DISCOURSE V.

1 John iv. 8.

GOD IS LOVE.

My Christian Friends! It is my design, in the following discourse, to direct your attention to the Scriptures. In confirmation of what was advanced in some preceding discourses, on the insufficiency of the arguments which are brought in support of the commonly received opinions of future Punishment, it may be proper to mention one Fact, which is taken notice of by the writers in favour of Universal Restitution, which appears to me in itself decisive, and of

which every person, whether he be acquainted with the languages in which the Scriptures are written or not, if he have only a Concordance to his Bible (as every one ought to have), is capable of judging for himself. In almost every page of the New Testament, the Doctrine of Eternal Life is clearly and unequivocally asserted. It is expressed negatively and positively; by a variety of words which admit of no misconstruction, and literally, as well as by the most splendid figures and images. It is indeed written as with a sun-beam.

And one would imagine, that if the Doctrine of Eternal Misery, or of Eternal Death, were likewise a Doctrine of Revelation, it would have been expressed with equal clearness, and at least with equal frequency. The general Fact of the future Punishment of the wicked is so expressed; and it is as clearly asserted, that it will consist in the loss

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of that immortal Life of which the Righteous, at the Resurrection, will be put in immediate possession. But how different is this information, from the thunders of divine wrath, which we hear from many pulpits, and from the denunciations of eternal damnation which we read in many books of Divinity! From these it would be natural to conclude that we should find innumerable declarations in Scripture of the most plain and unequivocal nature, that the positive sufferings of the wicked will never have an end, or, agreeably to the other supposition, that they will terminate in Eternal Death. So far however is this from being the case, that not one word expressive of either of these is to be found in the whole New Testament: and although the expressions, "they shall hùnger no more, nor thirst any more; and there shall be no more Death," are familiar to our ears: where do we meet with the expressions, they shall be happy

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happy no more, they shall exist no more, or there shall be no more Life?

I beg leave to call your attention to another circumstance: The word alwvior, aionion, and the Hebrew word which corresponds to it, which is translated eternal, everlasting, and sometimes for ever; but which signifies continued or lasting, and is determined in its sense by the subject to which it is applied (which may be of a shorter, a longer, or a never ending duration); this word is used more than a hundred times in the Old and New Testament; and out of these, if I mistake not, you will find upon examination that it is applied to Punishment of any kind but nine times, and to the future punishment of wicked men not more than six times. These texts have been already explained. To recur then to the general Observation, wherever the Gospel was preached, or wherever an account of it was given in writing,

writing, one would suppose that its most awful sanction, that of punishment, so necessary for the conversion of sinners, and to be presented to the mind in every moment of temptation, would be enforced with peculiar energy. But if that sanction be Eternal Misery, or Eternal Death, it is most unaccountably omitted. With respect to the word awon, aionion, on which the whole depends, it is a fact, that Luke in his Gospel never uses it, as connected with the pu nishment of the wicked: Mark only once, and that in a particular case. the Gospel of John, it is not to be found at all in that connexion, nor in any of his three Epistles. In the account of the preaching of the Gospel through the world in the first ages of Christianity, we do not find it mentioned in that light so much as once, no, not in all the Sermons and parts of Sermons which Luke has preserved in the Acts of the Apostles.

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