Mason:

There is, however, something more than this. The gospel is not simply an offer of mercy, it is a law. It has its own duties, and prescribes its own penalties. It does not simply make it the privilege, but the duty of all men, without exception, to embrace Jesus Christ, and to accept the offer of forgiveness which is made to them. It makes the question of eternal. life or eternal death to every hearer of the gospel to hinge upon his acceptance of proffered mercy, coming to him on the ground and through the provisions of the atonement of Christ. “This is the commandment of God, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ.” He is set before us, before every one of us, in all his fullness and freeness, and it is at our peril if we reject or neglect him. With these views of the gospel offer, I cannot advocate a limited atonement; I cannot put a restriction of the provision which I do not find in the offer; I cannot believe that God would make to a sinner in his wants and his woes the tender of a relief which did not exist, or which he did not wish him to embrace; I cannot believe that God would command his creatures to embrace a provision which had never been made for them, or sanction by the peril of one’s everlasting interests a commandment which he never meant should be obeyed, and which itself precluded the possibility of obedience.

It does not at all meet the difficulty of the case to say, at this point, that we are required thus indiscriminately to offer the gospel and thus to enforce its acceptance upon all, because we do not know the persons for whom the provision is made, and whom God designs shall accept it. The offer is not ours; we are but the channel through which it comes. God himself makes the offer; we but take up God’s words, and announce them as he has given them to us. We are ambassadors of Christ, not speaking in our own name, but according to our instructions, which bind us to say to each and every one of our hearers, “Come, for all things are now ready.” In this matter we have no responsibility beyond the simple utterance of the message, “This is the will of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent;” and the question returns upon us, how can we reconcile a universal offer with a limited provision? How can we acquit God of the charge of insincerity in making to men a tender, and enforcing upon them by the high sanctions of eternity the acceptance of that which not only was never designed for them in any sense, but which, in fact, has never been provided?

And yet it is said, at this point, “the Lord knows them that are his; it is not a matter of doubtfulness to him, who sees the end from the beginning, who shall and who shall not be saved through the atonement; he has his all-wise purposes in reference to this subject, and the final result will not vary one hair’s breadth from his purpose;” and while the truth of this principle is claimed from us, and cheerfully admitted by us, the difficulty of the subject is supposed to be thrown over upon ourselves, as the question is retorted upon us, how can we reconcile a universal offer with God’s secret purpose; an unrestricted provision with a well-known definite and limited result? Why should God make a provision to an extent he knew would be unnecessary, and be guilty of an expenditure beyond what the well-known circumstances of the case required? If he knew that in many cases the atonement would be rejected, why for such cases provide an atonement? If he saw distinctly that there would be some, and knew who they were, who would treat the blood of the covenant as an unholy thing, where the honesty of pressing it upon their acceptance, and bringing such mighty sanctions to bear upon them to enforce obedience?

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Styles:

1) Christ’s sufferings
proportionate to His people’s
guilt, the ground if the
sufficiency of His work.

We believe that as the death of the Lord Jesus was penal (that is to say inflicted on Him in punishment for the sins of His people,) His vicarious agonies were proportioned to their guilt, and died to save His own. that He suffered at the hands of impartial Justice what they Truth, wisdom, justice, power and love in their own persons must otherwise have endured in the place of endless woe, and that thus the measure of His rendered His oblation gloriously sufficient for great ends contemplated in the covenant of grace. William Jeyes Styles, A Manual of Faith and Practice, Designed for Young and Enquiring Christians, (London: Printed by J. Briscoe, Banner Street, Finsbury, E.C., 1897), 43. [Some spelling modernized; some reformatting; italics original; and underlining mine.]

2) ADDENDA TO CHAPTER 10. No. E.–Some erroneous views of the Atonement…

We differ from those who hold that "the dignity of Christ’s person,” and the "agony which He endured," "determines the merit of His work” No Scripture that we are aware of is adduced in favour of this assertion. It will therefore suffice to state that it has been duly considered and rejected by those whom we regard as authorities–who hold that the efficacy of the atonement lies in our Lord’s having so suffered, in His precious and inexplicable complexity, for the sins of His elect, as to satisfy divine justice on their behalf. Its worth lies neither in the glory of His person nor the circumstances of HIS passion, separately considered; but in His having suffered as the God-man, under the Divine wrath justly excited by the sins of His people.

