there would have followed a deliverance ipso facto for the release immediately follows the payment of the same and it had been injustice to have required any thing further in order to the discharge of the Offender when strict and full payment had been made of what was in the obligation But we see that Faith and Repentance and the consequences of those two are made conditions on our parts in order to the enjoying the benefit of what Christ hath procured So that the release is not immediate upon the payment but depends on a new contract made in consideration of what Christ hath done and suffered for us If it be said That by Christ's payment we become his and he requires these conditions of us besides the contrariety of it to the Scriptures which make the conditions to be required by him to whom the payment was made we are to consider that these very persons assert that Christ paid all for us and in our name and stead so that the payment by Christ was by a substitution in our room and if he paid the same which the Law required the benefit must immediately accrue to those in whose name the debt was paid For what was done in the name of another is all one to the Creditor as if it had been done by the Debtor himself But above all things it is impossible to reconcile the freeness of remission with the full payment of the very same which was in the obligation Neither will it serve to say That though it was not free to Christ yet it was to us For the satisfaction and remission must respect the same person for Christ did not pay for himself but for us neither could the remission be to him Christ therefore is not consider'd in his own name but as acting in our stead so that what was free to him must be to us what was exactly paid by him it is all one as if it had been done by us so that it is impossible the same debt should be fully paid and freely forgiven Much less will it avoid the difficulty in this case to say That it was a refusable payment for it being supposed to be the very same it was not in justice refusable and however not in equity if it answer the intention of the Law as much as the suffering of the offenders had done and the more it doth that the less refusable it is And although God himself found out the way that doth not make the pardon free but the designation of the person who was to pay the debt Thus when our Adversaries dispute against this opinion no wonder if they do it successfully but this whole opinion is built upon a mistake that satisfaction must be the payment of the very same which while they contend for they give our Adversaries too great an advantage and make them think they triumph over the Faith of the Church when they do it only over the mistake of some particular persons But the foundation of this mistake lies in the consideration of punishment under the notion of debts and that satisfaction therefore must be by strict payment in rigor of Law but how great that mistake is will appear in the subsequent discourse But it cannot but be wondred at that the very same persons who consider sins as debts which must be strictly satisfied for do withal contend for the absolute necessity of this satisfaction whereas Socinus his Arguments would hold good if sins were only considered as debts and God as the mere Creditor of punishment he might as freely part with his own right without satisfaction as any Creditor may forgive what summ he pleases to a person indebted to him and no reason can be brought to the contrary from that notion of sins why he may not do it But if they be considered with a respect to God's Government of the world and the honour of his Laws then some further account may be given why it may not be consistent with that to pass by the sins of men without satisfaction made to them III. And because the mistake in this matter hath been the foundation of most of the subsequent mistakes on both sides and the discovery of the cause of errors doth far more to the cure of them than any Arguments brought against them and withal the true understanding of the whole Doctrine of satisfaction depends upon it I shall endeavour to make clear the notion under which our sins are considered for upon that depends the nature of the satisfaction which is to be made for them For while our Adversaries suppose that sins are to be looked on under the notion of debts in this debate they assert it to be wholly free for God to remit them without any satisfaction They make the right of punishment merely to depend on God's absolute Dominion and that all satisfaction must be considered under the notion of compensation for the injuries done to him to whom it is to be made But if we can clearly shew a considerable difference between the notion of debts and punishments if the right of punishment doth not depend upon mere Dominion and that satisfaction by way of punishment is not primarily intended for compensation but for other ends we shall make not only the state of the Controversie much clearer but offer something considerable towards the resolution of it The way I shall take for the proof of the difference between debts and punishments shall be using the other for the Arguments for it For besides that those things are just in matter of debts which are not so in the case of punishments as that it is lawfull for a man to forgive all the debts which are owing him by all persons though they never so contumaciously refuse payment but our Adversaries will not say so in the case of sins for although they assert That the justice of God doth never require punishment in case of repentance yet withal they assert That in case of impenitency it is not only agreeable but due to