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    On Future Punishment. B03

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    3 i. 2

• Transcript

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    I Have Always Been Strongly Inclined To ...

    This is a consideration peculiarly awakening and alarming to those mixed and imperfect characters , so numerous in the woirldg who may he styled almost Christians ; and in this description may be included a very large proportion of those to whom the discoveries of the gospel have been addressed . Notwithstanding the prevalence of vice in the world , it may yet be true that the number of the utterly depraved and profligate is but small when compared with those Ho whom the above designation may be not

    improperly appliedo As for the former ^ if they are not altogether hardened and unimpressible , it is conceivable enough that at the awful moment when the concerns of an eternal scene are brought immediately into view , tthe notion of an eternity of punishment must fill them with horror unspeakable ; but the latter are too apt to sooth themselves with the persuasion that their offences are of too light a cast to call for so severe an infliction ., or at least that they may expiate them by the efficacy of a death-bed repentance , or by flying in their utmost need to the merits of Christ ' s atoning blood . Now if

    such are the views they take of their future prospects , whatever terrific ideas they may have fanned of the eternal woe reserved for the wicked , will be coupled with the belief that it is a subject in which they can never have any personal concern ; so that they will be apt , I should fear , to make themselves fatally easy about their present state , and their conduct during the continuance of health and strength . If , however , the doctrine we have been recommending should appear to be correct 3 there is an end to all such delusive expectations . Sinful habits contracted here will necessarily diminish our fitness for the

    frieavenly state . Even though we should be admitted to it , they will prevent us from deriving from it the happiness it was intended to communicate . Here or hereafter they must therefore be destroyed . These are views of the doctrine of limited punishments , and consequently of universal restoration , which , if I am not greatly mistaken , are calculated to make a much more powerful and salutary impression than that of an eternity of misery prepared for the wicked . It may not be so terrific in appearance ; but as it is more reconcileable to our notions of justice , and to the conceptions which both reason and revelation lead us to form of the Divine

    character , so it excites no feeling of scepticism in the mind , and presents itself as a probable or even certain prospect . I have dwelt so long upon this topic , because it is apt to be altogether over-looked by the opponents , and , I am disposed to think , too much so by the friends of this doctrine » The former , too well aware that the terror of an after-reckoning such as they represent to be in store for the wicked , and which some of them well know how to

    depict in all the tremendous colours which a glowing imagination and no ordinary powers of descriptive eloquence can supply , is still not so effectual as could be wished in restraining the sinner from the error of his ways , are ready to tax the advocates of universal restoration with views and feelings most adverse to the moral improvement of mankind ; and even some of the latter , not having attended sufficiently to the workings of the human mind , are sometimes afraid to bring forward to public notice what they believe to be conformable both to reason and to scripture , lest they should diminish the effect of a fear of future punishment in counteracting present temptations . They seem to imagine that a salutary falsehood is better than a dangerous truth which may be misunderstood or perverted . At any rate , I fear it is certain that very few of the advocates of this doctrine avail themselves as they might do of the resources which it places at their disposal for working effectually upon the terrors of the wicked . I have said ? upon the terrors of the wicked ; but perhaps this is am incorrect expression ,, which may lead , as

    On Future Punishment. B03

    On Future Punishment . B 03

    3 I. 2

    3 i . 2

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1830, page 803, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_02121830/page/3/