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    806 On Future Punishment.

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    I Have Always Been Strongly Inclined To ...

    J ) r . Paley argues the question throughout as if our good works were to furnish the criterion by which we are to be tried , and our admission or rejection on the great day to be determined . However con for triable this doctrine may be both to reason and scripture , it would he difficult , I suspect , to shew its conformity with the system which represents the righteous and the sinner as in respect of justification before God precisely upon a level , and

    owing their different fate solely to the circumstance that the Father for his own glory has been pleased to elect the one and reject the other 0 It is generally understood , I believe , ( though not by any means universally , ) by the advocates of this opinion , that the elect will be distinguished for good works ; their admission into heaven does not , however * in the smallest degree , depend on these , but solely on the imputation of the righteousness of Christ ; while on the other hand many , though by no means all the reprobate , have led wicked lives in this world ; but it is not on that account that

    they are doomed to eternal torment , but because they sinned in the person of their federal head Adam , whose offence is consequently imputed to them . Taking the & e views of imputed sin and imputed righteousness into tbe account , as furnishing ( in the estimation of the orthodox ) the true and only ground of future admission or rejection , happiness or misery , it is difficult to see in what way , consistently with the system , however loudly both reason and scripture may call for it , we can apply such a graduated scale to the condition allotted to mankind in a future state , as Dr . Paley suggests *

    But there is another important conclusion to which it seems to me naturally to lead us ; and that is , the possibility of passing from one of these states to the other . Those at least who are introduced to a state of irewardto a condition which deserves in any the most modified sense to be called one of happiness for a rational and intellectual being—must be enabled to continue the exercise of their rational powers , and probably , in proportion to the progress they have made here , under circumstances more

    advantageous to a continued improvement . No one can suppose that they are destined to rest contented and satisfied with their present attainments ; or that the happiness of a future state is to consist in mere rest or unprofitable speculation . Doubtless the blessed spirits made perfect are advancing continually in the divine likeness , and going on through endless ages from one degree of glory to another . Now if this is the case with all those who are admitted to heaven , and if , as Dr . Paley says , there may be as little to choose in nhe conditions of the lowest that are admitted and the best that are

    rejected as there is in their characters , who shall say that these latter may not be introduced to a state of discipline and correction ; who shall deny them the benefit of that activity which seems an essential attribute of mind , under circumstances which , though in the first instance penal and involving much suffering , may be for that very reason adapted to bring them to a sight and sense of their sins and their duty s and thus to place them at length on the same level in moral and religious attainments , which had been reached by some of those who were in the first instance admitted to a state of reward ?

    Again , if it be true that there is a uniform , unbroken gradation from the highest to the lowest , where shall we draw the line which excludes the possibility of such a transition as has here been suggested from one side of it to the other , from any one state to that immediately above it , and by consequence , ( only allow time enough , ) from the very lowest to the very highest ? Such appears to me to be a not unfair , practical inference from the views suggested by this excellent and valuable writer . And let k not be supposed that they tend in the smallest degree to weaken the efficacy of the prospects

    806 On Future Punishment.

    806 On Future Punishment .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1830, page 806, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_02121830/page/6/