The Atonement
by Archibald Alexander Hodge
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. Tit Ultimate Motives Op All God's Acts Are In Himself; And The Immutable Perfections Of The Divine Nature Demand The Punishment Of Sin. AS our first argument, we will appeal to what the Scriptures teach concerning the nature of God and his principle of action. In doing this, I shall attempt to prove show more (a) that the scriptural doctrine is that the ultimate motive and end of all God's actions are in himself; and (6) that the intrinsic and unchangeable perfections of the divine nature, lying back of and determining the divine will, determine him certainly, yet most freely, to punish all sin because of his essential holiness and its essential demerit. I. Scripture and reason teach us that the ultimate reason and motive of all God's actions are within himself. Since God is infinite, eternal and unchangeable, that which was his first motive in creating the universe must ever continue to be his ultimate motive or chief end in every act concerned in its preservation and government. But God's first motive must have been just the exercise of his own essential perfections, and in their exercise the manifestation of their excellence. This was the only end which could have been chosen by the divine mind in the beginning, before the existence of any other object. It is also infinitely the highest end in itself, and the one which will best secure the happiness and exaltation of the creature himself. It is manifest that a creature cannot be absolutely an end in himself, but only a means to an end. And he is the most exalted 'when he is made absolutely subservient to that end, which is the highest possible even to the Creator. The Scriptures are very explicit on this subject. (1.) They directly assert it. All things were created by him and for him. For of him, and through ... show lessTags
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