have not mentioned, have caused us to fear lest the doctrines 
 of that book may be already gaining a dangerous ascendancy — 
 especially over the minds of the young — and preparing the way 
 for a wide-spread error, captivating to the carnal mind, but de- 
 structive of the faith, and ruinous to the souls of men. These 
 things have also caused ministers and churches abroad — who 
 are in communication with us — to doubt whether there is not 
 among the ministers and churches of Connecticut a serious 
 and wide-spread departure from the truth as it is in Christ ; 
 which doubts, in the continued silence of our Associations, 
 we cannot but regard as justifiable. Under these circum- 
 stances, the doctrines of the book now go abroad bearing the 
 sanction of your official decision, that you regard their author 
 " as holding whatever is essential to the scheme " embodied 
 
in " the formulas of the church," and that, in your view, "he 
 could not be properly or justly subjected to the charge of 
 heresy, or be denied the confidence of his brethren in the 
 ministry." Yet we fin?f that your " committee were unanimous 
 in the conviction," (and " all the members of the committee 
 acceded to the proposition " so to report ; which report w^as 
 read to your Association and accepted with the two other re- 
 ports,) that the book in question "denies that the following 
 are revealed truths, viz. : 
 
 " 1. That there is a real Trinity in the Divine nature." 
 
 " 2. That, anterior to the incarnation, the personality of 
 Christ was distinct from that of the Father." 
 
 " 3. That the end sought and achieved by Christ, in making 
 the atonement, was to cancel the penal claims of condemning 
 law, by voluntarily offering his own sufferings and death as 
 a sufficient satisfaction therefor, and so to redeem every be- 
 liever from further exposure to these claims." 
 
 Permit us to say, brethren, that when we consider the terms 
 in which the book denies not only these, but other doctrines, 
 which we hold as essential to Christianity, we are much 
 amazed and grieved at your decision. 
 
 We ask you once more to review with us the doctrines set 
 forth in that book. We give you a statement of the doctrines 
 which, as we believe, the book contains, with the passages 
 which contain them written underneath. We underscore 
 parts of these passages, to call to them your especial atten- 
 tion. 
 
 I. — Concerning the Logos, or Word. 
 
 The Logos, or Word, which was in the beginning with 
 God, [p. 145,] called elsewhere zAe Form of God, [p. 145,] and 
 which, at the incarnation, was made flesh, is a capacity of 
 self-expression in God, [pp. 187, 177, 145,] by which he can 
 
 [P. 187.] " By the Word, or Word of Life, that peculiar /^ower in the Di- 
 vine nature, by lohich God is able to represent Himself outwardly in the 
 forms of things, first in the worlds, and now in the human person" — " by 
 this Word of Life, God has now expressed himself." 
 
 [P. 177.] " Undoubtedly the distinction of the AVord, or the power of self- 
 representation in God thus denominated, is eternal." 
 
outwardly produce himself [p. 146.] In creating the worlds, 
 God only represents, expresses, outwardly produces Himself, 
 [p. 145,] first in the worlds, then in men, [p. 146,] and at the 
 incarnation, as God has before produced himself in all the 
 other finite forms of being, and as he has before appeared in 
 the human, so now, yet more of God is exhibited in the human 
 frrm, in the person of Jesus Christ, [pp. 145, 146, 147, 151, 
 152.] 
 
 [Pp. 145, 146.] " There is ia Goel, taken as the Absolute Being, a capa- 
 city of se/f-exjn'cssion, so to speak, which is peculiar — a generative power of 
 form, a creative imagination, in which, or by aid of which, He can produce 
 Himself outwardly, or represent himself in the finite. In this respect God 
 is wholly unlike to us. Our imagination is passive, stored with forms, co- 
 lors and types of words from without, borrowed from the world we live in. 
 But all such forms God has in himself, and this is the Logos, the AVord, else- 
 where called the Form of God. Now, this Word, the Form of God, in which 
 he sees himself, is ivith God, as John says, /rom the beginning. It is God 
 mirrored before his own understanding, and to be mirrored, as in fragments 
 of the mirror, before us. Conceive him now as creating the worlds, or creating 
 worlds, if you please, from eternity. In so doing, he only represents, ex- 
 presses, or outwardly produces Himself. He bodies out his own thoughts. 
 What we call the creation, is, in another view, a revelation only of God, his 
 
 fii'st revelation " " Now as John also declares, there was light, the 
 
 first revelation was made, God was expressed in the forms and relations of 
 
 the finite." " One thing more is possible that will yield a still more 
 
 eflulgent light, viz., that, as God has produced himself in eil I the other finite 
 forms of being, so now he should appear in the human." 
 
 " Indeed, He has apjjeared in the human before, in the same icay as He has 
 
 in all the created objects of the world." [P. 147.] " But there was yet 
 
 more of God to be exhibited in the Human Form of our race." " Now, 
 
 therefore, God will reclaim this last type of Himself, possess it with his own 
 life and feeling, and through that, live himself into the acquaintance and bio- 
 graphic history of the world." — " This is Christ, whose proper deity or divi- 
 nity we have proved." 
 
 [P. 151.] " But the human person, it will be said is limited, and God is 
 not. Very true. But you have the same objection in reference to the first 
 revelation, the Word, in the world." " Besides you have a special de- 
 light in seeing God in the smallest things, the minutest specks of being. If, 
 then, it be incredible that God should take the human to express himself, be- 
 cause the human is finite, can the finite in the world, or in a living atom, 
 express him more worthily, or do it more accordantly with reason .'" [P. 152.] 
 " For it no more follows that a human body measures God, when revealed 
 through it, than that a star, a tree, or an insect measures him, when he is re- 
 vealed through that. " 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 1. These representations of the Word and of the incarna- 
 tion appear to us to teach that the Word is no person in the 
 Godhead, but only a power, or capacity, viz. : the power of 
 outwardly expressing or producing himself; and that in ac- 
 cordance with this teaching, the Scriptures should not say 
 
" The Word was God," but " The Word was a power in 
 God." " 
 
 2. The passages referred to, as they stand in their connec- 
 tion, appear to us to teach that the Logos had as really ex- 
 pressed and outwardly produced God, in the world, (viz. : in 
 its rocks, rivers, mountains, forests, beasts, stars and storms,) 
 as in Jesus Christ ; and that God had before appeared in men 
 as really, though not in the same degree, as in Christ. Ac- 
 cording to the doctrine of the book, we do not see why it 
 would not be as proper to say concerning each mountain, 
 river, beast or man, " This is the true God," as to say it con- 
 cerning the Lord Jesus Christ. In our view, the book repre- 
 sents the works of God to be as truly the Godhead as Christ ; 
 the Word, which became incarnate in Jesus, having been be- 
 fore embodied in the material creation, and having been as 
 truly made flesh before — in beasts and men — as in Jesus 
 Christ ; the only difference being, that in Christ there is ex- 
 hibited more of God, [p. 147.] 
 
 II. — Concerning the Trinity. 
 The Trinity is a three-fold impersonation which appears 
 at the incarnation ; not an essential Trinity in the Divine 
 Being, but only a Trinity in the mode of representation, as 
 related to our finite apprehension, [pp. 147, 148, 175, 176. 
 As the power of self-representation in God is eternal, if God 
 
 [Pp. 147-8.] " Prior to this momenc, [the incarnation,] there has been 
 ho appearance of trinity in the revelations God has made of his being ; but 
 just here, whether as resulting from the incarnation or as implied in it, we 
 are not informed, a threefold personality, or impersonation of God begins to 
 offer itself to view." " In these three persons or impersonations, I only see 
 a revelation of the Absolute Being, under just such relatives as by their 
 mutual play, in and before our imaginative sense, will produce in us the 
 truest knoAvledge of God." 
 
 [P. 175.] " Do you then ask, whether I mean simply to assert a modal tri- 
 nity, or three modal persons ? I must answer obscurely, just as I answered 
 in regard to the humanity of Christ. If I say that they are modal only, as 
 the word is commonly used, I may deny more than I am justified in deny- 
 ing, or am required to deny, by the ground I have taken." " Perhaps 
 
 I shall come nearest to the simple, positive idea of the trinity here maintain- 
 ed, if I call it an instrumental trinity, and the persons instrumental 
 PERSONS. There may be more in them than this, which let others declare 
 when they find it." 
 
 [P. 176.] " I perceive, too, that God may as well offer himself to me, in 
 thesepersonSf as through trees, or storms, or stars." 
 
10 
 
 has eternally rev^ealed himself, then this Trinity is likely always 
 to have been, and in like manner it lyiay always continue to 
 be. Yet it may be, even as a representation, occasional and 
 to be discontinued, [p. 177. J The Scriptures discourage the 
 idea that it is to continue, [p. 177.] It is a trinity of repre- 
 sentation only, produced by a process of revelation, [p. 178.] 
 There is no original triad (or Trinity in the Godhead) back 
 of this that is so produced ; and people had better keep their 
 discretion than to seek for one. — [178, 179, 180.] 
 
 [P. 176, 177.] " Meanwhile, if our feeling is, at any time, confused by 
 these persons or impersonations, we are to have it for a fixed, first truth, 
 that God is, in the most perfect and rigid sense, one being — a pure intelli- 
 gence, undivided, indivisible and infinite ; and that whatever may be true of 
 the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, it certainly is not true that they are three 
 distinct consciousnesses, wills, and understandings. Or, speaking in a way 
 more positive, they are instrumental I y three — three simply as related to our 
 finite apprehension, and the communication of God's incommunicable na- 
 ture." 
 
