ernment of God. You attempt to contrast the views entertained by Universalists on this subject with your own, and show at least to your own satisfaction, that Universalist opinions are utterly erroneous and indeed shockingly blasphemous. But did it ever occur to you, sir, to ask yourself what all this has to do with the subject before you? Suppose that Universalists do err egregiously in their views of the origin of moral evil, and that they cannot harmonize the existence of such evil with the moral government of God, does that prove that man is threatened by his Maker with eternal death? Does it furnish even a presumption against the final holiness and happiness of all mankind? Suppose that you could establish the Wesleyan doctrine of free will or free moral agency, and could prove that Universalists embrace undisguised fatalism, would this help your interpretation of Romans vi. 23? or would it furnish a particle of evidence that God has threatened man with endless misery? I must confess that I see no connexion between these subjects. And yet your first lecture is wholly employed in this way.

But I will give you credit for more discrimination than these re、 marks would seem to imply. You very well knew that your first lecture, although it had nothing to do with the text which you placed at its head, or with the sermon to which you were avowedly replying, was still a very important part of your labor. It gave you an opportunity of holding up Universalism and Universalists in a ridiculous if not an abhorrent light, and that was better for your cause than the best argument at your command. Some of your misrepresentations of our faith I shall find opportunity to expose hereafter, but for the present let us confine ourselves to your method of reasoning.

In your second lecture you attempt to reconcile "endless death -the full penalty of the divine law, or punishment of sin—with the administration of God," and to show it to be scriptural. Would it not have been a better arrangement, sir, to have shown it to be scripturally true in the first place, and then if necessary have reconciled it with the government of God? But let us glance at the particular steps of your argument. After having premised that the penalty of sin is in the text and other passages of scripture called death, you attempt to show,

"First, That this penalty of the law of God which is

the proper punishment of sin, has not been nor is it fully executed in this life upon the transgressor.

Second, That this inevitable penalty will be executed upon the finally impenitent in a future state of existence. Third, That its execution will result in their endless punishment."

There is something rather curious in this arrangement of your labor. It may have been the best for your cause that could be adop ted, but I cannot think it the most ready way to attain the truth.— If you can prove that the penalty of sin is endless death, let this be done, and done at once. The advantages of such a course are, it appears to me, numerous, and of a character to command attention. Instead, however, of attempting the main question, you very shrewdly undertake in your first proposition to show that the penalty of the law of God has not been, nor is it fully executed in this life upon the transgressor. Why not first prove, sir, that the penalty of the law of God is endless death, and then it will be unnecessary to prove that it is not inflicted in this life. With all their ignorance and stupidity, you will find no Universalists who would be anxious to contend against you that endless death is suffered in time!

But suppose I should grant, as many Universalists are quite ready to do, that your first proposition is true, how far I ask would that advance you toward your grand conclusion? Would it furnish any proof that the penalty of sin is eternal death? I can very well conceive of future punishment without being forced to believe in endless misery. But let us glance at the management of your first proposition. To evolve the truth which you suppose it contains, you take the following positions :

1. The punishment of the first sin was threatened to be death. God said to Adam. In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' Gen. ii. 17.

2. This threatening was not executed upon man to the uttermost in the day on which he sinned, but was suspended for a time, to give him another trial for eternal life."

And you add, with the greatest imaginable simplicity and truth, that "to establish this position it is necessary that we understand in what this death consisted."

This is admirable! But still you are right: for how can you

know that the threatened penalty was not inflicted till you know what that penalty was? Now to determine this point is in fact the great object, and ought to have been the only object, of your lectures. But it so happens with your logic that the conclusion which you were to arrive at only through the discussion of three distinct propositions, must, forsooth, be foisted in before you can establish even the first, and " is necessary" to make one of your premises! I cannot sufficiently express my admiration of this proceeding. Here we have a sermon of more than seventy pages to prove that the execution of the penalty of God's law will result in the endless punishment of the wicked; and yet you cannot take a single step in your argument until you have assumed that this penalty is the very thing that so protracted a discussion was to prove!

