Zorn Gottes, 28, makes wrath only the jealousy of love. It is more truly the jealousy of holiness. Prof. W. A. Stevens, Com. on 1 Thess. 2: 10-Holily and righteously are terms that describe the same conduct in two aspects: the former, as conformed to God's character in itself; the latter, as conformed to his law; both are positive." Lillie, Com. on 2 Thess. 1: 6-"Judgment is 'a righteous thing with God.' Divine justice requires it for its own satisfaction."

The moral indignation of a whole universe of holy beings against moral evil, added to the agonizing self-condemnations of awakened conscience in all the unholy, is only a faint and small reflection of the awful revulsion of God's infinite justice from the impurity and selfishness of his creatures, and of the intense, organic, necessary, and eternal reaction of his moral being in self-vindication and the punishment of sin; see Jer. 44: 4-"Oh, do not that abominable thing that I hate!" Num. 32:23-"Be sure your sin will find you out"; Heb. 10:30, 31" For we know him that said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." On justice as an attribute of a moral governor, see N. W. Taylor, Moral Government, 2: 253-293; Owen, Dissertation on Divine Justice, in Works, 10: 483-624.

VII. RANK AND RELATIONS OF THE SEVERAL ATTRIBUTES.

The attributes have relations to each other. Like intellect, affection, and will in man, none of them are to be conceived of as exercised separately from the rest. Each of the attributes is qualified by all the others. God's love is immutable, wise, holy. Infinity belongs to God's knowledge, power, justice. Yet this is not to say that one attribute is of as high rank as another. The moral attributes of truth, love, holiness, are worthy of higher reverence from men, and they are more jealously guarded by God, than the natural attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. And yet even among the moral attributes one stands as supreme. Of this and of its supremacy we now proceed to speak.

1. Holiness the fundamental attribute in God.

That holiness is the fundamental attribute in God, is evident:

(a) From Scripture,-in which God's holiness is not only most constantly and powerfully pressed upon the attention of man, but is declared to be the chief subject of rejoicing and adoration in heaven.

It is God's attribute of holiness that first and most prominently presents itself to the mind of the sinner, and conscience only follows the method of Scripture: 1 Pet. 1: 16"ye shall be holy; for I am holy"; Heb. 12: 14-"the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord"; cf. Luke 5: 8" Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord." Yet this constant insistence upon holiness cannot be due simply to man's present state of sin, for in heaven, where there is no sin, there is the same reiteration: Is. 6:3-"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts"; Rev. 4: 8— "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty."

(b) From our own moral constitution,-in which conscience asserts its supremacy over every other impulse and affection of our nature. As we may be kind, but must be righteous, so God, in whose image we are made, may be merciful, but must be holy.

See Bishop Butler's Sermons upon Human Nature, Bohn's ed., 385-414, showing "the supremacy of conscience in the moral constitution of man." We must be just, before we are generous. So with God, justice must be done always; mercy is optional with him. He was not under obligation to provide a redemption for sinners: 2 Pet. 2: 4-"God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell." Salvation is a matter of grace, not of debt. Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 277-298-“The quality of justice is necessary exaction; but the quality of mercy is not (con)strained [cf. Denham: "His mirth is forced and strained"]. God can apply the salvation, after he has wrought it out, to whomsoever he will: Rom. 9: 18-"he hath mercy on whom he will." The poet says: "A God all mercy is a God unjust." Emerson: "Your goodness must have some edge to it; else

it is none." We may learn of God's holiness a priori. Even the heathen could say "Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum", or "pereat mundus." But, for our knowledge of God's mercy, we are dependent upon special revelation. See, Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man: Sermon on "Mercy optional with God," 366: Mercy, like omnipotence, may exist in God without being exercised. "But justice is an attribute which not only exists of necessity, but must be exercised of necessity; because not to exercise it would be injustice."

If it be said that, by parity of reasoning, for God not to exercise mercy is to show himself unmerciful,-we reply that this is not true so long as higher interests require that exercise to be withheld. I am not unmerciful when I refuse to give to the poor the money needed to pay an honest debt; nor is the Governor unmerciful who refuses to pardon the condemned and unrepentant criminal. Mercy has its conditions, as we proceed to show, and it does not cease to be, when these conditions do not permit it to be exercised. Not so with justice: justice must always be exercised; when it ceases to be exercised, it also ceases to be.