 [P. 177.] "But some one, I supjDose, will require of me to answer, it'^e- 
 ther the three persons are eternal, or only occasional and to be discontinued ? 
 Undoubtedly the distinction of the Word, or the power of self-representa- 
 tion in God thus denominated, is eternal. And in this we liave a permanent 
 ground of possibility for the threefold impersonation, called trinity. Ac- 
 cordingly, if God has been eternally revealed, or refea/m^ Himself to created 
 minds, it is likely always to have been, and always to be as the Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost. Consequently, it may always be in^this manner that we shall 
 get our impressions of God, and have our communion with Him. As an ac- 
 commodation to all finite minds in the universe, it may be the purpose of 
 Jehovah to be known by this divine formula for ever. That which most dis- 
 courages such a belief is the declaration of Paul — " When all things shall be 
 subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that 
 did put all things under him, that God may be all, and in all." 
 
 [P. 178, 9, 180.] (After a citation from Neander.) " If now it be inquired 
 whether, beginning with a doctrine of trinity produced by the process of reve- 
 lation, and adequately accounted for as necessary to that process, I would then 
 turn to hunt for some " analogy" in myself, and try to climb up thus, through 
 myself, into a discovery of au original triad in God — convincing myself, also, 
 that John and Paul give • intimations' of such a triad, I frankly answer, 
 no. The expression of such a hope might comfort some who would other- 
 wise be disturbed, but it will only mislead a much greater number, who had 
 better keep their discretion. If God has given us an instrumental triad which 
 is good for its purposes of revelation, there can be no greater fraud upon it 
 than to set ourselves to the discovery of an original triad back of it, that has 
 no instrumental character, and has nothing to do with revelation. 
 
 [P. 180.] " This view of Christ and the trinity diifcrs, I am aware, in 
 some respects, from that which is commonly held ; but I hope the difierence 
 Avill not disturb you. I have known no other since I began to be a preacher 
 of Christ, and my experience teaches me to want no other. If it has delivered 
 me from agonies of mental darkness and confusion concerning God, w]iich,at 
 one time, seemed insupportable, it cannot be wrong to hope that God will 
 make the truth a deliverance, equally comfortable and joyful to some of 
 you." 
 
11 
 
 REMARKS 
 
 1. We regard these passages as teaching unequivocally, 
 that there is no Trinity in the Godhead. 
 
 2. According to the teaching of the book on the subject of 
 the Trinity, we see not why the representation of the scrip- 
 ture might not have been, — so far as the Godhead itself is 
 concerned — of a Quaternity as well as of a Trinity, a Myriad, 
 as well as of a Triad : nor why there might not have been any 
 number of Christs, as well as the one who is styled " The only 
 begotten Son of God." 
 
 3. As no real sacrifice, or work of atonement, can be per- 
 formed by a mere representation of a person, without the re- 
 ahty, it appears to us that this denial of the Trinity in the 
 Godhead, is necessarily followed by a denial of any real work 
 of Redemption by the blood of Christ. The doctrine of Justi- 
 fication by faith in that atoning sacrifice must, also, inevitably 
 be denied : as we shall see (hat both are denied in the book 
 in question. It is from this necessary connection of the doc- 
 trine of the Trinity, with the other fundamental doctrines of 
 Christianity, that the doctrine must needs become an article of 
 faith ; and is not, and cannot be, a point of mere speculation, 
 but becomes a doctrine in the utmost degree practical and 
 vital. 
 
 III. — Concerning the Law of God. 
 
 God does not, without the provisions of the Gospel, hold 
 every transgressor to punishment according to the letter of his 
 law. The law has no certain claim of punishment upon the 
 sinner, any longer than till he repents. It needs no atoning 
 sacrifice to satisfy its penal demands, or to vindicate the jus- 
 tice of God while he passes by the transgressions of the sin- 
 ner. It is a groundless assumption to suppose that it does so. 
 — [p. 198.] Christ did nothing to satisfy any penal demands 
 
 [P. 198.] "First, it [the more mitigated orthodox theory] assumes that, 
 as punishment expresses the uhhomnce of God to sin, or, what is the same, 
 his justice, He can sustain his law, <ind lay a ground of forgiveness without 
 punishment, only by some equivalent expression of ahhorrcjice — an assumption 
 that is groundless and without consideration, as I may cause to appear in 
 another place."- 
 
12 
 
 of the broken law, nor to vindicate the justice of God ; all 
 that he did, and all that needed to be done, was to make men 
 penitent. — [pp. 2 10-2 ID.] Indeed, if the doctrine were that 
 the Law, without the provision of the Gospel, holds every 
 transgressor to punishment, according to its declared penalty, 
 we should reason the doctrine away, and reject it as incredi- 
 
 [Pp. 216-219.] " But -what, in this view, some will ask, becomes of the 
 law and justice of God ? First, we have Christ, interrupting the flow of 
 justice by delivering men, or assisting them to deliver themselves from the 
 penal consequences of transgression ; from the blindness, bitterness, 
 DEADNEss, AND OTHER DISABILITIES IT PRODUCES. Sccondlj, there is made 
 out, or given to men, a confidence equally rejmgnant to justice, that God will 
 freely accept, embrace, and even justify the transgressor who forsakes his 
 SIN. Where, now, it will be asked, is government ? AVhat becomes of law .' 
 And since God's love of right, or, what is the same, his justice, was evidenced 
 by his law, and tlie penalties added to enforce it, what shall save the obliga- 
 tion of tlie law ; what, indeed, shall dis^Dlace the ambiguity that shades the 
 divine character itself? Hence the necessity, it is argued, of some vicarious 
 suifering, or expression made by suffering, that shall vindicate the law as 
 eftectiveiy as the penalties remitted would have done, and thus shall save 
 the moral rigor of God's integrity, in the view of his subjects. But, grant- 
 ing this, it does not follow that the new vicarious expression of God must be 
 made by a process equally vindictive with punishment ; or that God's abhor- 
 rence to sin must be poured out upon ChrisVs own person." 
 
 " If a vindication of God's law is wanted, in order to the offer of for- 
 giveness, it is wanted here, and for effect in this icorld. And if we nar- 
 rowly inspect the case presented, we shall be at no loss in regard to the real 
 ground of such a necessity. For it is even a fundamental condition, as re- 
 gards moral effect on our character, that, wliile courage and Iiope are given us , 
 we should be made, at the same time, to feel the intensest possible sense of 
 the sanctity of the law, and the inflexible righteousness of God. What we 
 need, in this view, is some new expression of God, which, taken as addressed 
 to us, will keep alive the impression in us that God suffers no laxity. In a 
 word, we must be made to feel, in the very article of forgiveness, Avhen it is 
 offered, the essential and eternal sanctity of God's law — His own immovable 
 adherence to it, as the only basis of order and well-being in the universe. 
 
 " As to the manner in which this desired restilt is effected, since it presents 
 the hinge question at issue betv/een Unitarianism and orthodoxy, I will 
 dilate upon it here as the gravity of the question demands. 
 
 " On one side, it is afiirmed that God could not forgive sin, either without 
 an equivalent suffering or an equivalent expression ((f abhorrence to sin made 
 Ijy suffering, in the place of 2nmishm€nt. On the other side, since this doc- 
 trine, in eitlier form of it, seems to involve something; offensive to our moral sense, 
 or repugnant to our' ideas of God, it is afiirmed that God, out of his simple 
 goodness or paternity, can forgive, and will forgive every truly penitent 
 sinner. Satisfied with neither doctrine, for the reasons urged by one against 
 the other, and, perhaps I should say, with both, for the reasons urged by 
 each in its own behalf, I venture to suggest, as the more real and reasonable 
 view, that, in order to make men penitent and soto want forgiveness, — 
 that is, to l<eep the world alive to the eternal integrity, verity, and sanctity of 
 God's law, — that is, to keep us apprised of sin, and deny us any power of rest 
 while tvQ continue binder sin ; it was needful that Christ, in his life and suf- 
 ferings, should consecrate, or re-consecrate the desecrated law of God, and 
 give it a more exact and imminent authority than it had before — this, too, 
 
13 
 
 ble ; so that it would have no verity, and, of course, no sa- 
 credness at all. — [pp. 228, 229.] 
 
 without a7iytlnng of peiial qualify in his passion, Tvithout regarding him as 
 bearing evil to pay the re/ease of evil, or as under any infliction or frown of 
 God, and yet doing it by something expressed in his life and death." 
 
 [Pp. 228, 229.] " This suffering [of Christ] is expressive, because it is in- 
 cidental to an effort to reveal the love of God, and bring the eternal life 
 into the closest possible proximity to our human hearts." — " If we look upon 
 it as the very end and aim of Christ's mission to recover man to God and 
 obedience; or, what is the same, to re-establish tlie law as a living power in 
 his heart; then, of course, everything he does and suffers, every labor, 
 weariness, self-denial, and sorrow, becomes an exj^ression of his sense of the 
 value of the law — every pang he endures, declares its sacredness. So that if 
 he offers pardon, free pardon, to every transgressor, we shall never connect 
 a feeling of license, but shall rather feel a sense of the eternal sanctity of the 
 law, and have a more tremulous awe of it in our conscience, than we should 
 if every transgressor were held to punishment by the letter of it. Indeed, if 
 that were the doctrine, we should reason away and reject the doctrine as in- 
 credible ; so that it woidd have no verity, and, of course, no sacredtiess at all. 
 Whereas, having seen, in the pains-taking, suli'ering life of Jesus, what God 
 will do for the practical establishment of his law, we are seized with a deep 
 and awe-felt conviction, that if we do not return to it according to his call, 
 there is yet something different that must assuredly follow. All this, you 
 perceive, without anything said of a penal quality, in the sufferings of Christ. 
 Ao evil is laid upon him as evil, by the Father, to be endured retributively. 
 He only suffers the ills that lie iti his way, and endures the violence that hu- 
 man malignity and cruelty heap on his head." 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 While the author, in these passages, confesses the necessity 
 of keeping up an impression of the eternal sanctity and verity 
 of the law, he teaches that this object is effected by a scheme es- 
 sentially different from that which God has revealed, and utterly 
 subversive of the great central and fundamental truth of the 
 Gospel. We regard him as denying the vindicatory power o{ 
 the law, stripping it of its sanctions, and leaving it mere ad- 
 vice, and no longer law. Indeed, he declares, that if God 
 were to instruct us that every transgressor is, by the power 
 of law, and by the divine justice, w^ithout the Gospel, held to 
 punishment according to the declared penalty, we should 
 reason avv^ay and reject such a declaration as incredible, so 
 that it would have no veritv, and of course no sacredness at all. 
 