the nature and decrees and therefore to the rectitude and equity of God not to give pardon But if this be true then there is an apparent difference between the notion of debts and punishments for the Impenitency doth but add to the gâ—eatness of the debt And will they say it is only in God's power to remit small debts but he must punish the greatest what becomes then of God's absolute liberty to part with hâ—s own right will not this shew more of his kindness to pardon the greater rather than lesser offenders But if there be something in the nature of the thing which makes it not only just but necessary for impenitent sinners to be punished as Crellius after Socinus frequently acknowledges then it is plain that sins are not to be considered merely as debts for that obstinacy and impenitency is only punished as a greater degree of sin and therefore as a greater debt And withal those things
meant meritorious or such upon supposition of which he ought to die for elsewhere he makes Christ to die for the cause or by the occasion of our sins which is the same that Crellius means by an impulsive or procatartick cause Which he thus explains we are now to suppose a decree of God not only to give salvation to Mankind but to give us a firm hope of it in this present state now our sins by deserving eternal punishment do hinder the effect of that decree upon us and therefore they were an impulsive cause of the death of Christ by which it was effected that this decree should obtain notwithstanding our sins But we are not to understand as tho' this were done by any expiation of the guilt of sin by the death of Christ but this effect is hindred by three things by taking away their sins by assuring men that their former sins and present infirmities upon their sincere obedience shall not be imputed to them and that the effect of that decree shall obtain all which saith he is effected morte Christi interveniente the death of Christ intervening but not as the procuring cause So that after all these words he means no more by making our sins an impulsive cause of the death of Christ but that the death of Christ was an argument to confirm to us the truth of his Doctrine which doctrine of his doth give us assurance of these things and that our sins when they are said to be the impulsive cause are not to be considered with a respect to their guilt but to that distrust of God which our sins do raise in us which distrust is in truth according to this sense of Crellius the impulsive cause and not the sins which were the cause or occasion of it For that was it which the doctrine was designed to remove and our sins only as the caâ—â—es of that But if it be said that he speaks not only of the distrust but of the punishment of sin as an impediment which must be removed too and therefore may be called an impulsive cause we are to consider that the removal of this is not attributed to the death of Christ but to the leaving of our sins by the belief of his Doctrine therefore the punishment of our sins cannot unless in a very remote sense be said to be an impulsive cause of that which for all that we can observe by Crellius might as well have been done without it if â—ny other way could be thought suffiâ—â—ent to confirm his Doctrine and Christ without dying might have had power to save all them that obey him But we understand not an impulsive cause in so remote a sense as though our sins were a meer occasion of Christs dying because the death of Christ was one argument among many others to believe his Doctrine the belief of which would make men leave their sins but we contend for a nearer and more proper sense viz. that the death of Christ was primarily intended for the expiation of our sins with a respect to God and not to us and therefore our sins as an impulsive cause are to be considered as they are so displeasing to God that it was necessary for the Vindication of God's Honour and the deterring the world from sin that no less a Sacrifice of Atonement should be offered than the blood of the Son of God So that we understand an impulsive cause here in the sense that the sins of the people were under the Law the cause of the offering up those Sacrifices which were appointed for the expiation of them And as in those Sacrifices there were two things to be considered viz. the mactation and the oblation of them the former as a punishment by a substitution of them in place of the persons who had offended the latter as the proper Sacrifice of Atonement although the mactation it self considered with the design of it was a Sacrificial act too So we consider the sufferings of Christ with a two-fold respect either as to our sins as the impulsive cause of them so they are to be considered as a punishment or as to God with a design to expiate the guilt of them so they are a Sacrifice of Atonement The first consideration is that we are now upon and upon which the present debate depends for if the sufferings of Christ be to be taken under the notion of punishment then our Adversaries grant that our sins must be an impulsive cause of them in another sense than they understand it For the clearing of this I shall prove these two things 1. That no other sense ought to be admitted of the places of Scripture which speak of the sufferings of Christ with a respect to sin but this 2. That this Account of the sufferings of Christ is no ways repugnant to the Iustice of God III. That no other sense ought to be admitted of the places of Scripture which speak of the sufferings of Christ with a respect to our sins but that they are to be considered as a punishment for them Such are those which speak of Christ bearing our sins