"Can a woman forget her SUCKING CHILD, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my HANDS; thy walls are continually before me."

After the prophet Hosea has said, " Ephraim is joined to his idols; let him alone;" and notwithstanding the dreadful doctrine drawn from the text by the orthodox, the sympathies of the human heart are sufficiently warranted by the subsequent language of the same prophet. "Is Ephraim my dear Son? Is he a pleasant child? For since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still." "And again-"Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? I have heard him, and observed him, I am like a green fir tree. From me is thy fruit found."

But, not to multiply quotations, let us inquire whether sympathy dwelt in the breast of Christ and his apostles. Christ, in speaking of the stiff-necked and rebellious Jews, says, "How often would I have gathered thy children," &c. "O that thou hadst known, even thou in this thy day," &c. But Paul declares in one word, that the goodness of God leadeth to repentance. Is not an appeal to the goodness of God, and to the mercies of God, an appeal to the sympathies of our nature? But orthodox testimonies are not wanting. The following is from the Evangelist;

"To her in the form of pity, sorrow owes many kind alleviations, and virtue ascribes many of her triumphs. To thee, angel of consolation, may the wretched appeal for peace, and hope, and comfort. To thee, the social circle owes its charms, and friendship her strong and tender influence. Woe to him who heeds not thy persuasions; he hath already leagued with hell, and hath covenanted with the children of darkness."

After reading the above quotations, you are left to furnish an apology for the gross attack that is made in the citation from your Letters, on the sympathy of our natures. But this is not all, you are called upon to give a reason for those astonishing exertions made by the abettors of your system, for the salvation of the heathen. Are you in earnest for their good, or do these systematic operations proceed from a spirit not recognized in the scriptures?

I shall close the present Number by examining a Hopkinsian sentiment admitted into your Letters. If the admission of its truth lead you into a labyrinth of contradictions, the fault is not mine.

"Now it is admitted on all hands, that God is a being of infinite goodness. His natural and moral perfections render it certain that he will govern the universe in such a manner as will, on the whole, secure the greatest possible sum of happiness. But what does this prove? That no evil natural or moral, can exist under the government of God,-that all the subjects of his empire must be holy and happy?"

To this I reply; if the premises be correct, the conclusion is certain, for Universal holiness and happiness must be the result. All the ingenuity of Samuel Hopkins, aided by all his followers, has not been able to extricate the sentiment from the palpable absurdity of connecting it with the tenet of endless misery. If the greatest possible sum of happiness be consistent with a great sum of misery, then is either the goodness or power of God deficient. Is God dependent, or independent? If the doctrine of fatalism prevent him from the full exercise of infinite benevolence, the being whom we worship as God is a mere idol. If he wILL the salvation of all, and may yet be disappointed, by what surety do we know he may not be disappointed in the salvation of a single soul?But you seem to argue, that as evil, natural and moral,

do exist under the government of God, that therefores the holiness and happiness of all men does not necessarily follow from the perfection of God. As I purpose to close this Review in the next Number, by calling on you for the redemption cf a pledge publicly given, the subject will then receive a more careful examination. At present, you are merely notified, that a fulfilment of your promise will be expected.

Yours,

CANDIDUS.

NO. 14.

To Rev. Joel Hawes,-Hartford.

SIR-The present number will embrace a call for the redemption of a pledge contained in the following citation from your 9th Letter;

"Let Universalists tell how the present sin and sufferings of men, are consistent with the benevolence of God, and I pledge myself to tell how eternal misery in the future world is consistent with the same benevolence. There is the same difficulty in the one case as in the other. All that the goodness of God demands is, that he govern, in such a manner, as will secure the greatest amount of good in the universe. That great temporal sufferings are consistent with this, is proved by facts; and who but God is competent to decide that eternal sufferings are not?"

In examining this paragraph, I shall take advantage of the two concessions which it contains, and endeavour to strengthen them by the application of scripture and argument. That God will govern for the greatest amount of good to the universe, is all for which Universalists contend. But we also maintain,

that the supreme good of the whole, must include the best good of all those individuals of which the universe is composed. The goodness of God leads to repentance. To repent is to return; and to return, includes a reformation of life. But "All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord;" and "All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord, and shall glorify thy name. It is thus that in the moral government of God, his goodness will draw us to the soucre, the fountain of unexhausted, inexhaustible Love, and that all shall be taught by, and shall therefore know the Lord of heaven and earth, whom to know is life eternal. Your concession agrees admirably with the declaration of the Psalmist; "The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works." But can the tender mercies of God be over those whom he has doomed to remediless wo?

But it may be urged, that the arcana imperii of Hopkinsianism require a different understanding of this concession. It may be urged, that to procure the greatest amount of good in the universe, a portion of man must be left to sin and suffer, endlessly, for the glory of God, and the happiness of the saved; and the following may be quoted from Dr. Edward's as strong authority;

"The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever. It will not only make them more sensible of the greatness and freeness of the grace of God in their happiness; but it will really make their happiness the greater, as it will make them more sensible of their own happiness; it will give them a more lively relish of it: it will make them prize it more. When they see others, who were of the same nature, and born under the same circumstances, plunged in such misery, and they so distinguished-0, it will make them sensible how happy

they are. A sense of the opposite misery, in all cases, greatly increases the relish of any joy or plea

sure.

What a beautiful illustration of the joys of the Hopkinsian heaven!

You will notice, that I have not imputed these infernal sentiments to you, as the hidden meaning of your concession, but the quotation was made, that the reader may see in its naked deformity, the improvement on Calvinistic fatalism, urged by the followers of Dr. Hopkins, in the language of the citation from your Letter.

And yet, I can perceive no other retreat from the doctrine of Universal salvation, on your own hypothesis, than is offered by this alternative. Unless happiness and misery are convertible terms, the illimitable sufferings of a portion of men, cannot surely conduce to their own happiness; and if the greatest possible enjoyment will result from the government of God, notwithstanding the hopeless misery of a part, it follows of necessity, that the Doctor's statement, must in effect be true. By what course of reasoning, or what passages of scripture, this figment of a distempered imagination is sustained, we have yet to learn.

The following quotation from Rev. John Wesley's writings, will serve as a specimen of the dernier resort to which the orthodox are driven, by the lucid doctrine of the apostle. When a man of his acknowledged talents and information, descends to such pitiful, such contemptable quibbling, for the purpose of avoiding inevitable conclusions, we are left in wonder that he has exposed the weakness of his own sentiment, by dwelling a moment on the subject. Ignorant and

*The reader is left to decide, whether this advocate of the doctrine of devils, would grace a seat in the Spanish Inquisition. Christians have provided penitentiaries and state prisons for parents who should act on this principle in the present world.