14 
 
 IV. — Concerning the Fall. 
 The fall of man was, from the nature of the case, an a priori 
 necessity ; and, of course, a historic certainty. It was to be 
 expected that the soul, under a simple commandment of God, 
 would yield to the instigation of her curious nature, and try 
 the bad experience of evil. We accordingly look, reason- 
 ably and necessarily, for a lapse under the first discipline of 
 law.— [pp. 238-240.] 
 
 [Pp. 238-240.] " The first stage of government is the stage of law. But 
 law, taken by itself, can establish nothing. There is an a priori necessity, 
 and, of course, a historic certainty^ that the training of an empire of free be- 
 ings, and the final and complete union of their will to God, will require a 
 double adnmiistration." — " Under the first stage, that of commandment, the 
 soul makes her acquaintance with obligation, comes at the terms, so to speak, 
 of her existence, lays her hands upon the iron-fences of law that stiifen round 
 her. Will she keep within her inclosures .' If we speak of a naked possi- 
 bility, she doubtless may. But it will be wonderful if she does not some- 
 times yield to the instigation of her curious nature, and try the bad ex- 
 perience of evil. Or if she does not, if she stays within her iron inclosure, 
 only because it is iron, she would seem to be governed in the good she fol- 
 lows, by constraint; which can hardly be regarded as a state oif perfect vir- 
 tue — it is a prudential, and even a cringing virtue, more than a virtue of liberty. 
 
 " Accordingly, tuc look for a lapse, under this first discijjline of law. Feeling its 
 bars, as the bars of a cage, about her, the soul begins to chafe against them, 
 and so she learns the law — first, by attrition against it, and then by bondage 
 under it. This is her fall." 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 We regard this, 1, As setting forth the principle that a 
 simple commandment of God is, with holy beings, no sufficient 
 ground of obedience : but if left with this alone, and put upon 
 their simple love, faith, and duty, they are to be expected to 
 transgress : 
 
 2. As palliating the guilt of the fall, by representing it as 
 reasonably to be expected — an a priori necessity, arising from 
 a natural curiosity and irksomeness of restraint, which, even 
 in holy beings, naturally required a second administration be- 
 fore complete obedience is to be expected : 
 
 3. That for holy beings to obey God, simply because he is 
 God, and because, as such, he commands, is a prudential 
 and even a cringing virtue. The whole goes to teach men 
 lightly to esteem the Divine authority ; and to vindicate crea- 
 tures in rebellion against the law of God, until some other 
 further dispensation is given to restrain tliem, than the dispen- 
 sation of law. 
 
15 
 
 V. — Concerning the Atonement. 
 
 (yHRisTdid not die to redeem us from the penalty of the law. 
 He did not bear our sins in the sense of delivering us from the 
 penalty by his sufferings. His blood was not, truly, shed for 
 many for the 7-emissio7i oi^ s'ms. — [pp. 218, 219.] He did not die 
 a vicarious sacrifice, the just for the unjust. — [p. 189.] He is 
 not in that sense the propitiation for our sins. There was no 
 design of expiation, or of vicarious or penal suffering, in His 
 death. — [pp. 236, 237.] He did not come into the world for 
 the purpose of dying for us : that would have been ostenta- 
 tious and absurd. — [pp. 201,202.] If God could for one mo- 
 
 [Pp. 218-219.] " On one side, it is afiSrmed tliat God could not forgive 
 sin, either without an equivalent suffering, or an equivalent expression of ab- 
 horrence to sin made by suffering, in the place of punishment.'''' — [P. 219.] 
 " I venture to suggest, as the more real and reasonable view, that, in order 
 to make men penitent, and so to want forgiveness — that is, to keep the world 
 alive to the eternal integrity, verity, and sanctity of God's law — that is, to 
 keep us apprised of sin, and deny us any power of rest while we continue 
 under sin, it was needful that Christ, in his life and sufferings should, con- 
 secrate or re-consecrate the desecrated law of God, and give it a more exact 
 and imminent authority than it had before — tliis, too, without anything of a 
 penal quality iii his jmssiori, without regarding him as bearing evil to pay 
 THE RELEASE OF EVIL, or CIS Wider any infliction or frozen of God, and 
 yet doing it by something expressed in his life and death." 
 
 P. 189.] Clirist enters into human feelings by liis incarnate charities and 
 sufferings, to re-engage the world's love, and to re-unite the world, as free, 
 to the Eternal Life. To sum up all in one condensed and luminous utterance, 
 every word of which is power, God was in Christ reconciling the world unto 
 Himself. Tlie apostle says nothing here, it will be observed, of reconciling 
 God to men, he only speaks of reconciling men to God. Had he said, the 
 Life of God was manifested in Jesus Christ, to quicken the world in love and 
 truth, and rewiite it to himself, he would have said the same thing under a 
 different form. I am well aware that, in offering such a statement, as the 
 true doctrine of Christ and his work, I affirm nothing that is distinctively 
 orthodox, and shall even seem to rule out that view of Christ "as a sacri- 
 fice, an expiation for sin, a vicarioiis .siffc7ing, vfhich, to the view of most or- 
 thodox Christians, contains the real moment of his work as a Savior." 
 
 P. [201.] "Once more, it is to be noticed, as a law of expression, that 
 when evil is endured, simply and only for what it expresses, it expresses no- 
 thing. If a man wades out upon some mountain, in the snows of a wintry 
 night, to carry food to a perishing family, tlien what he encounters of risk 
 and siiffering, being incidentally encountered, is an expression of charity. 
 But if he calls upon us to observe his charity expressed in what he will suf- 
 fer, and, waiting for a stormy night, goes forth on the same expedition to 
 the mountain, he expresses 7iothing but ostentation. So if Christ comes into 
 the world to teach, to cheer, to heal, to pour his sympathies into the bosom of 
 all human sorrow, to assert the integrity of truth, and rebuke ' the wick- 
 edness of sin ' — in a word, to manifest the Eternal Life, and,bring it into a 
 quickening union with the souls of our race, then to suffer iNcinENTALLY, 
 to die an ignominious and cruel death rather than depart from his heavenly 
 errand, is to make an expression of the Heart of God, which every human 
 
16 
 
 ment lay his frown (or penal suffering,) upon the soul of the 
 innocent, He can be no such Being as the author of the book 
 in question has loved and worshiped. — [pp. 198-201.] No 
 governmental reasons can justify such a substitution of the 
 innocent for the guilty. If the great Redeemer, in the 
 excess of His goodness, consents freely to offer Himself to 
 the Father, or to God, to receive the penal woes, or some suf- 
 ficient part of the penal woes, in his own person ; and if the 
 Father accepts the sacrifice, then the Divine government, in- 
 stead of clearing itself, assumes the double ignominy, first, of 
 letting the guilty go, and secondly, of accepting the sufferings 
 
 soul must feel. And this expression may avail to sanctify the law before us. 
 even though there be no abhorrence expressed in his sufferings. But, if 
 Christ comes into the world, invoking, as it were, the frown of God, and 
 undertaking to suffer evil as evil, that he may express God's justice, or His 
 ABHORRENCE OF SIN, then he expresses 7iotfiing. The very laws of expres- 
 sion, if I understand them rightly, require that suffering should be endured, 
 not as suffering, or as evil taken up for the expression of it, but that the evil 
 be a necessary incident encountered on the leay, to some end separate from 
 expression some truth, benefaction, or work of love." 
 
 [P. 198-201.] "In the second and more mitigated class of orthodox opin- 
 ions, a very important and really true position is, at last, reached, viz : — that 
 the value of Christ's life and death is measured by what is therein express- 
 ed. Only it is needed, now, to go a step farther, investigating U'hat he ex- 
 presses — whether, possibly, it be not rather to accomplish these ends, and 
 that, too, icithout any imposition or endurance of evil in the jicnal form of 
 evil, any suffering or pain which is tender taken for effect, as being a direct ex- 
 hibition of God's justice, or judicial abhorrence to sin." 
 
 " The objections I have to that more mitigated theory, are these : — First, 
 it assumes that, as punishment expresses the abhorretiee of God to sin, or 
 what is the same, his Justice, he can sustain his law and lay a ground of for- 
 giveness without punishment, only by some equivalent expression of abhor- 
 rence — an assumption that is groundless and without consideration, as I may 
 cause to appear in another place. 
 
 " Secondly, this latter seems to accord with the former view in supposing 
 that Christ suffers evil as evil, or as a penal visitation of God's justice, only 
 doing it in a less painful degree ; that is, suffering so much of evil as will 
 suffice, considering the dignity of his person, to express the same amount of 
 abhorrence to sin, that would be expressed by the eternal punishment of all 
 mankind. I confess my inability to see how an innocent being could ever be 
 set, even for one moment, in an attitude of displeasure under God. If He 
 could lay His frown for one moment on the soul of innocence and virtue, 
 He must be 7io such being as I have loved and. worshiped. Much less can I 
 imagine that He should lay it on the head of one tvhose nature is itself co- 
 equal Deity. Does any one say tliat He will do it for public governmental 
 reasons .' JVo governmental reasons, I answer, can jtistify even the admis- 
 sion of innocence into a participation of frowns and penal distributions. If 
 consenting innocence says:—' Let the blow fall on me,' precisely there is it for 
 a government to prove its justice, even to the point of sublimity : to reveal the essen- 
 tial, eternal, unmitigable distinction it holds between innocence and sin., by declaring 
 that under law and its distributions, it is even impossible to suffer any com- 
 mutation, any the least confusion of jolaces. 
 
