On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
enow far a perpetual increase in happiness , without any assistance from the sensation of future pain /' Of Dr . Hartley ' s piety , and respect for the Scriptures , no person who has read his admirable Treatise on Man ;
( especially Part ii . Chap . 2 , ) can entertain a doubt . In his 88 th Proposition , Part ii ., he says , " As man appears , according to the light of reason , to be in a progressive state , it may be
conjectured or even presumed , that the rewards and punishments of a future life will exceed that happiness and misery which are here the natural consequences of virtue and vice . However /' ( adds he , ) * ' the light of reason is not clear and certain in this point : neither can it determine whether the happiness
and misery of the next life will be pure and unmixed or not . It may indeed shew , that each man will receive according to his deserts ; but then , since there is no pure virtue or vice here , since also there may be room for both virtue and vice hereafter , the rewards and punishments of the next life may succeed each other at short intervals
as in the present : or if we adopt the mechanical system throughout , then we can only hope and presume , that God will ultimately make the happiness of each individual to outweigh his misery , finitely or infinitely * } and shall be entirely uncertain whether or not , at
the expiration of this life , we shall pass into another in like manner chequered with happiness and misery . " He proceeds to say , < ' The Scriptures ,
however , represent the state of the good hereafter as attended with the purest and greatest happiness , and that of the wicked as being exquisitely and eternally miserable .- "— 4 < Now though reason cannot discover tins to
us , or determine it absolutely ; yet it approves it when discovered , and determined previously . At least it approves of the pure and indefinite happiness of the good , and acquiesces in the indefinite punishment of the wicked : "
The good Doctor seems , at the time of publishing his book , to have felt it necessary to apologize to the religious world , for entertaining a doubt as to the metaphysical infinity of the duration of punishment , and as a placebo to the tenderness of orthodox : consciences , he intimates the probability , that the
Untitled Article
suffering's of tbe wicked in the lake of fire will endure for at irlie least 360 , 000 years . This , one would have thought , might satisfy the most fastidious stickler for punishment , if we did not know
that , after the lapse of three quarters of a century , there is as great a dread as ever that the wicked should escape from prison , and obtrude themselves into the society of the saints .
The Doctor had said a little before , that there is no pure virtue or vice here . This is very true ; and as God is no respecter of persons , it would seem to follow , not that there should be such an immense disparity in the future condition of such mixed
characters , but that rewards and punishments will be dealt out with perfect impartiality in exact proportion to the degree of virtue or of vice which belongs to each individual character . — How then could he consistently with his svstem . sav that reason acouiesces his systemsay that reason acquiesces
, in the indefinite punishment of the wicked ? My reason does no such thing ; and , if we are to believe Dr . Priestley , Dr . Hartley himself saw cause to abandon this opinion . While , however , I am as anxious as any man
can well be , to explode t&e gloomy notions which have too Kmg prevailed in the world respecting the destiny of the great bulk of mankind after death , I cannot , as I have already said , see my way quite clear to the consolatory conclusion at which these two excellent
Christian philosophers had arrived . — Let us , however , endeavour to discover the train of reasoning which they pursued . Suppose the invisible world and the invisible dispensations of Providence to be in any sort analogous to what appears ; or that both together make up
one uniform scheme , the two parts of which—the part we see , and that which is beyond our observation—are analogous to each other ; then there must be a tendency in the derived power throughout the universe , under the direction of virtue , to prevail in general over that which is not under its
direction , as there is in reason to prevail over brute force . But the complete success of virtue cannot be other than gradual ; there must be proper occasions and opportunities for the virtuous to joiir together , to exert themselves against lawless force , and to reap the
Untitled Article
234 Phtmdetpkm ' s Vindication of his Inquiry
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1824, page 284, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2524/page/28/
-