fountain of all right laws and reason and justice. 'Tis an ill pretence for inen to judge their Maker by, when they will not allow him that reasonable apology, nor make that construction of his ways, according to comon undeniable equity, as they will do of the ways of men. Right reason and the laws made thereby, are a beam of God's perfect wisdom and justice.

Jeremy Taylor, that truly Christian bishop, or overseer of souls, "himself an host, the Homer among preachers," though he appears in general to adopt the common notions on this subject, (especially in his Treatise "On Man," probably the only weak book he ever wrote, and some of the sentiments of which, if true, would almost justify the scheme of Anthropomorphitism,) yet, has many passages quite inconsistent with thein. In his Life of Christ," treating of temporal judge ments, he observes, of Ananias and Sapphira, Uzzah the prophet slain by the lion, and other cases of sudden surprisals in the commission of sinful acts, where the sufferers were in the main upright characters, that "We must not conclude such persons perishing and miserable to all eternity; it were a sad sentence to think God would not impute the untimely death for a punishment great enough to that deflexion from duty, and judge the man according to the constant tenor of his former life; unless the act were of malice enough to outweigh the former habits, and interrupt the whole state of acceptation and grace. For as God takes off our sins and punishments by parts, remitting to some the sentence of death, and inflicting only the fine of a temporal loss, or the genthe scourge of a lesser sickness; so also, he lays it on by parts and suitable proportions; and every transgression and lesser deviation from duty does not drag the soul to death eternal; but he suffers our repentance, though imperfect, to have an imperfect effect, knocking off the fetters by degrees, leading us in some cases to the council, in some to judgment, and in some to hell-fire; but it is not always certain, that he who is led to the prison doors shall there lie entombed, and a man may by a judgment be brought to the gates of hell, and yet those gates shall not prevail against him."

This passage is not cited as any

indirect argument against eternal punishinent, but only as proving by the way, that this great divine did not interpret too strictly those texts in Eze kiel, where it is said that the righteous shall perish in his present sin, notwithstanding his former attainments; and as proving, most unequivocally, that, like the favoured disciple, his soul was so wrapt and absorbed in the contemplation of the divine character, as the God of love, and probably, at the same time, so shocked, or at least dismayed, by the common notion of future punishment, that he could not allow himself to believe, that any would prove the vietins of this dire, ineffable doom, but the most flagrant, enormous and incorrigible transgressors. This is further evident front another passage in the same work, where he tells us that there is "bui one" individual of the human race, Judas Iscariot, of whom we may af firm, without breach of Christian charity, that he is certainly damned:" nay, he goes farther yet, and says, even of this delinquent, "his sin stuck close, and it is thought to a sad eternity." But we do not insist upon this latter passage; the good bishop often indulges in a daxity of phrase common in his day, but which the literary taste of the present times, superior in this respect, will not admit of. The foregoing sentiment, however, is delivered in plain and decided terms: let us attend, for a moment, to the singular idea, and to the instruction which it may afford us.

If Christian charity will not allow us to affirm that any man but Judas Iscariot is " certainly damned," it most assuredly will not require us to believe, on the other hand, that every man besides him is certainly saved: taking salvation in the common sense of the word, for the state of happiness immediately succeeding the general judg ment. This would be enthusiasm, and not charity, or charity carried to a degree of enthusiasm. We cannot doubt, from the history of the world and our own experience, happy if we have no reason to fear it respecting ourselves!that many go out of life utterly unfit, as far as appears, without considerable degree of purification, for the Christian heaven; judging, not

"Enthusiastic doctrines---good things strained out of their wits." Whichcote,

on

It is difficult to ascertain precisely, what were the sentiments of Archbishop King upon this important subject. In the Appendix to his Treatise "The Origin of Evil," a work abounding with many weighty truths, he adopts, in a great measure, the orthodox notion, and endeavours to obviate some of the arguments against it in the usual way-such as the sufferings of the danined tending to enhance the blessedness of glorified saints, by way of comparison and contemplation; a sentiment which, as applicable to the adequate and limited suffering of transgressors in a future state, may be allowed to have some weight; but which, if applied to the doctrine of strictly eternal punishment, confutes itself. The eternity of this state, however, he observes, is not a doctrine of reason, but of pure revelation. It appears from the light of nature that there shall be future punishments, but not that they shall be eternal." He further informs us, that they "do not proceed from the vengeance, but from the goodness of the Deity;" and then proceeds to offer some opinions which seem to be peculiarly his own:

