on the wonderful
exhibition made of the evil of sin, when _such_ a being could be
subjected to preternatural suffering as a vicarious sinbearer. To
this view, a high sense of the personal dignity of Jesus was quite
essential; and therefore I had always felt a great repugnance for Mr.
Belsham, Dr. Priestley, and the Unitarians of that school, though I
had not read a line of their writings.

A more intimate familiarity with St. Paul and an anxious harmonizing
of my very words to the Scripture, led me on into a deviation from the
popular creed, of the full importance of which I was not for some
time aware. I perceived that it is not the _agonies_ of mind or body
endured by Christ, which in the Scriptures are said to take away sin,
but his "death," his "laying down his life," or sometimes even
his _resurrection_. I gradually became convinced, that when his
"suffering," or more especially his "blood," is emphatically spoken
of, nothing is meant but his _violent death_. In the Epistle to the
Hebrews, where the analogy of Sacrifice is so pressed, we see that the
pains which Jesus bore were in order that he might "learn obedience,"
but our redemption is effected by his dying as a voluntary victim: in
which, death by bloodshed, not pain, is the cardinal point. So too
the Paschal lamb (to which, though not properly a sacrifice, the dying
Christ is compared by Paul) was not roasted alive, or otherwise put to
slow torment, but was simply killed. I therefore saw that the doctrine
of "vicarious agonies" was fundamentally unscriptural.

This being fully discerned, I at last became bold to criticize the
popular tenet. What should we think of a judge, who, when a boy had
deserved a stripe which would to him have been a sharp punishment,
laid the very same blow on a strong man, to whom it was a slight
infliction? Clearly this would evade, not satisfy justice. To carry
out the principle, the blow might be laid as well on a giant, an
elephant, or on an inanimate thing. So, to lay our punishment on the
infinite strength of Christ, who (they say) bore in six hours what it
would have taken thousands of millions of men all eternity to bear,
would be a similar evasion.--I farther asked, if we were to fall in
with Pagans, who tortured their victims to death as an atonement, what
idea of God should we think them to form? and what should we reply,
if they said, it gave them a wholesome view of his hatred of sin? A
second time I shuddered at the