Much interesting information will be found under the head of Letters and Intelligence, in relation to the labors of our beloved brother Förster in Denmark, Oncken in Germany, and the church at Belize, Honduras, under the care of their indefatigable pastor, Mr. Henderson. It will also be seen that the Strict Baptist Convention by aiding in the preparation of brethren for the ministry, and by sending the gospel to foreign lands, and that the Baptist Tract Society, also, in its own way, are doing considerable good with little noise, and very small expense. It is much to be regretted that either of these institutions, especially the latter, should be crippled in its operations for the want of funds. Will our friends take this into consideration? We have also to thank our brethren in Scotland and Wales for their increased sympathy and co-operation. Our communications with Canada and the United States are growing every year in importance. We refer to the letter of the Baptist Pastors' Conference in New York to the Strict Baptist Convention, signed by twenty-nine ministers, most of them pastors of Baptist churches in the city of New York and its vicinity, in our March number, with peculiar pleasure. We have also received a communication from the New York Baptist Association, expressing their cordial sympathy, and inviting correspondence with them, through Dr. Dowling their moderator. The Regular Baptist Union of Canada is rendering valuable aid to the Baptist Tract Society, by purchasing and circulating our tracts. To the letter of the nine Open Communion Secretaries to Dr. Sharp of Boston, America, and the discussion arising out of it, and to other articles in our Review department on the proposed new law of marriage, and on Mr. Noel's work on Baptism, and particularly on his chapter on Free Communion, we beg to invite special attention. But what about the "Primitive Church Magazine:" its circulation and prospects? We are happy in being able to give a favorable reply to this enquiry. Our sale is gradually increasing, and our periodical is advancing in the esteem of the wise and the good. But we are by no means satisfied with our present position; and we must again urge on our readers and friends generally, the necessity of their joining their efforts to our own, to obtain an extended circulation. We shall not rest content till it is at least doubled! And it soon would be doubled, if our friends generally displayed the same zeal by which we know many to be actuated. To you, then, we make our appeal, and say, brethren, help us. Those on whom the conduct of this enterprise chiefly depends, are making considerable sacrifice for the public good. "Now for a recompense in the same, be ye also enlarged." Aid us by taking in the Magazine yourselves, and by recommending others to do the same. Where one cannot afford to take it in, let two or three unite, and let those who are more wealthy, purchase an additional copy to lend out among the very poor. Ministers, Deacons, and Members of our churches, and Sunday-school Teachers, we look to you, and to all who desire the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom, and the speedy triumph of truth over every form of error. To all our zealous and active friends, wherever they reside, we tender our sincere and cordial thanks, and again commend our efforts to the kind consideration of our readers, and the gracious acceptance of our Lord. Nov. 21st, 1849. THE EDITORS. THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH MAGAZINE. No. 61. JANUARY, 1849. 1 EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. THE future punishment of the wicked | it must be because he deemed the disis indeed a deep and painfully interesting subject. If there be any truth in the language and representation of scripture, their sufferings in a future life will be indescribably awful. "Hell"-" the worm that dieth not" and "the fire never to be quenched"-"outer darkness, where there is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth," -are things not to be thought of without fear and trembling; nor to be discoursed about, but in a calm and serious manner. The consideration that we ourselves are by nature children of disobedience and wrath, even as others—that if we have escaped, it is by an act of marvellous grace-that thousands and tens of thousands of our fellow-men, among whom, perhaps, are some nearly related to ourselves, are yet standing on the very verge of the pit of misery-is calculated yet more to affect our minds. Far from us, then, be all levity and insensibilityall undue warmth and assumption-all partiality and hypocrisy-in dealing with such a theme. Our task is simply to ascertain, "What saith the scriptures?" and faithfully to interpret the same. Painful, however, as the subject may be, as an article of revealed truth it is highly important. It is a part of the counsel of God which we are bound to exhibit in all its entireness; and of that faith once delivered to the saints, for which we are to contend earnestly. If God has made known to us the future destinies of the unbelieving and ungodly, VOL. VI.-NO. LXI. covery important to our welfare, and subservient to the great end of a divine revelation. This end is undoubtedly a merciful and gracious one. To reclaim man from his lost condition-to bring him back to God through the mediation of his dear Son, and by the agency and operation of the Holy Spirit-to snatch him from hell, and to raise him to heaven; these are the glorious objects contemplated by the gospel. The full discovery of a state of future rewards and punishments, including a striking and awful exhibition of the sufferings of the finally impenitent in the world to come, is an essential part of the great moral apparatus, which God is employing for this beneficent purpose. Harsh as the sound of hell torments may be to the ear, and appalling to the heart, fidelity to the truth-an enlightened regard to the glory of God-and a benevolent and compassionate concern for our fellow-men, require that the doctrine should be clearly and prominently set forth. What then if this doctrine should be assailed? or what if it should be so explained as to neutralize to a great extent its influence? what if the terrors of the Lord" should be smoothed down by sophistical reasoning and artful representation, till they cease to inspire awe and salutary fear? What then is our duty? Is it not to vindicate the truth of God from those false glosses which man has put upon it, and to tear aside the veil by which the wrath to B come is concealed