end;) and therefore our Lord can never be supposed to talk in this manner. If we take the word (as we must take it) in the latter sense, our Lord's discourse will amount to this,-So God loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not be condemned, but have Here indeed is some sense; but poor

lasting life. and low, in comparison of what it is in the common translation. Our Lord is magnifying his Father's love to mankind, which was so great that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should have everlasting life. Here is a gift worthy of the goodness of God to bestow, and worthy of the wisdom of God to convey through his only begotten Sony: the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, Rom. vi. 23. There is a like representation of this matter, equally plain and strong, John x. 28, 29. I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all: and none is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. We deprive these words of their beauty and force, if we suppose, with Mr. W., that notwithstanding none is able to pluck them out of the hand of the Father and the Son, yet at last they will of themselves drop

* There seems to be no just opposition in the words even in this sense for when this lasting life is over, as it will some time be, they will be condemned to be annihilated; the apprehensions of which all along (if they know any thing of the matter) will be a punishment in proportion to the greatness of the happiness they are to lose.

y He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Rom.

viii. 32.

out, as it were, into nothing. But this important point does not rest upon two or three single passages. It is expressed throughout the New Testament in the strongest language: this mortal shall put on immortality, then shall death be swallowed up in victory" :-neither can they die any more a. It is a poor evasion to say, that they shall only die no more in the same sense and manner of dying as they did before, but still they may die in the sense of ceasing to exist for ever. This is making the oracles of God more ambiguous, more equivocating and deceitful, than the heathen oracles. No, they will never cease to exist, and to be happy; being in possession of an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, 1 Peter i. 4: in possession of the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world, Matt. xxv. 34: which kingdom is an everlasting kingdom;-and they shall reign for ever and ever, Rev. xxii. 5. Compare Dan. vii. 18. It is the kingdom of Christ, and of God the Father. See the note concerning doxologies, Num. XXII. What St. Paul says, 1 Cor. xv. 24. about Christ's delivering up the kingdom to God, even the Father, is not at all inconsistent with this everlasting kingdom, in which he and his saints shall reign for ever and ever. The mediatorial kingdom, the kingdom of grace, the kingdom which he governed in a particular manner, while he was subduing all opposite rule, authority, and power, and putting all enemies under his feet, will then be at an end: but there is still the kingdom of glory, into which he introduces his redeemed; and of this

1 1 Cor. xv. 53, 54.

a Luke xx. 36.

kingdom there shall be no end. Nicene Creed, Luke i. 33.

As this has been the common faith of Christians, from the commencement of the Christian name, whoever ventures to oppose it, ought, one would think, to have some good argument to produce against it. Let us now examine Mr. Whiston's. All that he suggests in point of reason is to this effect b; that if any creatures are to exist for ever, they will be coeternal with their infinite and everlasting Creator; that this is an amazing coeternity; "and has long "seemed to him too vast and immense a thing to "be expected, not only by us, poor, imperfect, sinful "mortals; perhaps the very lowest of all rational

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beings in the whole scale of creation; but by any "finite and subordinate creatures whatsoever." As to the first suggestion, where, I beseech you, is the absurdity in believing that some creatures shall be coeternal, that is, of equal continuance in being, as to all future duration, with God himself? Does this make them in any manner to equal or rival God? or put them in a state independent of him? By no means; it was he who created them immortal, and made them to be the images of his own eternity © : and they are but images of it still. His is supreme and underived, extending both ways, (a parte ante, as well as a parte post,) from everlasting to everlasting. Theirs is only commensurate with all duration to come, depending all the while upon God, and subordinate to him, who only, in the supreme sense, hath immortality. What then is there amazing in such a coeternity, which reserves to God his divine c Wisd. ii. 23.

b See p. 23, 64, 75, 89.

prerogative, and makes no encroachment upon any perfection of the infinite and everlasting Creator d? There is no envy in God, that he should be jealous of his creatures approaching too near him. And they will ever, in their highest exaltation, be infinitely below him. And as there is no want of goodness in the Deity, so neither is there of power, to preserve them in being, and in the enjoyment of their virtuous happiness, to everlasting ages. There is no contradiction in the nature of the thing; it is a real object of power, is what may be done and, taking all the divine perfections into consideration, it is reasonable to think it certainly will. "No," says Mr. W. "it is too vast and immense a thing to be "expected, not only by us poor sinful mortals, but

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by any creatures whatsoever." Here he seems to rest the point upon the incapacity of the creature. But why reasonable creatures, especially the most valuable, excellent, and noble of all God's creatures, may not expect the privilege of immortality, when they consider the nature of God, the declarations of his will, the constitution of their own na

d To what purpose, or with what consistency, does Mr. Whiston heap up texts and testimonies of scripture, for ten or a dozen pages together, to magnify the goodness, compassion, and tender mercies of God towards his creatures? this gloomy hypothesis of final universal destruction defaces all. What can be said worse of the wisdom and goodness of the Deity, what can represent his character in a more unamiable light, than saying that he will at last destroy the noblest works of his own hands, the general assembly and church of the firstborn, the spirits of just men made perfect, and the innumerable company of angels, that stand round about his throne; (not to go any higher;) because otherwise they would be coeternal with himself; and that "is too vast "and immense a thing" for them to expect?

ture, and the moral fitness and reason of things, I cannot imagine. If they will not expect what God has, in all these ways, given them reason to expect, this is not an argument of their humility, but of their baseness they reject the counsel of God against themselves, and judge themselves unworthy and incapable of everlasting life. As for our being “poor, "imperfect, and sinful mortals," it should have been remembered, that whatever we are at present, it does not yet appear what we shall be; only we know that the time will come, when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he (God) is pure. It is much to be lamented that Mr. Whiston should weaken this motive; and, in his zeal to reform the present systems of faith, should make such cruel inroads, not only into the doctrine of the gospel, but into natural religion itself, as to deny the immortality of the soul, and an everlasting state of retribution.

Since then men were throughly apprized of the fatal consequences of a wicked life, and not only had it in their power, but were encouraged and invited, by the promises of an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, to avoid them; it follows, that if they do incur these punishments, they incur them voluntarily, and as the effect of their own choice and option. The meaning of this is not that men choose misery or evil, especially eternal misery, as such; for so considered, it can be the object of no choice. Were eternal happiness and misery proposed to men's option abstractedly in themselves, e 1 John iii. 2, 3. f 1 Cor. xv. 53.