considered. If every wrong action be followed to all eternity by consequences of evil to him who performed it, we must conclude that no man will ever be altogether happy, for all men have sinned. And David and Paul, and many others who are regarded as saints, must be miserable forever.— There is no good man without some evil, and craving the pardon of my orthodox neighbors. there is no evil man without some good. Of course there will be neither heaven nor hell, neithperfect happiness nor misery in the future world. But what shall become of infants who have done neither good nor evil? According to this hypothesis they will be neither happy nor miserable, and might as well not be at all.

But do not the favorers of this hypothesis perceive that it overlooks entirely the great fact of revelation—the fact that the gospel is a remedial system, introduced on purpose "to destroy the Devil and his works," i. e. to take away the sin of the world? If the gospel is true, "where sin abounded grace did much more abound; that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." Christ will draw all men unto himself.

But perhaps it may be said as Dr. Knapp has done, that "those who have sinned, will always stand proportionably below others in point of happiness." According to this, Peter, and Paul

must always stand below James and John, and the judgment of the Savior, that he to whom much has been forgiven loves much, must be reversed. It can not be shown,then, that the consequences of actions are endless, and especially the consequences of evil actions which goodness can overcome, and which we see even in this world, often made subservient to good purposes, to happiness. But be yond this, the hypothesis is utterly opposed to the whole design of christianity, and stands in no harmony with even the other errors and absurdities of miscalled orthodoxy.

SEC. 6. Those who are damned are incurably wicked and incorrigible; therefore they must be punished world without end.

Another form still of the old hypothesis of infinite sin. For if sin be not infinite or capable of becoming so under certain circumstances, how happens it that any should become incurably wicked, and incorrigible? But here in this new form we are thrown once more upon sheer assumption; the assumption that some men have become, or will become, so bad that they cannot be reformed. Dr. Burthogge is good enough, however, to confine damnation to such exclusively. "That infernal torments are not inflicted, but on the obstinate and irreclaimable, can not but be manifest," says he, "to all that soberly consider, that the divine heart,as well as divine arms, are ever open to the penitent and converting." So all the modern

German divines, who admit the eternity of punishments, predicate it solely of those who have sinned against the Holy Ghost, and lost the very capacity of virtue and happiness. "He who can love," says Dr. Oldshausen, may also become the recipient of love; yea, as love is felicity and eternal life, so the privation of love is to be considered as infelicity and incapacity for happiness.'

The question, then, and the only question to decide is, whether there be such persons, or whether it be possible for a human being to become incorrigible, irreclaimable and deprived of the very capacity of loving. All this the hypothesis. before us boldly assumes, not only without proof, but against all the proof furnished by experience and observation. Experience and observation demonstrate that there is no point in the progress of the sinner at which we can take our stand and assert that here he becomes incorrigible. History is full of instances of the reformation of men of the most desperate characters. Paul was once a bloody persecutor; Augustine a corrupt and licentious infidel; and how many do we see around us now, upright, religious and valuable citizens, who a few years ago were grossly intemperate and profane. But the New Testament is decisive on this point "Christ came into the world to save sinners"-" to seek and to save that which was lost." Hence he " gaye himself

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,

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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. 66 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