A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation: In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.Ballou, Hosea
Religion
A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation: In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.
Ballou, Hosea
Revelation; Universalism -- Doctrines
You fault the address to truth, which you say I put into the mouth of
your argument, but this you do without the least occasion, nor is it
in your power, sir, to show that your argument does not afford all I
have made it say. You might, or rather you have varied the language a
little, but the sentiment is preserved entire. The address to truth
would, as before, extoll her existence, express the most ardent and
constant love for her divinity and finish the climax by _soaring down_
to non-existence, which you can contemplate with as much satisfaction
as you could an eternal existence in the enjoyment of the object of
your love!
But you contend that truth is lovely, and if your doubts are
consistent with truth you shall be happy to be confirmed in them; &c.
This hypothesis, sir, is too large to suit your own views; for you
have before decided a choice between the doctrine of eternal misery
and that of, I will call it, annihilation for this is its true
meaning. You have revolted at the thought of eternal misery, but your
hypothesis allows you no such liberty. Truth is lovely, and if the
doctrine of eternal punishment, with all the fire and brimstone that
has ever been preached by the most zealous advocates of torment be
truth, your hypothesis compels you to embrace the goddess, and
contemplate eternal misery with the same pleasure that you do
non-existence, or with the same you would everlasting felicity did you
believe in it!
If we would reason well, we must reason from what we know. We know
that man is capable of being miserable, he is capable of great
sufferings; likewise he is capable of being happy, he is capable of
great enjoyments. Now to pretend that he has no choice, that it is as
well for him to be miserable as to be happy, as well for him not to
exist as to exist, is the reverse of reason.
4th. As Jesus, in the instructions which he gave to his disciples,
respecting their conduct towards their enemies, had no design reaching
to the laws of a body politic, but only to the conduct by which the
ministry of the gospel would best succeed in its early beginning,
while it was _necessary_ for it to be persecuted, by which we are now
favoured with its evidences, we may now err in applying those
instructions differently from their primary design. St. Paul, as much
as any of the disciples of Jesus, submitted himself to the directions
of non-resistance, yet he insists on submission to the higher powers,
because they were the ministers of God, even revengers to execute
wrath upon them that do evil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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