Selected quad for the lemma: justice_n
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A42221
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A defence of the catholick faith concerning the satisfaction of Christ written originally by the learned Hugo Grotius and now translated by W.H. ; a work very necessary in these times for the preventing of the growth of Socinianism.; Defensio fidei catholicae de satisfactione Christi. English
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Grotius, Hugo, 1583-1645.
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1692
(1692)
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Wing G2107; ESTC R38772
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124,091
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303
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towards us to wit that he spared us to whom it was not a thing indifferent to punish sins but who thought it a thing of so great Concernment that rather than he would suffer them to be wholly unpunished he delivered up his only begotten Son to punishment for those sins So that as it was said by the Ancients 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 neither according to the Law nor against the Law but above the Law and instead of the Law That is very true of Divine Grace It is above the Law because we are not punished for the Law because Punishment is not omitted And therefore is Remission given that we may in time to come live to the Divine Law These things being rightly understood all those things fall which Socinus objects concerning the Defect of a Cause So that it is not necessary to go through all particulars in which nevertheless not a few Errours may be observed As when in the first Chapter of the first Book also in the first Chapter of the third Book â—…e says That punishing Justice doth not reside in God but is an Effect of his Will Verily to punish is an Effect of the Will but that Justice or Rectitude out of which proceeds both other things and also Retribution of Punishment is a Property residing in God for the Scripture concludes God to be just because he renders Punishment to Faults gathering the Cause from the Effect But Socinus seems to have been led into this Errour because he believed that any Effects of the Properties of God are altogether necessary whereas many of them are free to wit a free Act of the Will interveening between the Property and the Effect So it is an Effect of the Goodness of God to communicate his own Goodness but this he did not before the Creation It belongs to the same Goodness to spare the Guilty but scarcely will any man say that God spares those whom he punisheth with Eternal Punishment Therefore there are some Properties of God the Exercise whereof both as to the Act and also as to the Time and Manner of the Act yea also as to the Determination of the Object depends upon his free Will over which nevertheless Wisdom presides Neither can God therefore be said because he hath the free use of these Properties to do what he doth without a Cause when he useth them For God did not therefore make the World in vain because he had liberty not to make it neither because it pleased God to punish some which Socinus confesseth to be true chiefly in those whose Repentance God waits for doth he therefore punish without cause where he punisheth for many things are performed freely and yet for a weighty cause The other Errour is also above mentioned that he would make God forgiving sins to do just the same thing that men do who give up their own right It hath been shewed that punishment is not in Property or Debt or that it can be equallized to them in all things To give a man 's own to forgive Debt is always honourable of it self When we say of it self we exclude those things which are present 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by accident such as is the Poverty of the Giver himself which also cannot have place in God But to forgive Punishment sometimes would not be honourable no not to God himself as Socinus acknowledgeth Therefore there is a wide difference here but the rise of the difference is thence that the next Foundation of Lordly Power and Debt is a certain Relation of a thing to a Person but the next foundation of Punishment is the Relation of a thing to a thing to wit the Equality of a Fault with some Hurt agreeing to Order and common Good wherefore that is not true which Socinus asserted as most certain That the Common-wealth will commit no unjustice if it absolve a Guilty Person except it also be injurious to the proper right of some private Person or break God's Law For by the name of Common-wealth he either understands the Multitude that governs or is governed The Multitude that is governed as it hath not the power of making Laws so neither hath it the power of moderating them But a Multitude that Governs as a Senate in the State of Peers or the greater part of a Parliament in a Popular State cannot do more than other chiefest Governours as for example free Kings in a Kingdom and Fathers in respect of a Family But it is part of the Justice of a Governour to keep Laws yea those also that are positive and given by himself which Lawyers prove to be true as well in a free University as in the highest King The Reason of both is because the Act of Making or Relaxing a Law is not an Act of Absolute Lordship but an Act of Empire which ought to tend to the Preservation of Good Order That also which Socinus says deserves Reprehension That besides the Will of God and Christ himself there can be no lawful Cause given of the Death of Christ unless we say Christ deserved that he should dye For Merit is in the Antecedent Cause as we said above but Impersonally for our sins deserved that Punishment should be required But that Punishment was conferred upon Christ this we so refer to the Will of God and Christ that that Will hath also its own Causes not in the Merit of Christ who when he knew no sin was made sin by God but in the great fitness of Christ to shew a signal Example which consists both in his great Conjunction with us and in the unmatched dignity of his Person But that Collection of Socinus is confuted by manifest Testimonies of Scripture The Antecedent Cause Why the Infant of David died is made manifest because David by sinning heinously gave occasion to the wicked to insult over the Name of God blasphemously Here there is Merit but not in the Infant And in punishing the Posterity of Achab beyond their own Merit God had respect to the Merit of the sins of Achab. Whence it appears that the Antecedent Cause of Punishment is Merit but not always the Merit of the Person that is punished CHAP. VI. Whether God willed that Christ should be punished And it is shewed that he willed it And also the Nature of Satisfaction is Explained THese two Questions having been handled Whether God could justly punish Christ being willing for our sins And Whether there was some sufficient Cause why God should do it The third remains Whether really God did this or which signifies the same willed to do it For Socinus denies it both in many places elsewhere and also in a set Discourse upon it Lib. 3. cap. 2. We together with Scripture maintain that God willed this and did it For Christ is said to have been delivered up to have suffered and died for our sins Rom. 4.25 1 Pet. 3.18 Isai 53.5 The Chastisement of our Peace was laid upon
