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thing satisfactorily in this Point. A late ingenious Writer has advanced a sort of Hypothesis, that their Punishment will lead them into a kind of Phrensy and Madness. And their State of Disorder may so far at least resemble Madness, as to be equally incapable of Morality. The Faculties of their Minds, their Passions and Affections, may be so deprav'd, and their whole inward System so perverted and spoil'd, that they can no longer act, or chuse, what is right and good. Whether Beings in such a State of Disorder, are to be reckon'd Men, is a Point of no Consequence at all.

Let us view this matter in another light; and suppose for once that they are still real Agents, endu'd with Reason and Liberty. Does it therefore necessarily follow, that they will repent? The State of Things may be so changed externally, that they will be no longer able, or have Opportunity, to act their Vices; but will there be a correspondent Change in the inward System? What Reason has Dr. Burnet to say, that there will be no internal Concupiscence? Will not the Mind be the same? And the same evil Temper, Dispositions, and Habits still adhere to it? However therefore they may be restrain'd from the outward Acts of Vice, they continue the same evil Beings; and love the Wickedness which they cannot commit.

But the Stress of the thing, it will be said, lies here; that tho' they carry their evil Habits and Dispositions with them, when they first go into Hell, yet the Punishments of that Place will purify them; -will bring them to a sober Sense of Things ;—will

1 Archbishop King's Appendix to his Origin of Evil.

make them hate those Vices which are the Cause of their Sufferings, and excite in them by degrees the Love of God, and Virtue.

It is surprizing nevertheless, if Hell be such a State of Purification, that it should always be represented in Scripture only as a Place of Punishment. It is surprizing too, that a Place farthest remov'd from God, and his heavenly Influences, inhabited only by his most accursed Enemies, who are banished from his righteous Presence, should after all prove the most effectual School of Virtue. There is no good reason to believe that these Punishments will have any such effect. To say that they will force them to become good, amounts to a Contradiction. Election is matter of Freedom; it cannot be forced. And all means that fall short of this, all moral Motives, all Representations of Good and Evil, may possibly be of no avail. Evil may in a manner become their Good. And the unconquerable Will, and Study of Revenge,1 may defeat all Methods (should any Methods be contriv'd) to restore them. To be brief, there are two things which must concur to produce this wonderful Reformation: Their own inward System, or Constitution; and the System, or Constitution of things without them. That is, they must be really moral Agents, capable of chusing, loving, and practising Virtue; and the Place or State they are in, must be correspondent, affording them the means of Virtue, Motives to it, and Opportunities for it. Neither of which, as far as I can see, is likely to be

1 For never can true Reconcilement grow,

Where Wounds of deadly Hate have pierc'd so deep.

Milton.

the Case. However, it cannot be proved from Reason that this will be the Case;1 and it seems plain from Scripture, that it will not. According to all the Representations there given of the Transactions at the Day of Judgment, the Fate of the wicked will then be decided for ever. The divine Founder of the Christian Religion may then say, what he said when he had just purchased it with his Blood, TeTÉλEOTAι, It is finished. Having accomplished the Number of his Elect, he delivers up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; and, as no Man can, (nor, from the Foundation of the World to the End of it, ever did) come to the Father but by him; and his Offices of

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1 Since eternal Life is the free Gift of God, even to them who obey him, and their only Claim to it is by Promise, it seems an odd Attempt to undertake to prove merely from Reason, that they who would not obey him must be made Partakers of it. “No Man, says Dr. Clarke, can say 'tis unreasonable, that they "who by wilful and stubborn Disobedience to their Almighty "Creator, and most merciful Benefactor, and by the habitual 'Practice of unrepented Wickedness, have, during the State of "Trial, made themselves unfit for the Enjoyment of that Happiness which God has prepared for them that love and obey "him; should be eternally rejected, and excluded from it." But bare Deprivation of Happiness cannot be all. That excellent Writer goes on to prove unanswerably, that there must be some sensible and positive Punishment, besides the mere negative Loss of Happiness.-"And then as to the Duration of "this Punishment; no Man can presume in our present State "of Ignorance and Darkness to be able truly to judge, barely "by the Strength of his own natural Reason, what in this respect "is or is not consistent with the Wisdom and Justice and "Goodness of the supreme Governour of the World; since we "neither know the Place, nor Kind, nor Manner, nor Circumstances, nor Degrees, nor all the Ends and Uses of the final "Punishment of the wicked." Evidences of Religion, p.

66

360, &c.

2

John xix. 30.

3 Chap. xiv. 6.

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Mediation are now at an End, and the Purposes of God by him, of bringing many Sons unto Glory1 are fulfilled; the Mystery, or the whole mysterious Dispensation of God in Christ, [Teλeσ02] will be finished. He and his Saints take possession of the everlasting Kingdom, and the Door is shut. Without are Dogs, and Sorcerers, and Whoremongers, and Murderers, and Idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a Lye. And according to the whole Tenour and Drift of the New Testament, there is no Afteradmission for such as these: No Intimations dropt, from one End of it to the other, of their Re-establishment, or Recovery. On the contrary, it appears so evident, from all Authorities sacred and primitive, that in Gehenna, or Hell, there is no Repentance; that the greater Part of those who deny the Eternity of the Punishment, chuse to embrace the Hypothesis of Annihilation; contending that the Damn'd, so far from being restor'd to Happiness, will at last be utterly reduced to nothing. And they think that the Scripture-Expressions of Death, the second Death, Perdition, Destruction, (θάνατος, φθορά, ὄλεθρος, ἀπώλela) imply so much. Which however appears to be a Mistake, from what has already been observ'd in the second Chapter: But of the Point itself I shall treat more particularly in the following.

3 Ch. xxii. 15.

1 Heb. ii. 10.

2 Rev. x. 7.

CHAPTER V.

CONCERNING THE ANNIHILATION OF THE WICKED:

AND ALSO CONCERNING REPENTANCE IN "HADES."

NNIHILATION being a real Effect, it must be

produced by some Cause. This Cause must either be internal, or external. If the latter, it must either be God himself, or some inferiour Agent, or Instrument. And the Proof of this must be derived either from Experience, or Reason, or the Word of God. The first of these can afford little Evidence in the Case, since there is no Instance, or Example, of Annihilation in Nature. In material Substances we see great Changes, and Alterations; but none of them are absolutely reduced to nothing. The Modifications of Matter are infinitely varied, but not one Particle of Matter itself is annihilated: Nor can all the Art, or all the Power of Man, or any Creature, utterly destroy it. Omnia mutantur; nihil interit. And as Bodies cannot reduce each other to nothing by their mutual Actions upon one another, so neither have they any internal Tendency to Annihilation. They no more tend to unmake themselves, than they did to make themselves; but naturally persevere in their own present State.

If this be the case with regard to material Substances, or Bodies, it should hold, one would think,

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