Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Note XII.
37 r
claims on James, or entitle him to her esteem, approba
tion, and blessing? Or what if Matthew, vicarious son,
should at length address her in words to this purpose :
"
Now, I trust, you are appeased, and will be henceforward
reconciled to James. I have satisfied all your claims oil
him. I have paid his debt in full : and you are too just
to require the same debt to be paid twice over. You will
therefore regard him with the same complacency, and
receive him into your presence with the same love, as if
there had been no difference between him and you. For I
have made it What other up" reply could the
swelling
heart of the mother dictate than this ? "0 ! misery and
is it possible that you are in
league with my unnatural
child to insult me ? Must not the very necessity of your
abandonment of your proper sphere form an additional evi
dence of his guilt ? Must not the sense of your goodness
teach me more fully to comprehend, more vividly to feel
the evil in him ? Must not the contrast of your merits
magnify his demerit in his mother s eye, and at once recall
and embitter the conviction of the canker-worm in his
soul ?
"
If indeed by the force of Matthew s example, by per
suasion, or by additional and more mysterious influences,
or by an inward co-agency, compatible with the existence of
a personal will, James should be led to repent ;
if through
admiration and love of this great goodness gradually assimi
lating his mind to the mind of his benefactor, he should
in his own person become a grateful and dutiful child
then doubtless the mother would be wholly satisfied ! But
then the case is no longer a question of things, or a matter
of debt payable by another. Aids to Reflection, p. 322.
But is not Mr. Coleridge righting the air, when he
objects, on these grounds,
to the received doctrine of the
atonement as a for sin ? It is
satisfaction quite true that
such a doctrine is to
opposed
our natural idea of justice, as
well as to the truth of common reason, that one person
cannot be a substitute for another in moral action. But
who does not acknowledge this contrariety ? Does not the
most devout believer to hold this doctrine as
profess
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