Tradition makes the most horrible things acceptable to the mind which becomes blind to their deformity, and even the most detestable things, desirable, by a certain feigned sanctity which it attaches to them. But the charm once broken, the rational mind becomes transformed into another image, totally different, and entirely repugnant to the things which it before venerated as divine. You very justly remark, that if truth be in any way connected with endless misery, you are not reconciled to it; but the time has been when you and I viewed this doctrine as an essential article of the faith of the gospel. What an absurdity! Eternal misery an essential article of the faith of a Saviour! And this very moment there are thousands who set their feet on this vagary, believing it to be the only rock of safety. But we have reason to be thankful for our happy deliverance from such a pernicious tradition; a tradition which has poisoned the doctrine of the church, and hardened the hearts of Christian professors to such a degree, that cruelty of the worst kind has become habitual. Will our _pious clergy_ contend against this charge? Let them account then for all the persecutions, the anathemas, the hangings and the burnings, which owe their origin to this doctrine of eternal misery. Let them account for their own sermons, in our day, which sentence age, middle age, and infancy to endless torture, for offences they never heard of, nor will they ever be informed of them until they find themselves in hell for what a man and a woman did thousands of years before they were born, and of whom they never had heard one word in the land of the living! This they as constantly preach as they contend that man must be sensible of his fall in Adam, of the justice of his being eternally miserable for that offence, and of pardon through the atonement of Christ in this life, or be miserable forever hereafter; for thousands in all ages have lived and died who never heard this absurd story while on earth.