This is the glaring contradiction, which he is continually charging upon your Lordship throughout his whole book. Again, he attacks your Lordship thus, from your own words: “St. Peter, says his Lordship, tells all Christians, that they are called out of darkness into a marvellous light. Ask the evangelists, they will tell you, The day-spring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death. Ask any, or all the apostles, and they will tell you, their commission is, to open the eyes of the people, and turn them from darkness unto light. But how could the Jewish people have a good view and prospect of life, and immortality, if their eyes were not opened? How could they be called out of darkness, if their situation presented them with a good view of an object, which they were now first invited to behold? And how could they sit in the shadow of death, if they had been favoured with a good proof of a future state?
“It would be ridiculous to say, that they sat in darkness, or that they had not their eyes, merely, because they did not see the object in its full proportion, or extent, or had not an exact view of every minute part, and the opportunity of surveying it quite round. The sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, evidently implies a total want of light, by which the people thus circumstanced, were to be enlightened; it being impossible to express the most entire ignorance in more emphatic terms.”[¹]
[¹] Pages 4, 5, 6, &c.
I have made these large quotations from this author, containing all his chief texts of scripture, and his comments upon them, in his own words, that there might be no complaint of my robbing his arguments of any of their force, for all that he farther says on this subject, is but mere repetition.
I shall now shew, that all his reasoning upon these texts is false in itself, and nothing at all to the purpose, as not touching the one great point in question, which is the doctrine or belief of a future state, or the immortality of the soul in a life after this.—And this I shall do, by making it plain, that not one of these texts, nor any other in all the New Testament, proves, or has the least tendency to prove, that the doctrine or belief of the soul’s immortality, and a future state, was not known in and thro’ every age of the world, before the coming of Christ in the flesh.
This will be sufficiently done, by shewing, that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, or its future existence in some kind of happiness or misery in another life, is a matter about which these texts say not a syllable, but leave it as untouched as the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls.
If it be asked then, What is the great discovery, new light and knowledge, declared in these texts, as newly made known to the world by the gospel? It is answered, that the one thing meant both by the letter and spirit of all these, and every other the like passages of scripture, speaking of that mystery, new light, or knowledge made known by the gospel, and unknown before, is absolutely nothing else, points at nothing else, and has nothing else implied in it, but the one whole process of Christ in his personality, his birth, his life, his sufferings, his death, his resurrection and ascension into heaven. This, and this alone, namely, The whole process of Christ, in all these important particulars, is the great salvation, the great mystery, the hidden wisdom of God, kept secret from the foundation of the world, and not manifested, nor possible to be manifested, but by Christ himself entering into, and going thro’ all the parts of this process.—Of this process alone it is, that the apostles speak, when they declare the mystery opened in the gospel, to have been a mystery kept secret since the world began: and the reason why it was so is plain, because it must be a secret, and continue such, till what was contained in it came into actual existence, and thereby manifested itself.
Of this process alone, and its wonderful effects, it is that the apostles speak, when they glory of the abolishment of death, and of life and immortality brought to light through the gospel: because it is the gospel alone, that manifests the actual existence of this process of Christ in all its parts. Nor do they ever speak of any light, life, or knowledge, as formerly the hidden wisdom of God, and now made manifest to the world, but solely that light, that life, and knowledge, which arises from some one or other, or all the parts of our Saviour’s process, as the one only possible and actual Redeemer of the world.
That this is, the plain full truth of the matter, that the only thing, discovered to the world by the light of the gospel, is the one whole process of Christ, must be acknowledged by every considerate man, even from the nature of the thing.—For what can the mystery of the gospel be, but the mystery of Christ, as a Saviour, made known to the world? And what can the mystery of Christ, as a Saviour made known be, but the manifestation of what he is in himself, in the power of his personality, in the efficacy of his birth, in the blessed consequences of his life, his sufferings, his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, as our second Adam, or father of a new, divine nature, derived into us by his wonderful process in all its parts.
Now as all these particulars make up the whole manifestation of the mystery opened in the gospel, so there is not in any of these, the most distant hint given, that the doctrine of a future state, was not as soon, as universally, and constantly known as the fall of man was. Nor do they any more imply, such ignorance, than they imply, the fall of man not known till Christ came in the flesh.—Now that which is not taught in, and by the process of Christ, cannot be taught by the manifestation of the gospel mystery. But in all our Saviour’s process, there is no possibility of making any part of it prove, that the immortality of the soul, or its destination to a future life, was not the common belief, of every age from Adam to Christ.