ed of success there, and who will succeed after him? Your process of reformation, by your own showing, is attended with no success, for the souls of those who perished in the flood were still in hell when you wrote your Letters. Nor do you in your present book communicate any pleasing intelligence from hell that a revival of religion or any reformation has taken place there since. If you could give us any certain account of the success of the gospel there, or even your process of reformation, this would do more to make converts to your opinions than all you can say on the subject. But alas! You tell us, men are to be raised just as they died, which shows the strength of your faith in the success of your means to reform the damned in hades, in the intermediate state. 4th. Was it from your noticing that this text failed in proving that souls in hell were converted by Christ's preaching, you was led to invent "consideration and reflection" as the means of reforming them? But does not all this show your want of "consideration and reflection ?" The people's souls who perished in the flood, had considered and reflected to no purpose for two thousand years, for when Christ went and preached to them in hell, not one of them would allow him to change their minds or their miserable condition. And if you state their case fairly, they will all come out of hell just as they went there, in the resurrection at the last day. Reformation there, Sir, is as slow as the growth of a stone. It is so slow, that I suspect you must either give up your present system, or believe in endless misery. The last I think the most rational and consistent system. 5th. But was it strictly just in God to send the souls of those who perished in the flood to hell? We seriously doubt this, for you tell us he did not reveal even a future state in Moses' law, or that its penalties extended into a future state. It does not look very

much like justice to send people to a hell, concerning which he had said nothing to them in his word. Say, Sir, is this like the justice of the just God?

7th. You say again, p. 165, in answer to an objec tion of mine. "Luke says no more of Christ's preaching through Noah, than of his preaching to disembodied spirits. But Mr. B. cannot be so ignorant as to suppose that nothing is taught in the New Testament but what is found in the gospel of Luke." Answer. I am so well informed on this subject as to know that no Scripture writer speaks of immortal souls, disembodied spirits, future retribution or of Christ's preaching to souls in hell. The text before us is the solitary text on which you predicate Christ's preaching there and our readers can now judge if it supports it. You indeed refer to 1 Peter, 4: 6, in confirmation of your opinions, but I quoted Whitby before to show it meant a different thing, and to Whitby and Macknight I refer you for a correction of your mistake.

In concluding my remarks on this division of your book it may be observed, that as you have two hells, you have also two "future retributions." Your three first texts are adduced to prove a retribution for both soul and body after the resurrection in gehenna, and your two last, a retribution in hades, from death until the resurrection. For the sake of disorder, you have put the last first and the first last. Your first hell, hades, is to be destroyed, which perhaps requires a second to be provided. You tell us it is "somewhere," but you do not risk a conjecture that gehenna is any where, nor does the Bible speak of its destruction.In your first hell damned spirits have been preached to by Christ, but without success, and that doubly immortal sinners shall ever be reformed in your second, appears to me extremely doubtful.

LETTER VIII.

SIR, THE eighth and last division of your book is called "objections, moral influence, and concluding remarks." I adopt your division, and begin 1st. with objections. These are not stating objections against my views, but an attempt to remove the objections I brought against yours. But I am surprised you troubled yourself with them, if the following tale some twenty times told in your book be true.

You

commence by saying-" having shown that Mr. B's system is absurd and contradictory, and his principal rules of interpretation deceptive; having shown that his whole system is without foundation, and that a future retribution is taught in the Scriptures, we might here close the discussion." The court, Sir, can now judge having heard the evidence on both sides. Let us see how you meet my "objections."

The first is stated, p. 171, that I "place great stress upon the fact that men in a future state will be immortal." You add, that I "durst not hazard the assertion that immortality excludes all suffering." But. who is obliged to hazard assertions in opposition to all your assumptions? If you assert immortality is to suffer, produce your proof of it, for who cares for your assertions or may be evidence on such a subject? Is it any proof, Sir, that though "an immortal being suffers he will not decay and finally perish," because "immortality consists in being constantly upheld by the deity?" This logic proves that mortality will not "decay and perish, for it consists in being upheld by the deity." And what kind of logic is it to assume that man " possesses an immortal soul in

this state and suffers misery here," and from this assumption conclude that an immortal being may suffer in the resurrection state? Your premises are assumed, and your conclusion does not follow. You ought to be ashamed to assert that immortality is to suffer, without producing proof of it from the Bible. And pray, Sir, tell us why such immortal beings will not sin as well as suffer; yea, why the immortal God may not sin and suffer, if your doctrine be true.— But you say, p. 171, 172-"I will state that the English word immortality simply denotes endless life and has not the least relation to virtue or vice, happiness or misery. The same is true of the Greek word athanasia or athanatos, which Parkhurst derives from a not, or without, and thanatos, death; so the word literally signifies without death." You add, "the term has no relation to character or condition. An immortal being may be either happy or miserable, virtuous or vicious. And as I said in my Letters, we cannot prove that God is good or happy, simply from the fact that he is immortal." Well, Sir, produce proof that the Bible speaks of immortal, vicious, miserable sinners. Such sinners, we should think, were just fitted to be sinners and sufferers forever. What is to prevent this? and I pray you inform us, how you are to change these immortal, vicious, miserable sinners, into immortal, holy and happy saints in the resurrection state. Death cannot effect any change in them, for they are now immortal or without death. That they shall ever ripen of their own accord, by "consideration and reflection" into such saints in hell, is to me of all absurdities the greatest absurdity. I wish, Sir, you had remembered your own words which I return you with a slight alteration. "For fra imperfect beings as we are beings who cannot describe or fix one movement of our minds, or explain our own beginning or end, to say that God shall punish an im

mortal being of his own forming in a future state, and still continue him in existence, betrays a stupid kind of impiety."

2d. You say p. 174-there are several passages of Scripture which relate to the subject of the resurrection, in which Mr. B. places great reliance. But

1

as these passages were considered in my Letters, p. 240-276, I shall be very brief here." These texts were considered in my Essays, and also again considered in preceding Letters, so that here I am saved all trouble of a reply. But after merely alluding to Acts 24: 15. Luke 14: 14. John 5: 28, 29, you draw this conclusion-"these passages teach us that some will be punished after the resurrection." The last of these texts is the only one on which such an opinion can be founded, and let our readers judge from what has been advanced on it above, if you are not mistaken in your views of it. In p. 174, 175, you recur again to different orders being raised in the resurrection, and I beg the reader's notice how you draw conclusions from I Cor. 15: 22, 23. You say-" having stated that all men shall be raised by Christ, he (Paul) adds, verse 23, but every man in his own order.' This shows that all are not to be raised in the same happy condition. For if all are raised happy at the same time, it would entirely destroy the order of which, Paul speaks." What order, Sir, would it destroy? Not a syllable does Paul say of your order of bad men in these verses, or throughout the chapter. Admit for argument's sake a million of orders, what in the words "but every man in his own order” shows you "that these orders are not to be raised in the same happy condition?" And admit a million of years should elapse between the resurrection of each of these orders, what in these words or the whole chapter intimates some of them are to be raised happy and others miserable? But in support of your