is Restitution due to me But the cause of the Punishment is the viciousness of the Act and not because I want something For though no man wants any thing the Act will be rightly punished as in great Crimes which were only begun and were not compleated There is also another difference no less remarkable that the Nature of a thing it self determines the manner and quantity of the Restitution Punishment though in its own kind it hath a Natural Cause in some sense as we shall say afterwards yet it cannot be determined but by a free Act of the Will Add this also that Punishment inasmuch as it consists in speaking or doing is not due ordinarily before Condemnation but Restitution in all respects is due The Debt of Restitution passeth unto the Heir the Punishment passeth not Which I judge requisite to mention only for this Cause lest any should rashly confound that which is due to the offended with Punishment But yet it is true that by a positive Law as also by a Contract way may be made that a Creditor may obtain a right for Punishment which then also the Laws distinguish from the pursuit of a thing or of damage L. si pignore parag cum furti d. de furtis instit de lega Aquilia parag and in these words But this useth for the most part to be appointed in pecuniary punishments which not only bring Damage to him who did the hurt but also Gain to him that was hurt But in Corporal punishments in which there is no true Gain of the person that was injured this is scarcely exercised And therefore we see Kings and other chief Governours forgive punishment to the Guilty against the will of the Party wronged commanding them only to make Restitution of the Damage which no man judgeth unjust But this would be unjust if punishment were due to the Party wronged especially where no necessity of the Common-wealth required remission Wherefore that lesser Magistrates cannot remit Corporal punishments that comes not to pass for any power of the person injured in punishing for they could not punish any thing the more with the consent of the offended person but because the Law of the Superior hath not granted unto them that power yea hath expresly denied it which should likewise be understood concerning Kings being compared with God in those Crimes which the Divine Law hath commanded indispensably to be punished These things make for this that it may appear that God also being offended with us is not properly a Creditor in punishing for he that affirms that relies either on that Right which proceeds from the things themselves or that Rght which is constituted We have sufficiently shewed as I think That the offended person is not a Creditor in the punishment by that Right which proceeds from the things themselves But a constituted Right not whereby punishment but whereby such a credit of punishment may be introduced is neither alledged nor if it be alledged can it be proved neither can any reason be given why it should have been so appointed Some body will perhaps object That God forgiving the punishment of sinners is somewhere compared with a Creditor giving up his own Right as Matth. 18.35 But as we shewed above Comparison doth not require that things should agree genere proximo in their next kind but is contented with any similitude So Christ washing his Disciples feet gave an Example to his Disciples that as he did they should also do that is that they should serve one another But the resemblance of God forgiving sins and of a Creditor's yielding up his own Right is greater than the resemblance of the same God forgiving sins and an offended person forgiving offences concerning which resemblance we just now discoursed For the Acts of God and the Creditor's agree not only in the moving Cause which is Bounty and the Effect which is fâ—eeing from Misery or Trouble but in that also that in both some right goes before in God to punish in the Creditor to require the Debt and on both sides there is a certain Dissolution of the Obligation that was before though in the Obligation it self as also in the Dissolution there is something unlike which though that Example doth not properly belong to the thing to which it is brought cannot wrong the Resemblance or Parable This may be the Third Assertion The right of punishing in a Governour is not either the right of absolute Lordship or the right of the thing credited This is proved first from the End which useth best to distinguish Faculties For the right of absolute Lordship as also the right of the thing credited is procured for his sake that hath that power or right but the power of punishing is not for the sake of the punisher but for the sake of some Community for all punishment hath the common good proposed to wit the Preservation of Order and Example so than it hath not the nature of being desirable but from this end whereas the power of Lordship and of the thing credited are of themselves desirable In this sense God saith That he delights not in the punishment of them that are punished Again It is never contrary to Justice to give up the right of Lordship or of the thing credited for this is the nature of Property that it is as lawful to use it as not to use it But to let some sins go unpunished to wit of them that repent not would be unjust in a Governour yea in God himself as Socinus confesseth Therefore the right of punishing is not the same with the right of Property or Credit Moreover no man is called just for that and is praised upon the account of Justice because he useth his own Property or because he requires the Debt But any Governour and God himself also is called therefore Just and Praised upon the account of Justice because he forgives not punishment but exacts it severely Just art thou O Lord because thou hast so judged Apoc. 16.5 which was proved already in many places Again The diversity of Vertues ariseth from the diversity of Objects But the Virtue whereby we give up our Property or our Debt is called Liberality not Clemency but that whereby freedom from punishment is granted is not called Liberality but Clemency Perhaps some man may ask seeing punishment is said to be owing Who is here the Creditor for a Debtor can scarcely be understood where there is no Creditor But it must be observed that the word debere to owe doth not always signifie a Relation between two persons For oftentimes Debeo hoc facere I ought to do this signifies no other thing but it is convenient that this thing should be performed by me without respect to another person So Debeo poenam I owe punishment that is I am worthy of punishment and I am absolutely obliged to suffer it but not Relatively in respect of this man or that Therefore it is the same sense in