17 
 
 of the innocent. — [p. 19G.] It did not please the Father to 
 bruise him, and to put him to grief. — [pp. 228, 229, 230.] 
 When Christ cried out upon the cross, the Father had not for- 
 saken Him. — [p. 230.] Christ died only incidentally, with no 
 
 [P. 200.] — "According to the supposition, the problem here is to produce 
 an expression of abhorrence to swt, through the sufferings of Christ, in 
 PLACE OF another, through the sufferings of the guilty. Now, the truth 
 of the latter expression consists in the fact, that there is an abhorrence in 
 God to be expressed. But there is no such abliovrencein God toward Christ, 
 and, therefore, if the external expression of Christ's sufferings has no cor- 
 respondent feelings to be expressed, iv/iere lies the truth of the expression ? And 
 if the frown of God lies upon his soul, as we often hear, in the garden and 
 on the cross, how can the frown of God, falling on the soul of innocence, express 
 any truth, or any feelings of justice ?" 
 
 [P. 201.] " Thirdly, if Christ be himself, in the highest and truest sense, 
 the Eternal Life, God manifested in the flesh, then every expression of justice 
 or abhorrence to sin, -which is made by his death, as a mere endurance of evil, is in- 
 volved in yet greater obscurity and confusion." — " He is, in fact, theembodiment, 
 as he is the rei^resentation of God and divine Government ; he must be taken, 
 in all that he does, as something which is properly referable to God. No 
 theory of three metaphysical natures, called persons, in God, can at all vary 
 this truth. The transactions of Christ must still be taken as transactions of 
 God. The frown, then, if it be said to be of God, is quite as truly on God. 
 The expression of justice or abliorrence is made by sufferings that are en- 
 dured, not out of the circle of divine government, but in it. And thus we 
 have a government realizing its penal distributions or their equivalents ; 
 that is, i^s/ifs/ice, its significations of abhorrence, wholly within itself and 
 apart from all terms of relation, save as the subjects, so called, are to be 
 spectators ! Whatever speculations we may hold, in regard to modes of 
 expression, can we hold such a view of divine government without some 
 uncomfprtable suspicion of mistake in it .'" 
 
 [P. 196.] — "And if the great Redeemer, in the excess of his goodness, 
 consents, freely offers himself to the Father, or to God, to receive the penal 
 woes, or some sufficient part of the penal woes of tlie world, in his own per- 
 son, what does it signify, when that offer is accepted, but that God will have 
 his modicum of suffering somehow — if he lets the guilty go, will yet satis- 
 fy himself out of the innocent .' In which the divine government, instead of 
 clearing itself, assumes the double ignominy, first of letting the guilty go, and 
 secondly of accepting the sufferings of innocence." 
 
 [P. 229.] — -'But this, it will be apprehended by some, destroys the ivhole 
 import of such scenes as the agony and the crucifixion. It may require a different 
 construction of these scenes, but I hope it will not be too hastily concluded 
 that a different construction robs them of their sacred import and power. It 
 is imagined by many, that what is called ' the «go»(/' of Jesus, was caus- 
 ed by the penal attitude in which he found himself before the Father, and the 
 consequent sense of the desertion he felt." — [p. 230.] — " It was not that the soul 
 of the sufferer was racked, by a sense of the withdrawrnent of the Father. How could 
 the Father withdraw from so great excellence and purity, under so great a burden 
 of sorrow ? — what end could it serve thus tofcdsify his character ? — It is also re- 
 presented, by Luke, that an angel is sent to strengthen and support him — 
 sent by the Father to support him under his own displeasure ! Sometimes the ex- 
 clamation, which he uttered afterwards, on the cross, is made to assist the 
 interpretation of the agony also — ' My God ! my God! why hast thou forsak- 
 en me !' But this is only the language of intense suffering, an interjection, 
 so to speak, of anguish." — " To take this language of passion, this common 
 outcry of distress, and hold it in a cool, historic, or dogmatic sense, is to 
 violate all dignified laws of interpretation." 
 2 
 
18 
 
 thought of a penal quality in his death — [pp. 219, 228, 229.] 
 or of any divine abhorrence of sin exhibited by sufferings laid 
 upon his person. — [pp. 236, 237. J Everything done by Him 
 was done for expression before us, and thus for effect in us : — ■ 
 [pp. 236, 237,] only that he might enter into human feelings by 
 his incarnate charities and sufferings, to re-engage the world's 
 love, and to re-unite the world, as fi-ee, to the Eternal life — 
 [p. 189,] to set before us the value which God puts upon law, 
 by the import of His life taken in the simple aspect of a free, 
 faithful, loving obedience. — [p. 220, 227.] His work was the 
 
 [Pp. 228, 229.] — " This suffering [of Christ,] is expressive, because it is m- 
 cidental to an effort to reveal the love of God." — " All this, you perceive, 
 without anything said of a jKiial quality, in the stiff erings oi Christ. No evil is laid 
 upon him as evil, by the Father, to be endtired rctributively. He only suffers 
 the ills that lie in his way, and endures the violence that human malignity and cru- 
 elty heap on his head." — [See this passage cited more at length, under article 
 " Concerning the Law."] 
 
 [Pp. 236,237.] — " The effect depends, woi on any real altar-ceremony in his 
 death, but it depends, artistically speaking, in the expressive power of the fact 
 that the Incarnate Word, appearing in humanity, and having a ministry for 
 the reconciliation of men to God, even goes to such a pitch of devotion, as to yield 
 up his life to it, and allow the blood of his mysterious person to redden our 
 polluted earth." — " My doctrine is summarily this — that, excluding all 
 thoughts of a penal quality in the life and death of Christ, or of any divine abhor- 
 rence to sin, exhibited by sufferings laid upon his person — excluding points like 
 these, and regarding everything done by him as done for expression before us, and 
 thus for effect in us, he does produce an impression in our minds of the essen- 
 tial sanctity of God's law and character, which it was needful to produce, 
 and without which any proclamation of pardon would be dangerous, any 
 attempt to subdue and reconcile us to God, ineffectual. Meantime, it may 
 comport some to add, that he does by implication, or inferentially, express in 
 all that he does the profoundest abhorrence to sin ; for if, he will endure so 
 much to re-sanctify his law and renew us in the spirit of it, how intensely 
 gignified is the abhorrence of his nature to the transgression of his law — 
 more intensely than it would be by the punishment even of us all !" 
 
 [P. 226,227.] — " Regard him as coming under the desecrated law" — " 
 then consider the import of his life, taken m the simple aspect of a free, faithful^lov- 
 ing, unfaltering obedience — obedience unto death. And then, if the speculative in- 
 stinct rushes in to insist on the absurdity of obedience in a being whose nature 
 is essential deity, let it be enougli to reply that there is no being in the 
 universe, of whom obedience can be predicated in so vast a sense as of God. 
 For though God is under no obligations to another. He is yet under obligations to 
 goodness to devise, do, bear, forbear, suffer, all which the conception or idea of infinite 
 goodness and love contains. He is really under the same law of obligation that we were 
 under and cast off, audit is the glory and greatness of his nature that he de- 
 lights eternally to acknowledge this law. Christ is the manifested life reveal- 
 ing this everlasting obedience of the divitie nature. Jill that he does and suffers is but 
 an expression of the homage, rendered by God himself, to that ichich we reject ; and 
 the only object of his mission is to bring us back into a like free obedience to the 
 same lovely requirement. His poverty and patience, his weary, persecuted 
 life his agony, his cross, his death — exclude from these all thought of penal suffer- 
 ing or vindictive chastisement, regard him simi:)ly as thus supporting the 
 CALL OF DUTY, and signifying to mankind the self-renouncing and sublime 
 obedience of the divine nature." 
 
19 
 
 fulfilment of His own eternal obligation — in which, by 
 simply supporting the call of duty, and signifying to man* 
 kind the self-renouncing and sublime obedience of the di- 
 vine nature, [p. 227,] He aimed to bring us, by this example, 
 back into a like free obedience to the same lovely requirement ; 
 and incidentally he died rather than depart from this woi-k. 
 -[201.] 
 
 VI. — Justification by Faith. 
 
 1. The Object of the Faith. 
 
 2. Nature of the Justification. 
 
 3. The Ground of Justification. 
 
 1. The OBJECT of the faith by which the sinner is justified, is 
 not Christ as the Redeemer whose blood was really shed for 
 the remission of sins ; for no such sacrifice was rendered, and 
 none was needed, in order that God might be just, and the 
 justifier of the sinner. If God had accepted such a sacrifice, 
 it would have been both unjust and absurd, and a sufficient 
 ground for rejecting him as the God of our love and worship 
 [pp. 199-201.] [See under Atonement.] 
 
 2. The sinner has no remission of sins through the merits 
 of Christ's atoning blood : nor is Justification " An act of 
 God's free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and ac- 
 cepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness 
 of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone ;" nor for 
 any consideration based on any vicarious or atoning sacrifice 
 of Christ. If the sinner believes in such a sacrifice, and rests 
 his soul upon it, this is not believing and resting in the truth, 
 but in error [p. 268]. The sinner is to understand by the suf- 
 ferings and death of Christ, that God had proposed to express — 
 not penalty or abhorrence of sin, but — only his love, and what 
 God will do, without punishment and without the expression 
 of penalty or abhorrence, for the practical establishment of 
 his law. [See under Atonement.] Coming with this under- 
 
 [P. 268.]— " First, we have what may be called the Protestant form, which 
 takes the ritualistic side of tlie Gospel, the objective side, turns it into dog- 
 ma, and repeats it as a theoretic or theologic truth. And then though it 
 be no longer a truth, the/brm of a truth, and so far a divine power lingers in 
 it." 
 
