these passages aright, is in no degree the question before us; but solely, supposing our interpretation correct, whether the fundamental nature of the doctrines in question is not a necessary consequence. I return you my most sincere thanks for the favourable opinion you express of my performance; and that you may be guided into the midst of the paths of judgment is the sincere prayer of Your obliged Friend and Servant, LXI. ROBERT HALL. TO THE REV. JOSEPH IVIMEY, LONDON. My dear Sir, Leicester, Feb. 20, 1819. I had intended long since to thank you very sincerely for your very valuable present of your two volumes of the History of the Baptists. I think it is highly creditable to yourself, and to the denomination to which you belong. I read them both with much interest and delight, and have seldom derived equal information and pleasure from any similar work. It will be a permanent monument of your talent and devotedness to the cause of religious truth and liberty. You have brought forward a great deal of curious information, with which the public were little, if at all, previously acquainted. I was much pleased with your style of narration: it is perspicuous, lively, and perfectly unaffected. With respect to reviewing it in the Baptist Magazine, I am sorry to be obliged to put a negative on your wishes. I have the utmost aversion to the whole business of reviewing, which I have long considered, in the manner in which it is conducted, a nefarious and unprincipled proceeding, and one of the greatest plagues of modern times. It was infinitely better for the interests of religion and literature when books had fair play, and were left to the unbiassed suffrages of the public. As it is, we are now doomed to receive our first impression and opinion of books from some of the wickedest, and others of the stupidest of men,-men, some of whom have not sense to write on any subject, nor others honesty to read what they pretend to criticise, yet sit in judgment upon all performances, and issue their insolent and foolish oracles to the public. To abolish the power of reviewing would be the greatest benefit a single man could confer on the public. At the same time, while such things are, the support of one like the Eclectic, upon sound principles, becomes a necessary evil. Your work wants no such artificial props. Earnestly wishing your valuable life and labour may long be spared. LXII. TO MRS. TUCKER. Leicester, April 16, 1819. Dear Madam, I feel myself much gratified and honoured by your kind and affectionate expressions of remembrance of an old friend, who, though long detained by circumstances from personal intercourse and correspondence, will never hear the name of Mrs. Tucker with indifference. I am delighted to hear from you, and to learn that, with all the changes effected by time, to which you so affectingly allude, the ardour of mind and warmth of sensibility by which you were formerly distinguished remain unimpaired. How wonderful, how complicated the mazes of providence through which we are conducted in our pilgrimage to eternity! Could we foresee the trials which await us, the agonies and vicissitudes we are called to pass through, life would be insupportable; but we are led, like the blind, by a way that we know not, and strength is dealt out just in proportion to our day. Let us, my dear friend, lock forward, and remember that our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. Let us hope that the fiercest part of our mortal warfare is passed, and that the evening of life will be more tranquil than the morning and the noon. May our deep experience of the mutability and vanity of the present shadowy state be improved into a perpetual motive for cultivating that heavenly-mindedness which is the only effectual antidote to the miseries of life. With respect to my visiting Plymouth, I have heard nothing of it from any quarter; and should I be invited on the occasion you mention, it will be utterly out of my power this summer to comply with it. My engagements are already too numerous. But of this, my dear madam, be assured, that should my steps be directed to Plymouth at any time during your life, I shall never for a moment think of taking my abode but at your house, with your permission, should I be invited by a prince. You little know me if you suppose that rank and fashion would have the smallest influence in inducing a forgetfulness of ancient friendship. My chief inducement to visit Plymouth would be the pleasure of once more seeing and conversing with Mrs. Tucker. With my kindest remembrances to Mr. Tucker, I remain, Dear Madam, Your affectionate Friend, LXIII. TO THE REV. THOMAS LANGDON. My dear Friend, Leicester, Jan. 11, 1820. As Mr. Ryland is passing through to Leeds, I take the liberty of troubling you with a few lines, just to let you know how I and my family are, and to express my undiminished affection and attachment to one of my oldest and best friends. I look back with renewed pleasure on the scenes through which we have passed, and deeply regret that Providence has placed us at such a distance from each other that our opportunities of intercourse are so few. I hope the period will arrive when we shall spend an eternity together, and look back with mingled wonder and gratitude on all the way the Lord God has led us. What a scene will that present when the mysterious drama shall come to a close, and all the objects of this dark and sublunary state shall be contemplated in the light of eternity! "O could we make our doubts remove, Those gloomy doubts that rise, I am very sorry to hear that you have been so much afflicted with your asthmatic complaint. It is high time you retired from your school, and procured a house nearer your meeting. I am persuaded your long evening walks are extremely prejudicial. Do, my dear friend, be prevailed upon to give up your evening lectures. It is what you owe to your family to be as attentive as possible to your health. "Do thyself no harm," is an apostolic injunction. I was much affected to hear of the death of dear Mr. Robert Spear. It