on all men; when the unjust, and those that have been disobedient to God, and have given honour to such idols as have been the vain operations of the hands of men, as to God himself, shall be adjudged to this everlasting punishment, as having been the causes of defilement; while the just shall obtain an incorruptible and never-fading kingdom. These are now indeed confined in Hades, but not in the same place wherein the unjust are confined.

For there is one descent in this region, at whose gate we believe there stands an archangel with a host; which gate, when those pass through that are conducted down by the angels appointed over souls, they do not go the same way, but the just are guided to the right hand, and are led with hymns, sung by the angels appointed over that place, unto a region of light, in which the just have dwelt from the beginning of the world; not constrained by necessity, but ever enjoying the prospect of the good things they see, and rejoicing in the expectation of those new enjoyments which will be peculiar to every one of them, and esteeming those things beyond what we have here; with whom there is no place of toil; no burning heat, no piercing cold; nor are any briers there; but the countenance of the fathers and of the just which they see always, smiles upon them while they wait for the rest and eternal new life in heaven, which is to succeed this region. This place we call the bosom of Abraham.

But as to the unjust, they are dragged by force to the left hand by the angels allotted for punishment, no longer going with a good will, but as prisoners driven by violence; to whom are sent the angels appointed over them to reproach them, and threaten them with their terrible looks, and to thrust them still downwards. Now these angels that are set over these souls drag them into the neighborhood of hell itself; who when they are hard by it continually hear the noise of it, and do not stand clear of the hot vapour itself; but when they have a near view of this spectacle, as of a terrible and exceeding great prospect of fire, they are struck with a fearful expectation of a future judgment, and in effect punished thereby; not only so, but where they see the place (or choir) of the fathers and of the just, even hereby are they punished; for a chaos deep and large is fixed between them, insomuch that a just man that hath compassion upon them cannot be admitted, nor can one that is unjust, if he were bold enough to attempt it, pass over it.

This is the discourse concerning Hades wherein the souls of

all men are confined until a proper season which God hath determined, when he will make a resurrection of all men from the, dead not procuring a transmigration of souls from one body to another, but raising again those very bodies, which you Greeks seeing to be dissolved, do not believe (their resurrection.)

For all men, the just and as well as the unjust, shall be brought before God the Word; for to him hath the Father connitted all judgment, and he, in order to fulfill the will of his Father shall come as judge whom we call Christ. For Minos and Rhadamanthus are not the judges as you Greeks do suppose, but he whom God and the Father hath glorified,

CONCERNING WHOM WE HAVE ELSEWHERE GIVEN A MORE PARTICULAR ACCOUNT, FOR THE SAKE OF THOSE WHO SEEK

AFTER TRUTH. This person, exercising the righteous judgment of the Father towards all men, hath prepared a just sentence for every one, according to his works; at whose judgment-seat, when all men, and angels, and demons shall stand, they will send forth one voice, and say JUST IS THY JUDGMENT; the rejoinder to which will bring a just sentence upon both parties, by giving justly to those who have done well, an everlasting fruition, but allotting to the lovers of wicked works eternal punishment. To these belong the unquenchable fire, and a certain fiery worm never dying, and not destroying the body, but continuing its eruption out of the body with never-ceasing grief: neither will sleep give ease to these men, nor will the night afford them comfort; death will not free them from their punishment, nor the interceding prayers of their kindred profit them; for the just are no longer seen by them, nor are they thought worthy of remembrance.'

Here we learn from the best authority,

1. That hades among the Jews, in the days of Christ, denoted the state of the dead, in which the souls of the righteous were happy and the wicked miserable. 2. That "Abraham's bosom" was a phrase by which the Jews designated the happiness of the righteous in hades. 3. That "unquenchable fire," and "undying worm," were expressions used by the Jews in the days of Christ to represent the "eternal punishment" of the wicked in the world to come. Now, if Christ was an honest speaker and meant to be understood by his hearers, he must have used words in their ordinary acceptation. He must have used the word hades then to represent the state of the dead,the good and the bad, the happy and the miserable, anterior to the fesurrection. So his hearers must have understood him.

he did not mean this, he must have wilfully deceived his hearers. Can you deny this?

