that the Scriptures are a book of “infinite deception ?" The difference between an eternal and a temporary retribution is infinite; the propounding of an eternal retribution, if it be not true, is an infinite lie. And they who lend themselves to this are acting on the principle, on which the great Apostasy has been builded, and to which is annexed the seal of the Divine reprobation, “Let us do evil that good may come.”

Of the disingenuousness of such a course as Mr. Foster describes in the ministers of his acquaintance, their preaching or apparent preaching of this doctrine in public, their disbelief of it in private, and their whisperings and circulations of such disbelief in familiar circles, we need say nothing. We wonder that a mind of such independence, nobleness, integrity, sincerity, and fearlessness as Mr. Foster's, could have been warped at all into any excuse of such a course, much less any sanction of it by example. The habit of such casuistry must be powerful beneath the teachings of an Established Church, which propounds Thirty-Nine Articles of belief to be sworn upon as the conditions of earthly emolument and usefulness, with the understood provision that the oath of belief may or may not mean belief according to the opinion of the swearer. But out of the Establishment could it have been supposed that such casuistry would prevail ? Let a man believe or disbelieve at his pleasure, and if he chooses, teach it wholly, or keep it to himself. 66 While it remained, was it not thine own? And when it was sold, was it not in thine own power ?” But to appear to preach it in public, and in private to circulate the mischief of unbelief; in public to proclaim the terrors of the Lord, in private to reduce them to a vast and glaring deception; in public to maintain the sanctions of the law, in private to disarm them by reasonings against the penalty ;-this is a course which nothing can justify, and which tends to unsettle the foundations of theology and morality together.

In reference to Foster himself, the truth seems to be that his own mind was never really settled on this subject, but was swayed to and fro, and sometimes, perhaps, in dreadful agitation. In no other way can we account for the inconsistencies of his reasonings, and the contradiction between the menacing tenor of his writings in the prospect of the Eternal World, and the hesitating plunge into a complete denial of eternal retribution in his letter to a student in theology. But then, what a picture of vagueness and indetermination in theological opinion is presented in a man, whose practical writings are of so definite, compact and powerful a tissue, and whose personal solemn impressions of the eternal world make many of his pages look as if written in the light of the vast pyre of eternal burnings! We cannot but contrast what we have seen him saying in 1841, with his opinion and advice on the same subject in 1801. In that year he had occasion to write to the Rev. Dr. Ryland a criticism upon one of the Doctor's sermons, the subject of which was the eternal punishment of the wicked. It is said to have been a sermon in its delivery eminently powerful and successful, and Foster himself acknowledged in very strong terms the ingenuity, the variety, and the forcible description with which it abounded. But we can easily conceive that a sermon of this character which would be powerful and useful preached from the heart of a man glowing like Paul with love to the souls of his audience, might not be so well fitted for the press, without the tones and persuasions of the preacher. Mr. Foster advised him to keep it without printing, and told him he was afraid that those who had expatiated most on infernal subjects had felt them the least. But he did not tell him, as he did forty years afterwards the student in theology, that if the tremendous doctrine were true, surely it ought to be almost continually proclaimed as with the blast of a trumpet, inculcated and reiterated, with ardent passion, in every possible form of terrible illustration. But he said that it struck him as a kind of Christian cruelty to go into such illustration, and he

gave an opinion in regard to the voice of the New Testament on the subject, which for the sake of comparison and contrast we place beside his opinion on the same at the later period.

1801.

1841. The utmost space I would allot in my I do say, that to make the milder sua. writings to this part of the revelations of sives, the gentle language of love, the our religion, should not, at any rate, main resource, is not in consistency with exceed the proportion which in the the spirit of the Bible, in which the New Testament this part of truth bears larger proportion of what is said of sin. to the whole of the sacred book, the ners, and addressed to them, is plainly grand predominant spirit of which is in a tone of menace and alarm. Strange love and mercy.

if it had been otherwise, when a right. eous Governor was speaking to a deprav. ed, rebellious race.

