Owen enters fully into the nature of the death of Christ, and insists upon its having been a price or ransom, a sacrifice and a satisfaction. He contends that it was a punishment for sin properly so called; and that the covenant between the Father and the Son was the ground and foundation of the penal sufferings from which redemption flows. Nor does he confine himself to the citation and enforcement of Scripture texts in support of these opinions. He supplies a dissertation on Divine justice--in which, from the consent of mankind, as appears in the testimony of the heathen, and the power of conscience, from the prevalence of sacrifices, and from the works of providence,--he concludes that Divine justice is a vindicating justice, and that the non-punishment of sin would be contrary to the glory of that justice. He examines and answers the objections of Socinus, and the main drift of the whole treatise is to establish the indispensable necessity of the satisfaction of Christ for the salvation of sinners. In his _Salus Electorum Sanguis Jesu_, a work published so early as 1648, Owen connects the Atonement with the Divine decrees. He points out what he conceives to be the false and supposed ends of the death of Christ, and unfolds his reasons for a belief in the doctrine of particular redemption.[527] He admits that the sacrifice of Christ was of infinite worth and dignity, sufficient in itself for the redeeming of all and every man, if it had pleased the Lord to employ it to that purpose; but the main drift of the Essay is to prove that it did not please the Lord so to employ it.[528] Whatever may be thought of the logical consequences of Owen’s positions in reference to election and particular redemption, it would be extreme injustice--and the same remark may be applied to Goodwin and others--to charge him or them with any connivance at Antinomianism, an error which they regarded with the utmost abhorrence, and opposed with not a whit less of zeal than burns intensely in their writings, when they are subjecting Arminianism to a process of destructive criticism. CHAPTER XIX.