Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/80

74 And the Catechism (1839) for the Methodist Episcopal Church says:

"Christ, by means of his sufferings and death, offered a full satisfaction . . . to Divine Justice for the sins of the world." And the reason assigned is: "Because He was perfectly righteous, there was an infinite value and merit in his death which was undergone for our sakes and in our stead."

And so generally accepted has been, and is still, this idea of the nature of the great work of human redemption, that we find the theological meaning of the word redemption, as given by a great American lexicographer, to be: "The procuring of God's favor by the sufferings and death of Christ."

The Old doctrine, then, on this subject is: That the human race, being in a state of captivity to sin and Satan, was ransomed—bought off—released from its bondage, and consequently from hell and its miseries, by the payment of an infinite price, to wit, the voluntary sujfferings and death of the Son of God (the second person in the Divine Trinity): Precisely as a slave may sometimes be released from bondage or a prisoner from his confinement, by the payment of a stipulated price.

Now it needs but a little exercise of one's reason and understanding to see what absurdities, inconsistencies and contradictions this doctrine involves.