A very few words will put an issue to this controversy, if our blessed Saviour may be accepted for an umpire. Saith he, Matt.
586 VINDICI^ EVANGELICiE.
XXV. 46, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal." Certainly he that shall be everlast- ingly ^;r<?M'5Aec? shall he everlastingly. His punishment shall not continue when he is not. He that hath an end cannot be everlast- ingly punished. Again, saith our Saviour, " In hell the fire never shall be quenched ; where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched,'' Mark ix. 43, 44 ; which he repeats again verse 46, and, that Mr B. may not cause any to hope the contrary, again verse 48. This adds to the former miracle, — that men should be punished and yet not be, — that they shall be punished by the stings of a worm to tor- ment them when they are not, and the burning of a fire when their whole essence is consumed! So also Isa. Ixvi. 24, their torments shall be endless, and the means of their torments continued for ever ; but for themselves, it seems, they shall have an end as to their be- ing, and so nothing shall be punished with an everlasting luorin and a, fire never to he quenched! Nay, which is more, there shall be amongst them "weeping, and gnashing of teeth," Matt. viii. 12, the utmost sorrow and indignation expressible, yea, beyond expres- sion, and yet they shall not be! God threatens men with death and destruction, and describes that death and destruction to consist in the abiding under his wrath in endless torments; which inex- pressible state evidently shows that death is not a consumption of them as to the continuance of their being, but a deprivation of all the good of life natural, spiritual, and eternal, Avith an infliction of the greatest evils that they can be capacitated to endure and undergo, called their " destruction and perdition."^
What hath been the intention and design of Mr B. in this his Catechism, which I have thus far considered, I shall not judge. There is one Lawgiver to whom both he and I must give an account of our labour and endeavours in this business. That the tendency of the work itself is to increase infidelity and sin in the world I dare aver. Let this chapter be an instance; and from the savour that it hath let a taste be taken of the whole, and its nature be thereby esti- mated. That the greatest part of them to whom the mind of God, as revealed in Scripture, is in some measure made known, are not won and prevailed upon b}^ the grace, love, and mercy, proclaimed therein and tendered through Christ, so as to give up themselves in all holy obedience unto God, I suppose will be granted. That these
^ " A. Ita jocaris, quasi ego dicam, eos esse miseros, qui nati non sunt, et non eos miscros, qui mortui sunt. M. Esse ergo eos dicis. A. Immo, quia non sxrnt, cum fuerint, eos miseros esse. M. Pugnantia te loqui non vides ? quid enim tarn pugnat,
quam non modo miserum, sed omnino quidquam esse qui non sit A. Quoniam
me vcrbo premis, postliac non ita dicam, miseros esse, sed tantum, miseros, ob id ipsum quia non sunt. M. Non dicis igitur, miser est M. Crassus, sed tantum, miser M. Cras- sus. A. Ita plane. 31. Quasi non necesse sit, quicquid isto modo pronunties, id aut esse, aut non esse. An tu dialecticis ne imbutus quidem es," etc. — Cicer. Tuscul. Quest, lib. i. 7.
OF THE RESURRECTION. 587
men are yet so overpowered by the terror of the Lord therein disco- vered, and the threats of the wrath to come, as not to dare to run out to the utmost that the desperate thoughts of their own hearts and the temptations of Satan meeting in conjunction would carry them unto, as it liath daily and manifold experiences to evince it, so the examples of men so awed by conviction mentioned in the Scripture do abundantly manifest. Now, what is it, among all the considerations of the account that men are to make and the judg- ment which they are to undergo, which doth so amaze their souls and fill them with horror and astonishment, so strike off their hands when they are ready to stretch them out to violence and unclean- ness, or so frequently make their conception of sin abortive, as this of the eternity of the punishment which impenitent sinners must undergo? Is not this that which makes bitter the otherwise sweet morsels that they roll under their tongues, and is an adamantine chain to coerce and restrain them, when they break all other cords and cast all other bonds behind them? Yea, hath not this been, from the creation of the world, the great engine of the providence of God for the preserving of mankind from the outrageousness and unmeasurableness of iniquity and wickedness, which would utterly ruin all human society, and work a degeneracy in mankind into a very near approximation unto the beasts that perish, — namely, by keeping alive, in the generality of rational creatures, a prevailing conviction of an abiding condition of evil doers in a state of misery?^ To undeceive the wretched world, and to set sinful man at liberty from this bondage and thraldom to his own causeless fears, Mr B. comes forth and assures them all that the eternity of torments is a fable, and everlasting punishment a lie. Let them trouble them- selves no more ; the worst of their misery may be past in a moment. It is but annihilation, or rather perdition of soul and body, and they are for ever freed from the wrath of the Almighty ! Will they not say, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die?" Down we lie of a season ; God, it seems, will see -us once again, and then fare- well for ever. Whether ever there were a more compendious way of serving the design of Satan, or a more expedient engine to cast down and demolish the banks and bounds given to the bottomless lust and corruption of natural men, that they may overflow the world with a deluge of sin and confusion, considering the depraved condi- tion of all men by nature and the rebellion of the most against the love and mercy of the gospel, I much doubt. But who is more fit to encourage wicked men to sin and disobedience than he who la- bours also to pervert the righteous and obedient from their faith?