Deus Homo_, and
the doctrine which had been slowly growing into the theology of
Christendom was thenceforward stamped with the signet of the Church.
Roman Catholics and Protestants, at the time of the Reformation, alike
believed in the vicarious and substitutionary character of the atonement
wrought by Christ. There is no dispute between them on this point. I
prefer to allow the Christian divines to speak for themselves as to the
character of the atonement.... Luther teaches that 'Christ did truly and
effectually feel for all mankind the wrath of God, malediction, and
death.' Flavel says that 'to wrath, to the wrath of an infinite God
without mixture, to the very torments of hell, was Christ delivered, and
that by the hand of his own father.' The Anglican homily preaches that
'sin did pluck God out of heaven to make him feel the horrors and pains
of death,' and that man, being a firebrand of hell and a bondsman of the
devil, 'was ransomed by the death of his only and well-beloved son'; the
'heat of his wrath,' 'his burning wrath,' could only be 'pacified' by
Jesus, 'so pleasant was the sacrifice and oblation of his son's death.'
Edwards, being logical, saw that there was a gross injustice in sin
being twice punished, and in the pains of hell, the penalty of sin,
being twice inflicted, first on Jesus, the substitute of mankind, and
then on the lost, a portion of mankind; so he, in common with most
Calvinists, finds himself compelled to restrict the atonement to the
elect, and declared that Christ bore the sins, not of the world, but of
the chosen out of the world; he suffers 'not for the world, but for them
whom thou hast given me.' But Edwards adheres firmly to the belief in
substitution, and rejects the universal atonement for the very reason
that 'to believe Christ died for all is the surest way of proving that
he died for none in the sense Christians have hitherto believed.' He
declares that 'Christ suffered the wrath of God for men's sins'; that
'God imposed his wrath due unto, and Christ underwent the pains of hell
for,' sin. Owen regards Christ's sufferings as 'a full valuable
compensation to the justice of God for all the sins' of the elect, and
says that he underwent 'that same punishment which ... they themselves
were bound to undergo.'"[214]

To show that these views were still authoritatively taught in the
churches, I wrote further: "Stroud makes Christ drink 'the cup of the
wrath of God.' Jenkyn says 'He su