He
would have to say, 'here I am amongst barbarians, who not only refuse to
do justice, but encourage the greatest of all crimes. I am therefore in
a state of nature: for, so far as there is no law, it is a state of
nature: and consequently, upon the eternal and immutable law of justice,
which requires that he who sheds man's blood should have his blood
shed[273], I will stab the murderer of my father.'
We went to our inn, and sat quietly. Dr. Johnson borrowed, at Mr.
Riddoch's, a volume of _Massillon's Discourses on the Psalms_: but I
found he read little in it. Ogden too he sometimes took up, and glanced
at; but threw it down again. I then entered upon religious conversation.
Never did I see him in a better frame: calm, gentle, wise, holy. I said,
'Would not the same objection hold against the Trinity as against
Transubstantiation?' 'Yes, (said he,) if you take three and one in the
same sense. If you do so, to be sure you cannot believe it: but the
three persons in the Godhead are Three in one sense, and One in another.
We cannot tell how; and that is the mystery!'
I spoke of the satisfaction of Christ. He said his notion was, that it
did not atone for the sins of the world; but, by satisfying divine
justice, by shewing that no less than the Son of God suffered for sin,
it shewed to men and innumerable created beings, the heinousness of it,
and therefore rendered it unnecessary for divine vengeance to be
exercised against sinners, as it otherwise must have been; that in this
way it might operate even in favour of those who had never heard of it:
as to those who did hear of it, the effect it should produce would be
repentance and piety, by impressing upon the mind a just notion of sin:
that original sin was the propensity to evil, which no doubt was
occasioned by the fall.
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