"As to another objection, the matter is still in debate, whether it were better to be miserable than not to be at all; and there are arguments on both sides. "Tis manifest, indeed, that those evils which overbalance the desire and happiness of life, commonly put an end to life itself; and that such objects as are hurtful to the sense, at length destroy it. The same seems to hold good in thinking substances, viz. those things which affect the mind to a higher degree than it can bear, may in like manner put an end to it: for they may be supposed either to drive us to madness; or so far to disorder the thinking faculty, as to make us think

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of nothing at all. Who can tell, then, whether the punishment of the wicked may not lead them into a kind of phrenzy and madness? Thus they may indeed be very miserable, and become a sad spectacle to others; they may be sensible of their misery also, and strive against it with all their power; but while they do not observe or believe that it is founded in perverse election, they may hug themselves in the cause, the effects of which they abhor; being still wise in their own opinion, and, as it were, pleasing themselves in their misery."

"Thus, the more they labour under it, the more they einbrace the cause of it, and thereby become their own hindrance from ever getting free; and will not suffer themselves to be any thing but what they are. This we see daily done by mad and frantic persons, and reckon it a part of their unhappiness. The divine goodness, therefore, is not to be charged with cruelty for letting them continue in that existence, though it be very miserable, when they themselves will not have it removed; or, for not altering their condition, which they utterly refuse to have altered. "Tis better indeed for them not to be; but this, in the opinion only of wise men, to which they do not assent; for they indulge themselves in their obstinate election, and though every where surrounded and oppressed with woes, yet will they not alter what they have once embraced, and had rather endure all than repent: as men that are desparately in love, ambitious, envious, choose to bear torments, loss of estate, and hazard of life, rather than lay aside these foolish and bewitching affections. We may easily conceive, then, how the wicked in hell may be in very great misery, upon the increase of their obstinacy and folly, and yet unwilling to be freed from them."

The reader will make his own comment upon these passages, and more of the same kind, in the original: for the writer's part, he professes only to regard them as constituting an inextricable labyrinth, from which, it is probable, he should not readily escape, and into which he hath certainly no inclination to enter: he has, therefore, only to observe, that awful instances of the prevalence of evil habits in the present life, can furnish no criterion as to their influence in the next, where all the objects of sinful gratification

The only prose divine remaining, whose sentiments upon this subject we shall briefly consider, is the pious, learned and candid Dr. Doddridge. In his Theological Lectures, Prop. 163, Ed. 1776, he proposes the question with great fairness and impartiality. We cannot enter into all the arguments he has produced on both sides, which would be to repeat much of what hath already been offered: our inquiry here is only respecting his consistency.

He acknowledges that "We cannot pretend to decide, à priori, or previous to the event, so far as to say, that the punishments of hell must and will certainly be eternal;" but gives it as his opinion, on a review of the arguments, "That there is at least so much force on the affirmative side of the question, and in the solution of the preceding objections, as to render it both imprudent and unsafe to go out of the way of scripture upon this head; or to explain those expressions in such a manner, as positively to determine that future eternal punishments, in strict propriety of speech, are not to be apprehended."

Now there is evidently a chasm in this way of reasoning: for if we cannot decide that eternal punishments will take place; and must not be persuaded or express our conviction, that is, according to our conceptions of things, that they will not; we must remain all our lives in a state of tortuous suspense as to one of the leading motives of the gospel, in one

of its principal characteristics; and be utterly unable, in this view, either to understand it ourselves, or to preach or explain it to others, and conse quently unable, thus far, to believe it; since we can believe nothing which we do not, in some measure, apprehend: and this, in a question involving our ideas of the moral attributes of the Deity, is a circumstance of prodigious importance. This is not a matter of mere abstract speculation, as to which it is of little consequence on which side the truth lies:-doubtfulness, in such a case, is death!

But it will be said, alas! what can we know of the extent of the divine plans and operations in a future state? "Who can by searching find out God, who can find out the Almighty to perfection?" Shall the Omnipotent be arraigned at the bar of a worm? Shall the delinquent sit in judgment upon the Judge himself? These objections are plausible, and the senti ments themselves founded in truth; but they do not altogether apply in the present case. We are not to renounce our understandings in the contemplation of subjects in which we are so deeply interested, under a false notion of humility and self-abasement. "We may have true concep tions of God, though not full and adequate conceptions."