of our iniquities being laid upon him of his making himself an offering for sin and being made sin and a curse for us and of his dying for our sins All which I shall so far consider as to vindicate them from all the exceptions which Socinus and Crellius have offered against them 1. Those which speak of Christ's bearing our sins As to which we shall consider First The importance of the phrase in general of bearing sin and then the circumstances of the particular places in dispute For the importance of the phrase Socinus acknowledges that it generally signifies bearing the punishment of sin in Scripture but that sometimes it signifies taking away The same is confessed by Crellius but he saith it doth not always signifie bearing proper punishment but it is enough says he that one bears something burdensome on the occasion of others sins and so Christ by undergoing his sufferings by occasion of sins may be said to bear our sins And for this sense he quotes Numb 14.33 And your Children shall wander in the Wilderness forty years and bear your whoredoms until your carcasses be wasted in the Wilderness Whereby saith he it is not meant that God would punish the Children of the Israelites but that by the occasion of their parents sins they should undergo that trouble in wandring in the Wilderness and being deprived of the possession of the promised Land But could Crellius think that any thing else could have been imagined setting aside a total destruction a greater instance of God's severity than that was to the Children of Israel all their circumstances being considered Is it not said that God did swear in his wrath they should not enter into his rest Surely then the debarring them so long of that rest was an instance of God's wrath and so according to his own principles must
we see that the ends of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are very agreeable with the sufferings of Christ considered as a punishment of sin X. We now consider whether as Crellius asserts supposing Christ's death were no punishment it could have these effects upon mens minds or no Yes he saith it might because by his sufferings we might see how severely God would punish wicked and obstinate persons Which being a strange riddle at the first hearing it viz. that by the sufferings of an innocent person without any respect to sin as the cause of them we should discern God's severity against those who are obstinate in sin we ought the more diligently to attend to what is said for the clearing of it First saith he If God spared not his own most innocent and holy and only Son than whom nothing was more dear to him in Heaven or Earth but exposed him to so cruel and ignominious a death how great and severe sufferings may we think God will inflict on wicked men who are at open defiance with him I confess my self not subtle enough to apprehend the force of this argument viz. If God dealt so severely with him who had no sin either of his own or others to answer for therefore he will deal much more severely with those that have For God's severity considered without any respect to sin gives rather encouragement to sinners than any argument to deterr them from it For the natural consequence of it is that God doth act arbitrarily without any regard to the good or evil of mens actions and therefore it is to no purpose to be sollicitous about them For upon the same account that the most innocent person suffers most severely from him for all that we know the more we strive to be innocent the more severely we may be dealt with and let men sin they can be but dealt severely with all the difference then is one shall be called punishments and the other calamities but the severity may be the same in both And who would leave off his sins meerly to change the name of punishments into that of calamities And from hence it will follow that the differences of good and evil and the respects of them to punishment and reward are but airy and empty things but that God really in the dispensation of things to men hath no regard to what men are or do but acts therein according to his own Dominion whereby he may dispose of men how or which way he pleases If a Prince had many of his Subjects in open rebellion against him and he should at that time make his most obedient and beloved Son to be publickly exposed to all manner of indignities and be dishonoured and put to death by the hands of those rebels could any one imagine that this was designed as an exemplary punishment to all rebels to let them see the danger of rebellion No but would it not rather make them think him a cruel Prince one that would punish innocency as much as rebellion and that it was rather better to stand at defiance and become desperate for it was more dangerous to be beloved than hated by him to be his Son than his declared Enemy so that insisting on the death of Christ as it is considered as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for of that we speak now there is no comparison between our Adversaries hypothesis and ours but saith Crellius the consequence is not good on our side if Christ suffered the punishment of our sins therefore they shall suffer much more who continue in sin for Christ suffered for the sins of the whole world but they suffer only for their own and what they have deserved themselves To which I answer that the argument is of very good force upon our hypothesis though it would not be upon theirs For if we suppose him to be a meer man that suffered then there could be no argument drawn from his sufferings to ours but according to the exact proportion of sins and punishments but supposing that he had a divine as well as