20 
 
 standing to the spectacle of Christ's life and incidental death, 
 the sinner is to take courage and receive assurance, being con- 
 vinced that his terrors of the condemning sentence of the law 
 are groundless, and that visibly God is not the implacable 
 avenger his guilty fears had painted [pp. 213-21GJ. This 
 belief is saving faith [p. 214]. This assurance is Justifica- 
 tion [p. 214]. 
 
 [P. 213-216.] " An indescribable dread of evil still overhangs the human 
 spirit. The being is haunted by shadows of wrath and tries all painful me- 
 thods of self pacification. Vigils, pilgrimages, sacrifices, tortures, notliing 
 is too painful or wearisome that promises to ease the guilt of the mind. 
 Without any speculations about justification, mankind refuse to jnstify them- 
 selves. A kind of despair fills the heart of the race. They have no cour- 
 age. Whether they know God or not, they know themselves, and they sen- 
 tence themselves to death. If they have only some obscure notions of a di- 
 vine Being, then they dread the full discovery of him. If he lurks in their 
 gods, they fear lest their gods should visit them in vcngeslnce, or plague 
 them by some kind of mischief The sky is full of wrathful powers, and the 
 deep ground also is full. Their guilty soul peoples the world with venge- 
 ful images of its own creation." 
 
 [P. 214.] " And here, now, if we desire to find it, is the true idea of Christian 
 Justification. We discover what it is by the want of it. Justification is that 
 which will give confidence, again, to guilty minds ; that which will assure the 
 base and humiliated soul of the world, chase away the detyions of wrath and 
 despair it has evoked, and help it to return to God in courage, whispering still 
 
 to itself — soul be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee." " In short 
 
 he [Christ,] lives confidence into the world. Apart from all theologic theories, 
 we knotc, we see with our eyes, that God will justify us and give us still his 
 peace. And then, when we truly come nnto him, believing that Christ the Word 
 is He, when forsaking all things for him, we embrace him as our life, then are 
 we practically juslijied. It is impossible for us to fear. No guilt of the past 
 can disturb us ; a peace that passeth understanding fills our nature. Being 
 justified Ly faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 " Or, if we advert, in this connection, to the sufferings and death of Christ, 
 we shall see how these, without the imijutatiou of any penal quality or frown 
 of God upon his person, have a special efficacy in fortifying our assurance, 
 or hope of justification with God. Dismiss all speculation about the mode, pos- 
 sibility, interior reality of this suffering ; understand that God, having propos- 
 ed,.in this manner, to express his love, all logical, theological, ontological, phy- 
 sioioi-ical questions are, by the supposition, out of place. Come, then, to the 
 spectacle of Christ's suffering life and death, as to amystery wholly transcend- 
 ent, save in what it expresses of Divine feeling. Call what oii\\is J eel in g you 
 receive, the reality — all else the machina Dei for the expression of this. With 
 deepest reverence of soul, approach that most mysterious sacrament of love, 
 the ao-ony of Jesus ; note the patience of his trial, the meekness of his sub- 
 mission to injustice, and the malignant passions of his enemies ; behold the 
 creation itself darkening and shuddering with a horror of sensibility at the 
 scene transpiring in his death ; hear the cry of the crucified — " Father, for- 
 give them, for they know not what they do ;" then regard the life that was 
 manifested, dropping into cessation, and thereby signifying the deposite of 
 itself in the bosom of that malign world to whose enmity it is yielded, — Avho, 
 what man of our race beholding this strange history of the Word, will not 
 feel a new courage enter into his soul ? Visibly, God is not the implaca- 
 ble AVENGER HIS GUILTY FEARS HAD PAINTED. But He is a friend, he is love 
 And so great is this change, apart from all theology, that I seem even to see 
 
21 
 
 3. The ground of Justification is not the sacrifice which 
 Christ has made to answer the condemning sentence of the 
 law, but it is the righteousness which is prepared in us [pp. 
 254-258], Christ is not really our sacrifice or atonement, 
 
 anotlier character produced by it in the Christian nations. They dare to hope. 
 God is closer to them, and in a way to inspire courage. They are notimth- 
 ered, humiliated even to baseness, tinker those guilty and abject fears, that take 
 away at last the spirit of other nations. It is not that they have all a theory 
 of Justijication by faith, but that their current conceptions of God are such 
 as the history of Jesus, the suffering Redeemer, has imparted. They have a 
 feeling of something like Justification, even if they never heard of it — a feel- 
 ing, which, if it were to vent itself in language, would say — Therefore ii'e are 
 freely Justified by grace. It is not that the suffering appeases God, but that 
 it expresses God — displays, in open history, the unconquerable love of God s 
 Heart." 
 
 [P. 254.] " The moral propriety, then, or possibility, nay, in one view, 
 THE GROUNP OF JUSTIFICATION, is subjectively prepared in us; viz., in a 
 state or impression, a sense of the sacredncss of law, produced in us, by 
 Christ's life and death. But we cannot think of it in this artificial way ; 
 most persons could make nothing of it. We must transfer this subjective state 
 or impression, this ground of justification, and produce it outwardly, if 
 possible, in some objective form ; as if it had some effect on the law or on God. 
 The Jew had done the same before us, and we follow him ; representing 
 Christ as our sacrifice , sin-offering, atonement, or sprinkling of blood. Now 
 in all these terms, we represent a work as done outwardly for us, which is 
 really done in us, and through impressions prepared in us, but the more ade- 
 quately and truly still, for the reason that we have it in mystic forms before 
 us. These forms are the objective equivalent of our subjective impressions. 
 Indeed, our impressions have their life and power in and under these forms. 
 Neither let it be imagined that we only happen to seize upon these images of 
 sacrifice, atonement, and blood, because they arc at hand. Tliej' are prepar- 
 ed, as God's form of art, for the representation of Christ and his work ; and 
 if we refuse to let him pass into this form, we have no mold of thought that 
 can fitly represent him. And when he is thus represented, we are to under- 
 stand that he is our sacrifice and atonement, that by his blood we have re- 
 mission, not in any speculative sense, but as in art. AVe might as well think 
 to come at the statue of Aristides speculatively, interpreting its power by 
 geometric demonstrations, instead of giving our heart to the expression of 
 integrity in the form, as to be scheming ami dogmatizing over these words 
 atonement, sin-offering, sacrifice, and blood, which are the divine form of 
 Christianity. 
 
 [P. 255.] " It is only another aspect of the same truth, when Christ is repre- 
 sented, objectively, as our righteousness. As the sacred blood, yielded for sin, 
 stood in the place of a righteousness, in virtue of tlie impressions produced by 
 it, so also does Christ; and as the oSering^\'ns n liiurgic exercise of J'aith and 
 penitence, so likewise Christ is a power to regenerate character and restore us 
 to righteousness of life. What, then, shall we call him, if not our righteousness ; 
 tr.ansferring, again, what is only subjective, in us, and beholding it in its 
 objective source — that is, in the form of divine art and cxpres.sion, by which it 
 is wrought ? This is the true attitude o/ faith ; for if, in the utmost sim- 
 plicity, we thus believe in liim, if we take him, objectively, as a stock of 
 righteousness for us, and hang ourselves upon him lor supply, we can 
 scarcely fail to have his life and character ingrafted in us. We may take his 
 obedience as accruing to our benefit — we may see ottr righteousness in him, 
 just as we say we see our pity in things that we say are pitiful. If we go 
 farther, if we speak of his righteousness as imputed to us, it will not be ill. 
 
22 
 
 nor have we b} his blood any real remission of sins ; these 
 are only terms, as in art, transferring objectively to Christ, 
 the ground of justification, which is really subjective in us; 
 the effect of his death being not upon the sentence of the law, 
 
 in case we hold the representation as in art^ and not as a dialectic or dogmatic state- 
 ment. 
 
 " Or, adverting to the aifecting truth that Christ has come between us and 
 our sins in his death, we shall see our sins transferred to him, and regard him 
 as loading himself with our evils. And then, as if we had put our sins upon 
 his head, we shall say that he bears our sins, suifers the just for the unjust, is 
 made a curse for us. All those terms of vicarious import, that were generat- 
 ed under the ritual sacrifice, will be applied over to him, and we shall hold 
 him by our ftxith, as the victim substituted for our sins. And so, with the 
 humblest and most subduing confessions, we shall deposit our soul tenderly 
 and gratefully in his mercy. 
 
 [256,7, 8.] " Or we may take the general doctrine affirmed as the subjec- 
 tive verity of the Gospel, viz., that God is in Christ reconciling the world 
 unto himself. Then all the sacrificial terms, that represent jjacification loith God, 
 will come into application at once ; Christ will now be called our priest ans- 
 wering for us, our sacrifice, passover, lamb, blood of sprinkling. Here, too, the 
 word propitiation, as used (1 John ii. 2,) — a different word, in the original, 
 from that which we found in the third chapter of the epistle to the Romans — 
 will get its proper objective sense. Viewed thus objectively, Christ will be 
 a propitiation, a piacular, expiatory, vicarious offering, and, embracing him 
 in this altar form, there will be a simplicity in our moral attitude, such as 
 will favor the transforming and reconciling power of his life, as no attempt 
 to apply him artificially and reflectively would do — therefore with a more 
 certain and deeper effect. 
 
 " Or, if we are occupied more especially with the desire of purification, or 
 with present, actual deliverance from evil, and the new purity and cleanness 
 of our heart before God, we shall sjiea'f of Christ as a lustral offering that re- 
 moves our defilement, and declare that the blood of Christ cleanseth from all 
 sin. All things, we shall soj/, in our deep gratitude, are purged with blood, 
 and without shedding of blood there is no remission. 
 
