[7] Tracts for the Times, No. IV. p. 5.
[8] Ibid., No. V. pp. 9, 10.
[9] Archbishop Whately, speaking of the word ἱερευς and its meaning, says: "This is an office assigned to none under the Gospel scheme, except the one great High-Priest, of whom the Jewish priests were types." (Elements of Logic. Appendix: Note on the word "Priest.") Of the "Gospel scheme" this is quite true; of the Church-of-England scheme it is not. There lies before me Duport's Greek version of the Prayer-Book and Offices of the Anglican Church: and turning to the Communion Service, I find the officiating clergyman called ἱερευς throughout. The absence of this word from the records of the primitive Gospel, and its presence in the Prayer-Book, is perfectly expressive of the difference in the spirit of the two systems;—the difference between the Church with, and the "Christianity without Priest."
[10] See Rom. vi. 2-4: "How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." Mr. Locke observes of "St. Paul's argument," that it "is to show in what state of life we ought to be raised out of baptism, in similitude and conformity to that state of life Christ was raised into from the grave." See also Col. ii. 12: "Ye are ... buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead." The force of the image clearly depends on the sinking and rising in the water.
[11] Mr. Dalton's Lecture on the Eternity of Future Rewards and Punishments, p. 760.
[12] Mr. Dalton's Lecture, p. 760.
[13] See Rev. II. M'Neile's Lecture, The Proper Deity of our Lord the only Ground of Consistency in the Work of Redemption, pp. 339, 340.
[14] "Either he" ("the Deity of the Unitarians") "must show no mercy, in order to continue true; or he must show no truth, in order to exercise mercy. If he overlook man's guilt, admit him to the enjoyment of his favor, and proceed by corrective discipline to restore his character, he unsettles the foundations of all equitable government, obliterates the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong, spreads consternation in heaven, and proclaims impunity in hell. Such a God would not be worth serving. Such tenderness, instead of inspiring filial affection, would lead only to reckless contempt."—Mr. M'Neile's Lecture, p. 313.
Surely this is a description, not of the Unitarian, but of the Lecturer's own creed. It certainly is no part of his opponents' belief, that God first admits the guilty to his favor, and then "proceeds" "to restore his character." This arrangement, by which pardon precedes moral restoration, is that feature in the Orthodox theory of the Divine dealings against which Unitarians protest, and which Mr. M'Neile himself insists upon as essential throughout his Lecture. "We think," he says, "that before man can be introduced to the only true process of improvement, he must first have forgiveness of his guilt." What is this "first" step, of pardon, but an "overlooking of man's guilt"; and what is the second, of "sanctification," but a "restoring of character"; whether we say by "corrective discipline," or the "influence of the Holy Spirit," matters not. Is it said that the guilt is not overlooked, if Christ endured its penalty? I ask, again, whether justice regards only the infliction of suffering, or its quantity, without caring about its direction? Was it impossible for the stern righteousness of God freely to forgive the penitent? And how was the injustice of liberating the guilty mended by the torments of the innocent? Here is the verdict against sin: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." And how is this verdict executed? The soul that had sinned does not die; and one "that knew no sin" dies instead. And this is called a divine union of truth and mercy; being the most precise negation of both, of which any conception can be formed. First, to hang the destinies of all mankind upon a solitary volition of their first parents, and then let loose a diabolic power on that volition to break it down; to vitiate the human constitution in punishment for the fall, and yet continue to demand obedience to the original and perfect moral law; to assert the absolute inflexibility of that holy law, yet all the while have in view for the offenders a method of escape, which violates every one of its provisions, and makes it all a solemn pretence; to forgive that which is in itself unpardonable, on condition of the suicide of a God, is to shock and confound all notions of rectitude, without affording even the sublimity of a savage grandeur. This will be called "blasphemy"; and it is so; but the blasphemy is not in the words, but in the thing.
Unitarians are falsely accused of representing God as "overlooking man's guilt." They hold, that no guilt is overlooked till it is eradicated from the soul; and that pardon proceeds pari passu with sanctification.