(c) From the actual dealings of God,-in which holiness conditions and limits the exercise of other attributes. Thus, for example, in Christ's redeeming work, though love makes the atonement, it is violated holiness that requires it; and in the eternal punishment of the wicked, the demand of holiness for self-vindication overbears the pleading of love for the sufferers. That which conditions all is highest of all. Holiness shows itself higher than love, in that it conditions love. Hence God's mercy does not consist in outraging his own law of holiness, but in enduring the penal affliction by which that law of holiness is satisfied. Conscience in man is but the reflex of holiness in God. Conscience demands either retribution or atonement. This demand Christ meets by his substituted suffering. His sacrifice assuages the thirst of conscience in man, as well as the demand of holiness in God: John 6:55-"For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 280, 291, 292, from which much of the above is in substance taken. See also Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1: 137-155, 346-353; Patton, art. on Retribution and the Divine Goodness, in Princeton Rev., Jan., 1878: 8-16; Owen, Dissertation on the Divine Justice, in Works, 10: 483-624.

(d) From God's eternal purpose of salvation,-in which justice and mercy are reconciled only through the foreseen and predetermined sacrifice of Christ. The declaration that Christ is "the Lamb. . . . slain from the foundation of the world" implies the existence of a principle in the divine nature which requires satisfaction, before God can enter upon the work of redemption. That principle can be none other than holiness.

Since both mercy and justice are exercised toward sinners of the human race, the otherwise inevitable antagonism between them is removed only by the atoning death of the God-man. Their opposing claims do not impair the divine blessedness, because the reconciliation exists in the eternal counsels of God. This is intimated in Rev. 13: 8--" the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world." This same reconciliation is alluded to in Ps. 85: 10" Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other"; and in Rom. 3: 26 -"that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus." The atonement, then, if man was to be saved, was necessary, not primarily on man's account, but on God's account. Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 279: The sacrifice of Christ was an "atonement ab intra, a self-oblation on the part of Deity himself, by which to satisfy those immanent and eternal imperatives of the divine nature which without it must find their satisfaction in the punishment of the transgressor, or else be outraged." Thus God's word of redemption, as well as his word of creation, is forever "settled in heaven" (Ps. 119: 89). Its execution on the cross was "according to the pattern" on high. The Mosaic sacrifice prefigured the sacrifice of Christ; but the sacrifice of Christ was but the temporal disclosure of an eternal fact in the nature of God. See Kreibig, Versöhnung, 155, 156.

2.

A.

The holiness of God the ground of moral obligation.
Erroneous Views. The ground of moral obligation is not

(a) In power,-whether of civil law (Hobbes, Gassendi), or of divine

will (Occam, Descartes). We are not bound to obey either of these, except upon the ground that they are right. This theory assumes that nothing is good or right in itself, and that morality is mere prudence.

Civil Law: See Hobbes, Leviathan, part i, chap. 6 and 13; part ii, chap. 30. Gassendi, Opera, 6: 120. Upon this view, might makes right; the laws of Nero are always binding; a man may break his promise when civil law permits; there is no obligation to obey a father, a civil governor, or God himself, when once it is certain that the disobedience will be hidden, or when the offender is willing to incur the punishment.

Divine will: See Occam, lib. 2, quæs. 19 (quoted in Porter, Moral Science, 125); Descartes (referred to in Hickok, Moral Science, 27, 28). Upon this view, right and wrong are variable quantities. Duns Scotus held that God's will makes not only truth but right. God can make lying to be virtuous and purity to be wrong. If Satan were God, we should be bound to obey him. God is essentially indifferent to right and wrong, good and evil. We reply that behind the divine will is the divine nature, and that in the moral perfection of that nature lies the only ground of moral obligation.

As between power or utility on the one hand, and right on the other hand, we must regard right as the more fundamental. We do not, however, as will be seen further on, place the ground of moral obligation even in right, considered as an abstract principle; but place it rather in the moral excellence of him who is the personal Right and therefore the source of right.

(b) Nor in utility,-whether our own happiness or advantage present or eternal (Paley), for supreme regard for our own interest is not virtuous; or the greatest happiness or advantage of being in general (Edwards), for we judge conduct to be useful because it is right, not right because it is useful. This theory would compel us to believe that in eternity past God was holy only because of the good he got from it—that is, there was no such thing as holiness in itself, and no such thing as moral character in God.