5. Once more. I cannot adopt your views of this parable, because they are supported by the most weak and wretched sophistry, such as men of sound judgment ought to be asham-ed of. For example; we are told that the word "hades," denotes the state of the dead-not a place of punishment; ergo, there is no punishment in the future world. This is about as sound reasoning as it would be to say, the word Vermont means Green Mountain, not punishment; ergo, there is no punishment for criminals in Vermont. The word Salem denotespeace, not war and murder; ergo, Capt. White could not have been murdered, nor the Knapps hung, in Salem. The word Charlestown means the town of Charles; not a place of punishment ; ergo, there can be no state prison in Charlestown. The word Fall River denotes a falling stream of water, not a manufacturing village; ergo, there can be no calico-mills or iron-works in Fall River. This is a specimen of Universalists' mode of reasoning, and by adopting it, you can reason heaven and hell, God and angels, your Bible and yourself, out of existence, as well as you can the future punishment of the wicked. Again. Mr. Whittemore reasons against applying the parable to the sufferings of the wicked in the spiritual world, because the Rich Man is represented as having eyes, hands, tongue, &c. To this I remark, that Universalists in this objection, place themselves with Atheists. Infidels ridicule the Bible because God, a pure spirit, is spoken of as having hands, feet, eyes, ears, etc. Do Universalists understand how a pure spirit can be spoken of as having a body and parts? if so, they need have no difficulty in understanding how the disembodied spirits of the Rich Man and Lazarus can be spoken of in the same way. Spiritual and eternal things are represented by sensible and material objects. Again. We are told that "it is not said that the Rich Man was very wicked, nor that the beggar was pious." Very well; if the rich and worldly, who are not cruel, oppressive and unjust, are left to agonize in torments "in the state of the dead," because found destitute of the requisite qualifications for the society and employment of the heavenly world, what must be the inevitable doom of those who are not only proud and rich, but who have amassed their wealth by defrauding the widow, and oppressing and robbing the fatherless? As to the character of the Rich Man, the picture our Savior has drawn of him is true to the life; it is a fac simile of those very men whom we may

find, any day, in the mansions of the rich. They are worldly, proud, haughty, selfish, live at ease, and despise the poor.Not the worst of men, but totally unlike Jesus, and wholly unfit for the heavenly world. As to Lazarus, true, it is not said that he is pious, but this is clearly implied throughout, and he is represented as one of those humble, afflicted, unfortunate children of God, of whom the world is not worthy, whose treasure is in heaven and not on earth. In fine, after examining the most plausible attempt of which your system is capable, to explain away this most solemn and important parable of Christ, I confess myself surprised that any man can be found willing to risk his reputation for good sense, to say nothing of his eternal salvation, upon such thread-bare sophistry. Yours as ever.

LETTER XXI.

My Dear Sir:

I find John 5: 28,29, a serious difficulty in the way of believing in Universalism.

"Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."

This passage as it stands in the records of our faith, is plain, and its import too obvious to be misunderstood by any unsophisticated mind. No commentator or author of any note, to my knowledge, from the days of Christ till the rise of Modern Universalism, has attempted to deny that it clearly and necessarily teaches the doctrine of future retribution. But some of your most popular authors have attempted to explain it away. Look at the Universalist exposition, as given by one of your oldest and most profound divines. He says:

"It is evident that the time of the resurrection of the dead is not meant, but the hour or time of the destruction of Jerusalem. The Jewish nation, whom our Lord addressed, had' long been in a state of moral and political death. They were not only dead, but buried in their lusts; or in the language: of the prophet, were in their graves. A few of them, under our Lord's ministry, had heard his voice, and were raised to moral or spiritual life during the time expressed in the phrase,

now is," verse 25. But he says in the 23th, "the hour is coming in which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice and come forth." Come forth from what? They shall come forth from the state of inactivity to action, from this moral and political death." See the Universalist Magazine. Vol. 7. pp. 103, 107.

This is the proper construction of John 5: 28, 29, according to Universalism. This is the view which your preachers generally take of this passage. Let us look at it. Is it sound? Is it sound theology? Is it sound philosophy? I think not.— Now, this explanation needs to be explained a thousand fold more than the text itself. I object to the Universalist mode of explaining this passage away,

1. It is an unnatural, far-fetched construction; one that could not have suggested itself to the persons who heard our Lord, when he uttered the lauguage of the text,-a construction, so unnatural as never to have suggested itself to the understanding of any of the many thousands of pious students of the Bible in former days. It is a forced construction of the text, evidently invented and gotten up to sustain a system.— Such expositions are always false. They are never to be trusted, never to be taken.

2. The sense which your authors put upon the word resurrection here is deceptive and absurd. It is deceptive, because a great parade is made about the import of the Greek word anastasis, rendered resurrection. The hearer or reader who knows nothing about it himself, is told that it means "rising from obscurity to eminence, from inactivity to action." This is adapted to mislead, and leave the impression upon the mind of the reader, that the original word here employed is not the word which is commonly and properly used to denote the literal resurrection of the dead. Be it known unto you, and to all Universalists who have been misled and deceived by such miserable attempts at criticism, that anastasis is the very word employed by Christ and his Apostles to denote the literal resurrection of the dead. It is the word employed in Mat. 22: 23, 28, 31. Mark 12: 18, 23. Luke 14: 14, 20, 27, 35, 36.

The sense which the Universalists put upon the word resurrection in this text is absurd also. You apply the text to the famous destruction of Jerusalem, and tell us that the resurrection then and there experienced, was a "moral and political resurrection," that "the Jewish nation had long been in a state of moral and political death." Very well. Now, how will this hang together ? We will see. What is a moral resur、