of a certain portion of pain? Suppose the sin committed to reach the level of the point of merited annihilation? Would the Deity prove himself not to be a God of love, if harmonising, by means devised in His infinite wisdom, the exercise of mercy with His other attributes, he should mitigate the sentence of annihilation into that of some portion of suffering as preparatory to forgiveness? Proceed to higher offences; to acts of disobedience transcending in their guilt the level of penal annihilation, and rising one above another to successive stages of enormity? For these transgressors what is to be the appointed state? Because God is Love, is there to be no law of retributive justice in the divine administration of the universe; no apportionment of the measure of punishment to the measure of guilt? Whenever we witness a discussion concerning the nature and the effects of punishments inflicted by men, the grand imperfection admitted and lamented on all sides is the impossibility of adjusting the amount of penal infliction in due proportion to that of criminality. Do you reduce the moral government of anOmniscient and Omnipotent Deity within the limits resulting from the scantiness of human knowledge, and the feebleness of human resources? "The purpose," replies the objector, " of punishment in the hands of man is different from that which must be ascribed to a God of love when he punishes." The difference perhaps may be less than under your first impression you may have concluded. What do you conceive must be the divine purpose in punishing? "To reform the offender." And what the purpose of human punishment? "To protect society." Recently you pronounced annihilation to be the proper penalty for the Deity to inflict upon transgressors of His law. Was the annihilation of an offender meant to reform him? But has not human punishment, in carrying into execution its purpose of protecting society, a collateral design, in all cases in which the two objects can be united, of reforming the individual? Human punishment is intended to protect society by three distinct modes of operation. It is to deter other wicked men from imitating the pernicious example of the criminal. It is to restrain, or, if necessity require, to disable him from pursuing his iniquitous course. It is to impress him, whenever the forfeiture of his life is not indispensable, with aversion to the habits which have produced his suffering; and thus to be a first step in rendering his heart less reluctant to listen to the suggestions of religion. In this last mode, then, of operation, human punishment seeks to attain, according to its measure of capability, the same object which has been ascribed to divine punishments -the reformation of the transgressor. And has not punishment, inflicted by the hand of God, in addition to its purpose of amending the transgressor, if permitted to continue in existence, the design also which has been attributed to human punishment, of protecting society I speak in the first instance of earthly society and of divine chastisements poured forth on actual inhabitants of earth- from the workers of iniquity? And do not divine chastisements operate, with whatever superiority of effect, yet in the very modes which have been stated as belonging to human punishments, by deterring others from imitating the example of the offender, and by restraining or disabling him from pursuing his evil course? If proofs be required, open the Bible. the Bible. Pursue the research from the widest visitations to the most circum - scribed; from the destruction of the antient world by the deluge; from the fiery catastrophe of Sodom and Gomorrah, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly'; from the punishment, and final extinction in the wilderness of the disobedient generation of Israelites who had been saved out of the land of Egypt, down to the judgements recorded in the Old and in the New Testament, as executed upon individual transgressors: and you will find them steadily applied as warnings against sin to all generations, and to all persons, ourselves included, to the end of time. All which things happened unto them for ensamples; and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. But divine punishments, whether they are poured forth upon sinful men, or upon Angels who sinned; whether they fulfil their commission upon earth, or in some unknown region of infinite space; possess, in their office of repressing existing iniquity, and of guarding against its revival, an immeasurable range beyond the bounds of human society and the continuance of the globe on which we dwell. 2 1 2 Pet. ii. 5, 6. Jude, 5. 7. E 2 1 Cor. x. 5. 11. They look to the interests of the universe, and to those interests as pervading eternity. Whether they overtake human beings, or any other class of sinful agents; they were ordained to be solemn and momentous examples unceasingly to warn now, and throughout eternity, all existences placed, or hereafter to be created and placed, in states of probation, to be steadfast in perfect obedience, to the Lord of all, the Fountain of Holiness and of bliss. To load a transgressor with punishment more than commensurate with his guilt, for the purpose of deterring other beings from becoming offenders, would be repugnant to the justice of God. But if to inflict upon an offender, of whatever class or rank in the creation, the degree of punishment which he has justly incurred would promote, by the influence of the example, holy obedience and blessedness, in the same province, or in other provinces, in the same period, or in subsequent periods, of the universe; would not every instance of the exaction of such punishment be not only compatible with the character of a God who is Love, but one among the proofs that he is Love? |