But the method you adopt to understand in what the threatened penalty consisted, is also deserving of notice. You attempt to show that the Universalist views of it are incorrect, and then very goodnaturedly take it for granted that your own are true. Perhaps had you been able to show that this penalty consisted in endless death, your auditors and readers could have inferred for themselves that the Universalist is in error. But there is some sleight of hand in this part of your labors which I shall find it necessary to examine, but must for the present confine myself to your general argument. Your second proposition in this lecture, in which you labor to prove that "this inevitable penalty will be inflicted upon the finally impenitent in a future state of existence," is really a matter of curiosity. In the first place, it is necessarily implied in your first proposition. If you have proved that the penalty of God's law has not been, nor is fully executed in this life, it follows of course-at least according to the belief of Universalists, who never question the justice of God-that it will be inflicted in a future state of being. You might, therefore, had you reposed any confidence in your first proposition, have spared yourself all the quotations you have made from Merritt and Lee on the second. But if it were most unconditionally granted that there is a future punishment for the wicked, will you be good enough to inform me, what it has to do with endless misery, the doctrine which you wish to prove? It seems to me you might with safety have greatly economized your quotations, or wholly omitted them.

We now come to your third proposition, in which you are to show that the infliction of the penalty will result in the endless punishment of the wicked. This is the all important subject of your lectures, and after wasting more than one half of your volume in preliminaries which are altogether unnecessary, and so far as I can perceive, useless, I am glad to find you at last entering in earnest upon the labor before you. But here again I am doomed to disappointment. I had hoped to see an exposition of your text. I had anticipated some proof that the word death there used by inspiration means eternal, or as you say, endless death. Instead of this, however, we have Dr. Johnson and Webster's definitions of eternal and everlasting. We have Mr. Groves' definition of aionios, and Dr. Clarke's remarks upon the Hebrew olam and the Greek aion. Then comes the same author's declamation upon Matt. xxv. 46, all borrowed from Luther Lee, and this is followed by Rev. Mr. Merritt's admirable exposition of Jude 7, borrowed by Mr. Merritt from Rev. O. Scott. To all this you add nine distinct arguments, drawn chiefly from Mr. Merritt and Mr. Lee, to prove that the wicked will be punished endlessly, and these of course are fortified by the whole class of Scripture texts which the advocates of that doctrine have quoted time out of mind in favor of their darling hpothesis, and which Universalists have explained again and again without being heard or noticed by their adversaries. We are told that if the punishment of the wicked were not endless, they might still be the subjects of prayer. But their case is hopeless, "their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." We are told that the Scriptures draw a contrast between the condition of the righteous and the wicked which extends to eternity. The righteous go away into life eternal and the wicked into torment eternal. But I have not time even to mention the various arguments upon which you rely for the support of your doctrine. Suffice it to say

we have nothing original here, and I suspect nothing conclusive. One thing is quite worthy of rotice. Through the whole of your first and second lectures, occupying more than three fourths of your book, there is scarcely a mention of your text, and not the slightest legitimate attempt to furnish your readers with its interpretation! And this, too, in a formal reply to an exposition of this passage of scripture!

The object of your third and last lecture is to contrast the gift of God which is eternal life, with the wages of sin which is death, and you close your labors with a number of objections against Universalism. You tell us that in this lecture you shall confine yourself to the latter division of your text-" the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Here you inquire:

"1. What are we to understand by eternal life?

2. By what proof we know that it is the gift of God. 3. We shall inquire to whom is it given."

This appears to me a strange way of proving that the wages of sin is endless death. But you are certainly at liberty to pursue

your own course.

On page 115, my eyes are gladdened by the sight of these longed-for words, "We now come to consider our text, 'For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.'" But, alas! with your eye resting on a clear refutation of the oft-repeated but groundless assertion, that since death is here contrasted with eternal life it must therefore mean eternal death, you reiterate the absurdity and pass on. This consideration of your text, including two or three short quotations, is extended to a fraction over twenty lines!—and the conclusion is as clear as your assertion can make it, that as "eternal life is an eternal union with God in glory," "its opposite must be an eternal separation from God, which is endless death"!

But I am tired, and I doubt not my reader is also. Let any man who has the patience, read my sermon on the penalty of sin, and then carefully peruse your lectures in reply, and candidly answer his own heart whether he there finds either a refutation of my argument or an exposition of your text. I cannot avoid the conviction that whatever else you have done, you have not attempted to discuss the question properly in debate. In my next I shall return to the consideration of your first lecture.

I am, with due respect, yours,

THOMAS J. SAWYER.