308 HISTORY OF ROMAN LAW 



who lived just at the time of the great legal revival, seems to have 

 been the first great Christian writer who elaborated the dogma that, 

 as part of a scheme ordained from all eternity whereby God's justice 

 should be satisfied and man's sin pardoned, God had become man 

 in order to satisfy by His death a debt which the human race had 

 heaped up, but could not pay. This strictly legal view was elaborated 

 by the Thomists and Scotists in their disputes over satisfactio super- 

 abundans and satisfactio gratuita, and at the Reformation it was 

 appropriated by the Reformers, who quite logically insisted upon 

 it as a strong argument against the Papal system of penance and 

 indulgences. Luther said that "by none other sacrifice or offering 

 could God's fierce anger be appeased but by the precious blood of 

 the Son of God "; and the poet of Puritanism has stated its doctrine 

 in the gloomy lines: 



" Die he or justice must; unless for him 

 Some other able, and as willing, pay 

 The rigid satisfaction; death for death." 



To what legal extremes this theory of atonement was carried at the 

 Reformation is nowhere better shown than in the Defence of the 

 Catholic Faith which Grotius wrote against Socinus. 1 Socinus had 

 argued that where there was satisfaction of a debt there could be no 

 need for any remission of that debt by God. Grotius answered him 

 with citations from the Digest. He admitted that Socinus 's contention 

 would have been true if the legal service performed by Christ had 

 been acceptilatio, novatio, or delegatio. But inasmuch as that service 

 was in law quite a different transaction, and since the obligation 

 incurred by man had not been canceled by Christ, but merely sus- 

 pended through the working of satisfactio, Grotius argued that there 

 was still room for the exercise of God's mercy in completely doing 

 away with man's liability. 2 



It would be interesting to trace the whole history of this famous 

 dogma, perhaps the strongest though by no means the only instance 

 of legal influence on Christian religious thought; but in so short 

 a sketch details must needs be omitted. The doctrine figured con- 

 spicuously in the teaching of Wesley, whose constant cry was: 

 " Plead thou singly the blood of the Covenant, the ransom paid for 

 thy proud stubborn soul," and through him it has played a great 

 part in modern Protestantism. While it may be true, in the recent 

 words of an English clergyman, that "theories of atonement are now 

 either rejected or in process of being rejected," 3 St. Anselm's legal 

 doctrine still numbers many adherents. 



1 Socinus, De Chris'o Servatore, pars 3, cap. 1-6. 



2 Grotius, Def. Fidei Cath. cap. 6. 



1 Canon Henson, Value of the Bible, p. 279. 