 " You perceive, in this manner, and as a result of our experiment, that as 
 soon as we undertake to throw the elements of our subjective doctrine into an 
 objective representation, it passes immediately into the view commonly desig- 
 nated by the phrase vicarious atonement, only it rather becomes a vicarious 
 religion. And thus, after all, it proves itself to be identical, at the root, icith 
 the common Protestant doctrine — identical, I mean, not in any rigid and ex- 
 act sense, but in such a sense that one is a more didactic and reflective, the 
 other a more artistic representation of the same subject matter. There is no 
 
 conflict, UNTIL WE BEGIN TO ASSERT THE FORMER AS THE ONLY TRUTH OF 
 
 THE G6spEL, or to work up the latter by itself, into a speculative system of 
 dogma, or of moral government. If we say that Christ is here, reconciling 
 men to God, it is, for just that reason, necessary to have a way of representing 
 that God is conciliated toward us. If we say that Christ is a power, to 
 quicken us into newness of life, and bring us out of the bondage we are 
 under to evil, for just that reason do we need to speak of the remission of 
 sins obtained by his blood ; for the two seem to be only different forms of one 
 and the same truth, and are often run together in the Scriptures — as when 
 the blood of Christ, ' who offered himself without spot to God,' is said to 
 ' purge the conscience from dead works, to serve the living God.' The two 
 views are not logically or theologically equivalent, but they are not the less 
 really so on that account. An objective religion, that shall stand before me, 
 and be operated or operative for me, excluding all subjective reference of 
 thought, must take such forms, most obviously, as are no logical equivalents 
 
23 
 
 but upon us, making impressions on us, and working charac- 
 ter in us [p. 255]. So we call Christ our righteousness, 
 transferring to Christ, as in art, what is only subjective in us ; 
 the righteousness by which we are justified being not in Christ, 
 but in us [p. 255]. We only see our own righteousness in him, 
 just as we see our own pity in things that we call pitiful [p. 
 255]. In no other sense or manner do we see our sins trans- 
 ferred to Christ, or regard him as loading himself with our 
 evils. As if we had put our sins on his head, we say that he 
 bears our sins — suffers the just for the unjust. It is not so ; 
 he does not bear our sins, nor suffer vicariously the just for 
 the unjust ; but we are justified by actual righteousness 
 wrought in us through the impressions of the sacredness of 
 law and of the love of God, made upon us by the manifesta- 
 tion of the same in the life and death of Christ [pp. 255, 2G6]. 
 
 VII. — Objective Forms of Subjective Truths. 
 
 The objective form, if regarded as the truth, is not true [pp. 
 257, 268], the representation bearing no true correspondency to 
 
 of the same, considered as addressing and describing our internal states : for, 
 by the supposition, an objective artistic poiv/r is substituted for those methods 
 of address which appeal to consideration, reflection, and self-regulation." — " It 
 is the Divine Form of Christianity, in distinction from all others, and is, 
 in that view, substantial to it, or consubstantial with it. It is, in ftict, a 
 Divine Ritual for the working of the world's mind." — " The Christ must become 
 a religion fur the soul aud before it : therefore, a Rite or Liturgy for the 
 world's feeling, — otherwise- Christianity were incomplete, or imperfect." 
 
 [P. 266.] "If the soul, then, is ever to get her health and freedom in 
 goodness, she must have the gospel, not as a doctrine only, but as rite before 
 her, a righteonsness , a ransom, a sacrifice, a lamb slain, a blood offered for her 
 cleansing before Jehovah's altar. Then, reclining her broken heart on this, 
 calling it her religion — hers by faith — she receives a grace broadei* than 
 consciousness, loses herself in a love that is not imparted in the molds of mere 
 self-culture, and without making folly of Christ by her own vain self-appli- 
 cations, he is made unto her wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and re- 
 demption." 
 
 [P. 257.] " There is no conflict" [between this doctrine and " the common 
 Protestant doctrine"] " until we begin to assert the" [latter] " as the only 
 truth of the Gospel." [See the pasage under Justification.] 
 
 [P. 208.] " First, we have what may be called the Protestant form, yi\nch. 
 takes the ritualistic side of the Gospel, Mf' objective side, inrns, it into dogma, 
 and re-asserts it as a theoretic or theologic truth. And then, though it be 
 NO LoxGER A TRUTH, the ./o/v/i of a truth, and, so far, a divine power lingers 
 in it. I say a divine power; for this holy form of sacrifice is no child of hu- 
 man art or reason, but the body prepared of God to be tlie vehicle of his love 
 to men. But, alas ! the Protestant world have not been able to content tliera- 
 selves in it, or to think it sufficiently wise, till they have changed it into 
 
24 
 
 any thing real. It is only a form, or representation, or liturgy, 
 by which impressions are produced in us. Thus, there being 
 no real sacrifice, nor any real remission of sin as the effect of 
 sacrifice, and the atonement being no propitiation to the di- 
 vine justice, but a simple at-one-ment — having all its effect 
 upon us [see pp. 236, 237, under Atonement] not by any real 
 altar ceremony, but only by an artistic display — a liturgic 
 form [see pp. 252-255, under Atonement] for an effect in the 
 direct manner of art, — to turn these representations into dog- 
 ma, and represent them as realities, is to represent as truth 
 that which is not true [pp. 268, 257] ; and the Protestant 
 world, who have taught that these representations of atone- 
 ment and remission by the blood of Christ have a true corres- 
 pondence with any thing real, and so are the truth, have done 
 what they could to set themselves between God's wisdom and 
 man's want [p. 268.] Howbeit, there are beams of light yet 
 shining by them, and some, it is to be trusted, shine through - 
 inasmuch as what they set forth as truth, though no truth, is 
 yet a Divine Form — the body prepared by God to be the ve- 
 hicle of his love to men. The particle of truth which Pro- 
 testants hold, is no reason for their contending about the faith, 
 either with Papists or Unitarians, who also hold their particle : 
 — on the basis of this doctrine of objective forms of subjective 
 truths, Protestants, Romanists, apd Unitarians, may all unite? 
 universalize their feelings, and become brothers [pp. 269-270]. 
 
 dogma, and made it hianan ; in ■which, they have done what they could to set 
 themselves between God's wisdom and man's want. Still tliere are beams of 
 light shining by them, and some, I trust, shine through." 
 
 [P. 269.] " Secondly, on the left of this Protestant form, Tve have the 
 speculative or philosophic form."—" Under this, as one of its varieties, the 
 Unitarian doctrine is included. Nor is there any doubt that we declare 
 a great and real truth, -when we say that the reconciliation of man to God is 
 the sole object of Christ's mission." — " Reason is not confused and baitled 
 here, as in the Protestant dogma, but the altar of self-renunciation andfaitli, 
 she has taken down." 
 
 P. 270.] " Thirdly, on the right hand of the Protestant view, we have the 
 Eomish form, the form of the mass. Here the ritual, objective view, is all in 
 all — nay, somewhat more than all." — " We deal with blood, not as a symbol 
 to faith and feeling, but as a real and miraculous entity. But here, again, a 
 light will sometimes stream by the miracle, into the worshipper's heart — gen- 
 uine light from Christ our peace, and the Lamb that taketh away our sin." — 
 " Seeing thus how at-one-ment and atonement and thi: mass, all, lie about 
 the Christian truth, receiving something from it which belongs to its verity, re- 
 jecting much that is essential to its value and power, is it better to busy our- 
 
25 
 
 VIII. — Christianity Esoteric and Exoteric. 
 
 There may be a true Christian experience when one rejects 
 the altar form, both as a truth and as a form without truth [p- 
 264, 265]. It will add greatly to the comfort and true under- 
 standing of the preacher, if he has in liis mind this solution oi' 
 the form, viz., that it is art and not truth [p. 271], and prob- 
 ably the philosophic or subjective view (which rejects the 
 doctrine of vicarious atonement as a reality, and views it as 
 a liturgy or form of art) may be allowed to come into a some- 
 what more prevalent use among a cultivated, philosophic peo- 
 ple [p. 271], and in a philosophic age of the world. Yet such 
 people will, from their infirmities, continue to have some need 
 of the sacrificial or ritual view [p. 271] ; and the rude masses 
 would be much injured by the discovery that these represent- 
 ations are not realities ; and would make a sad figure in ap- 
 plying a gospel of philosophic causes to their own nature, for 
 they hardly know as yet that they have a nature [p. 267]. 
 
 selves for tlie next eighteen centuries, in quarreling, eacla for the particle of 
 truth lie lias, because it is a particle, or, to come back, in sbame and sorrow, 
 and receive enough of God's truth to enlarge our consciousness, iiniversalize 
 our feelings, and make us brothers :" 
 
 [P. 264.] " I do not say here, it will be observed, that no one can have a 
 true Christian experience, who does not find it in the embrace of Christ as a 
 sacrifice, or a vicarious religion ; I only affirm that no one ever becomes a 
 true Christian man, who docs not rest liimself in God, or give himself over to 
 God in objective faith and devotion, somehow. He may do this, regarding 
 simply the essential truth and goodness of God as revealed in .Jesus Christ!" — 
 " And here it is that the objective viciv of Christ holds a connection so profound, 
 with all that is freest, most unselfish, and most elevated in Christian experi- 
 ence. There may be a Christian experience where it is rejected." [p. 265 ] 
 
 [P. 271.] " An interesting question remains, Avhich I can only reply to 
 just far enough to save from misapprehension, viz., how ought Christ to be 
 preached ? Not, certainly, as a theory, nor in the half scholastic manner in 
 which 1 have here cxhiljited the Christian doctrine. I only think it will add 
 greatly to the comfort and true self -understanding of \\\q jjreacher in his works, 
 ifhe has, m/j(soR'>i»imrf, some such solution as this. Meantime, he is to preach 
 much as the Scriptures themselves speak, blending the two views of Christ 
 together. Sometimes he will be more in one, and sometimes more in the other. 
 Probably the philosophic, or subjective viciv, may be allowed to come info a somewhat 
 more prevalent use among a cultivated, philosophic jjcoplc, and in a philosophic age of 
 the world. But it must never exclude and displace the sacrificial or ritual view ; 
 for even the Christian philosopher himself will need often to go back to this 
 lioly altar of feeling,* and hang there, trusting in Christ's offering; there to 
 rest himself in the quietness of faith, getting away from his care and reflec- 
 tion, and his troublesome self-culture, to be cared for and clothed with a 
 righteousness not his own." 
 
