FOOTNOTE:
[Y] From a scriptural small work, with the style and spirit of which we are much pleased, “The Transfiguration,” an exposition of Matt. xvii. i. 8, by the rev. Daniel Bagot, B.D., minister of St. James’ chapel, Edinburgh, and chaplain to the right hon. the earl of Kilmorry. Edinburgh, Johnstone: London, Whittaker, Nisbet: Dublin, Curry, jun., Robertson.
The Cabinet.
No Salvation without an Atonement.—But let me turn your attention to the sad effect which a denial of the Saviour’s Deity has upon the prospects of man for eternity. It is a truth written, as with a sunbeam, upon every page of scripture, that man is by nature a fallen, a guilty, a condemned creature, obnoxious to the righteous judgment of God. We are told, that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked;”—that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God:” Jehovah himself is represented as looking down from heaven upon the children of men, to investigate their characters with that omniscient ken by which he explores the utmost boundaries of the illimitable universe, and pronouncing this solemn verdict—“There is none righteous; no, not one:” and the apostle Paul, when reminding the Ephesian church of their past unregenerate condition, says that they were “children of wrath, even as others.” If man, then, be in a guilty and condemned state by nature, it is an awful and important question, how shall he obtain pardon and justification with God, on account of his past transgressions? and how shall his sinful and unholy nature be sanctified and prepared for admission into the realms of everlasting glory? Can personal repentance, on the part of the sinner, obliterate the crime of which he has been guilty, so as to reinstate him into the condition of a sinless and unfallen being? Unquestionably not. For whatever act has been performed by God, or angels, or by man, must remain for ever written upon the pages of eternity, never to be erased; and, therefore, no subsequent repentance on the sinner’s part, no tears of sorrow or contrition, can ever blot out his past transgressions; nor even could the united tears of angels erase the record of those offences for which man is brought in guilty before God! Can, then, subsequent obedience achieve the work of the sinner’s justification? This, alas! will prove as ineffectual as repentance; for though we should render to God a perfect obedience for the remainder of our lives, still the sin we have committed is sufficient to procure our conviction and condemnation; for the wages of sin is death! Shall we, then, have recourse to the abstract mercy of God, as the foundation upon which to rest our hope of pardon? This is the Unitarian’s plea: “I believe,” he says, “that God is merciful; and I repose in his kindness, and trust he will have compassion on me.” Alas, my friends! it was bad enough that Mr. Porter should have yesterday adopted the algebraic principle of neutralizing one text of scripture by another; but to carry up this principle to a contemplation of the character of God, and to bring it into collision with the attributes of Jehovah, and thus to set his mercy against his justice—his compassion against his truth—his grace against his holiness, and thereby to neutralize and annihilate one class of attributes by another, is a guilt that is direful, blasphemous, and indescribable.—From speech of the Rev. Daniel Bagot, at the Belfast Unitarian [Socinian] discussion.