righteousness arise with healing on his wings. 3. And ye shall tread down the wicked: for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet; in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts."

Thus spake the holy spirit by his servant David, and by the prophets; and thus spake our blessed Saviour, shewing that eternal existence could only be obtained through Him: But He no where more unequivocally declares this, than in his answer to the Sadducees, who disbelieving man's immortality, inquire of Him, whose wife she should be, who had had seven husbands; and Jesus answering, said unto them; (Luke xx. 34. to 38.) "The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage; but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage, neither can they die any more; for they are equal to the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he called the Lord, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; for He is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto Him."

Now, if we consider who it was that asked the question, the Sadducees, who deny that there is any resurrection; and who it was that answered, He who knew what was in man, and needed not that any should reveal it unto Him, no words can more plainly exclude a state of Eternal Misery, and surely no authority can be more conclusive; because the doctrine rests solely on a supposed declaration of our Saviour's.

The object of the inquiry made by the Sadducees,

was a future state generally; and Christ's answer applies to their question, "They that shall be accounted worthy to attain that world." Whilst if there are two worlds, one of eternal happiness, and one of eternal misery-and the inquirers, from their unbelief, could only be interested in the latter-it will be impossible to account for our Saviour's limiting his answer to the former: but He has expressly declared there is no other; for He says they are the children of God, because the children of the resurrection, and that all that exist live unto Him.

It being impossible to reconcile this answer to the belief of a state of Eternal Misery; if the various texts which have given rise to that opinion, will bear a construction harmonizing with the reply, these texts will mutually illustrate and confirm each other; that they do so I shall presently, I trust, be able to establish.

I have now shewn that the words of our Saviour, and God's declaration to the Jews of the nature of man, are irreconcilable with this doctrine. I will proceed to inquire how the great points of faith are each effected by its removal; and if every one of them is elucidated, strengthened, and confirmed thereby, God has set to his seal, that this interpretation is true.

The doctrine of the sacrifice of the death of Christ is brought into strong prominence, but perfect harmony, by the removal of the opinion here combated; whilst its continuance involves that doctrine in deep obscurity.

How He could be made sin.

How He could endure misery.

How God could be pleased with his sufferings.

How his righteousness could be imputed to us. How, though death was to be a state of suffering, it could "be finished," when He gave up the ghost. These, and many other difficulties, fade, on the admission of the interpretation contended for, like the morning dew when the sun ariseth.

I will employ a few words on this part of my subject, and then, from all that we have seen, I think I may venture to infer, that the general tenor of the Sacred Writings does not support the doctrine of Eternal Misery.

It is the doctrine of scripture, that Christ suffered the punishment due to our sins, and that by his stripes we are healed. Now this cannot be true, if his suffering was neither in kind or degree, the same that God has threatened for our offences. The belief that this was Eternal Torment, led Calvin to think that our blessed Saviour endured the misery of the damned, between his death and resurrection, although He, Himself had said on the cross, "it is finished." Previous to this, then, must have been the suffering He endured for us: and does not conviction flash on us, when we hear Him cry out,

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Here He bore the full import of the curse, and by the infinite superiority of his nature; by his large experience and perfect knowledge of the blessing He submitted to be deprived of, for our sakes; He satisfied the justice which our forfeited existence could not appease; and by regenerating us, (He being the person by whom all things were made,) opened again the gates of life, closed against us by the just judgment of God, on Adam's disobedience.

If Eternal Torment was the punishment to which

mankind was subject, previous to the coming of Christ, it must be that as the original curse, which He who knew not sin, endured for our sakes; and it must be believed that Christ bore the torments of hell. Now nothing can reconcile to the divine justice, the making purity itself enter that ́state, the very nature of which is hatred of the divine government.

This, Christ could not choose; therefore, on this interpretation, Christ could not suffer the punishment due to our offences; and the whole christian scheme, which is founded on this vicarial suffering, is made void by this doctrine. But if the sentence be the withdrawing of that spirit, which inhabiting our mortal bodies, makes man capable of immortality, by the production of fruits meet for eternal life: that spirit which God originally infused into Adam, when having made him of the dust of the earth, He breathed into him the breath of life; that spirit, which, when He uttered the denunciation, "dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return;" He still lent to the mortal creature, in order that, although dead in trespasses and sius, he might be regenerated and born again; (and this all of necessity must be, that shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.)—If, I say, the sentence is, the alienation of the immortal spirit of God, from the man formed of the dust of the earth,-then Jesus Christ truly and indeed was made a curse for us, when he drank the cup of the wine of the wrath of God. And justly might God lay upon Him the iniquities of us all, who having power to lay down his life, and power to take it again, acted most conformably to the glorious dignity of his nature, when He consented,

for the redemption of mankind, not only to quit the glory, which He had in the bosom of His Father, before all worlds, but to pass through the state of death, (surely not a mere transition from this wretched world, where He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; where, though the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, the Son of man had not where to lay His head ;-where He was despised and rejected of men; persecuted, betrayed, reviled, buffetted, spit upon; where, although He might have obtained legions of angels, to minister unto Him, He refused to ask them of His Father, because, thus it became Him to fulfil all righteous ness; surely not, I say, the passing from hence, to the scene of His past and eternal glory), but the parting from that Spirit, which as none ever so largely possessed, so none so truly estimated; the thought of which appalled and agonized Him, to whom all other events were equal: this was the curse upon Adam: this, the natural fate of all mankind: from this we are redeemed by Christ, He hav ing suffered for all, who in obedience and sanctification, live the life to which He has justified them; whilst to this curse, all other, the sons and daughters of Adam are subject, there being no name given under heaven, whereby mankind can be saved, but that of Jesus only, nor curse to which they are subject, but that which Jesus bore for all mankind.

Now we can readily see how He could be made sin, on whom the extremity of sin, even death, came. How He could endure misery, who could not but feel bitter anguish at those sins, that made it wise and good to Him to forego the presence of His Father, in order to restore to mankind their capacity

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