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    will enjoy it , and who will be rejected . If we believe that Christ came for the express purpose of bringing life and immortality to light , is it to be supposed that he

    would leave any part of the subject involved in the profoundest obscurity , or that he would not ( as indeed I think he has ) explain it in the plainest and most unequivocal terms . It seems to me to be

    hardly possible for a man impartially to examine all that he has said upon the subject , without feeling the strongest possible conviction , that glory , honour and immortality will be the reward of

    a course of virtuous obedience ; and that everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord is designed to be the portion of those who wilfully and obstinately disobey bis commands *

    : From the criticisms that have been published upon this subject , I think it must be evident to the English reader , that the Greek word that is made use of to

    express the duration of that destruction , is quite as expressive of never-ending duration as the word everlasting , or any other English adjective that could have been made use of . And as there is

    nothing in the nature of death , or destruction , to alter the sense of the adjective , I can see no good reason why we should not understand it to be used for the express purpose of denoting the eternal duration of the punishment . Indeed there could have been no

    occasion to make use of the adjective , if a resurrection from the dead had not been so expressly revealed ; but that seems to have made it necessary to express in plain terms , that the wicked shall suffer a death from which they

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    shall nevfer again be raised . Wfaaj short of this can we understand from the wicked being so frequently represented as chaff , tares , stubble , &c . things that are so easily destroyed by fire ; while the righteous are represented as gold , that

    will be purified instead of being destroyed by it ? I can see no meaning such representations can have , if they are not designed to inform us that the one will in reality be saved , and the other destroyed . Nor can I see how he could well have made use of mare

    unequivocal terms to express such a meaning than he has done . Supposing he had intended this , Would it not have been very properly expressed by such language as the following ? Matt . xiii . 40 to £ 2 : " As therefore the tares are

    gathered and burnt m the fire , so shall it be in the end of this world . The Son of Man shall send forth his angels , and they shall gather

    out of his kingdom all things that offend , and them which do iniquity , and shall cast them into a furnace 6 f fire ; there shall be

    wailing and gnashing of teettu " If destruction is intended to be the portion of the wicked , it is very aptly represented by their

    being cast into a furnace of hre , or into the fire of Gehenna , which was kept continually burning for tbe purpose of destroying all noxious substances . But if mere

    corrective punishment is all that was intended , I confess it appears to me that such representations can be calculated only to mislead and confound the imagination , and

    involve the subject in the " profoundest obscurity , " instead of conveying to the mind a plain and important trutb . That St . Paul understood these expressions in

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    676 Arguments for the Destruction of the Wicked .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1814, page 676, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2446/page/16/