Just so it is in relation to the sufferings of Christ. He was led by his boundless compassion to avert from us the awful consequences of sin, by the agony, and the sufferings, and the death, which he endured upon the cross. And, according to the doctrine of atonement, he is infinitely more than repaid for all this. Though he suffered in the flesh, and was made a spectacle to men and angels, yet he despised the shame, seeing the joy that was set before him. We do confess that we can see no insufferable hardship in all this, nor the least shadow of injustice. One thing is certain, if injustice is exhibited here, it is exhibited everywhere in the providence of God; and if the doctrine of the atonement were stricken from the scheme of Christianity, the injustice which is supposed to attend it would still continue to overhang and cloud the moral government of God. And hence, if the deist or the Socinian would escape from this frightful spectre of his own imagination, he must bury himself in the most profound depths and most cheerless gloom of atheism. The doctrine in question is frequently misrepresented, and made to appear inconsistent with the justice of God, by means of false analogies. The Socinian frequently speaks of it, as if it were parallel with the proceeding of a human government that should doom the innocent to suffer in place of the guilty. Thus the feeling of indignation that is aroused in the human bosom at the idea of a virtuous man’s being sentenced to suffer the punishment due to the criminal is sought to be directed against the doctrine of the atonement. But in vain will such rhetoric be employed to excite indignation and horror against the doctrine of the cross, in the mind of any person by whom it is at all understood. The cases are not at all parallel. In the first place, no human government has a right to doom a virtuous man to bear the punishment due to the criminal; and if he were willing to suffer in the place of the culprit, no government on earth has a right to accept of such a substitute. The life of the virtuous citizen is the gift of God, and no earthly power has the authority to take it for any such purpose. It would be a violation of the will of God for any human government to admit of such a substitution. On the contrary, Christ had the power to lay down his life; and he did so, in perfect accordance with the appointment of God. In submitting to the death of the cross, he did not subvert, he fulfilled the end of his earthly existence.