he inflictions of the
retributive justice of God. He may be most justly punished; for as the
claims of retributive justice have not been satisfied, so they may be
demanded of him without being a second time exacted. He really deserves
the wrath of God on account of his sins, although administrative justice
has been satisfied; and hence, when he truly repents and believes, all his
sins are freely and graciously remitted. No satisfaction is made to
retributive justice.

It is the administrative justice of God that has been satisfied by the
atonement. This merely enforces the punishment of the sinner, as I have
said, in order to secure the ends of good government; and hence, it is
capable of yielding and giving place to any expedient by which those ends
may be secured. In other words, it is capable of being satisfied by
whatever method God may be pleased to adopt in order to secure the ends of
good government, and to accomplish his own glorious designs, without the
punishment of the sinner. All this, as we shall see hereafter, has been
most gloriously accomplished by the death and sufferings of Christ. God
can now be just, and yet the justifier of him that believes. The great
obstacles which the administrative justice of God interposes to the
forgiveness of sin, having been taken out of the way and nailed to the
cross, that unbounded mercy from which the provision of such a Saviour
proceeded, can now flow down upon a lost and ruined world in all the
fulness and plenitude of its pardoning and sanctifying power.

As a general thing, those who undertake to vindicate the sufferings of
Christ against objections, rest their defence on the ground that they are
a satisfaction to the administrative justice of God. This is seen, not
from their express declarations, but from the nature of their arguments
and defence; as if they unconsciously turned to this position as to their
stronghold. On the other hand, those who assail the sacrifice of Christ,
almost invariably treat it as if it were a satisfaction to the retributive
justice of God. Both sides seem to be right, and both wrong. The whole
idea of satisfaction to divine justice by a substitute is not absurd,
because the idea of satisfaction to retributive justice is so; nor is the
whole justice of God, or the justice of God in every sense of the word, to
be conceived of as satisfied by the atonement, because his administrative
justice is thus satisfied. When it is thus asserted, th