Infinite Indignity

Inherent righteousness can neither remove the offense to God or the guilt springing from it, nor compensate for the injury to the divine majesty. For besides the fact that it looks to the future (that man may perform his duty), not to the past (that he may compensate for the defect of duty by giving a satisfaction), it is impossible by a quality of finite virtue and worth for an offense of infinite indignity to be blotted out and compensated for.

 

Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 16.2.17, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, vol. 2 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992-1997), 643.