humane nature there may not be so great a proportion of the sins of the world to the sufferings of Christ as of the sins of a particular person to his own sufferings and therefore the argument from one to the other doth still hold For the measure of punishments must be taken with a proportion to the dignity of the person who suffers them And Crellius himself confesseth elsewhere that the dignity of the person is to be considered in exemplary punishment and that a lesser punishment of one that is very great may do much more to deterr men from sin than a greater punishment of one much less But he yet further urgeth that the severity of God against sinners may be discovered in the sufferings of Christ because God's hatred against sin is discovered therein But if we ask how God's hatred against sin is seen in the sufferings of one perfectly innocent and free from sin and not rather his hatred of innocency if no respect to sin were had therein he answers That God's hatred against sin was manifested in that he would not spare his only Son to draw men off from sin For answer to which we are to consider the sufferings of Christ as an innocent person designed as an exemplary cause to draw men off from sin and let any one tell me what hatred of sin can possibly be discovered in proposing the sufferings of a most innocent person to them without any consideration of sin as the cause of those sufferings If it be said That the Doctrine of Christ was designed to draw men off from sin and that God suffered his Son to die to confirm this Doctrine and thereby shewed his hatred to sin I answer 1. This is carrying the dispute off from the present business for we are not now arguing about the design of Christ's Doctrine nor the death of Christ as a means to confirm that but as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and what power that hath without respect to our sins as the cause of them to draw us from sin by discovering God's hatred to it 2. The Doctrine of Christ according to their hypothesis discovers much less of God's hatred to sin than ours doth For if God may pardon sin without any compensation made to his Laws or Honour if repentance be in its own nature a sufficient satisfaction for all the sins past of our Lives if there be no such a Justice in God which requires punishment of sin commiâ—ted if the punishment of sin depend barely upon God's will and the most innocent person may suffer as much from God without respect to sin as the cause of suffering as the most guilty let any rational man judge whether this Doctrine discovers as much God's abhorrency of sin as asserting the necessity of vindicating God's honour to the World upon the breach of his Laws if not by the suffering of the offenders
likewise there is necessity in nature and reason that he that hath thus deserved it must unavoidably suffer it And on the other side we say no man by his innocency can deserve to be punished i. e. no man's innocency makes him by vertue of that obnoxious to punishment but yet we add that notwithstanding his innocency the circumstances may be such that he may be justly punished and in that sense deservedly So that the Question is strangely mistaken when it is thus put Whether an innocent person considered as such may be justly punished for no one asserts that or is bound to do it but the true question is whether a person notwithstanding his innocency may not by some act of his own will oblige himself to undergo that punishment which otherwise he did not deserve which punishment in that case is just and agreeable to reason And this is that which we assert and plead for So that innocency here is not considered any other ways than whether that alone makes it an unlawfull punishment which otherwise would be lawfull i. e. whether the Magistrate in such cases where substitution is admittable by the Laws of Nations as in the cases we are now upon be bound to regard any more than that the obligation to punishment now lies upon the person who by his own act hath substituted himself in the others room and if he proceeds upon this his action is justifiable and agreeable to reason If it be said that the substitution is unjust unless the substituted person hath before-hand deserved to be punished it is easily answered that this makes not the matter at all clearer for either the person is punished for the former fault and then there is no substitution or if he be punished by way of substitution then there is no regard at all had to his former fault and so it is all one as if he were perfectly innocent VI. And by this Crellius his answer to the instances both in Scripture and elsewhere concerning Childrens being punished for their Parents faults will appear to be insufficient viz. That God doth never punish them for their Parents faults beyond the desert of their own sins and therefore no argument can be drawn from thence that God may punish an innocent person for the sins of others because he hath punished some for what they were innocent For the force of the argument doth not lie in the supposition of their innocency as to the ground of punishment in general for we do not deny but that they may deserve to be punished for their own faults but the argument lies in this whether their own guilt were then considered as the reason of punishment when God did punish them for their fathers faults And whether they by their own sins did deserve to be punished not only with the punishment due to their own miscarriages but with the punishment due to their fathers too If not then some persons are justly punished who have not deserved that punishment they undergo if they did deserve it then one person