 P. 2G7.] " I might speak also" — " of the sad figure that would be made by 
 
26 
 
 They want an altar, and at least a form of Christ's blood 
 sprinkled on it ; he must, though not in reality, yet in their 
 apprehension, bear their sins for them. He must be a stock 
 of righteousness before them, and be, in iact, their religion- 
 They, then, taking him by faith to he all this before and for 
 them, though, in reality, he is nothing of all this at all, — the 
 Divine Art hidden in it transforms their inner life, in the im- 
 mediate and absolute manner of art ; and seeing now their 
 new peace, not in themselves, where it is, but in God (where 
 it is not,) they rejoice that God is reconciled, and his anger 
 smoothed away ; being equally under an illusion in supposing 
 this last to be true as the first [p. 267; see 213-216, under 
 Justification]. 
 
 the rude masses of the worlil, in applying a gospel of philosophic causes to their 
 own nature; for they hardly know, as yet, that they have a nature. How 
 manifest is it that they want an altar, set up before them, and if they cannot 
 quite see the blood of Christ sprinkled on it, they must have it as a Form in 
 their souls ; he must be a stock of righteovisness before them ; he must bear 
 their sins for them, and be, in fact, their religion. Then, taking him, by faith, 
 TO BE all this before and for them, the Divine Art hid in it, transforms their 
 inner life, in the immediate, absolute manner of art ; and seeing now their new 
 peace, 7iot in themselves, where it is, but in God, they rejoice that God is re- 
 conciled, and his anger smoothed away. 
 
 "However, there is no such difference of class among men, that the most 
 cultivated and wisest disciple will not often need, and as often rejoice, to get 
 away from all self-handling and self-cherishing cares." — " The mind becomes 
 wearied and lost in its own mazes, discouraged and crushed by its frequent 
 defeats, and virtue itself, being only a conscious tug of exertion, takes a look 
 as unbeautiful as the life is unhappy. Therefore we need, all alike, some objec- 
 tive religion ; to come and hang ourselves upon the altar of sacrifice sprink- 
 led by the blood of Jesus ; to enter into the Holiest set open by his death ; to 
 quiet our soul in his peace, clothe it in his righteousness, and trust him as 
 the Lamb of God that taketh away our sin. In these simple, unselfish, un- 
 reflective exercises, we shall make our closest approach to God." 
 
 REMARKS. 
 
 According to this scheme, we are both justified and sanc- 
 tified, by embracing as truth that which is no truth ; and 
 though the more " cultivated and philosophic " might become 
 so even under a knowledge of the truth, yet it is essential to 
 the " rude masses " to be thus deluded. Accordingly, God 
 prepares a Divine Form, a form not corresponding to the 
 reality of things, and which, regarded as the truth, is not true, 
 by which, through an illusion — not to say deception — prac- 
 tised on their understandings, he moves their feelings to love 
 
27 
 
 and righteousness. This illusion is far more effectual than 
 truth ; indeed the rude masses would have made a sad figure 
 with the truth; and even the cultivated and philosophic stand 
 in much need of the illusion. God therefore persuades men 
 that Christ died to atone for their sins to his offended justice 
 and to his injured law ; but this is not so. He makes them 
 believe that Christ is the propitiation for their sins, and that 
 Christ is their righteousness ; but it is not so. Taught to ap- 
 ply to Christ "all these terms of vicarious import" [pp. 255- 
 258], they hold him by faith as the victim substituted i'or their 
 sins [p. 267]. Holding thus, by faith, to an untruth, under 
 the illusion — or delusion — that Christ bears their sins [p. 256] » 
 suffers the just for the unjust, is made a curse for them — 
 " with the humblest and most subduing confessions, they de- 
 posit. their souls tenderly and gratefully in the Divine mercy " 
 [p. 256]. Thus by Divinely prepared Forms, or Liturgic exer- 
 cises wrought before them, and by Divine Art hid in forms de- 
 void of truth, God converts and sanctifies the soul. 
 
 And, what is even more remarkable in this scheme is, that 
 Giod so deludes men by representations of vicarious suffering, 
 which have in them, "when speculatively regarded," that 
 which is " repugnant to the most saa-ed instincts or sentiments 
 of our moral nature,'' and which "dissolves itself at the first 
 approach of rational inquiry'' [p. 203]; and by which, if we 
 once regard these representations as true, he forfeits our es- 
 teem as the God of our love and worship [p. 199]. 
 
 Our Lord Jesus Christ says, " Sanctify them through thy 
 truth : thy loord is truth." No, says this book, sanctify them 
 through illusions. It will not do for the rude masses to know 
 the truth. Besides, " thy word " — in its representations of vi- 
 carious atonement, and as it is necessary to be understood by 
 the rude masses — is not " truth." 
 
 The Savior says, " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth 
 shall make you free." No, says this book ; truth cannot be 
 known ; language is inadequate to allow of any written and 
 external revelation which shall truly and intelligibly declare 
 the mind and will of God to his creatures. What we want 
 
28 
 
 is not truth, but iinprcssions from liturgies and forms of art. 
 Doctrinal statements of truth are mere dogma, fraught with 
 error and mischief. Ye shall not know the truth ; ye shall 
 receive impressions from Forms of Art, and embrace b}^ faith 
 things which are not truths; and error " shall make you free." 
 We had indeed read of some, that God should send them 
 " strong delusion that they might believe a lie ; that they all 
 might be damned who believe not the truth ;" and that for the 
 very reason, that they " received not the love of the truth, 
 that they might be saved."' But according to this theory, God 
 has beforehand prepared Forms of Art, to bring upon men 
 strong delusion, that they might believe a lie, and embrace it 
 with faith, that they might he saved. We cannot receive 
 such a scheme. We regard it as a corruption of God's holy 
 truth — a subversion of the most fundamental and vital doc- 
 trines of Christianity; as destructive of all confidence in re- 
 velation itself; in one word, as "another Gospel." 
 
 IX. Has Dr. Bushnell retracted amj of these doctrines? 
 Has his communication, embodied in the. report of the Ma- 
 jority, contradicted them ? 
 
 ■ We inquire, 1st, Concerning the Trinity. In that commu- 
 nication Dr. Bushnell says : 
 
 "I start with the conception of the One God, different, I 
 suppose, in no wise, from the one substance or homousion 
 of the Church, — which one God is developed to us, or becomes 
 a subject of knowledge under the conditions of a three-fold 
 personality. I take the three, therefore, in their threeness, as 
 distinct grammatical personalities, as thev are practically 
 employed in the Bible, acting and interacting mutually to- 
 wards each other, as the Bible represents ; only refusing to 
 investigate their interior mystery — believing that in such a use 
 of them, I receive in the truest and fullest manner the One 
 God. The Trinity and Unity as thus set forth, I constantly 
 preach in public, regarding it as necessary to the efficacy of 
 the Gospel, in saving souls. I love this Trinity, I live upon 
 it. Without it I feel that I could not work my mind and 
 heart in the private exercises of my own Christian life." 
 
 Is there here any retraction of what Dr. Bushnell has 
 
29 
 
 taught in his book ? It is not pretended that there is. Is 
 there here any contradiction of what he has taught in his 
 book ? Not even the shadow of it. Nor does it appear that 
 such was his design, or that he would allow it to be the fact if 
 it were so charged. The only difference is, that in this com- 
 munication, he has dealt in general terms, which in his book 
 he has fully explained ; and that explanation is, that there is 
 no Trinity in the Godhead, but only an instrumental Trinity, 
 produced and adequately accounted for by a process of reve- 
 lation,— a Trinity which, even as a representation, is probably 
 casual, and finally to vanish away. 
 
 The only thing insisted on in the report is, that Dr. Bush- 
 nell preaches the Trinity, and lives upon it in his Christian 
 experience ; just as he tinds it revealed in the Bible ; and that 
 a minister should be held responsible, not for his theories, but 
 for his preaching, and for holding the facts of the Gospel. 
 
 But Dr. Bushnell has set forth in his book, lohat facts, and 
 ichat Ti-inity, he finds in the Bible. Are we- to understand 
 that his preaching is contradictory to these ? or does his ex- 
 planation imply that his preaching is even different from the 
 representations which he has given in his book ? We see 
 not the slightest reason to suppose so. We regard the book, 
 therefore, as the true explanation of the more general state- 
 ments of the communication embodied in the report ; and we 
 have already declared, that in our view, the doctrine of the 
 book is a denial of the doctrine of the Trinity, as it stands 
 in the formulas of our churches, and as it stands connected 
 with the other fundamental doctrines of the Gospel. 
 
 We inquire, 2d, of the explanation concerning the doctrine 
 oi Justification hy Faith. 
 