Our own happiness: Paley, Mor. and Pol. Philos., book i, chap. vii-" Virtue is the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness." This unites (a) and (b). John Stuart Mill and Dr. N. W. Taylor held that our own happiness is the supreme end. These writers indeed regard the highest happiness as attained only by living for others (Mill's altruism), but they can assign no reason why one who knows no other happiness than the pleasures of sense should not adopt the maxim of Epicurus, who, according to Lucretius, taught that “ducit quemque voluptas." This theory renders virtue impossible; for a virtue which is mere regard to our own interest is not virtue but prudence. "We have a sense of right and wrong independently of all considerations of happiness or its loss."

Greatest good of being: Not only Edwards, but Priestly, Bentham, Dwight, Finney, Hopkins, Fairchild, hold this view. See Edwards, Works, 2: 261-304-“ Virtue is benevolence toward being in general"; Dwight, Theology, 3: 150-162–“Utility the Foundation of Virtue"; Hopkins, Law of Love, 7-28; Fairchild, Moral Philosophy; Finney, Syst. Theol., 42-135. This theory regards good as a mere state of the sensibility, instead of consisting in purity of being. It forgets that in eternity past "love for being in general"= = simply God's self-love, or God's regard for his own happiness. This implies that God is holy only for a purpose; he is bound to be unholy, if greater good would result; that is, holiness has no independent existence in his nature. We grant that a thing is often known to be right by the fact that it is useful; but this is very different from saying that its usefulness makes it right. "Utility is only the setting of the diamond, which marks, but does not make, its value." "If utility be a criterion of rectitude, it is only because it is a revelation of the divine nature." See British Quarterly, July, 1877, on Matthew Arnold and Bishop Butler. Bp. Butler, Nature of Virtue, in Works, Bohn's ed., 334. Love and holiness are obligatory in themselves, and not because they promote the general good. Cicero well said that they who confounded the honestum with the utile deserved to be banished from society. See criticism on Porter's Moral Science, in Lutheran Quarterly, Apr., 1885: 326-331.

(c) Nor in the nature of things (Price),—whether by this we mean their fitness (Clarke), truth (Wollaston), order (Jouffroy), relations (Wayland), worthiness (Hickok), sympathy (Adam Smith), or abstract right (Haven and

Alexander); for this nature of things is not ultimate, but has its ground in the nature of God. We are bound to worship the highest; if anything exists beyond and above God, we are bound to worship that—that indeed is God.

See Wayland, Moral Science, 33-48; Hickok, Moral Science, 27-34; Haven, Moral Philosophy, 27-50; Alexander, Moral Science, 159-198. In opposition to all the forms of this theory, we urge that nothing exists independently of or above God. "If the ground of morals exist independently of God, either it has ultimately no authority, or it usurps the throne of the Almighty. Any rational being who kept the law would be perfect without God, and the moral centre of all intelligences would be outside of God" (Talbot). God is not a Jupiter controlled by Fate. He is subject to no law but the law of his own nature. Noblesse oblige-character rules-purity is the highest. And therefore to holiness all creatures, voluntarily or involuntarily, are constrained to bow. Hopkins, Law of Love, 77-" Right and wrong have nothing to do with things, but only with actions; nothing to do with any nature of things existing necessarily, but only with the nature of persons." Another has said: "The idea of right cannot be original, since right means conformity to some standard or rule." This standard or rule is not an abstraction, but an existing being--the infinitely perfect God.

B. The Scriptural View. According to the Scriptures, the ground of moral obligation is the holiness of God, or the moral perfection of the divine nature, conformity to which is the law of our moral being (Chalmers, Calderwood, Gregory, Wuttke). We show this:

(a) From the commands: "Ye shall be holy," where the ground of obligation assigned is simply and only: "for I am holy" (1 Pet. 1: 16); and "Ye therefore shall be perfect," where the standard laid down is: "as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mat. 5: 48). Here we have an ultimate reason and ground for being and doing right, namely, that God is right, or, in other words, that holiness is his nature. (b) From the nature of the love in which the whole law is summed up (Mat. 22: 37-"thou shalt love the Lord thy God"; Rom. 13: 10-"love therefore is the fulfilment of the law"). This love is not regard for abstract right or for the happiness of being, much less for one's own interest, but it is regard for God as the fountain and standard of moral excellence, or, in other words, love for God as holy. Hence this love is the principle and source of holiness in man.

