ANSWER V.

Remarks on Mr. Paige's Reply to Lecture III. "These shall go away into everlasting punishment," Matt. xxv, 46.

It is with some regret I find myself compelled to remark on the productions of a new and absent antagonist this evening; but the course which my opponent has taken has made it indispensable. Had he borrowed the sentiments of his brother Whittemore, and brought them here as his own, no exceptions could have been taken, especially if he had "given him due credit ;" and this he certainly might have done. In this case his reply might have been in point; whereas now he has replied to some things not in my lecture, and has passed over more that are in it. His motive in introducing a third disputant I leave for others to decide;-one thing all must agree in, that he could not have brought in Mr. Whittemore's misnamed reply to Mr. Scott, for the purpose of a pertinent reply to my lecture.

About two years since the Rev. T. Whittemore of Cambridge Port, challenged the Rev. O. Scott of Charlestown, to a discussion upon doctrinal points, and offered him one page, once in a month, in the Universalist Magazine, for each of six pieces he should write, and the choice of subjects was left wholly to Mr. Scott. Mr. S. required some conditions, among which one was, that he should be allowed two pages in the Magazine for each of the six pieces. About ten months afterward Mr. W. complied with Mr. Scott's conditions; but when he found that Mr. S. did not reply to him, but pursued a forward course, he manifested a great degree of disappointment, and some irritation of feeling, which thenceforward changed the spirit and character of the discussion. Mr. Scott an

swered that he had fixed on five or six subjects for so many communications, and designed to reply in his last, if he found it necessary to reply ;-that he was willing the arguments on both sides should go to the public without rejoinders;-that he could not go on with his original design and reply in only two pages, and to require it was like requiring a man to run a race with his legs tied, especially as he, Mr. W., had adopted the style and mode of declamation, and every where abounded in evasion, assumption, and illogical deduction; but if he would allow him an equal privilege in the Magazine with himself, he would reply, and make good all his assertions. This privilege, however, was never granted; but Mr. W. continued his complaints with increasing emphasis, till Mr. S. in his fifth communication said to him, that if he would continue to allow him two pages in the Magazine per month, he would review him at length, otherwise he should go no farther. This proposal not being complied with, the correspondence ended, rather unpleasantly on Mr. W.'s part. And this is another reason why I was unwilling his spirit, and style, and mode of treating his subject and his opponent should be brought into this discussion, where our own way of managing is a sufficient trial of our humility, meekness, and patience. I have reluctantly said thus much on a disagreeable and delicate subject, because I thought it my duty to myself and to the audience, to assign the reasons for my objection to my opponent's bringing in Mr. W. as he did.

As my opponent, contrary to our mutual understanding, has furnished me with nothing in writing, and I have no guide but my own memory and Mr. W.'s irrelevant remarks, to be picked out here and there, I am apprehensive that I may bring in, or leave out of my answer, things that I should not, had I the assistance of a manuscript. I will do the best I can, and leave the event to the candour of the audience. I would only observe farther, that as my

opponent has adopted the sentiments of Mr. W., I shall consider them as his own, and hold him alone answerable for them.

That I may not trespass too far on the patience of the audience I will be as brief as possible, and confine myself to the principal topics in the reply.

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I will first notice his remarks on those passages which assert the future punishment to be everlasting, eternal, &c. I produced these passages in my lecture, not for the purpose of proving endless punishment, (though I take them in the endless sense,) but to show what the Universalists have always contended for, that the words everlasting, eternal, &c, mean an age," or " ages of ages." I apply these words, as the Scriptures do, to express the duration of punishments under the Divine law, and to show the conclusiveness of the argument, I apply them to the case of deliberate suicide. What does my opponent do here? Why, first, he goes to work to show, what my argument does not require, viz. that these words do not mean endless punishment, and he occupies between four and five squares of a column to make this out. In the next place he states the case of an insane person, who, " by despair and excessive sorrow is driven to the dreadful alternative of taking his own life," to show that he receives his whole punishment in this world. In the third place he tells us that, "In cases of suicide, the sin is in the intention to do the deed, the execution of it may be the punishment." And here his argument closes. Now I desire to ask my opponents a few questions for information. And, first, where, in what books, in what language, and in what nation, they learned that the sin of suicide is wholly "in the intention to do the deed," that is, that there is no sin in the act of taking one's own life, but that the act is the "punishment" of the intention ?* And, secondly, I would

* As my opponent has given us the novel and very queer sentiment that "the sin," in a case of suicide, "is in the intention to do the

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ask whether they are quite certain that the act of taking life is the " punishment of the intention" in a case of suicide, when they say it may be the punishment ;" and where, and what the punishment shall be, if it should not happen to be, as they say it may be? And, thirdly, I would ask, for it appears to have escaped their thoughts entirely, whether the time occupied in "executing" the "intention," when one shoots himself through the head or the heart, is the whole time expressed by the words for ever, everlasting, eternal, &c. Is not this one of the finest defences of Universalism ever set up by two learned men!

As my opponent has several times asserted his ability to make it appear that the words everlasting, eternal, &c, do not mean endless duration, I may be thought wanting in attention to this subject if I pass it over in silence; and yet I can make but a few brief remarks upon it in this place. I take these words in the endless sense, for the following reasons among others :—

Because this is the true sense of the Greek word aion, from which they are derived. All able critics, ancient and modern, give the word this meaning according to its etymology, ai, always, and on, existing, always existing; and thus the idea conveyed by it is endless existence. The same is to be observed of its derivatives. The word aionios is applied to God, theos aionios, "the everlasting God." And this word Dr. Chauncey tells us "is applied to the future state of the righteous more than forty times in the New Testament," In all these places he admits that it

deed," and that the" act of taking life is the punishment of that sin;" and as in his defence he quoted Matt. v, 28, "Whosoever looketh on a woman," &c, in proof of that sentiment; he is desired, as there has been no small inquiry on that head since the evening of his defence, to inform the public whether the same distinction between the "intention" and the "act" is to be made in a case of adultery, as in suicide; and if not, he would do well to be very particular in assigning his reasons for confining it to the latter.

means endless duration, Universalist as he was. Why then should these words be taken in a different sense when applied to the punishment of the wicked?

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In this application of these words we are sustained by an unerring rule of revelation,-"The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal," 2 Cor. iv, 18. Here the word "eternal" must have the endless sense, as it stands opposed to the word temporal." And then the things which are not seen, the things of the invisible, spiritual world, as God, angels, saints and sinners when they enter that world, with the happiness of the one class, and the misery of the other, must be endless, because "the things which are not seen are eternal."

And here let me add the testimony of Dr. Huntingdon ; of which I might say as David did of the sword of Goliah, "There is none like it;" for he was not only a man of learning, but a Universalist, and wrote his book entitled "Calvinism Improved," to prove that doctrine. His words are, "Does the Bible plainly say that sinners shall be damned to interminable punishment? It certainly does; as plainly as language can express, or any man, or even God himself can speak. It is quite strange to me that some who believe that all mankind shall in the end be saved, will trifle as they do with a few words, and most of all with the original word, and its derivatives, translated, for ever," &c. We never denied that these words are sometimes applied, by way of accommodation, to temporal things; but to us, as well as to Dr. H., it appears "trifling," when men have nothing to urge against the proper application of these words to the future state but their accommodated application to the things of this world.

I quoted Jude, verse 7, in my lecture, and offered four reasons to show that the phrase, "suffering the. vengeance of eternal fire," in relation to Sodom and Gomorrah, &c, should be taken as implying that they are still suffering.