every temptation to
sin, with the most violent recoil."19

19 John Foster, Letter on the Eternity of Future Punishments.

If an endless hell is to be the lot of the sinner, he ought to
have an infallible certainty of it, with all possible helps and
incentives to avoid it. Such is not the case; and therefore, since
God is just and generous, the doctrine is not true.

Finally, the injustice of the dogma of everlasting punishment is
most emphatically shown by the fact that there is no sort of
correspondence or possible proportion between the offence and the
penalty, between the moment of sinning life and the eternity of
suffering death. If a child were told to hold its breath thirty
seconds, and, failing to do it, should be confined in a dark
solitary dungeon for seventy years amidst loathsome horrors and
speechless afflictions, and be frightfully scourged six times a
day for that entire period, there would be just proportion nay, an
inexpressibly merciful proportion between the offence and the
punishment, in comparison with that which, being an absolutely
infinite disproportion, does not really admit of any comparison,
the sentence to an eternal abode in hell as a penalty for the
worst kind and the greatest amount of crime a man could possibly
crowd into a life of a thousand years. Think, then, of passing
such a sentence on one who has struggled hard against temptation,
and yielded but rarely, and suffered much, and striven to do as
well as he could, and borne up courageously, with generous
resolves and affections, and died commending his soul to God in
hope.

"Fearfully fleet is this life," says one, "and yet in it eternal
life is lost or won: profoundly wretched is this life, yet in it
eternal bliss is lost or won." Weigh the words adequately, and say
how improbable is the thought, and how terribly unjust. Perhaps
there have already lived upon this earth, and died, and passed
into the invisible world, two hundred thousand millions of men,
the everlasting doom of every one of whom, it is imagined, was
fixed unalterably during the momentary period of his mortal
transit from cradle to grave. In respect of eternity, six thousand
years and this duration must be reduced to threescore years and
ten, since that is all that each generation enjoyed is the same as
one hour. Suppose, now, that all these two hundred thousand
millions of men were called into being at once; that they were
placed on probation for one hour; that