sighs, as the mother's bosom heaves with anguish unutterable; and the uusleeping pangs that rend the soul of the heartbroken and distracted daughter! Do all these receive in this life, according to their guilt? How often do such men prowl along, solaced and proud of their trophies, till several hapless beings have fallen; and at last die in delirium, through excessive indulgence! Do they wake up in glory? But there are other ways of iniquity-innumerable kinds of vice, of wickedness, and successful crime; where people triumph in the ruin they have caused, and laugh at the tears that follow their criminal career! Shall we softly and gently tell them, they ought not to do so, for fear it will disturb their consciences? But whether they do or not, all will be well when they die? No. Give them no such preposterous expectations. Let the Deity be heard in thunder upon their crimes; until deep contrition and reformation wash away their stains or bring them to Christ. Till they do that, let them dream of naught but damnation! Let dungeons of horrour, perjured and bloody companions, storms of wrath, and the sighs of wronged and injured ghosts, echoing from the towering flames, haunt their dreams and sting their consciences. So let the guilty live, or let them reform. A conscience, thus haunted with forebodings of retribution, might be some punishment, and might tend to reformation. But remove the fear of future punishment from the minds of those, who have no moral principle, and you unchain the tiger; and he will pounce upon every victim within his grasp. This is the world as it is; not as we would like to have it be. We should like to have all good and happy, both here and hereafter. "For the time (is come) that judgement must begin at the house of God; and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God"-I. Peter 1v. 17.-Does not universalism teach that the end of such will be immortal glory in heaven? Did Peter mean so? "And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?"-Verse 18.-Did Peter mean, they should appear in heaven? Was Peter a universalist? Some have said that Peter here was alluding to the judgement that was to come upon Jerusalem. But he was writing to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Capadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. In what danger were these people of the judgement of Jerusalem? If this judgement was in his mind, he might have preached it to Judea and Jerusalem, but why speak of it in a warning style to people of other countries? "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgement."-II. Peter 11. 4.Are we to suppose this was the judgement of Jerusalem! Or are we to suppose it the present judgement of the wicked, at which mankind are judged and punished daily for their sins? And were the angels reserved in chains of darkness unto this? "The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgement to be punished."-Verse 9.-Was this day of judgement all the time that men live on earth. And does God reserve the unjust unto this day (their present life) to be punished, by punishing them while he reserves them? Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgement and perdition of ungodly men.-II. Peter 111. 6,7.-Is this day in which we live the judgement day referred to? Is this the day of perdition of ungodly men? And is the heavens and the earth, which were reserved unto this day, now on fire? Or does this mean the judgement of Jerusalem? But Peter was not writing this to that devoted city, yet he avails himself of this judgement to terrify the scattered people to whom 66 แ he wrote, to good works. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be, in all holy conversation and godliness."--Verse 11. See also verse 10 and 12.-We must here add the 16th verse. "As also in all his (Paul's) epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which some things are hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction." Do any wrest the scrip- Serious and affecting truth! tures to their own' destruction? construction of scripture be heard. They speak about the secrets of the future state. How curious would we be to peep through the veil of death, and look a moment on the invisible world. The Bible is all the window through which we can gaze until we go. We have no interest, therefore, to pervert that to make it reflect false shadows and images upon our minds. Upon all the passages referred to in this section, we remark, 1. They are quoted from the prophets, evangelists, and apostles, addressed on various occasions to different kinds of people. And they all allude to a judgement to come, to a retribution at a future time. And the language, generally is expressive of a retribution beyond this life, so plainly that in most cases it would require the most subtle ingenuity to invent any other meaning to it. 2. The numerous classes of people addressed on these occasions, were all believers in future retribution; except some, who denied a future existence. That the Gentiles were believers in future rewards and punishments, is proved from their classick authors. In the Latin and Greek poems, and histories, we find an abundance of such belief. Indeed the religious Jews not only believed in a partial salvation, but that none would be saved but the pious of their own country. That botlr Jews and Gentiles held to a judgement and state of retribution in another world in the days of Christ, is admitted by universalists. 3. Christ and the apostles were either universalists or they were not. If they were universalists they would have considered the Jews and Gentiles in a great and fatal erFour, in holding to a future judgement and rewards and punishments in another state of being. This being the case, they would have avoided any expressions that would seem to sanction the errour-that would tend to confirm them in such belief. But the passages we have quoted show, that they were not careful to avoid expressions which would favour that opinion, but were rather careful, on many occasions, to use such expressions. They would not only have endeavoured to avoid being supposed to favour the doctrine of future retribution, but they would have expressly, distinctly, decidedly and unequivocally have reprobated the errour, as universalists now do. They boldly and distinctly inveighed against the errours and heresies and false traditions of both Jews and Gentiles; and as the doctrine of a future judgement and retribution was so prevalent every where among them, they would have noticed the false doctrine and corrected it. But never did they do it. We challenge universalists throughout the world, to find a single text in the New Testament, where either Christ or any of his apostles reproved any body for believing in the judgement and retribution of another world. They never have done it, and never can do it. So far from it, these divine teachers seemed to acquiesce in the doctrine, and teach it so plainly, that their followers then, and most of them in every age, really suppose them in earnest about it, or to mean so, until this age, which has discovered a deep and subtle meaning to their words, which very few can comprehend! 4. They may ask, why the divine teachers did not point out plainly the errour of universalism. We answer-there wore two good reasons. 1. Because no such errour then prevailed. No. Neither Jews nor Gentiles, ignorant or learned, believed in that doctrine.. Some were skepticks, but all, who believed in a future existence, believed in a fu ture judgement and rewards and punishments. 2. It could not have been reasonably expected that universalism ever would exist to any extent where the Bible should be bglieved. 5. We are aware, that Balfour and others have said on this ground, that the doctrine of future judgement is of heathen origin. We care not about its origin, so as we know whether Jesus and the apostles acknowledged it as The doctrine of a God was truth, or rejected it as errour. also generally held among the heathen: shall we therefore reject it as a Pagan superstition, notwithstanding Christ and the apostles received it as truth? The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, was also held among the religious people of the Jews and the Pagans; must we reject that too as a Pagan superstition? We think, it would be quite as easy, to prove, that Christ and the apostles did not acquiesce in and confirm the doctrines of a God, and a resurrection, as that they did not the doctrines of a future judgement and retribution. It is argued, we believe, by one of the most distinguished universalist authors, that as the doctrine of future rewards and punishments was generally believed in without the Bible, it could not be revealed in the Bible: for it would be no revelation if found there. But may not every school boy see, that the existence of a God, the resurrection of the dead, and future rewards and punishments, might have been believed among men without a revelation; and then Christ might confirm these doctrines by a revelation. Many of the moral principles contained in the Bible were held among the heathen. Does that invalidate them, after Christ has sealed them with the impress of his divine approbation? No doubt, these doctrines of an invisible and superintending Providence, a resurrection of the dead, and a future judgement and retribution, were generally believed among all nations, (though often mixed with many absurd and superstitious notions,) from an instinctive inclination |