obeyed; that, instead of having ensured submission, they appear upon the face of the scriptures only in connection with the violations of them. Witness, the cases of Adam and the Jews already referred to. How is this fact, I again enquire, to be reconciled with the theory in question? On what scriptural principles or authority can God be said to threaten in order to ensure obedience, when all such threatenings as are contained in scripture appear to have been disobeyed? From the circumstance of the two first covenants entered into by God with the human race having been violated, notwithstanding the tremendous threatenings and sanctions with which they were accompanied, I find myself obliged to draw a conclusion directly in the teeth of the above hypothesis: namely, that it was God's purpose, by means of the violation of His prohibitions, and the disregard of His threatenings, on the part of those to whom they were addressed, in the first place, to demonstrate the impossibility of threats ever ensuring obedience to divine law; and, in the second place, to introduce a principle which, without the aid of threats altogether, nay in opposition to them, should by its very nature effect that which threats had invariably failed in accomplishing. The language of the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews from the 6th to the 12th verses, to which I would now refer, shews that the Apostle viewed the matter in the same light that I do. According to him, it was not by issuing prohibitions sanctioned by threatenings, but by the implantation of a new principle, that God was to ensure

the attachment and obedience of His people in New Testament times.*-If any opponents remain unconvinced by these statements, I must still farther enquire, what is the class or order of pure intelligent beings to whom, in their opinion, the menace of punishment, in the ordinary sense of the term, may be addressed? Is it those who are in a probationary, or to those who are in a fixed and permanent state ?-If to those who are in a probationary state,† as scripture alone can authorise such a supposition, we must have recourse to scripture for information relative to beings who may be so placed, and the nature of the threatenings which may be addressed to them. Adam and the nation of Israel furnish us with the two most important scriptural instances of intelligent beings placed in probationary states. But in neither of these instances was everlasting punishment in a future state of existence threatened; for, in the case of Adam, when the divine record is examined, we do not find that the everlasting punishment of others in a future life, whether everlasting or limited, was proposed to him as a motive to deter him from disobedience; nor, indeed, from his ignorance of good and evil would he have been capable of comprehending such a threat:-and, in the case of the Jews, independently of the fact that they were not pure

* See Heb. viii. 6-12; indeed, throughout.

+ Observe, I do not use the phrase probationary state, in the ordinary and popular sense which it bears, viz. as implying "that persons behaving well in an inferior state, may entitle themselves to be raised to a higher one ;" but in the sense of a "person or persons being put on their trial, as to whether they deserve even retaining the state in which they are originally placed.”

beings, it has been proved by Bishop Warburton with irresistible force of reasoning in his Divine Legation of Moses, that punishment to be inflicted in another life was not among the number of the sanctions addressed to them. If, then, we suppose, (without any authority from scripture, be it observed), that God may address threatenings to other pure intelligent beings besides men in a probationary state; and if scripture is to furnish us with specimens, both of such beings themselves, and of the threats addressed to them; it clearly follows, that the everlasting punishment of wicked men can constitute no part of these threats.-On the other hand, let the supposition be, that the pure intelligent beings, to whom the everlasting punishment of wicked men is proposed as a motive to deter from transgression, are in a fixed and permanent state, and is it not apparent to the least reflecting mind, that we are at once involved in gross self-contradiction. If their state be fixed, why propose to them that which must imply, either a state of probation, or be perfectly nugatory ?-Thus, then, by sifting the matter to the bottom, do we discover: 1st, that when God threatens, He is not revealing, but preparing to reveal His character. 2ndly. That the object and purpose of divine threatenings is, not to ensure obedience, but by means of their violation to bring out and develope something ulterior.* And, 3dly, that the threat of everlasting punishment hereafter can be addressed to no class of supposed intelligent beings: not to those who are in a probationary state, for we have no

* Rom: v. 20; viii. 3, 4.

example of it, and such a threat could not be understood by them; not to those who are confirmed in happiness as glorified saints are, for threatenings suit only a preliminary and probationary dispensation, and are inconsistent with permanent and unchangeable felicity. Thus does an examination of the supposed objection, tend to confirm the preceding reasonings.

Having thus shewn, that the principal arguments on which the ordinary doctrine of eternal punishment hereafter rests, the Jachin and Boaz of the system, are worthless and inconclusive, instead of acting any longer on the defensive, I would now assume an offensive position, and ply my antagonists with a few plain objections which are fatal to their cause. If it be maintained, that the wicked undergo eternal punishment in the ordinary sense of the term in a future state of existence, it must also be maintained, first, that the wicked possess eternal life; and, secondly, that sin is eternal.

First. If the wicked are punished eternally in a future state of existence, they are necessarily possessed of eternal life.

I presume, that to every man who is capable of reflecting and endowed with ordinary candour, the bare statement of this proposition must evince its truthmust satisfy him of the conclusion to which it leads—and must supersede the necessity of illustration altogether. But as the dull and the prejudiced constitute always a large proportion of the human race, with a view to

assist the apprehensions of such I observe, that as, by the very terms of the doctrine which I impugn, punishment of the nature of torment is to be inflicted eternally upon certain individuals, it plainly and undeniably follows, that such individuals must eternally exist, or be eternally alive, to undergo this punishment. In other words, those who are eternally tormented, must at the same time be possessing eternal life. But such a notion is inadmissible for the following reasons:1. Eternal life is declared by the Lord Jesus himself, in passages innumerable, to be the peculiar privilege or blessing which he bestows upon His own people; whereas, according to the doctrine in question, eternal life must be maintained, without any authority from scripture, to be likewise the privilege of wicked beings as such.* 2. Eternal life is the life of God-eternity being, as we have already seen, one of the divine attributes; and, therefore, to possess eternal life, is to possess the divine nature or to be one with God. But is it intended by the advocates of the system of eternal punishment hereafter, to predicate concerning the wicked as such, that they possess the life of God or the divine nature? 3. If the wicked as such, by possessing eternal

* It will be shewn afterwards, that there is a sense in which even the unbelieving portion of mankind come to possess eternal life: but, 1st, such have not eternal life as unbelievers; 2dly, they have not that blessing now; and, 3dly, in a most obvious sense, they have it not at all. Believers, as partakers of the first fruits of the divine nature by their new creation upon earth, 2 Corinth. v. 17, even now have a life which can never come to an end; unbelievers, as not now partakers of the divine nature, have no eternal life now, (and eternal life is properly speaking present life), but depend, for their living hereafter, upon their being new created hereafter by the omnific word of the Son of God. Rev. xxi. 3—5.

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