SEC. 2. Infinite punishment is but the counterpart of infinite rewards, and is therefore just.

This hypothesis is adopted by Archbp. Dawes. "that sin is a

"It must be considered," he says, voluntary refusal and contempt of eternal happiness, and upon that account richly deserves eternal misery for its punishment, according to that of St. Austin, That man is well worthy of eternul punishments who hinders himself from being eternally happy. And indeed, it cannot be denied, that the eternity of the joys of heaven make the belief of the eternity of the torments of hell sit much easier upon our minds than it would otherwise have done. Had the eternity been only on the punishing side, this would have looked hard, and not altogether agreeable to our notions of the divine goodness; but being on the rewarding side likewise, we have here infinite goodness and infinite justice set one against the other; and what reason can any man possibly have to complain of this?""

The design of this modification of the exploded hypothesis of infinite sin, is very frankly confessed by the Archbishop to be to make the doctrine of the eternity of hell-torments sit more easily on the mind. A very worthy object, doubtless, but how is it to be effected? Neither the Scriptures nor reason give us any knowledge of infinite rewards in the government of God, and this therefore, like infinite punishments, must be assumed

instead of being proved. But let it be taken for granted that the rewards of obedience are infinite, and what, I pray, has this to do with infinite punishments? For as Archbishop Tillotson says,

though it be not contrary to justice to exceed in rewards, that being a matter of mere favor; yet it may be so to exceed in punishments." Justice obviously requires some proportion between the crime and the punishment of it; hence the consideration of rewards, be they greater or less, can not affect the subject at all, unless it be to assist the prejudiced in blinding themselves to the absurdity they are attempting to maintain; for, as Dr. Whitby justly remarks, "it renders not the fault the less finite, or the punishment the less infinite, and so doth not rerder it the less inconsistent with divine goodness and equity."

Archbishop Dawes thinks the infliction of endless punishment will very clearly express God's indignation at man's refusal of his mercy. "When God has been so abundantly gracious, as out of his own free goodness and loving kindness," says he, "to offer everlasting happiness to mankind, if they will accept it; is it not very reasonable to that he will to the utmost resent their refusal and contempt of the riches of his goodness? Is it not very natural to believe that he will give the contemners of everlasting happiness, everlasting cause to remember, bewail, and repent of this their folly Doth it not seem very just that he

suppose

should everlastingly keep them in being, that so they may to all eternity think on that everlasting happiness which they have refused, and that by making them feel what an eternity of wo is, they may be sensible to the utmost what they have lost in losing an eternity of happiness"?

I should regret to think it necessary to say a single word in reply to such an argument as this. If it does not represent the Deity with the low passions of a narrow minded man; if it does not exhibit him as changing his dispositions from "free goodness and loving kindness," to malignity and implacable revenge, I have entirely failed to understand it. I will therefore leave it for some advocate of endless torments to explain if he can, how keeping sinners everlastingly in being, "so that they may to all eternity think on that everlasting happiness which they have refused, and feel what an eternity of wo is," consists with either goodness or justice. Such a doctrine I cannot but regard as a gross libel on the divine character.

The pious Christopher Love argues on much the same ground as the Archbishop above. "The godly," he says, "shall be in everlasting joy, therefore the wicked shall suffer eternal torments; their condition shall be quite contrary to one another; the torments of the one shall last as long as the joys of the other; as the one is for the glory of God's grace, so the other is for the glory of his

justice." It was Swedenborg, I believe, who maintains that there must be evil as well as good, a Devil as well as a God. Our author would add another item to these necessities, and have an endless hell, because there is an endless heaven!

SEC. 3. God has set before the sinner life and death, and given him his choice between them; he has also expressly forewarned him of the consequences of his conduct; no one therefore can charge him with injustice.

Several authors greatly congratulate themselves on this precarious ground. "If God inflict eternal torments on men," says Dr. Burthogge, "it is but what he told them of before that he would do if they did not reform, which was but fair. He striketh not, but after he hath threatened."

This, it will be seen, is but little more than another form of the preceding hypothesis in which is assumed the very thing to be proved, and then by a slight of hand, this assumption is made a premise for proving itself. We alledge that endless punishment is unjust, and therefore it can not be threatened; our opposers assume that it is threatened, and thence conclude that it is just, and thence again that it if just it must be threatened. What is this but arguing in a circle?

But let us concede that endless punishment is threatened; and will that prove it just? Some years ago men in England were threatened with capital punishment for petit larceny, and the

threatening was often carried into execution. Was this just? True, they were forewarned; they were told before, as Dr. Burthogge has it, "which was fair." Very fair, no doubt, but I ask again, was it just? So in the ease before us. The sinner, it may be said, has nothing to complain of; God" striketh not but till after he hath threatened." This, perhaps, may be enough to silence, in some degree, the sinner, but as Archbishop Tillotson well says, "after all that, it does not seem so clearly to satisfy the objection, from the disproportion between the fault and the punishment."There still stands that glaring injustice of an infinite punishment for a finite crime; and there is no sophistry, no cloaking over that can lessen the absurdity it involves.

Besides, it might be worth the attention of men, were they not resolved on supporting a theory, to consider whether all men have been duly threatened with endless punishment. What shall we say of the heathen, twenty millions of whom, according to modern orthodoxy, are sinking into hell every year, and more than fifty thousand every twenty four hours? What shall we say infants and children who are incapable of understanding such threatening, but are still exposed to "all miseries, spiritual, temporal and eternal?"