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scure tradition of their heathen neighbours , which is what you assert , how could those who lived under that covenant , at least so long as they remained ignorant of the obscure tradition of the
heathen , have any expectation of a recovery to life , after the death , or destruction , mentioned in the Old Testament had taken place , iany more than men now can have of a future restoration , after the destruction threatened in the New
Testament shall have taken place , though no intimation of such a restoration should be found in the scriptures i You do not deny that the forms of expression in both Testaments are equally strong , you understand them literally in both , you deny that the discovery of a future life was communicated
under the Old Testament , yet you admit that the terms death ) utter destruction , &c . were not intended to convey the idea of endless loss of being then ; have I not a sight to ask , what can authorize you to conclude they are designed to convey such an idea now ? iC
That immortality and endless life will be the portion of the religious , " I fully grant ; but that it will be the reward promised , in which there must be degrees , as
M Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own la . bour" ( 1 Cor . iii . S ) , I do not admit ; because it would exclude
the possibility of the reward being proportioned to different degrees pf moral excellence and virtuous labotir ; and because , to make immortality the exclusive portion , fcrjr . making it [ the reward , of the righteous , would be to consign to endless destruction all who
nave died in infancy , of course who have never performed any
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righteous acts and can be entitled to no reward - You admit that the phrase , eternal death * is not to be found
contrasted with eternal life , in the same passage of scripture . But why is it not , if the writers meant to express that the death would be as endless as the life ? The
simple term death , expresses merely the privation of life , not its endless loss . Though a Chris . tian should not be able to bring aay direct scriptural proof of a restoration , he may be fully satisfied , that the words death ^ &c .
as applied to future punishment , do not necessarily imply endless loss of being ; and he may well think his conclusions from the cha . racter and perfections of God , respecting the final recovery of all men , better founded , than that of endless destruction from forms
of expression which do not necessarily imply it . That there is no direct evidence of the doctrine of the restoration , in the New Testament , I admit only so far as by direct evidence is meant plain declarations which
unequivocally express it : so far as infinite wisdom , infinite goodness , the character of God as the Father of all , his superabounding grace and mercy to mankind , and the corrective nature of th . e punishments he inflicts in . ' this life ,
lead to and authorise the concltu sion , the proof is direct and of the most decisive nature . Universalists do not , as you suppose , ** set up a scheme of their own , by which they endeavour to
support their opinion / in opposition to what" God . in the works of nature , and the revelation o > f hi * will to men , has manifested and declared ite pUn of hi * diviu #
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620 Mr . Wright to J . S . on Future Punishment .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1814, page 620, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2445/page/32/
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