punishment was due to God for the sins of men. This vast sum was made
up of all the woes due through eternity to the whole human race, or,
as some said, to the elect. Christ on the cross bore this punishment
himself and thereby took it away: thus God is enabled to forgive
without violating justice.--But I early encountered unanswerable
difficulty on this theory, as to the question, whether Christ had
borne the punishment of _all_ or of _some_ only. If of all, is it not
unjust to inflict any of it on any? If of the elect only, what gospel
have you to preach? for then you cannot tell sinners that God has
provided a Saviour for them; for you do not know whether those whom
you address are elect. Finding no way out of this, I abandoned the
fundamental idea of _compensation in quantity_, as untenable; and
rested in the vaguer notion, that God signally showed his abhorrence
of sin, by laying tremendous misery on the Saviour who was to bear
away sin.

I have already narrated, how at Oxford I was embarrassed as to the
forensic propriety of transferring punishment at all. This however
I received as matter of authority, and rested much on the wonderful
exhibition made of the evil of sin, when _such_ a being could be
subjected to preternatural suffering as a vicarious sinbearer. To
this view, a high sense of the personal dignity of Jesus was quite
essential; and therefore I had always felt a great repugnance for Mr.
Belsham, Dr. Priestley, and the Unitarians of that school, though I
had not read a line of their writings.

A more intimate familiarity with St. Paul and an anxious harmonizing
of my very words to the Scripture, led me on into a deviation from the
popular creed, of the full importance of which I was not for some
time aware. I perceived that it is not the _agonies_ of mind or body