may deserve to be punished for anothers sins If it be said as it is by Crellius that his own sins make him capable of punishment and God by occasion of others sins doth execute that punishment which he might not have done for his own I answer we are not enquiring into the bare capacity of punishing but into the reason of it was the reason of punishment his own or his fathers sins If his own then he was punished only for his own sins if his fathers then the punishment may be just which is inflicted without consideration of proper desert of it for no man say they can deserve to be punished but for his own sins But it 's said that the sins of Fathers are only an impulsive cause for God to punish the Children according to the desert of their own sins which he might otherwise have forborn to punish Then the sins of the Fathers are no reason why the Children should be punished but their own sins are the reason and their Fathers the bare occasion of being punished for them But in Scripture the reason of punishment is drawn from the Fathers sins and not from the Childrens For then the words would have run thus if the Children sin and deserve punishment by their own iniquities then I will take occasion from their Fathers sins to visit their own iniquities upon them Whereas the words referr to the Fathers sins as the reason of the Childrens punishment So in the words of the Law wherein the reason of punishment ought to be most expresly assigned it is not I will certainly punish the Children if they continue in the Idolatry of their Fathers but I will visit the sins of the Fathers upon the Children unto the third and fourth Generation of them that hate me If it were only because of imitation of the Fathers sins by the Children there could be no reason for the limitation to the third and fourth Generation for then the reason of punishment would be as long as the imitation continued whether to the fourth or tenth Generation And as Alphonsus à Castro observes If the reason of punishment were the imitation of their Fathers sins then the Children were not punished for their Fathers sins but for their own for that imitation was a sin of their own and not of their Fathers Besides if the proper reason of punishment were the sins of the Children and the Fathers sins only the occasion of it then where it is mentioned that Children are punished for their Parents sins the Childrens sins should have been particularly expressed as the proper cause of the punishment But no other reason is assigned in the Law but the sins of the Fathers no other cause mentioned of Canaan's punishment but his Father's sin nor of the punishment of the people in David's time but his own sin Lo I have sinned and I have done wickedly but these sheep what have they done Which is no hyperbolical expression but the assigning the proper cause of that judgment to have been his own sin as the whole Chapter declares Nor of the hanging up of Saul's sons by the Gibeonites but that Saul their Father had plotted their destruction And in an instance more remarkable than any of those which Crellius answers viz. the punishment of the people of Iudah for the sins of Manasses in the time of Iosias when a through Reformation was designed among them the Prince being very good and all the places of Idolatry destroyed such a Passover kept as had not been kept before in the time of any King in Israel yet it then follows Notwithstanding the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath wherewith his anger was kindled against Iudah because of all the provocations wherewith Manasses had provoked him withal Who can say here that the sins of Manasseh were only the occasion of God punishing the people in the time of
what makes him attribute so much to the death of Christ if all the benefits we enjoy depend upon the consequences of it and no otherwise upon that than meerly as a preparation for it what peculiar emphasis were there in Christ's dying for sinners and for the ungodly unless his death had a particular relation to the expiation of their sins Why are men said to be justified by his blood and not much rather by his glorious Resurrection if the blood of Christ be only considered as antecedent to the other And that would have been the great demonstration of the love of God which had the most immediate influence upon our advantage which could not have been the death in this sense but the life and glory of Christ. But nothing can be more absurd than what Crellius would have to be the meaning of this place viz. that the Apostle doth not speak of the proper force of the death of Christ distinct from his life but that two things are opposed to each other for the effecting of one of which the death of Christ did intervene but it should not intervene for the other viz. it did intervene for our reconciliation but it should not for our life For did not the death of Christ equally intervene for our life as for our reconciliation was not our eternal deliverance the great thing designed by Christ and our reconciliation in order to that end what opposition then can be imagined that it should be necessary for the death of Christ to intervene in order to the one than in order to the other But he means that the death of Christ should not intervene any more what need that when it is acknowledged by themselves that Christ died only for this end before that he might have power to bestow eternal life on them that obey him But the main force of the Apostles argument lies in the comparison between the death of Christ having respect to us as enemies in order to reconciliation and the life of Christ to us considered as reconciled so that if he had so