"These passages, and many others like them, scattered all through his writings, prove indisputably that Augustine held the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction." _Gregory, the Great, Bishop of Rome (604):_ Gregory, in his writings, lays great stress upon the idea of a sacrifice offered in the death of Christ. He starts from the conception of guilt, and from this derives immediately the necessity of a theanthropic[A] sacrifice. "Guilt," he says, "can be extinguished only by a penal offering to justice. But it would contradict the idea of justice, if for the sin of a rational being like man, the death of an irrational animal should be accepted as a sufficient atonement. Hence, a man must be offered as the sacrifice for man; so that a rational victim may be slain for a rational criminal. But how could a man, himself stained with sin, be an offering for sin? Hence a sinless man must be offered. But what man descending in the ordinary course would be free from sin? Hence, the Son of God must be born of a virgin, and become man for us. He assumed our nature without corruption. He made himself a sacrifice for us, and set forth for sinners his own body, a victim without sin, and able both to die by virtue of its humanity, and to cleanse the guilty, upon grounds of justice." [Footnote A: Theantropic--both divine and human; being or pertaining to the God-man.] _6. Anselm's Theory of Satisfaction:_ A. Anselm's views of the Atonement (1109 A. D.) are fundamentally those of Protestant Christendom, it is important that they be stated in sufficient detail to make the leading principle clear. The fundamental position of Anselm is that "the Atonement of the Son of God is absolutely or metaphysically necessary in order to the remission of sin. Anselm concedes by implication, throughout his work, that if it cannot be made out that the vicarious satisfaction of divine justice by the theanthropic suffering of Jesus Christ is required by a necessary and immanent attribute of the Divine Nature, then a scientific character cannot be vindicated for the doctrine; for nothing that is not metaphysically necessary is scientific. Hence, in the very beginning of the tract, he affirms that a mere reference to the divine benevolence, without any regard to the divine justice, cannot satisfy the mind that is seeking a necessary basis in the doctrine of atonement. For benevolence is inclined to dispense with penal suffering, and of itself does not demand it.