Two defences of this dreadful doctrine have appeared within a few years—one by Rev. Nehemiah Adams, D. D. (chiefly known by his many and determined pleas for slavery), and the other by Dr. Thompson of New York.
We will first examine Dr. Adams's tract on “The Reasonableness of Eternal Future Punishment.”
We have these three objections to it:—
I. It, throughout, denies the sovereignty of God.
II. It is, throughout, a system of naturalism.
III. It, throughout, ignores the central truth of the gospel.
It is our business to substantiate these assertions by sufficient proof.
1. The view taken in his tract, of God, cannot be true, because it conflicts with his supreme and sovereign deity.
Of course, this is to dethrone God. God, if not sovereign, is not God. Any view which disturbs, however remotely, the supremacy of the Deity, must be a relapse towards Pagan idolatry. We charge this tendency on the whole tenor of this tract. We affirm that it seriously impairs that confidence and strength which can only come from reliance on Omnipotence, and remands us to the terrors and narrowness of Polytheism: not consciously, of course, or intentionally, but by the logic of its ideas and the tendency of its argument.
According to Dr. Adams's view of the world, it is a scene of conflict between God and the Devil. The prize contended for is the souls of men. God wishes to save them: the Devil wishes to damn them. By immense efforts,—by the unparalleled sacrifice of himself on the cross,—God succeeds in saving a portion of this race, whom the Devil had plunged into fearful and desperate sin. As for the rest, He can do nothing with them, but must go away and leave them; escaping with the saved to some other region, where the sin and misery of the rest may be lost sight of.