Abelard (twelfth century) also held that there was "nothing in the Divine nature which necessitates a satisfaction for past transgression antecedently to remission of penalty; like creating out of nothing, redemption may and does take place by a _fiat_, by which sin is abolished by a word, and the sinner is received into favor. * * * Abelard denies the doctrine of satisfaction and contends that God may remit penalty by a sovereign act of will.[A] Even Augustine, according to Neander, declared that if considered from the point of view of the divine omnipotence" he believed the answer must be in the affirmative; that is, that choice of other means for man's redemption than the Atonement could have been made. "But no other way," Augustine supposed, "would have been so well adapted for man's recovery from his wretched condition," as the one that was adopted in the Atonement of Christ. Not, however, from the "intrinsic nature of the case; not from the daws of the moral government of the world;" but because of the subjective influence that the union of the divine nature with the human--effected in the incarnation and the Atonement by the Christ, would have upon man.[B] [Footnote A: Shedd, "History of Christian Doctrine," Vol. II, pp. 260, 261.] [Footnote B: The matter is stated at length in Neander's "History of the Christian Religion and Church," Vol. IV, pp. 497-8. See also Augustine (De Trinitate), Lib. xiii, Ch. x. "This idea of an 'abstract' omnipotence accompanies the history of the doctrine of atonement down from the earliest to the latest times. In the ancient church, Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. III, XX.), Cyril of Jerusalem, Basil, and Ambrose contend for an absolute necessity of Christ's satisfaction; while Athanasius, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, and John Damascene assert only a relative necessity. In the mediaeval church, Anselm, and perhaps Hugh St. Victor assert an absolute, while Abelard, Bernard, Lombard, Hales, Bonaventure, and Aquinas (Cont. Gent. IV, liv, lv) concede only a relative necessity. In the seventeenth century, the subject was discussed by Owen, and Twise (the prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly); the former asserting and the latter denying, the absolute necessity of a satisfaction. See Owen's tract, 'On the Nature of Justice'" ("History of Christian Doctrine," Vol. II, p. 302, note).]