o suffered in
expiation of our sins." He does not say so. Finally, in the
intrepid speech that Peter made before the Jewish council,
referring to their wicked crucifixion of Jesus, he says, "Him hath
God raised up to his own right hand, to be a Leader and a Savior,
to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." How plainly
remission of sins is here predicated, not through Christ's
ignominious suffering, but through his heavenly exaltation! That
exaltation showed in dramatic proof that by God's grace the
dominion of the lower world was about to be broken and an access
to the celestial world to be vouchsafed.

If Christ bought off our merited punishment and earned our
acceptance, then salvation can no more be "reckoned of grace, but
of debt." But the whole New Testament doctrine is, "that sinners
are justified freely through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus." "The redemption that is in Christ"! Take these words
literally, and they yield no intelligible meaning. The sense
intended to be conveyed or suggested by them depends on
interpretation; and here disagreement arises. The Calvinist says
they mean the redemption undertaken, achieved, by Christ. We say
they mean the redemption proclaimed, brought to light, by Christ.
The latter explanation is as close to the language as the former.
Neither is unequivocally established by the statement itself. We
ought therefore to adopt the one which is at once most rational
and plausible in itself, and most in harmony with the peculiar
opinions and culture of the person by whom, and of the time when,
the document was written. All these considerations, historical,
philosophical, and moral, undeniably favor our interpretation,
leaving nothing to support the other save the popular theological
belief of modern Protestant Christendom, a belief which is the
gradual product of a few great, mistaken teachers like Augustine
and Calvin.

We do not find the slightest difficulty in explaining sharply and
broadly, with all its niceties of phraseology, each one of the
texts urged in behalf of the prevalent doctrine of the atonement,
without involving the essential features of that doctrine. Three
demonstrable assertions of fact afford us all the requisite
materials. First, it was a prevalent belief with the Jews, that,
since death was the penalty of sin, the suffering of death was in
itself expiatory of the sins of the dying man.12 Lightfoot says,
"It is a common and most known doc