HKB
that all the mitigations which they add, have no other tendency than to perplex, obscure, and corrupt the pure doctrine, and to conceal their impieties under false and illusive colours.
XXV. The third place in repentance they assign to satisfaction; all their jargon concerning which may be overturned in one word. They say, that it is not sufficient for a penitent to abstain from his former sins, and to change his morals for the better, unless he make satisfaction to God for the crimes which he has committed; and that there are many helps by which we may redeem sins, such as tears, fastings, oblations, and works of charity; that by these the Lord is to be propitiated, by these our debts are to be paid to the Divine justice, by these we must compensate for the guilt of our sins, by these we must merit pardon; for that though, in the plenitude of his mercy, he has remitted our sins, yet, in the discipline of justice, he retains the punishment, and that this is the punishment which must be redeemed by satisfactions. All that they say, however, comes to this conclusion—that we obtain the pardon of our transgressions from the mercy of God, but that it is by the intervention of the merit of works, by which the evil of our sins must be compensated, that the Divine justice may receive the satisfaction which is due to it. To such falsehoods I oppose the gratuitous remission of sins, than which there is nothing more clearly revealed in the Scripture. In the first place, what is remission, but a gift of mere liberality? For the creditor is not said to forgive, who testifies by a receipt that the debt has been paid, but he who, without any payment, merely through his beneficence, voluntarily cancels the obligation. In the next place, why is this said to be free, but to preclude every idea of satisfaction? With what confidence, then, can they still set up their satisfactions, which are overthrown by such a mighty thunderbolt? But when the Lord proclaims by Isaiah, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins,”(1732) does he not evidently declare, that he derives the cause and foundation of forgiveness merely from his own goodness? Besides, while the whole Scripture bears testimony to Christ, that “remission of sins” is to be “received through his name,”(1733) does it not exclude all other names? How, then, do they teach, that it is received through the name of satisfactions? Nor can they deny that they ascribe this to satisfactions, although they call their intervention subsidiary. For when the Scripture states it to be “through the name of Christ,” it signifies, that we bring nothing, that we plead nothing, of our own, but rely solely on the mediation of Christ; as Paul, after affirming, “that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them,” immediately adds the method and nature of it, “for he hath made him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us.”(1734)