gentius, Gregory the Great, and in later times by Drexelius, Baumgarten, Troschel, and others.

To this desperate hypothesis it hardly seems necessary for me to reply. It stands upon а 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 to sin 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.

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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

Knapp's Theology, adopts much the same views, though expressed in less intelligible terms. God's love of what is morally good, he says, is the last ground of the divine justice, and the last end of the retribution which he awards. "If there were no reformation of the individual offender, no warning of others, or any objective ground for the exercise of retributive justice, there would be sufficient ground for all that God does, either to punish or reward, in his own absolute love of moral good and hatred of moral evil.”

Leibnitz speaks of a kind of justice which contemplates neither the amendment of the guilty, nor an example for others, nor the reparation of evil, but which is founded in the fitness of things, that requires a certain satisfaction to expiate a bad action, and which, he says, not only satisfies the injured party, but the wise, also, who behold it; just as fine music, or a good piece of architecture pleases the well cultivated mind.

The views of Burthogge and Goodwin, and many others, seem to me revolting. To represent God as punishing his creatures without end, and merely from a spirit of revenge, without any design of benefitting either the punished or others, is to make him a monster at once. Nor does it avail to say that he seeks to vindicate his injured honor. How the endless torments of the damned can honor God, or reflect any credit upon his government, I leave to the advocates of this

hypothesis to show. Mere revenge is not usually regarded as a very honorable feeling, and if perpetuated forever would disgrace a savage, I had almost said" the arch-fiend" himself.

The views of Leibnitz are, to some extent, undoubtedly correct. The sense of justice belongs to all moral beings, and the infliction of punishment in due measure, meets with an inward response and approval in every good mind. But that this sense of justice contemplates no good in the punishment of the wicked, either to the punished themselves, or any one else, is obviously absurd. There is ever an acknowledged tendency in punishment to prevent evil and increase the virtue and happiness of mankind, which reconciles us to the suffering it occasions, while it satisfies the demand we all feel for moral retribution. Take away this felt, if not clearly recognized, tendency, and punishment loses at once its benevolent character, and is degraded into mere vengeance, and takes on the aspect of ruthless cruelty, as unworthy of God as it is inconsistent with every moral sentiment of the soul.

The glory and honor of God which true punishment is calculated to vindicate and promote, must not be supposed to be some abstraction quite disconnected from the aggregate of his attributes, and unconcerned in the well-being of his moral creation. When Moses desired to see God's glory, he caused all his goodness to pass before him.