the commencement of this series of dise courses, I shall now, in the second place, proceed

II. To consider the arguments for the doctrine of Annihilation, and endeavour to prove that they are not sufficient for its support; and then show that this doctrine, as well as that of the Eternity of Hell-torments, is inconsistent with the Perfections of God, and the declarations of Scripture.

On this side of the question I do not know that any discourse was ever delivered before; and indeed very little has hitherto been written. Mr. Simpson, in his Essays on the Language of Scripture, has said most on the subject. The doctrine itself can by no means boast of a general reception. The principal writers in defence of it, are those which follow. Mr. Bourn of Norwich has a sermon on the subject in the first volume of his

excellent

excellent Discourses; Mr. Wakefield has a long note on the same side in his Translation of Matthew with Notes; Mr. Kenrick alludes to it in his Reflections on the text in Matthew, but I believe he afterwards entertained doubts on the subject: we have likewise a long note, in vindication of the doctrine, at the end of Goadby's Illustration of the Bible (perhaps the best Illustration of the Bible for the use of families),-this is in recantation of the author's former opinion of the Eternity of Hell-torments. And a book expressly on this subject, containing much useful information, was published in the year 1792, it is said, by a Mr. Clark, who I apprehend is still living. This book by some is thought to be unanswerable. It has, I know, inade converts (and it appears to me to be admirably calculated to produce this effect) to the doctrine of Uni versal Restitution.

It is a remarkable circumstance that the doctrine of Annihilation, or the final destruction of the wicked, has been defended, and I believe adopted, chiefly by Unitarians, by which term I always mean (and am sorry any other meaning should ever have been affixed to it) persons who believe in, and worship one God, without any reference to the pre-exist ence or simple humanity of Christ. I must rely, my friends, on your liberality to distinguish between my opinion of the Doctrine, and the Persons who have espoused it. I think the Doctrine one of the greatest corruptions of Christianity; and I trust that, as it has only lately courted public attention, so it will, in a course of years, exist only in the historic page. Some of the Persons who have adopted it, both among the living and the dead, are characters which I regard with the highest veneration. The doctrine in question constituted an article of my own creed, after that period, when it is

thought

a

thought men do not often change their opinions. Had not the almost unceas ing remonstrances of the Friend whom most I loved (the publication of whose Discourses on Universal Restitution would probably supersede the necessity of publishing mine) forced me to reconsider the subject, and to contemplate it in all its bearings and connexions, it is not improbable that to this day I might have been an advocate for that doctrine to which I now avow the most determined hostility. Can I then be uncandid with respect to persons? Did I love my friend the less for his zeal to dispel the darkness from my mind? Our next meeting, which through the mercy of God, I trust, will be in the society of the just made perfect, will show that I did not. Can I then fear a diminution of your regard? To have erred, is no disgrace to any finite being; it is a wilful

The Rev. Rochemont Barbauld.

perse

perseverance in error, of which God only can judge, which is culpable in his sight.

On asking Dr. Priestley, the last time he was in Bristol, why in his History of the Corruptions of Christianity he had omitted the doctrine of the Eternity of Hell-torments, which I said appeared to me the greatest of all corruptions, he answered, that "he had not made up his mind on the subject," that is, whe her he should embrace Annihilation or Universal Restitution. It is well known from the history of his life that he af terwards made up his mind, and that in favour of the doctrine of Universal Restitution. It is not an easy matter to account for these things. Disgusted with the doctrine of the Eternity of Hell-torments, many, I am inclined to think, on finding that Scripture does not require the belief of this, have dismissed all farther consideration of the

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