*Answers.*

I. The agent and personal cause of the Redemption of mankind is--the co-eternal Word and only begotten Son of the Living God, incarnate, tempted, agonizing

crucified, submitting to death, resurgent, communicant of his Spirit, ascendent, and obtaining for his Church the descent and communion of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.

II. The causative act is--a spiritual and transcendant mystery, that passeth all understanding.

III. The effect caused is--the being born anew: as before in the flesh to the world, so now born in the spirit to Christ.

IV. The consequences from the effect are--sanctification from sin, and liberation from the inherent and penal consequences of sin in the world to come, with all the means and processes of sanctification by the Word and the Spirit: these consequents being the same for the sinner relatively to God and his own soul, as the satisfaction of a debt for a debtor relatively to his creditor; as the sacrificial atonement made by the priest for the transgressor of the Mosaic Law; as the reconciliation to an alienated parent for a son who had estranged himself from his father's house and presence; and as a redemptive ransom for a slave or captive.

Now I complain, that this metaphorical naming of the transcendant causative act through the medium of its proper effects from actions and causes of familiar occurrence connected with the former by similarity of result, has been mistaken for an intended designation of the essential character of the causative act itself; and that thus divines have interpreted de omni what was 260 spoken de singulo, and magnified a partial equation into a total identity.

I will merely hint to my more learned readers, and to the professional students of theology, that the origin of this error is to be sought for in the discussions of the Greek Fathers, and (at a later period) of the Schoolmen on the obscure and abysmal subject of the divine A-seity and the distinction between the

and the

that is, the Absolute Will, as the universal ground of all being, and the election and purpose of God in the Personal Idea, as the Father. And this view would have allowed me to express what I believe to be the true import and Scriptural idea of Redemption in terms much more nearly resembling those used ordinarily by the Calvinistic divines, and with a conciliative show of coincidence. But this motive was outweighed by the reflection, that I could not rationally have expected to be understood by those, to whom I most wish to be intelligible: et si non vis intelligi, cur vis legi?

Not to countervene the purpose of a Synopsis, I have detached the confirmative or explanatory remarks from the answers to questions II. and III., and place them below as scholia. A single glance of the eye will enable the reader to re-connect each sentence it is supposed to follow.