Where Did Jesus Die? — Page 128
? 128 nature and not as St. Paul says (Eph. 2:3): ‘We. . . were by nature the children of wrath’; that is, liable to punishment. 5. The natural sequence of eating or touching the forbidden tree was death: ‘lest ye die’. 1 If it were true that Jesus, by his crucifix- ion, paid the ransom for Original Sin, then no one should have died after it. But we see that the death sentence is still being carried out; all men die, and the Christian nations, especially, have invented the most cruel and swiftest ways of death. 6. The belief that by killing His innocent Son, God reconciled His justice and mercy, is certainly incomprehensible. ‘Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty, even if the inno- cent would offer himself. To suppose that justice does this is to destroy the principles of its existence; which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge. ’ 2 When Judah requested Joseph to take him instead of his younger brothers, Joseph answered: ‘God forbid that I should do so: but the man in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my servant; and as for you, get you up in peace unto your father. ’ 3 A positive proof that the doctrine of Atonement is false and contrary to divine justice is that, when the Israelites made a god of gold, a calf, Moses said to them (Exodus 32:30): 1. Gen. 3:3 2. The Age of Reason, by T. Paine. 3. Gen. 44:17