much kindness for enemies to die for their reconciliation we may much more presume that he now living in Heaven will accomplish the end of that reconciliation in the eternal salvation of them that obey him By which it is apparent that he speaks of the death of Christ in a notion proper to it self having influence upon our reconciliation and doth not consider it Metonymically as comprehending in it the consequents of it IX 2. Because the expiation of sins is attributed to Christ antecedently to the great consequents of his death viz. his sitting at the right hand of God Heb. 1.3 When he had by himself purged our sins sate down on the right hand of his Majesty on high Heb. 9.12 But by his own blood he entred in once into the Holy Place having obtained eternal redemption for us To these places Crellius gives a double answer 1. That indefinite particles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being joyned with Verbs of the preterperfect tense do not always require that the action expressed by them should precede that which is designed in the Verbs to which they are joyned but they have sometimes the force of particles of the present or imperfect tense which sometimes happens in particles of the preterperfect tense as Matth. 10.5 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and several other instances produced by him according to which manner of interpretation the sense he puts upon those words Heb. 9.12 is Christ by the shedding of his blood entred into the Holy of Holies and in so doing he found eternal redemption or the expiation of sins But not to dispute with Crellius concerning the importance of the Aorist being joyned with a Verb of the preterperfect tense which in all reason and common acceptation doth imply the action past by him who writes the words antecedent to his writing of it as is plain in the instances produced by Crellius but according to his sense of Christ's expiation of sin it was yet to come after Christ's entrance into Heaven and so it should have been more properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not I say to insist upon that the Apostle manifests that he had a respect to the death of Christ in the obtaining this eternal redemption by his following discourse for v. 14. he compares the blood of Christ in point of efficacy for expiation of sin with the blood of the Legal Sacrifices whereas if the expiation meant by him had been found by Christ's Oblation of himself in Heaven he would have compared Christ's entrance into Heaven in order to it with the entrance of the High-Priest into the Holy of Holies and his argument had run thus For if the High-Priest under the Law did expiate sins by entring into the Holy of Holies How much more shall the Son of God entring into Heaven expiate the sins of Mankind but we see the Apostle had no sooner mention'd the redemption obtained for us but he presently speaks of the efficacy of the blood of Christ in order to it and as plainly asserts the same v. 15. And for this cause he is the Mediator of the New Testament that by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions which were under the first Testament they which were called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance Why doth the Apostle here speak of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the expiation of sins by the means of death if he had so lately asserted before that the redemption or expiation was found not by his death but by his entrance into Heaven and withal the Apostle here doth not speak of such a kind of expiation as wholly respects the future but of sins that were under the first Testament not barely such as could not be expiated by vertue of it but such as were committed during the time of it although the Levitical Law allowed no expiation for them And to confirm this sense the Apostle doth not go on to prove the necessity of Christ's entrance into Heaven but of his dying v. 16 17 18. But granting that he doth allude to the High Priest's entring into the Holy of Holies yet that was but the representation of a Sacrifice already offer'd and he could not be said to find expiation by his entrance but that was already found by the blood of the Sacrifice and his entrance was only to accomplish the end for which the blood was offer'd up in Sacrifice And the benefit which came to men is attributed to the Sacrifice and not to the sprinkling of blood before the Mercy-seat and whatever effect was consequent upon his entrance into the Sanctuary was by vertue of the blood which he carried in with him and was before shed at the Altar Neither can it with any reason be said that if the redemption were obtained by the blood of Christ there
merely by his Dominion we must take away all rewards and punishments for then the actions of men would be the mere effects of irresistable power and so not capable of rewards and punishments for there could be neither of these where mens actions are capable of the differences of good and evil and that they cannot be if they be the acts of God's Dominion and not of their own But if God doth not exercise his full Dominion over rational creatures it is apparent that he doth govern them under another notion than as mere Lord and the reason of punishment is not to be taken from an absolute right which God doth not make use of but from the ends and designs of Government which are his own Honour the Authority of his Laws and the good of those whom he doth govern And Crellius is greatly mistaken when he makes punishment to succeed in the place of the right of obedience for it is only the desert of punishment which follows upon the violation of that right and