a ransom for all, to be testified in due time ;" and he assures us that he will draw all men unto himself. So Paul teaches that "Christ must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet.. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto Him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." Besides it is very worthy of consideration whether such a state as the advocates of this hypothesis assume, would not exclude man's moral nature. I confess I can no more conceive of a man being absolutely incorrigible and irreclaimable; absolutely incapable of virtue and happiness; than I can conceive of a sun destitute of light, or of fire without heat. It is this moral nature which renders him man, and distinguishes him from all other beings, and to suppose him deprived of it, is to imagine him converted into some other being, and one, let it be remembered, incapable of punishment.

SEC. 7. If the wicked were to live forever in the present world, God foresees that they would continue to sin forever, and therefore it is but just to inflict upon upon them an endless punishment.

Algerus was sorely troubled to determine how the rewards and punishments of temporal actions could be eternal. "It seemeth," says he, "to be not only an intemperate rigor, that for the fault of one short day, or even for a little hour, an eternity of punishment should be required and inflicted,

but also a kind of prodigality, that the rewards of a temporal action should be made to endure forever." To solve the difficulty growing out of this utter disproportion between the cause and its consequences, he attempts to make it appear that although the action is only temporal, the disposition or will, whether for good or evil, is eternal. Hence he maintains that such rewards and punishments are just, "because God," says he, "does not reward or punish the temporal action, but the disposition or will, which is eternal, and which if it were to live forever, would continue forever in the same state. Therefore," says he, "God justly attaches an eternity of retribution to the eternity of will."

Archbishop Dawes favors, though not strongly, the same views. "It is further urged," says he,

that sinners, though not actually, yet in will and intention, do sin eternally, and therefore in all justice ought to suffer eternal punishment. For though, because God allows sinners but a temporal life in this state of probation, they have it not in their power to sin actually to all eternity, yet this is no thank to them, who in all probability, were they to live here eternally, would eternally go on in their sins.”

This is the famous argument, as it is called, ex scientia media Dei, i. e. from God's knowledge of things conditional. It was employed by Ful

necessary

gentius, Gregory the Great, and in later times by Drexelius, Baumgarten, Troschel, and others. To this desperate hypothesis it hardly seems. for me to reply. It stands upon a groundless assumption, and involves the grossest injustice. It assumes, what no man can prove, if he can even think it possible, that some men, if they were to live in this world forever, would also continue for ever to sin. But, as Archbp. Tillotson says, "who can certainly tell that if a man lived never so long, he would never repent and grow better?" For as Dr. Knapp justly remarks, "the fact is very questionable, whether there are any men who would go on tosin without interruption, in every possible situation and under all circumstances in which they might be placed in this world." That they would is a sheer assumption, with a thousand probabilities against it, and nothing but a bare possibility in its favor. But granting this assumption, do not the friends of this hypothesis perceive that it pointedly convicts God of injustice? It represents him as punishing his creatures with endless torments, not for what they have done, but for what he foresaw they might have done, had they lived in this world,and under its present circumstances, through all eternity! We ordinarily think it just when a man is adequately punished for the crimes he has committed, without his suffering for what he might have committed, had he enjoyed time, opportu

nity and means.

We can conceive of no greater injustice than is here ascribed to God. As Dr. Knapp says, "it cannot be reconciled with our ideas of justice, that sins which were never actually committed, should be punished as if they had been committed," and he concludes that were a human ruler to act on this principle, “it would doubtless be pronounced unjust and tyrannical."

It is unnecessary for me to say how severely the advocates of endless punishment must have felt themselves pushed, before they could resort to so desperate a hypothesis as this. All fair minds, it seems to me, must be forced to say with Archbp. Tillotson, that it "hath neither truth nor reason enough in it, to give satisfaction." It is a mere device to impose upon the credulous and unreflecting. But there are few or none at present, I believe, who adopt it, and it may therefore be regarded as an exploded hypothesis.

SEC. 8. Endless punishment will be inflicted to vindicate the divine honor, and is purely vindictive.

"They who do not reform and convert," says Dr. Burthogge, "upon the threatening of eternal punishment, when God makes it, do, by interpretation, laugh at that, and dare him; it is as if they should say, we care not for his threats, nor fear them; let him that makes them do his worst. And what shall God, in honor, then do, when he is challenged to do his worst, but the justice which

he owes himself, to make them feel the dire effects of his extreme displeasure, who so despised him?" Hence this learned author frankly acknowledges that "eternal punishments are neither castigations, nor examples, but mere revenges, intended to assert divine honor, and satisfy justice, and, in a word, intended to remove away from God all the dishonor and contempt that hath been put upon him by sinners... And to be plain, I hold eternal punishments now threatened, and one day to be inflicted on those that dispise them, all vindictive, or effects of wrath; and that the great design and end of God in them is to rescue his injured honor, and to satisfy and please himself in the trophies of his justice, and in triumphs over vanquished enemies." In like manner does Dr. Goodwin speak. "Sin in thee," says he, "and the injury of it to God, is an eternal stain, which hell-fire cannot eat out or satisfy God for, but in an eternity of time.... Justice hath a mixture of pity mingled with it, but when 'tis a case of revenge, there is decorum put upon the extremity of justice. It is the revenge of an injury. Then says justice, too, I must be satisfied to the utmost farthing, and have the last drop of blood that is in their souls"! Even mercy itself, according to our learned Doctor, will not speak a good word for the damned, but "turn as fiercely against them as any other attribute."

· ...

Even Leonard Woods, Jr., the translator of