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    Calvin gives of man , and the awful imputations which his doctrines bring on God : such are the only fitting words to characterize a doctrine which teaches that before all worlds the Creator made an eternal decree , irrespective of goodness on the one part or of sin on the other ; that a few of the countless myriads of rational creatures should be eternally happy ,. but all the rest , the vast majority , consisting of numbers which the stars of

    heaven , nor the sands of the sea , nor the drops of the falling rain , can equaf-— all the rest , after passing a few short years in this chequered scene—after a few transient joys , a few feverish days—after feeling the consciousness of high capabilities , and forming the desire and hope of a nearer union with Gcd hereafter—all the rest , not for any crime of their own , but because their first progenitor fell—rather , not for any sin of his , but because of God ' s eternal decree—all the rest are doomed to inconceivable and endless

    torliientF-, The words eternal punishment are so often on the lips and in the hearing of some Christians , that we are apt to lose the fulness of their awful import . Their proper significaacy should be felt , in order to realize to the mind the dreadful system of Calvin . The imagination of systemmongers has been put to the rack , in order to give some idea of the overwhelming reality of endless torments to be suffered by the nine-tenths of ( Jed ' s intelligent creatures . Frightful and terrific are the pictures which

    Calvin , Boston , and others , havfc drawn ; but the human mind is unequal to the task , and no words can do justice to the subject . Such pictures , however , serve to confute the system . Can it he true ? is the question they suggest ; and the heart and soul reply , No ! It is confuted by its own extravagance . What an overwhelming , what a harrowing thought , that the chief part of God ' s rational creatures are doomed to inexpressible and eternal woe ! How can a heart of flesh and blood believe it ? How can

    one who has felt the sentiments of a father , believe it of his Heavenly Father ? How can a man that has felt the common promptings of humanity believe it of the fountain whence human affection sprung ? Was ever tyrant found on earth whose cruelty could be named in comparison with representations which Calvinism gives of the government of God ? We ask not now for mercy ; but where is justice fled , if this be true ? How is it , how can it be , reconcileable with justice that God , for his own good pleasure , and

    by his own eternal decree , should destine myriads to eternal burnings ? Wherein lies their sin ? In being depraved ? So were they before they saw the light . In being born ? Over that they had no controul . In descending from Adam ? Such was the ordinance of their Maker . Did the demerit lie in Adam ' s fall ? He was made subject to vanity , and God not

    only foresaw but foredetermined his fair . How much more compatible with justice , with mercy , with the character of a God , to have punished Adam solely , or to have prevented his existence—to have left the work of creation undone—to have annihilated the race by destroying their progenitor , than thus to people the regions of torment with the countless myriads of his own children ! O ! into what do men like Calvin make the world 1 They

    depopulate the abode of the Divinity to fill the domain of Satan . How large a part of the universe do they convert into a Pandemonium ! On earth nothing can be found to picture forth an idea of the horrors of hell . The Inquisition has been a cruel and a bloody theatre ; the beautiful plains of France have been aforetime covered with scenes of massacre and woe ; the rich and gold-bearing lands of Peru were deluged by Christians with the blood of thousands ; but how petty all such scenes when compared with the terrors and the pains of the immeasurable regions of the reprobate .

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    60 S tVhately ' s Essays &n the Writings of St . Paul ,

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1829, page 608, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2576/page/8/