ttle much about. We have but three general convictions
on the subject. First, that these punishments will be experienced
in accordance with those righteous and inmost laws which
indestructibly express the mind of God and rule the universe, and
will not be vindictively inflicted through arbitrary external
penalties. Secondly, that they will be accurately tempered to the
just deserts and qualifications of the individual sufferers. And
thirdly, that they will be alleviated, remedial, and limited, not
unmitigated, hopeless, and endless.

Upon the first of these thoughts perhaps enough has already been
said, and the second and third may be discussed together. Our
business, therefore, in the remainder of this dissertation, is to
disprove, if truth in the hands of reason and conscience will
enable us to disprove, the popular dogma which asserts that the
state of the condemned departed is a state of complete damnation
absolutely eternal. Against that form of representing future
punishment which makes it unlimited by conceiving the destiny of
the soul to be an eternal progress, in which their initiative
steps of good or evil in this life place different souls under
advantages or disadvantages never relatively to be lost, we have
nothing to object. It is reasonable, in unison with natural law,
and not frightful.13 But we are to deal, if we fairly can, a
refutation against the doctrine of an intense endless misery for
the wicked, as that doctrine is prevailingly taught and received.

The advocates of eternal damnation primarily plant themselves upon
the Christian Scriptures, and say that there the voice of an
infallible inspiration from heaven asserts it. First of all, let
us examine this ground, and see if they do not stand there only
upon erroneous premises sustained by prejudices. In the beginning,
then, we submit to candid minds that, if the literal eternity of
future torment be proclaimed in the New Testament, it is not a
part of the revelation contained in that volume; it is not a truth
revealed by inspiration; and that we maintain for this reason. The
same representations of the everlasting duration of future
punishment in hell, the same expressions for an unlimited
duration, which occur in the New Testament, were previously
employed by the Hindus, Greeks, and Pharisees, who were not
inspired, but must have drawn the doctrine from fallible sources.
Now, to say the least, it is as reasonable to suppose that these
express