“The merits of Christ," says William Palmer, consist in the worth of His person drawn out in acts of obedience unto death, which He rendered as a public person to the Law." The glory of the Lord’s person indeed characterized His atoning work Had He not been the infinite God, not one sinner would have been saved by His sufferings. This we concede. But "the essence of the atonement," again says William Palmer, "must not be confounded with tho Divinity of Him who made it; for then the slightest pang would have sufficed, and a plenary punishment been avoided.”

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Wardlaw:

XXIV. ON THE CALVINISTIC VIEWS OF THE EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT.

THE present discussion is to be occupied with the sentiments of Calvinists on the subject of the extent of the atonement the second of the five points of the Arminian Controversy, viz., particular redemption.

It ought here to be borne in mind that when, in this controversy, the phrases particular and universal redemption are used, they are not at all to be understood in the same sense as particular or universal salvation. The doctrine of the Universalists is quite a different thing from the doctrine of those who maintain universal redemption. The former falls properly to be considered when we come to discuss the final states of men. Arminians, though maintaining general or universal redemption, are not Universalists, but agree with Calvinists as to the matter of fact, that all are not ultimately saved. They differ from the Calvinists respecting the cause of that limitation, denying it to arise at all from any sovereign or special purpose of God. Perhaps the word redemption is not the most happily chosen in the statement of this doctrine, inasmuch as, generally speaking, it is understood of the effects or results to men from the work of Christ, or the ransom paid by Him in His death, rather than of that ransom itself. Yet, being used in both senses, it might be vindicated. It expresses the result to us.¹ But we have an instance, I rather think the only one, of its meaning the ransom by which the redemption is effected.² And in this acceptation it is that the word is now used, when the dispute is, whether the redemption was particular or general. It is the same as the question: Whether the atonement was restricted or universal, for some or for all.

We shall consider the Calvinistic views under three modifications:–1. Hyper-calvinism; 2. Calvinism as more generally held by the orthodox; and, 3. Moderate, or what may be designated modern Calvinism, as held and ably elucidated by the late Andrew Fuller, Dr. Edward Williams, and others, and now embraced by a growing proportion of Calvinistic ministers and professing Christians.

1. Of the hyper-calvinistic views on the present subject I have already indicated my opinion. They are the views of the exact equivalentists, of those who hold a limited atonement in the sense of its being sufficient only, in the way of legal compensation, for the salvation of the elect; so that, if more in number had been to be saved, more suffering must have been endured; that Christ, standing in the room of the elect, and appearing as their substitute and representative, bore their sins exclusively, making an atonement adequate for their remission and for no more; paying precisely (to use the ordinary but much abused phraseology) their amount of debt. This view of the atonement has been held by not a few, and has been advanced anew, and maintained as the only just and scriptural view, by some modern writers.

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Mason:

The question before us is not, what God intends to accomplish by virtue of the sacrifice of Christ; not how far the efficacy of that sacrifice will in point of fact reach; for upon these questions God has thrown a veil of impenetrable darkness; but what is the great moral, revealed purpose of the atonement; what is its intrinsic value and sufficiency; how far is it available in its own nature to the salvation of men? Did God mean to spread it over only a part, or the whole of the race? Are men, all men, as lost sinners, so interested in the atoning death of Jesus Christ, that they may, if they will, be saved by it? This is the question, and we unhesitatingly take the affirmative. Our position is, that through the sacrifice of Christ, God can be just, and yet forgive. Such is the character of the atonement, that, “it would comport with the glory of the divine character, the sustentation of God’s government, the obligation and honor of his law, and the good of the rational and moral system, to save all men, provided they accepted of Christ.” “Every legal bar and obstruction in the way of the salvation of all men is removed.”¹ Such is the nature and efficacy of the atonement of the Son of God, that the relations not merely of some men, but of the entire race, are totally different from what they would have been, had the Savior never suffered and died; different, I mean, in this sense, that since this great atoning sacrifice has been offered, God can upon the ground of it consistently pardon the sins of all, and nothing now shuts a man out from forgiveness and hope, but his own unwillingness to accept of the offers of mercy made to him in the gospel. Such is the view of the fullness of the atonement which we desire to advocate, and which we would fain commend to the intelligent faith of our hearers.

Erskine Mason, “Extent of the Atonement,” in A Pastor’s Legacy Being Sermons on Practical Subjects (New York: Charles Scribner, 1853), 275-276. [Some reformatting; some spelling modernized; and underlining mine.]

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¹Associate Reformed Synod’s Report, p. 53.