The preventive function of government, however, is far more liable to be abused, to the prejudice of liberty, than the punitory function; for there is hardly any part of the legitimate freedom of action of a human being which would not admit of being represented, and fairly too, as increasing the facilities for some form or other of delinquency. ❋ Unknown (2002)
[124] A constant, then, and uniform course of just operation in punishing sin proves punitory justice to be essentially inherent in God. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
But Socinus, as if having achieved some great exploit, at length thus concludes: “That punitory justice is not a virtue inherent in God, or a divine quality or property, but the effect of his will; and that that justice by which God always punishes impenitent sinners is so called, not properly, but by accident, namely, because it is agreeable to true justice or rectitude.” ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
That punitory justice is one alone and individual, we affirm; but that it is variously exercised, on account of the difference of the objects about which it is employed, we acknowledge; — but this by no means proves it to be twofold; for he ought not, among men, to be said to be endowed with a twofold justice who renders different recompenses to those who merit differently. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
Rutherford reviewed — An oversight of that learned man — His opinion of punitory justice — He contends that divine justice exists in God freely — ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
Socinian speaks against; but rather to this, that as punitory justice is a natural attribute of God, a very considerable portion of his essential glory, yea, a well-known name of God, he can “by no means clear the guilty,” unless he were to deny himself, and deliver up his glory to another, — than which nothing is farther from God. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
The devoting of Christ to death, considered in the first sense, we deny to be an act of punitory justice, or to have arisen from that justice; for that act by which God destined his Son to the work of mediation, by which, in respect of their guilt, he transferred from us all our sins and laid them upon Christ, are acts of supreme dominion, and breathe love and grace rather than avenging justice. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
But, “That punitory justice,” say they, “which you assign as the source of punishment, is opposite to mercy.” ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
In almost all his writings he opposes this punitory justice. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
He maintains, as I have observed before, “That punitory justice exists not in God by necessity of nature, but freely;” and he has said that Twisse hath proved this by a variety of arguments, one of which, in preference to the others, he builds on, as unanswerable. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
But the apostle says that this anger or punitory justice is “revealed from heaven.” ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
So very puzzling and harsh is the diction, that it is difficult to make any sense of it; for what means that sentence, “That God, by a necessity of nature, owes the good of punitory justice to the universe?” ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
To owe, then, “the good of punitory justice to the universe,” is to owe the good of an essential attribute to his own glory. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
The learned Twisse grants that punitory or sin-avenging justice is natural to God, or that it is an essential attribute of the divine nature. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
But in the whole matter of salvation by the Mediator, God-man, there is no excellence of God, no essential property, no attribute of his nature, the glory of which is the chief end of all his works, that he hath more clearly and eminently displayed than this punitory justice. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
God is said to forgive sins is the justice of faithfulness, which has the foundation of its exercise in this punitory justice: which being satisfied, ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
But this reason is evidently of no force; for besides that arguments from opposites do not hold always good in theology, as hath been shown in various instances by Maccovius, we have before demonstrated at large that the relation between remunerating grace and punitory justice is not the same. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
But if the learned author mean this, that God ought to preserve his own right and dominion over the universe, and that this is just, his nature so requiring him, but that it cannot be done, supposing sin to exist, without the exercise of punitory justice, and then that those who affirm this indirectly deny the existence of God, — this is easy for any one to assert, but not so easy to prove. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
But the punishment of Christ, made sin for us, is an act of punitory justice; nor, upon the supposition that he was received in our room as our surety, could it be otherwise. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
But how this learned man will prove that sparing mercy, — which, as not only the nature of the thing itself requires, but even the Socinians with the orthodox agree, ought to be viewed in the same light as punitory justice, — is essential to God, when he affirms punitory justice to exist in God freely, I cannot conjecture. ❋ 1616-1683 (1967)