as we assert that the right of obedience is derived from God's Sovereignty so we deny not but the desert of punishment is from the violation of it but withal we say that the obligation to punishment depends upon the Laws and God's right to inflict punishment Laws being supposed is immediately from that Government which he hath over mankind For otherwise if the whole right of punishment did still depend upon God's Dominion and the first right of Sovereignty then all sins must have equal punishments because they are all equal violations of the fundamental right of obedience then it were at liberty for God to punish a greater sin with a less punishment and a lesser sin with a greater And lastly this would make the punishment of sin a mere Arbitrary thing in God for there would be no reason of punishment but what depended upon God's mere will whereas the reason of punishment in Scripture is drawn from a repugnancy of sin to the divine purity and holiness and not merely from God's power or will to punish but if that were all the reason of it there would be no repugnancy in the nature of the thing for the most vitious person to be rewarded and the most pious to be made everlastingly miserable But who ever yet durst say or think so From whence it appears that the relation between sin and punishment is no result of God's arbitrary will but it is founded in the nature of the things so that as it is just for God to punish offenders so it would be unjust to punish the most innocent person without any respect to sin But if the right of punishment depends merely on God's Dominion I cannot understand why God may not punish when and whom and in what manner he pleaseth without any impeachment of his Justice and therefore it is to be wonder'd at that the same persons who assert the right of punishment to be merely in God's Dominion should yet cry out of the injustice of one person being punished for anothers faults for why may not God exercise his Dominion in this case yes say they he may his dominion but he cannot punish because punishment supposes guilt and cannot be just without it how far that reaches will be examined afterwards at present we take notice of the contradiction to themselves which our Adversaries are guilty of that they may serve their own hypothesis for when we dispute with them against absolute remission without satisfaction then they contend that the right of punishment is a mere act of Dominion and God may part with his right if he please but when they dispute with us against the translation of punishment from one to another then they no longer say that the right of punishment is an act of Dominion but that it is a necessary consequent of inherent guilt and cannot be removed from one to another And then they utterly deny that punishment is of the nature of debts for one man's money they say may become anothers but one man's punishment cannot become anothers Thus they give and take deny and grant as it serves for their present purposes VI. 2. The different ends of debts and punishments make it appear that there is a difference in the nature of them for the intention of the obligation to payment in case of debt is the compensation of the damage which the Creditor sustains but the intention of punishment is not bare compensation but it is designed for greater and further ends For which we are to consider the different nature of punishments as they are inflicted by way of reparation of some injury done to private persons and as they do respect the publick good I grant that private persons in case of injuries seek for compensation of the damage they sustain and so far they bear the nature of debts but if we consider them as inflicted by those who have a care of the publick though they are to see that no private person suffers injury by another yet the reason of that is not merely that he might enjoy his own but because the doing injuries to others tends to the subversion of the ends of Government Therefore I can by no means admit that Position of Crellius that a Magistrate only punishes as he assumes the person of the particular men who have received injuries from others for he aims at other ends than merely the compensation of those injured persons Their great end is according to the old Roman Formula nè quid Resp. detrimenti capiat the reason of exacting penalties upon private men is still with a regard to the publick safety Supposing men in a state of nature no punishment is due to the injured person but restitution of damage and compensation of the loss that accrues to him by the injury sustained and whatever goes beyond this is the effect of Government which constitutes penalties for perservation of the Society which is under Laws But herein Crellius is our adversary but with no advantage at all to his Cause for he offers to prove against Grotius That something more is due by an injury beyond bare compensation for what the other is supposed to lose by the right of nature for saith he in every injury there is not only the real damage which the person sustains but there is a contempt of the person implyed in it for which as well as the former he ought to have compensation To which I answer 1. That this doth not prove what he designs viz. that punishment doth belong to the injured person in a state of Nature beyond bare restitution but that it is necessary that men should not continue in such a state that so they may be vindicated from that contempt and others compelled to restitution Both which as they are punishments are not in the power of the offended party as such but shew that it is very reasonable there should be Laws and Governours that private persons may