(c) From the example of Christ, whose life was essentially an exhibition of supreme regard for God, and of supreme devotion to his holy will. As Christ saw nothing good but what was in God (Mark 10: 18-"none is good save one, even God"), and did only what he saw the Father do (John 5: 19; see also 30-"I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me "), so for us, to be like God is the sum of all duty, and God's infinite moral excellence is the supreme reason why we should be like him.

For statements of the correct view of the ground of moral obligation, see Chalmers, Moral Philosophy, 412-420; Calderwood, Moral Philosophy; Gregory, Christian Ethics, 112-122: Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2: 80-107; Talbot, Ethical Prolegomena, in Bap. Quar., July, 1877, 257-274: “The ground of all moral law is the nature of God, or the ethical nature of God in relation to the like nature in man, or the imperativeness of the divine nature." Plato: "The divine will is the fountain of all efficiency; the divine reason is the fountain of all law; the divine nature is the fountain of all virtue." For further discussion of the subject, see section on the Law of God. See also Thornwell, Theology, 1: 363-373; Hinton, Art of Thinking, 47-62; Goldwin Smith, in Contemporary Review, March, 1882, and Jan., 1884; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 195-231, esp. 223. Holiness is the goal of man's spiritual career; see 1 Thess. 3: 13" To the end he may stablish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father." The greatest recent work on the general subject is that of James Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory.

CHAPTER II.

DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.

In the nature of the one God there are three eternal distinctions which are represented to us under the figure of persons, and these three are equal. This tripersonality of the Godhead is exclusively a truth of revelation.

It is clearly, though not formally, made known in the New Testament, and intimations of it may be found in the Old.

The doctrine of the Trinity may be expressed in the six following statements: 1. In Scripture there are three who are recognized as God. 2. These three are so described in Scripture that we are compelled to conceive of them as distinct persons. 3. This tripersonality of the divine nature is not merely economic and temporal, but is immanent and eternal. 4. This tripersonality is not tritheism; for while there are three persons, there is but one essence. 5. The three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are equal. 6. Inscrutable yet not self-contradictory, this doctrine furnishes the key to all other doctrines. These statements we proceed now to prove

and to elucidate.

Reason shows us the Unity of God; only revelation shows us the Trinity of God, thus filling out the indefinite outlines of this unity and vivifying it. The term Trinity' is not found in Scripture, although the conception it expresses is Scriptural. The invention of the term is ascribed to Tertullian. The Montanists first defined the personality of the Spirit, and first formulated the doctrine of the Trinity. The term 'Trinity' is not a metaphysical one. It is only a designation of four facts: (1) the Father is God; (2) the Son is God; (3) the Spirit is God; (4) there is but one God.

Park: "The doctrine of the Trinity does not on the one hand assert that three persons are united in one person, or three beings in one being, or three Gods in one God (tritheism); nor on the other hand that God merely manifests himself in three different ways (modal trinity, or trinity of manifestations); but rather that there are three eternal distinctions in the substance of God." Smyth, preface to Edwards, Observations on the Trinity: "The church doctrine of the Trinity affirms that there are in the Godhead three distinct hypostases or subsistences-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit-each possessing one and the same divine nature, though in a different manner. The essential points are (1) the unity of essence; (2) the reality of immanent or ontological distinctions." See Park on Edwards's View of the Trinity, in Bib. Sac., April, 1881: 333. Princeton Essays, 1: 28-"There is one God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are this one God; there is such a distinction between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as to lay a sufficient ground for the reciprocal use of the personal pronouns." Joseph Cook: "(1) The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one God; (2) each has a peculiarity incommunicable to the others; (3) neither is God without the others; (4) each, with the others, is God."

For treatment of the whole doctrine, see Dorner, System of Doctrine, 1: 344-465; Twesten, Dogmatik, and translation in Bib. Sac., 3:502; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:145-199; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:57-135; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3: 203-229; Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:246-385; Farrar, Science and Theology, 138; Schaff, Nicene Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, in Theol. Eclectic, 4: 209. For the Unitarian view, see Norton, Statement of Reasons, and J. F. Clarke, Truths and Errors of Orthodoxy.