It would seem that Foster had not, on this subject, come to the Scriptures to settle his mind there, with the same unhesitating acquiescence and faith, with which he received from the same Scriptures the doctrine of a suffering Mediator. And it would seem that he had not looked very narrowly into the profound and fundamental connection of the great truths of the Gospel scheme with one another, and their mutual dependence on each other for their separate demonstration, sanction, and power. He was not what can be called a profound theologian, neither in the Scriptures, nor in the systematic study of theology. He never pretended to be. Nor is this a derogation from the greatness of his merit and the originality and power of his thoughts as a practical writer; though we love to see the tide of practical thought and emotion sustained, compressed,'and, so to speak, flung back upon itself, by a rock-bound coast of theoretical systematic truth, which offers

points of command over the ocean, and strong harbors where the soul may securely ride at anchor. But Foster carried his mental independence, and his hatred of the restraint of systems, to the verge of error. He would have been a more useful preacher, a more massive thinker, a more comprehensive writer, had his mind, from an early period, been more deeply imbedded in the knowledge of the Scriptures. On whatever point a man's anchorage does not hold there, his reasoning is unsafe.

That Foster could have reasoned on the ground of mere prejudice and doubt, without taking into view known and admitted facts and relations, would have seemed incredible. And yet in the instance of the future retribution he has done it. He has adopted a line of reasoning with an admission in the course of it, fatal to the very principle of the argument; a line of reasoning taking up in its course a mighty fact to support it, which overthrows it completely from its very foundation. He brings in the agency of Satan, the intervention and activity of the great Tempter and Destroyer, to lessen our sense of the desert of endless punishment in man, and thus to make the truth of such punishmemt appear inconsistent with the Divine goodness; not appearing to remember that the admission of the truth of the Scriptures in regard to the existence and agency of such a Tempter and Destroyer, is inevitably the admission of an eternal state of sin and suffering ; which is as inconsistent with the Divine benevolence in reference to Satan and the fallen angels, as it would be with reference to man. Eternal retribution being once admitted in reference to any created sinful intelligences, must be admitted in reference to all ; the disproportion between endless misery and any limited duration of punishment being infinitely greater than any possible disproportion between the guilt of one class of finite sinful intelligences and another class. It could not possibly consist with the Divine benevolence, to punish one class of sinners eternally, and not another. Admitting, therefore, the sin and the punishment of Satan, you have overthrown the very foundation of any argument against the Divine benevolence, from the truth of eternal retribution as propounded in the Scriptures. This Mr. Foster has done; taking up thus into the texture of his argument (which, indeed, is but a texture of doubts and reasonings from mere emotion) a fact that rots the whole of it, a single thread that turns it all to dust. It is as if a man should attempt to pass off as a costly antique, a vase that has on it the name of the manufacturer at Potsdam. It is like the attempt to prove that Moses was mistaken in the date of the world by a temple alleged to have been built before the deluge, but in which a hieroglyphical inscription being read, fixes the time of its erection under the Roman Empire. Bringing up Satan as the Tempter of man, to prop up an argument against Éternal Retribution as inconsistent with the benevolence of God, Mr. Foster has merely produced an instance of an intelligent, sinful being, actually suffering such retribution ; an instance which inspiration itself lays hold of to prove the certainty of such retribution, in the case of wicked men. “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, the Lord knoweth how to reserve the unjust unto the Day of Judgment, to be punished.” We take the case of Satan as being, in Mr. Foster's argument, a case of eternal retribution; for we do not suppose that Mr. Foster would have admitted a possibility of Satan ever being converted, or as he would rather have phrased it, ever being brought under the economy of grace. The existtence of an immortal being so malignant as to make the perdition of immortal beings his delight, is the existence of eternal sin and misery; and that being given, the argument against the Divine goodness from eternal retribution, is as futile as would be an argument against the Divine existence from the alleged eternity of matter.

