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« erptex tk * ec ^ ^ M m Christ , somefanes " casting t £ em into aa amazedness , " and require even in the " strong men' * a considerable degree of care and attention in order to reconcile them , so they are " wrested ' by the sceptic , learned and unlearned , into
downright absurdities and contradictions . It is one of St . Paul ' s spiritual paradoxes , " If any man think he knoweth any thing , he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know . " But St . John says , €€ Ye have an unction from the Holy One , and ye know all things . 97 How easy for a toweringgenius , or a self > conceited lecturer , to represent these and similar passages in a ludicrous or contradictory point of view , which a little common sense
will easily reconcile ! Thus the sceptic , " speaking evil of the things which lie knows not , " and which , while he labours under his present state of mental occaecation , he cannot know , either in the garb of a mild and specious eloquence strives to sap the foundations of the gospel , or with his
pen dipped in gall and venom , proceeds in his bold career , beguiling the hearts of the simple , and exulting in his fancied victory . But " Knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth . " Now , the chief passages of Scripture which are supposed to designate eternal punishments , are those translated by the terms ever and
everlasting , particularly Matt . xxv . 46 . Here , says the orthodox believer , our Lord sets himself on purpose to describe the future judgment and its awful consequences ; he gives the wicked no hope beyond their final award , and employs the same terms as to the
duration of the happiness of the righteous and the sufferings of the ungodly . This objection having been sufficiently handled in the Number for December last , ( p . 719 , ) needs not to
ue enlarged upon : the terms must be considered according to the subject to which they are applied , and the Entflish reader may recollect similar instances of application in his own language . "The Guardian , " speaking vt a great writer , says , " He may " ° pe to be rewarded with an immorality , much more to he desired than "nat of remaining in eternal honour among mankind . Here , ua absolute eternity is con-
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trasted with a finite one . —Dr . Young on " the day of judgment , " says , " Rocks eternal pour Their melted mass , as rivers once they poured ; Stars rush , and finaI ruin fiercely drives Her ploughshare o ' er creation V
Here the eternal rocks are converted into a ruin I The parallel passage in John v . 29 , as well as in ver . 27 , ( . Kpuraaq , ) ' might have been rendered " judgment . " "We cannot determine , " says Dr Doddridge , " how far this language
may be literal , and how far figurative . There seems no reason to believe that every particular word and action shall be examined in all its circumstances , witnesses heard , refuted , &c , as in human courts ; for this would make the j udgment-day millions of years longer
than the whole period of the earth ' s duration ; nor can we be sure that those excuses will be made as there represented . These expressions , as well as * opening the books' in the Revelation / it is probable are to be taken figurative Iff . "
Moreover , it is stated by M . Petitpierre , from Grotius and Wittenbach , that the term Ko \ a , < rtq , translated punishment , is peculiarly applicable to the pruning of trees ; and , in a moral
view , was commonly used by the Greek philosophers to denote such sufferings as were inflicted on the criminal in order to promote his future amendment .
And surely the wisdom of our Lord is here , as in all his divine teachings , abundantly manifest , in the use he has made , not of equivocal , but of indefinite terms ; which , as Dr .
Doddridge allows , as they preclude the possibility of proving strictly eternal punishments d priori , or previous to the event , and thus exclude absolute despair ; so they are sufficiently awful and tremendous to alarm the most
hardened transgressor , and to urge him to an immediate repentance and reformation . Upon the whole , we plainly and chiefly learn from this sublime representation of the future judgment , its certainty , its universality , a principal criterion by which it is to be regulated , und the iliiferent states or ecu-
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A " Long-Lost Truth" 663
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1825, page 663, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2542/page/23/
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