His argument assumes, that “it is of the essence of the original consignment, that it dooms the condemned to maintain the criminal spirit unchanged forever.” This is an unwarrantable assumption. We nowhere learn, and we are nowhere required to believe, that the guilty are doomed to sin forever, because they have voluntarily sinned in this life; much less that they are necessitated to sin in order to suffer! The doctrine of the eternity of future punishments is not necessarily encumbered with any such ridiculous appendage; and if any one can be found to entertain so absurd a view of the doctrine, we must leave him to vindicate the creation of his own imagination. We do not suppose that the soul of the guilty will continue to sin forever, because it will be consigned to the regions of the lost; but we suppose it will be consigned to the regions of the lost, because, by its own repeated acts of transgression, it has made sure of its eternal continuance in sinning. God dooms no man to sin—neither by his power nor by his providence. But it is a fact, against which there will be no dispute, that if a man commit a sin once, he will be still more apt to commit the same sin again, under the same or similar circumstances. The same thing will be true of each and every succeeding repetition of the offence; until the habit of sinning may be so completely wrought into the soul, and so firmly fixed there, that nothing can check it in its career of guilt. Neither the glories of heaven, nor the terrors of hell, may be sufficient to change its course. No amount of influence brought to bear upon its feelings, may be sufficient to transform its will. “There is a certain bound to imprudence and misbehaviour,” says Butler, “which being transgressed, there remains no place for repentance in the natural course of things.” And may we not also add, nor in the supernatural course of things either; and there only remains a certain fearful looking-for of judgment? As this may be the case, for aught we know, nay, as it seems so probable that this is the case, no one is authorized to pronounce endless sufferings unjust, unless he can first show that the object of them has not brought upon himself an eternal continuance in the practice of sin. In other words, unless he can first show that the sinner does not doom himself to an eternity of sinning, he cannot reasonably complain that his Creator and Judge dooms him to an eternity of suffering.