But modern Socimans, or, as they call them selves, Unitarians, (and, indeed, there is a wide difference between some of their opinions and those of Socinus, who certainly approached much nearer to the orthodox system than they do, ) have had the boldness to affirm, that the doctrine of atonement is not once to be found in scripture. This is maintained by Priestley, in his answer to Paine, with a view to render Christianity palatable to that unbeliever, by explaining away its most peculiar and most obnoxious doctrines. " The doctrines of atonement, incarna tion, and the Trinity," says he, " have no more foundation in the scriptures than the doctrines of transubstantiation or transmigration." This is new ground indeed : we know that the scriptures have often been rejected because they contained the doc trine of atonement, &c. ; but it was reserved for Dr Priestley and his associates to discover, that such doctrines were not to be found there. Neither the friends nor the enemies of Christianity had ever sus pected such a thing before ; and it would have been almost as easy to have persuaded them that Homer did not write of Troy, as that the evangelists did not write of the atonement. It not once hinted at in the gospels, say these writers ; we would be obliged to them, then, for a satisfactory explanation of these expressions : " the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many;" Mark, x. 45. " This is my blood of the new testament which is shed for many,fir the remission of sins :" And if we turn to the epistles, we can scarcely find a page where this doctrine is not either expressly taught or alluded to. If it is therefore to be reckoned among the corrup tions of Christianity, as Dr Priestley affirms, we should be forced to conclude, that Christianity was corrupted by its founder, and that its first preachers' exerted themselves to propagate- a delusion. It is lamentable to see the judgment of a man, otherwise acute, so miserably warped by prejudice, as to be unable to discern the clearest truths. We shall see
still farther reason for this observation, when we at tend to the extraordinary position which he advances on another occasion : " From a full review of the re ligions of all ancient and modern nations, they ap pear to have been utterly destitute of any thing like a doctrine of proper atonement." Is it possible that such a sentiment should be seriously maintained by- a divine, a scholar, and a historian,—a sentiment which any peasant might refute from the Jewish law, and any school-boy from the practice of ancient nations ? What so common as expiatory sacrifices amongst all..
nations under heaven ? at.d yet Dr Priestley could discover no vestiges of such a practice ! The death of Christ, according to Priestley and his followers, was intended to give us a proof of our resurrection and immortality, by his rising from the dead. But surely these doctrines were not so new, nor so uncommon, as to require such a proof : the doctrine of a resurrection was familiar to the Jews ; and they had seen several actual proofs of its possi bility : and the doctrine of the soul's immortality was received among all nations. Dr Priestley, indeed, who affirmed the soul•to be nothing but a combina tion of matter, might reckon some extraordinary evi dence necessary to prove its future existence : But the bulk of mankind did not deem such a proof ne cessary for they had always believed in the soul's immortality. We do not deny that this doctrine, as well as many others connected with morality and re ligion, received the strongest confirmation by our Lord's instructions, death, and resurrection. But no one who receives the scriptures as the word of God, or indeed in any other sense, can fail to ob serve, that the great end of our Lord's death is uni formly stated to be, that he might make an atone ment for the sins of men ; nor can we see how his death, in any other view, should have at all been ne cessary ; for all the other parts of his mission might have been completely accomplished without it. See Magee On the Atonement, and THEOLOGY. (g)