minister the penalty upon this principle, for it is perfectly inconsistent with an administration on moral principles, to deal out a mathematical measurement of punishment for an arithmetical amount of injury and wrong. For though the punishment of the sinner will be no greater than deserved, yet all his sufferings and pains will never be an equivalent, in commercial or commutative justice, for the honors and the homage of which God has been wronged. Commercial or commutative justice cannot be exercised here, for the government is a moral one. No moral quality or action can be recompensed with a commercial payment. It were absurd to suppose a father, a husband, or a master, governing his family on the commercial principle of paying so much, in money or goods, for so much love and obedience.

The execution of the penalty on the principle of distributive justice, is inconsistent with the present administration of moral government, as it is a state of probation and trial. Such an execution would render our present state not a state of trial. If every swearer, or sabbath-breaker were immediately dealt with according to his character, men would no longer be in a state of probation, to try whether they would swear and keep the sabbath or not. If men would be always seeing the immediate and summary consequences of sin, they would not be proved any longer as to what was in their heart, whether they would keep His commandments or no. They would be walking by sight, and not by faith.

The exercise of what is called vindictive justice in the administration of the law, ill accords with the present connection between God and man. There is so much goodness, and mercy, and clemency, and bounty, in our present circumstances, as to assure us that God has thoughts of peace and not of evil concerning us. Even the evils and the inflictions of the present state are not vindictive, but are evidently under the control and direction of a benevolent principle.

If the divine justice be regarded as commutative, or distributive, or vindictive, we must suppose that the execution of the penalty is an affair of indispensable necessity, and that it must inevitably be inflicted. Besides, in such a necessary execution, there is also implied a necessary and inflexible adherence to the strict letter and form of the law, so that the Public Ruler can not inflict less punishment than was threatened, nor confer more favor than was promised, without violating the constitution.

Then, we must recur to our former question--"Upon what principle shall this penalty of the law be administered?" I answer, upon the principle of PUBLIC JUS

TICE.

PUBLIC JUSTICE is that justice which a government exercises, to preserve the public good, and the public honor of the whole community. In human governments the chief magistrate has a power of suspending penalties, and of dispensing favors, provided he does not exercise such a prerogative to the detriment of the public good. Public justice is related to civil good, as distributive justice is related to personal good. If the penalty be executed, public justice provides that it shall be executed only for the public ends of government, and not for private revenge. If the punishment be suspended, public justice provides that the suspension or remission shall not be detrimental to the public good; it provides that the ends of government shall be as fully secured by the suspension as by the execution.

the principle of distributive justice, Junius Brutus delivered his two offending sons to the lictors, and said, "Execute the law upon them." On the principle of public justice, Zaleucus spared his offending son from blindness, by consenting to suffer the loss of an eye himself. The ends of good government were as effectually secured by the public justice of Zaleucus, as by the distributive justice of Brutus. The tendency in either administration to produce salutary impressions on the subjects, is decidedly in favor of that of public justice,

SECTION III.

The suspension of the Penalty, on honorable grounds,

consistent with Public Justice.

If the chief magistrate, in suspending a punishment, or conferring a pardon, act beside the letter of the law, yet he cannot be said to be unjust, while his measures subserve the general design of the law, and answer to the spirit of the constitution.

Suppose one of a gang of robbers to turn king's evidence. Distributive justice would require that the penalty of death be inflicted upon him as "particeps criminis," and the letter of the law would demand his execution. In such a case the chief magistrate thinks that he will promote the ends of justice, and secure the public good, better by suspending the merited punishment, than by inflicting it; and no honest subject in the kingdom will think him guilty of injustice.

In civil governments, we are every day presented with instances of the suspension of punishment, when it can be done without injury to the public good. A thief is condemned to suffer the punishment of death, but this punishment is suspended, and transportation for life is substituted instead of it. In either case the end of government is answered, namely, that he should no longer wrong honest subjects.

The providential government which God exercises over the affairs of this world, shews that threatenings can be honorably suspended when the ends of good government can be secured by it. The case of Nineveh is in point. The end of divine government, in threatenings denounced by Jonah, was the reformation of the people. This end was secured without an infliction of the penalty; consequently, no one but Jonah has ever thought the suspension or remission of the punishment wrong. That it is a possible case that a punishment may be suspended, when the ends of govern

ment can be otherwise secured, is evident from the whole history of the forbearance and long-suffering of God. The threatened inflictions are long delayed, many serious warnings are given of the approach of judgments when judgments come, they are not inflicted so severely as was threatened; and their execution takes place gradually, as if God were reluctant to inflict them, and as if he were waiting every moment for a signal to withhold his hand. This induction proves that to secure the ends of government, is much greater in the estimation of God, than to execute a threatening; and that his denunciations can be honorably withdrawn, when their public ends are secured.

It has pleased God to give us a specimen of his moral government over the universe in the theocracy which he exercised over the Israelites. In the annals of the theocracy, suspensions and remissions of threatened punishments are facts of very frequent occurrence. Indeed the whole of this divine polity was a system of suspensions, founded upon the substitution of sacrifices, as public expedients and honorable grounds for the non-infliction of threatenings and penalties. Since God in this peculiar polity has clearly shewn that he can on honorable grounds suspend a threatened judgment, without being deemed unjust, he has exhibited to us the exercise of a principle, which is capable of indefinite application to the whole sway of his moral government, and which has actually left well-defined and indelible traces of its operation in the administration of divine providence.

Even if the arguments from analogy failed us in proving the justice of suspending a threatening, there is one fact, that in the history of sinners is boldly prominent, and is presenting itself at every turn; it is the fact that the original penalty threatened to our first parents has been actually suspended. Had it been literally executed, there would have been no human race now existing. The penalty threatened to Adam was, "in the day thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die." Adam

did eat of the forbidden tree; he was spared, he did not die, his penalty was suspended, his punishment was remitted. Was such a suspension just? On what principle can it be justified? It was suspended on the principle of public justice, which made honorable provisions, that the spirit of the divine constitution should be preserved without adhering to the letter of it.

SECTION IV.

The Death of Christ an honorable ground for remitting Punishment.

I. The atonement of Christ is a distinct and public recognition of the truth and justice of the sinner's liableness to the punishment threatened in the law.

The apostle Paul in Col. ii, 14, represents the influence of the death of Christ as paying a debt or cancelling a bond. The chirograph, or bond, means the power of the law to condemn a sinner, that is, our obligation and liableness to suffer the penalty threatened by the law for sins. The sinner owes to the public government the suffering of the punishment. It is this due, this obligation, this liableness, that is represented by the chirograph.

The first part of an honorable payment of a debt, whether commercial or civil is, freely owning the justice of the claim, and the reality of the obligation. The whole of the undertaking of Christ proceeds upon this recognition, that what the law requires is holy, just, and good. By blotting out the handwriting and cancelling the bond, he did not mean to imply that its claims were false, or that its demands were unjust. On the contrary, he nailed the chirograph to the cross, as having been a true and valid indictment.

The death of Christ, or the atonement by his death, supposes the charge against the sinner to be true, and his liableness to the punishment to be just and right. He came to seek and to save that which is "lost,"—to