 The communication inserted in the majority report is in 
 these words, viz. : 
 
 " I hold most emphatically the doctrine of Justification by 
 Faith, and that any and every form of religion which propos- 
 es to save mankind, on terms of merit or desert, is not Chris- 
 tianity. As regards the ground of Justification, I believe that 
 without something done, which in Christ is done, to declare 
 
30 
 
 the righteousness of God, and maintain the sanctity of law, a 
 free pardon offered to sinners would be nearly equivalent to a 
 dissolution of Government. At the same time I look upon 
 Christ as fulfilling the highest and principal office of his Mes- 
 siahship by means of the incarnation itself, that is, by the rev- 
 elation he makes of God's feelings towards us, in and through 
 the human state assumed, and the immense power he exerts, 
 or is to exert, in this manner, over our spiritual character. He 
 is then emphatically ' The Life,' the new-creating grace of 
 God — the wisdom of God and the power. To preach him in 
 this character, is my deepest study, and my in tensest love to 
 him centers here." 
 
 Now when one declares, in a formal explanation of his 
 views, upon their being called in question, that he holds most 
 emphatically " The doctrine of Justification hy Faith,'' he is 
 bound to use the terms. Justification and Faith, in their cur- 
 rent sense, as he knows they will be received by those whom 
 he addresses, and by the intelligent Christian community be- 
 fore whom that explanation is to be spread and have its effect; 
 that is, in the sense in which they are current among the or- 
 thodox churches, the orthodox ministers, and in the orthodox 
 standard writers and formulas. To use them in a sense fun- 
 damentally different from this, when they can exonerate him 
 from heresy only by being understood in the current sense, is 
 to pass off a counterfeit as current and genuine coin. 
 
 Does Dr. Bushnell then mean by the words " Justification 
 by Faith," what those words mean in their current sense, and 
 what they will commonly be understood to mean by our min- 
 isters and churches ? 
 
 If so, then he has retracted and renounced all that he has 
 taught on this subject in his book. If this be so — if your As- 
 sociation have received evidence that it is so — we shall 
 greatly rejoice, and only demand that the evidence of such 
 retraction be made as unequivocal and as public, as your re- 
 port, and as the book itself If this be not so, then we re- 
 spectfully submit, that our brethren of the Hartford Central 
 Association have inadvertantly accepted a spurious Justifica- 
 tion by Faith, instead of the true one ; and have been made the 
 instrument of passing off upon the Christian public, a Justifi- 
 
31 
 
 cation by Faith which the orthodox Christian pubhc have only to 
 know, to pronounce it spurious. If Dr. Bushnell has retracted 
 the doctrine of his book, on the subject of Justification by Faith, 
 it is well. If he has not, then we refer to those doctrines in 
 the passages which we have cited, in groof of the justice of 
 our conviction, that he does not hold " The doctrine of Justi- 
 fication by Faith," which those ternis currently represent, and 
 which they will by our ministers and churches be understood 
 to indicate : but that he holds to a Justification, and a Faith 
 — and to a Justification hy Faith — diametrically opposed to the 
 common orthodox doctrine known by that name, and utterly 
 subversive of it. 
 
 It is on this account that we regard the book as the more 
 dangerous, and the more reprehensible, — that while it denies 
 the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel, and substitutes in their 
 places dogmas which are contrary to and subversive of the 
 same, it still employs the loords Trinity, Atonement, Redemp- 
 tion, Faith, Justification, as though it were not denying, — but 
 as though it were inculcating, — the great truths which these 
 terms currently represent. In our view, therefore, it is not 
 by any deep " Chemistry of thought," but by a simple and un- 
 warrantable change of names, that the book proposes to fuse 
 down, and unite in one homogeneous substance, systems of 
 faith as irreconcilable as the doctrine of Christ and the doc- 
 trine of devils ; calling evil good, and good evil ; putting bit- 
 ter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. 
 
 We becj leave, also, to call vour attention to another im- 
 portant error — on pp. 97, 98 — viz., that a man is not responsi- 
 ble for his belief, whether he holds the truth or rejects it. 
 The passages are in these words : — " I suppose it is proper to 
 say, that I did not prepare the occasions on which these Dis- 
 courses were delivered, and seem scarcely to have chosen the 
 subjects themselves. Indeed, I seem, too, as regards the 
 views presented, to have had only about the same agency in 
 forming them, that I have in preparing the blood I circulate, 
 and the anatomic frame 1 occupy. They are not my choice, or 
 invention, so much as a necessary growth, whose process I 
 
32 
 
 can hardly trace myself. And now, in giving them to the 
 pubHc, I seem only to have about the same kind of option left 
 me that I have in the matter of appcainng in corporal mani- 
 festation myself, — about the same anxiety, I will add, concern- 
 ing the unfavorable judgments to be encountered ; for though 
 a man's opinions are of vastly greater moment than his looks, 
 yet if he is equally simple in them, as in his growth, and 
 equally subject to his law, he is responsible only in the same 
 degree, and ought not, in fact, to suffer any greater concern 
 about their reception, than about the judgments passed ujjon 
 his person." 
 
 We also call your attention to the views of the author 
 of the book on the subject of Creeds, — on p. 82 — viz. : " Per- 
 haps it is on this account that I have never been able to sym- 
 pathize at all with the abundant protesting of the New Eng- 
 land Unitarians against Creeds. So far from suffering even 
 the least consciousness of constraint, or op)pression, under any 
 creed', I have been readier to accept as great a number as fell 
 in my way: for when they are subjected to the deepest 
 chemistry of thought, that which descends to the point of re- 
 lationship between the fortn of the truth and its interior 
 forjnless nature, they become, thereupon, so elastic, and run 
 so freely into each other, that one seldom need have any dif- 
 ficulty in accepting as many as are offered hitji." 
 
 We deem that we might justly advert to other important 
 matters contained in the book : its views of language, which 
 we view as teaching men lightly to regard the difference be- 
 tween truth and error, and as impugning the sincerity and 
 sufficiency of the revelation given to us by God ; its teachings 
 with regard to inspiration, and its implication relative to the 
 renewing of the Holy Ghost, whose essential personality the 
 book denies. We, however, waive all consideration of these 
 topics further than to request you, — if you shall see cause to 
 reconsider your doings — to give to these matters the attention 
 which their importance demands. 
 
 Such, in our view, is the scheme of doctrine to which your 
 decision has given your sanction, as not inconsistent with the 
 
33 
 
 faith of our churches so far as justly to subject one who teaches 
 it even to a trial for heresy. In our view, so far as these doc- 
 trines shall prevail, the Gospel of Christ will be as prevalently 
 rejected and trodden down. If they pass among us not only 
 without ecclesiastical censure, but with, an express ecclesiasti- 
 cal allowance, — and if our churches and associations shall, by 
 their silence, acquiesce in such a decision, — then a good stand- 
 ing in the church, and in the ministry among us, ought not, in 
 our view, to be any longer regarded as even prima facie evi- 
 dence of soundness in the faith : nor could we, in such an 
 event, desire that it should be so considered by the orthodox 
 churches in our land. Such a wide-spread indifference to the 
 truth we should regard as a matter greatly to be deplored. 
 And now, brethren, with all due affection and esteem, arro- 
 gating to ourselves no superiority or authority, and wishing 
 you grace, mercy, and peace through Jesus Christ our Lord, 
 we make to you this our respectful but earnest Remonstrance 
 AND Complaint. We entreat you to reconsider your doings, 
 and to redress the injury, which, as we believe, you have in- 
 advertently done to our churches, to the truth, to the cause of 
 salvation, and to our Lord Jesus Christ, the adorable Re- 
 deemer who bought us with his blood. 
 
 Edwin Hall, Moderator. 
 
 Theophilus Smith, Scribe. 
 
34 
 
 THE REPLY, 
 
 " Hartford, March 6, 1850. 
 To THE Members of the Fairfield West Association : 
 
 Drar Brethren : — A special meeting of the Hartford 
 Central Association was held in Hartford, at the house of the 
 Rev. Mr. Clarke, on Tuesday, March 5th, to entertain your 
 Remonstrance and Complaint in reference to the action of 
 Association upon the book of Dr. Bushnell, entitled " God in 
 Christ." Present — Rev. Messrs. Robbins, D.D., Porter, 
 D.D., Hawes, D.D., Bushnell, U.D., Scranton, Bartlet, Spring, 
 Hempsted, Woodruff, Seward, W. Wright, Richardson, 
 Clarke, Patton, McLean, Raymond, Searle, Grant, and J. L. 
 Wright. 
 
 The following resolutions were passed, and the undersigned 
 were appointed a committee to transmit them to the Mode- 
 rator of your Association. 
 
 D. M. Seward, Moderator 
 
 of Hartford Central Ass'n. 
 
 John A. Hempsted, Scribe. 
 
 R esolutions. 
 
 "Resolved, That we acknowledge the receipt of a Remon- 
 strance and Complaint from our brethren of Fairfield Asso- 
 ciation, on the subject of our decision respecting tlie publica- 
 tion of Dr. Bushnell, entitled "God in Christ;" that we grate- 
 fully accept their fraternal admonitions, and sympathize with 
 them in their attachment to those doctrines of the Gospel 
 which have been supposed to be controverted in the above- 
 mentioned publication. 
 
35 
 
 " Resolved, That, having carefully examined 'the book of 
 Dr. Bushnell, and heard his vindication of himself against the 
 charges of heresy brought against him from various quarters, 
 and, after solemn deliberation, come to the conclusion of 
 whicji our brethren complain, we cannot, with all our respect 
 for their judgment, think it consistent with the established 
 rules of judicial proceedings, or with justice to ourselves or to 
 Dr. Bushnell, to review that decision, or institute a new in- 
 vestigation of the case, until new evidence of a decisive cha- 
 racter shall be presented to us. 
 
 "Resolved, That we have carefully considered the statements 
 and arguments presented to us by the Fairfield West Associa- 
 tion ; that in making up our decision we allowed greater 
 weight to the statement of Dr. Bushnell, as published in con- 
 nection with it, than our brethren of that Association appear 
 to be willing to allow it ; and that we protest against the con- 
 clusion that we give our sanction to any peculiarities of Dr. 
 Bushnell's scheme of doctrine." 
 
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