As to the _difficulties_ besetting the old or common view of future punishment, I admit their existence, and I do not pretend to explain them. But I always expect to find many mysteries in revealed religion, and I am not stumbled by them. I see other difficulties in the world which I cannot solve, and I am content to wait for their solution. What a mighty divine has called, "The mystery of God, the great mystery of His suffering vice and confusion to prevail,"--the origin of evil,--the permission of cruelty, oppression, poverty, and disease,--the allowed sickness and death of infants before they know good from evil,--the future prospects of the heathen who never heard the Gospel,--the times of ignorance which God has winked at,--the condition of China, Hindostan, and Central Africa, for the last 1800 years,--all these things are to my mind great knots which I am unable to untie, and depths which I have no line to fathom. But I wait for light, and I have no doubt all will be made plain. I rest in the thought that I am a poor ignorant mortal, and that God is a Being of infinite wisdom, and is doing all things well. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right." (Gen. xviii. 25.) It is a wise sentence of Bishop Butler: "All shadow of injustice, and indeed all harsh appearances in the various economy of God, would be lost, if we would keep in mind that every merciful allowance shall be made, and no more shall be required of any one, than what might have been equitably expected of him from the circumstances in which he was placed, and not what might have been expected from him had he been placed in other circumstances." ("Analogy," part ii. ch. vi. p. 425. Wilson's edition.) It is a grand saying of Elihu, in Job, "Touching the Almighty, we cannot find Him out: He is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: He will not afflict." (Job xxxvii. 23.)
It may be perfectly true that many Romish divines, and even some Protestants, have made extravagant and offensive statements about the bodily sufferings of the lost in another world. It may be true that those who believe in eternal punishment have occasionally misunderstood or mistranslated texts, and have pressed figurative language too far. But it is hardly fair to make Christianity responsible for the mistakes of its advocates. It is an old saying that "Christian errors are infidel arguments." Thomas Aquinas, and Dante, and Milton, and Boston, and Jonathan Edwards were not inspired and infallible, and I decline to be answerable for all they may have written about the physical torments of the lost. But after every allowance, admission, and deduction, there remains, in my humble opinion, a mass of Scripture evidence in support of the doctrine of eternal punishment, which can never be explained away, and which no revision or new translation of the English Bible will ever overthrow.[23] That there are degrees of misery as well as degrees of glory in the future state, that the condition of some who are lost will be far worse than that of others, all this is undeniable. But that the punishment of the wicked will ever have an end, or that length of time alone can ever change a heart, or that the Holy Spirit ever works on the dead, or that there is any purging, purifying process beyond the grave, by which the wicked will be finally fitted for heaven, these are positions which I maintain it is utterly impossible to prove by texts of Scripture. Nay, rather, there are texts of Scripture which teach an utterly different doctrine. "It is surprising," says Horbery, "if hell be such a state of purification, that it should always be represented in Scripture as a place of punishment." (Vol. ii. p. 223.) "Nothing," says Girdlestone, "but clear statements of Scripture could justify us in holding, or preaching to ungodly men, the doctrine of repentance after death; and not one clear statement on this subject is to be found." ("Dies Irae," p. 269.) If we once begin to invent doctrines which we cannot prove by texts, or to refuse the evidence of texts in Scripture because they land us in conclusions we do not like, we may as well throw aside the Bible altogether, and discard it as the judge of controversy.
23: Horbery alone alleges and examines no less than one hundred and three texts, on his side, in his reply to Whiston.