from those who are warned to flee from it? Now it is well known to some of our readers that this awful truth has recently been assailed. We do not mean that the future punishment of the wicked has been flatly denied. But we mean that attempts have been made to explain it in such a way as to divest it of its repulsive and terrific character, and render it more palatable to the human mind-more consonant to reason. According to these interpreters, the proper punishment of sin is not death," temporal, spiritual, and eternal," but "annihilation." Thus, then, when God said to Adam, "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die," the meaning was, "thou shalt be annihilated:" and so the wages of sin is not sorrow, suffering, initial here, eternal hereafter, but annihilation." "We find ourselves," observes one of the most prominent in this controversy, "imperatively compelled to believe that the sentence pronounced in case of transgression considered in itself, conveyed the sole idea of cessation of existence-a return to that blank nothingness out of which he was brought, and that unless a remedial system had mercifully intervened, when Adam died, there would have been an utter and everlasting extinction of his conscious being." Is then this the sentence which is executed on the impenitent sinner? Does he also cease to be, when he ceases to live on the earth? Is death to him what it would have been to Adam, "an utter and everlasting extinction of his conscious being?" Not so. The wicked are to be raised at the day of judgment; they are likewise to be sentenced to punishment, and the execution of this punishment will be accompanied with pain, and will consist in being miserably destroyed, i. e., annihilated. The writer already alluded to, speaks of the ungodly "going away with weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth into the place assigned for them, there to undergo the second death," i. e., "dying out of existence," as the author expresses it in another place, "annihilation." How long this process of "dying out of existence," or annihilation, will last, we are not told. It may be, humanly speaking, an hour, or a year, or a thousand years; but however long a term it may occupy, it must be infinitely short of eternity. The preceding statements respecting future punishment, are taken from Mr. Dobney's book on that subject. To him, at least among dissenters, belongs the responsibility of having opened the discussion, and of being the first, in recent times, of calling in question the generally received opinion of the eternal sufferings of the wicked. Between the publication of Mr. Dobney's notes of Lectures on Future Punishment in 1844, and his more complete volume on the same subject in 1846, a pamphlet was published under the title of "What was the Fall?" and advocating similar views. This pamphlet professes to be the result of nearly seven years' continuous study of the question; and is evidently the production of an erudite and thinking person. Its design is to shew that the first and second death are to be literally understood; that Adam was threatened with a literal destruction, both of body and soul; that "the intervention of the system of redemption seems to have modified the execution of the original curse;" whence it follows that at the judgment day, "those who have been born to newness of life, who shall be found members of the heavenly Adam, shall receive immortality, and die no more; while those who are unchanged, mere sons of the earthly, sinful, and mortal Adam, shall undergo the full execution of the original curse in that second death, which they shall suffer with torment, each man according to his deeds, in the consuming fire, with stripes," "indignation," wrath," tribulation," and "anguish," as "the wages of sin." Soon after the appearance of Mr. Dobney's larger work on future punishment, a treatise on the same subject was published by Mr. White, an Independent minister at Hereford. The title of this work is, "Life in Christ; or Immortality the Peculiar Privilege of the Regenerate." The author writes in a pleasing style, which rises occasionally to eloquence; but he is greatly defective in argument. Nevertheless it is adapted to captivate a certain class of minds, with respect to whom a more logical process would be labor spent in vain. Nor is this all. We have reason to know that the sentiments advocated by these gentlemen, are participated by some young ministers of reputation in our own denomination; and that they are shared by some intelligent members of our churches. We are also strongly of opinion, that they are likely to become more generally diffused. They appear to fall in with the latitudinarian tendencies of the age, and with the disposition so widely prevalent to take up with whatever is new, provided it be clothed with a show of reason and liberality, without being at the trouble to subject it to a rigorous investigation. One question naturally arises as it regards the origin of these opinions, and the particular form which they have received in the hands of these writers. Our readers need not be informed that the eternity of future punishment has often been called in question, and that various theories have been propounded by speculative minds. All these, so far as we can discover, have their origin in one common feeling, viz., the inability to reconcile the doctrine of the eternal sufferings of the wicked, with the wisdom and infinite benevolence of the Deity. This a priori reasoning is resorted to in the first instance, and is recurred to again and again, with painful frequency and flippancy, as the grand forte of the scheme of limited punishment! Man, vain man, forgetful of the vast and impenetrable_mysteries with which he is surrounded on every hand, first takes upon himself to judge what is, or what is not, inconsistent with the wisdom and benevolence of the Deity; and then having determined on the negative side with regard to the endless suffering of the wicked, proceeds to pare down the language of scripture, and to accommodate it to the theory which he has set up. This, whether right or wrong, whether becoming or unbecoming the infinite majesty of the Creator, and the utter insignificance of the creature, is the course uniformly adopted. How far it is a course which is likely to conduct us to conclusions agreeable to truth, or how far it is calculated to open the flood-gates to an inundation of errors, we must leave for further consideration. This, however, is the fact; and it is a fact which deserves to be