must have been peculiarly distressing to the amiable youth I saw at your house. He was a most excellent man, and has no doubt had an abundant entrance into the joy of his Lord. May we be followers of those who thus inherit the promises. My health is, through mercy, very good. Mrs. Hall is at present very much indisposed by a bad cold and oppression of the lungs, but through blistering and bleeding is, through mercy, better. Let me indulge the hope that next summer you and Mrs. Langdon will visit me at Leicester. Be assured that the company of no friend would give me more pleasure. Please to remember me affectionately to Mrs. Langdon, to your family, and to all inquiring friends as if named. I am your affectionate Friend and Brother, ROBERT HALL. LXIV. TO A GENTLEMAN AT TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. Leicester, April 30, 1821. Dear Sir, I am considerably at a loss how to answer your letter. I sincerely sympathize with you in the perplexity you experience on a very high and awful subject. For my own part, I acquiesce in the usual and popular interpretation of the passages which treat on the future doom of the finally impenitent. My reasons, in brief, are as follows:-I assume it as a maxim, that we are utterly incompetent to determine, à priori, what is the amount of guilt incurred by such as reject the overtures of the gospel, any further than God has been pleased to make it the subject of express revelation; that the terms expressive of the duration of future misery are as forcible as the Greek language supplies; that the same term is applied to the duration of misery as to the duration of happiness, or even the eternity of God himself (Matt. xxv. 46; Rev. xix. 3); that the exclusion of the impenitent from happiness is asserted in the most positive terms-" They shall not see life," &c. &c., that "their worm dieth not, and their fire is not extinguished;" that positive terms may be understood in different degrees of latitude, but this is impossible respecting negative terms, since a negation admits of no degrees. If the eternal misery of a certain number can be rendered conducive to a greater amount of good in relation to the universe at large than any other plan of action, then the attribute of goodness requires it; for I take it for granted that the Supreme Being will adopt that scheme, whatever it be, which will produce the greatest quantity of happiness on the whole. But our faculties are too limited, and our knowledge of the laws of the moral world, and of the relation which one part of the universe bears to another, too imperfect to enable us to say that this is impossible. For aught we know, therefore, the existence of eternal misery may not only consist with, but be the necessary effect of, supreme goodness. At all events, it is a subject of pure revelation, on the interpretation [of which] every one must be left to form his own judgment. If the milder interpretation can be sustained by a preponderating evidence, I shall most sincerely rejoice; but I have yet seen nothing to satisfy me that this is the case. I would only add, that in my humble opinion the doctrine of the eternal duration of future misery, metaphysically considered, is not an essential article of faith, nor is the belief of it ever proposed as a term of salvation; that if we really flee from the wrath to come, by truly repenting of our sins, and laying hold of the mercy of God through Christ, by a lively faith, our salvation is perfectly secure, whichever hypothesis we embrace on this most mysterious subject. The evidence accompanying the popular interpretation is by no means to be compared O that which establishes our common Christianity; and therefore the fate of the Christian religion is not to be considered as implicated in the belief or disbelief of the popular doctrine. Earnestly wishing you may be relieved from all painful solicitude on the question, and be guided by the Spirit of God into the paths of truth and holiness, I remain, Your obedient humble Servant, LXV. ROBERT HALJ TO RICHARD FOSTER, JUN., ESQ. Dear Sir, Leicester, July 21, 1821. I thank you for your kind favour (which I should have acknowledged sooner, but was not at home), including a draft for 771., and odd. With respect to my sermon on the Trinity, I entered into no metaphysical disquisition whatever: I merely confined myself to the adducing passages which go to prove a plurality of persons in the blessed Godhead; such as the plural name of God in the Hebrew, the use of plural pronouns, the injection of plurals in the name of God coupled with singular verbs, the use of the terms Makers, Creators, &c. I adduced Isaiah, saying, "The Lord hath sent me and his Spirit," &c. From the New Testament I mentioned the baptismal form, the salutation to the Corinthians. To these I added the principal passages usually adduced in proof of the divinity of Christ and the personality of the Spirit. In short, it was a mere appeal to the letter of Scripture, without the smallest attempt at metaphysical refinement. I considered that doctrine continually as a doctrine of pure revelation, to which reasoning can add nothing but darkness and uncertainty. It appears, however, to me replete with practical improvement, being adapted to exhibit the part which each person in the blessed Trinity sustained in the economy of redemption in the most engaging light, and to excite the utmost ardour of gratitude. The time was when I maintained the dual system, supposing the Holy Spirit to be an energy; but I have long found abundant reason to renounce that doctrine, and now find much complacency in the ancient doctrine of the Trinity. As you mention the [meeting-house] being shut up, I hope it is to heighten it. I have no doubt that the extreme heat and closeness of the place must have a very injurious effect on the health both of the minister and people. I hope you continue comfortable, and that the Lord is giving testimony to the word of his grace. The interest of religion in a church which I served so long and so happily will ever lie near my heart. |