The great Truth of the Atonement was another admitted, practical, sun-like fact, which Foster held, most fully and firmly, but yet maintained an absolute insensibility to its bearing upon this point of an endless retribution. Either there was a voluntary absence and denial of any effort of his attention that way, an anxious withdrawal of his mind from that conclusion, almost as if he had said within himself, “That way madness lies;” or there was an original defectiveness in his reception of the doctrine, a sheer cutting away of the whole of one side of the Atonement from his moral vision. His reasoning on one divine truth apart from its connection with and dependence on another, was as if a natural philosopher should reason on the motion of the tides, without taking into consideration the influence of the moon; or should undertake to predict the moon's changes, without considering her position with respect to the sun.

There are three ways in which the Atonement may be disposed of to favor the doctrine of universal salvation. The first is the utter denial and rejection of it, as needless in the government of God, and in the economy of the human system.

This summary mode is in favor with many.

The second expedient is to extend the virtue of the Atonement over the whole human race, irrespective of moral character, as also of the question whether the expedient of salvation offered to the race is accepted of by them. But a God who could save men without repentance, might as well have saved them without an atonement. This second expedient was not admitted by Mr. Foster, for he made eternal salvation dependent on the condition of repentance and faith. • The third plan is, that of saving some by the Atonement through faith, and leaving the rest to be saved by suffering the penalty of the Divine law, that penalty as pretended, not being eternal. This

seems to have been the view taken by Mr. Foster. On the least profound examination it is full of palpable absurdities. The idea of an Atonement at all, if salvation could come in any other way, is absurd. The idea of an Atonement for some, and purgatory for others, is absurd. The idea of an Atonement because the Divine Attributes required it, is rendered absurd by the supposition of the salvation of some without it. If any could be saved by punishment irrespective of an Atonement, nay, having despised and rejected an Atonement, why not all? The idea of the innocent suffering for the guilty is absurd, if the guilty can be saved by suffering for themselves. The idea of the innocent suffering for the guilty because God could not save them in any other way consistent with the honor of eternal justice, is made perfectly absurd the moment you suppose any to be saved through their own suffering. But such is the case with those who suffer the penalty of the divine law, if that penalty be not endless. They serve out their time, they sin, and suffer for it the appointed measure of suffering, and are restored. Suffering is their savior, irrespective of an Atonement. They have nothing to do with Christ.

But the only ground on which divine revelation propounds the Atonement by the innocent suffering for the guilty, is because it was not consistent with the divine attributes to pardon the guilty in any other way. “For myself,” says Mr. Foster, “I never feel

“I any difficulty in conceiving that while the Divine Mercy would save guilty beings from deserved punishment, it should yet be absolutely necessary to the honor of eternal justice that an awful infliction should fall somewhere.” But in Foster's plan it falls both upon the innocent and the guilty; for while he supposes those who trust in the sufferings of the innocent to be saved by them, he also supposes those who do not trust in those sufferings, but despise them, to be saved by their own, saved by the endurance of the penalty of the law, which, they might say, we can well afford to endure, there being an eternity of blessedness afterwards. The idea of an Atonement for part of the human race, and Salvation for the rest by limited suffering, is well nigh the most absurd that ever was broached in all theological speculation. And yet this is absolutely Mr. Foster's idea, believing, as he seems to have endeavored to do, that all mankind will be saved after a limited endurance of penalty.

A limited endurance of the penalty! Here we strike upon another remarkable inconsistency in Mr. Foster's mind and train of reasoning; remarkable for him, because it could not have been supposed that a severely disciplined mind would have admitted it. He institutes a moral argument from “the stupendous idea of Eternity,” and he goes the whole length of supposing that man's necessary ignorance and narrow faculty of apprehending it precludes him from having a competent notion of it, and so inevitably THIRD SERIES, VOL. III. NO. I.

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