deeply pon dered, in connection with the inquiry before us. Whilst there is this similarity in the internal origin of these theories respecting future punishment, the theories themselves are as diverse as the different phases of the moon, and as wide as the poles asunder. The universalists affirm the ultimate salvation of the whole human race after a period of suffering in hell. This opinion was first broached by Origen, that weak, though pious man-that imaginative, but learned interpreter of scripture that faithful martyr and heresiarch of the primitive church. This sentiment in modern times has been advocated with great zeal by Dr. Chauncy, in America, who was answered by that extraordinary metaphysician and divine, Jonathan Edwards. It has also been maintained in this country by Mr. Stonehouse, Mr. Winchester, Mr. Brown, Mr. Petitpierre, Bishop Newton, and others. Dr. Hartley and Chevalier Ramsay have apprehended, that at length all the damned, not excepting the fallen angels, and Satan the head of the apostacy, will be so reformed by the discipline of their punishment, as to be brought to real repentance and piety, upon which they will not only be released from their prison, but admitted to partake with the blessed in everlasting happiness. Mr. Whiston, on the contrary-that eccentric man and bold innovator-not only denies the eternity of hell torments, but doubts the eternity of future blessedness. Nay, more, he intimates that the time may come when Christ himself shall cease to be; so that the Redeemer himself, and all the redeemed, may at length be blotted out from among the works of God. To such presumptuous and blasphemous lengths do men go, when relaxing their hold on the sure word of prophecy; they allow themselves to be drifted away on the wide sea of human speculation. In a note to Dr. Doddridge's lectures on this subject by Dr. Kippis, it is observed, that "A middle scheme is apprehended by some divines to be most consonant to scripture, which is not that the wicked shall be for ever miserable, or finally saved, but that after passing through an awful judgment, and a con B 2 demnation proportioned to their crimes, | for ever! The design of God in giving they shall be punished with an utter extinction of being." This scheme is maintained by Mr. Samuel Bourne, in the last sermon of the first volume of his discourses on the Principle and Evidences of Natural Religion, and the Christian Revelation; and in his letter to Samuel Chandler, D. D., concerning the scripture doctrine of future punishment; also by Mr. Clark, in a publication entitled, "A Vindication of the honor of God in a Scriptural Refutation of the doctrines of Eternal Misery and Universal Salvation." To this rank, then, of the impugners of the generally-received doctrine respecting future punishment, Mr. Dobney and his coadjutors appear to belong. The doctrine of the final salvation of all men, and of the subserviency of the future sufferings of the wicked to their reclamation and renovation, is wholly denied. "And thus taking counsel," says Mr. D., not of fancy but of fact, seeking a decision only from the oracle on Zion hill.... we find ourselves able to reach no other conclusion, than that the next state is one exclusively of retribution; that it is not paternal chastening with which the wicked are visited with a view to reclaim them, but in the strictest sense it is punishment that is deservedly inflicted." O si sic omnino. O that our brother were altogether what he is in spirit and in argument, when combating the unscriptural notion of the final restoration of the wicked. Here as a wise master builder, he builds with gold and silver and precious stones; but alas, the work quickly degenerates in his hands, as he proceeds with all his might to build with wood and hay and stubble, and to raise a structure which is as grotesque as it is incongruous, as rapid and superficial in its progress, as it is fragile and liable to be consumed in the fire that shall try every man's work of what sort it is. The wicked are to be punished, but how? With temporary suffering ending in annihilation. The next state is to be one exclusively of retribution, and that retribution is to be eternal nonentity. Hear it, ye men of reason and of scripture, "the wages of sin is death," which death consists in the utter annihilation of the whole man, both body and soul, us his Son was not to save us from eternal suffering under the holy and righteous wrath of God, but to save us from eternal nonentity, and to give us endless perpetuity of existence. Of course it is not for us at this stage of the enquiry to attempt a formal refutation of this novel theory. It is not for us now to show that the idea of annihilation at all is a perfectly gratuitous assumption, and is sustained by a gross misinterpretation of scripture; that to talk of a being under punishment, or in a state of retribution, hundreds and thousands of years after one has ceased to exist, is either a monstrous absurdity or a gross perversion of language; and that it is in direct opposition to the statements of scripture, which employ the same terms to denote the eternity of celestial bliss as the eternity of hell suffering. These, and other points of equal importance, we shall investigate as we advance. For the present we must content ourselves with the following observations, tending to show the extent to which the theory now propounded swerves from that which we regard as truth, and the important consequences that are involved therein. From this brief view of the case it appears that the views of future punishment advocated by Mr. Dobney and others, are widely different from those that are generally received among us. We might say that there is an infinite disparity. For allowing that this process of destruction ending in annihilation, were to occupy a thousand years, yet what proportion is there between this period, and an eternity of suffering? A less proportion than there is between a drop and the ocean--a single grain of sand, and the myriads that surround the sea shore. We do not say that this proves any thing as to the truth of the one view or of the other. But it does show that it is necessary for us to pause and reflect ere we admit so important a change into our creed. True, in denying the eternity of future punishment, we may seem to lean on virtue's side, and to take that view of the subject which is most agreeable to our benevolent feelings. But what, if after all, it is the wrong view? What, if a never-ending conscious existence is the ultimate |