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The Soon Coming Judgment Of God Upon America and How To Escape It 440
its being a substitute which makes all other sacrifices useless and unmeaning, but in its
giving them the power and meaning which of themselves they could not have... (Mr. Maurice)
may have failed to make clear that Sacrifice is not the only way of conceiving Atonement...”
In a letter to Rev. F. D. Maurice on November 16, 1849 he wrote the following concerning
substitutionary atonement:
O that Coleridge, while showing how the notion of a fictitious
substituted righteousness, of a transferable stock of good actions, obscured the
truth of man's restoration in the Man who perfectly acted out the idea of man, had
expounded the truth (for such, I am sure, there must be) that underlies the
corresponding heresy (as it appears to me) of a fictitious substituted penalty!...
Nor, as far as I can recollect, have you anywhere written explicitly upon this
point; even on the corresponding subject of vicarious righteousness, I know only
of two pages... and they have not been able to make me feel assured that the
language of imputation is strictly true, however sanctioned by St. Paul's example.
The fact is, I do not see how God's justice can be satisfied without every
man's suffering in his own person the full penalty for his sins.
1411
Hort did not believe in the infallibility of scripture. In a letter to Westcott on May 2, 1860
he states: “But I am not able to go as far as you in asserting the infallibility of a canonical
writing. I may see a certain fitness and probability in such a view, but I cannot set up an a priori
assumption against the (supposed) results of criticism.” Hort’s disbelief is partly based on the fact
that he alleged that the scriptures had been corrupted. Apparently, he also believed that God had
ordained him to edit the Bible and remove the errors. In a letter to Rev. Dr. Rowland Williams
on October 21, 1858 he write the following concerning the authority of scripture:
Further I agree with them [authors of Essays and Reviews] in condemning
many leading specific doctrines of the popular theology. . . The positive
doctrines even of the Evangelicals seem to me perverted rather than untrue.
There are, I fear still more serious differences between us on the subject of
authority and especially the authority of the Bible . . . If this primary objection
were removed, and I could feel our differences to be only of degree, I should still
hesitate to take part in the proposed scheme. It is surely likely to bring on a crisis;
and that I cannot think desirable on any account. The errors and prejudices, which
we agree in wishing to remove, can surely be more wholesomely and also more
effectually reached by individual efforts of an indirect kind than by combined
open assault. At present very many orthodox but rational men are being unawares
acted upon by influences which will assuredly bear good fruit in due time if is
allowed to go on quietly; but I fear that a premature crisis would frighten back
many into the merest traditionalism.
1412
Regarding his work of Bible revision, Hort writes to a friend that the combined impact of
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