(January 10, 1810–August 19, 1883), was the U.S. Secretary of State, 1860–61, and U.S. Attorney General under President James Buchanan, 1857–60. He was the president of the Court of Common Pleas in Pennsylvania, 1842–51; State Supreme Court Justice, 1852–57; and U.S. Supreme Court Reporter, 1861–64. He wrote in the North American Review, August of 1881:
As a matter of fact, Jesus Christ died that sinners might be reconciled to God, and in that sense He died for them; that is, to furnish them with the means of averting Divine justice, which their crimes had provoked.
A man who, by any contrivance, causes his own offense to be visited on the head of an innocent person is unspeakably depraved. But are Christians guilty of this baseness, because they accept the blessings of an institution which their great Benefactor died to establish?
Loyalty to the King who erected a most magnificent government for us at the cost of His life—fidelity to the Master who bought us with His blood—is not the fraudulent substitution in place of the criminal.2422