For be it recollected, that in all our reasonings concerning the Deity, we can reason only as to his perfections and attributes; of his abstract nature and essence, we can, at present, know nothing: and moreover, that if the ideas of those perfections which we derive from his works and his word, should be supposed to deceive us, there are no others to be had: we must begin anew, and launch out into a fathomless ocean, without a pilot, without a helm, and probably without a shore! But it has long been determined as the only legitimate criterion we have whereby to regulate our notions of the Divine Being, to consider the highest perfections of created natures, to subtract every thing imperfect from them, and then to add infinitude to those ideas: "It would, indeed, be a high presumption to determine, whether the Supreme Being has not many more attributes than those which enter into our conceptions of him;

* Wisheart.

a further notion of some of the old divines, of perpetually succeeding sins and punishments; but this, he says in another place, is not reconcileable to scripture, which uniformly represents the punishments of futurity as inflicted for sins" done in the body."

Such are the inconsistencies into which the greatest minds may fall when treating upon subjects not perhaps wholly mysterious and inexplicable in themselves, but rendered so by the intricate and unscriptural jargon of disputants and systematical writers, to whom they are often inclined to pay a degree of attention and deference far beyond their real deserts. In speculation, therefore, as well as in practice, "Let our eyes look right on, and let our eye-lids look straight before

us."

I

SIR,

[To be continued.]

Ryde, Isle of Wight,

15th May, 1816. IIAVE always considered the memory of great and good men as a sacred deposit which cannot be too highly cherished and too carefully preserved; and when the reputation which they have justly acquired has been violated, I have attributed it to the grossest ignorance of their exalted worth..

In this light I regard the attack of Sir G. Hill on the character of that illustrious man, the late Rev. Dr. Priestley, in the Committee of Supply, on Friday, the 10th instant, respecting an academical institution at Belfast, in which the reporter of his speech informs us, that he remarked, "That this institution was likely to be perverted, as persons of a desparate character had wormed themselves into that school with the view of promoting the politics and religion of Paine and Priestley; hoping, by these insidious means, to promote their abominable principles by inculcating them into the minds of the young. The visitors," he added, "have not been perhaps sufficiently active and many good men have declined interfering,"

If the above report be correct, (which, for the credit of Sir G. Hill and the reputation of the honourable the House of Commons, I much question) I am at a loss to account for the silence of those members who could patiently suffer, so illustrious a name to be so vilely traduced-and by their

silence apparently confirm the truth of his remarks.

The superior merits of Dr. Priestley, both as a divine and a philosopher, are well known and acknowledged by every candid inquirer after truth; and no man was ever actuated by a stronger desire to promote the best interests of his fellow-creatures, by means the most gentle, peaceable and praise-worthy. I speak from knowledge; for I was intimately acquainted with him. He had a soul endued with the most benevolent affections, comprehending, in its grasp, the whole human race; wholly unlike those narrow and illiberal men who, from want of education or early prejudice, have been led to embrace the doctrines and to conform to the worship of an established church, and to despise and consider as dangerous enemies to the state, all those who dissent from it.

What the character of Sir G. Hill may be, I know not; but I hope, and have no reason to believe it otherwise than respectable, notwithstanding this attempt to lower the opinion which every candid and well-informed man entertains of the late Dr. Priestley, We are none of us perfect, and Sir G. Hill has his weak side; let us pity and pray for him.

Country 'squires (and titles are no exemption) labour under great disadvantages. How superficial is their education! how low and groveling. their pursuits! Their days spent in hunting and shooting, and their nights in carousing!

Study has no charms for them; and literary characters, who dare to investigate truth and to think for themselves in matters of the highest importance-who refuse to subscribe to articles which they are convinced are false, though imposed by the highest human authority, are, in their judg ment, persons entertaining the most abominable principles.

I rejoice to think that we are no longer the slaves of a feudal aristocracy, The mind of man is now beginning to work; it will be found a most powerful engine, and eventually exterminate the deep-rooted errors and prejudices both of religion and politics.

We cannot raise our expectations" too high. In the mean time let us aid the progress of truth in every way which lies in our power; recollecting that we are the salt of the earth, and