But the modern stoic, while, by a _sinister_ inference from his doctrine, he takes large leave of indulgence to the flesh (an indulgence which he uses or not, as his temperament may determine) and so borrows the practical part of Epicureanism, transfers his egregious dogmas to the unseen world, where they come not at all in contact with common sense. In the vast unknown of an eternity on both sides of time, he finds range enough, and immunity, for even the most enormous paradoxes which ingenuity can devise, or sophistry defend. Besides, the argumentative resources of the modern are incomparably more copious and various and tangible than those of the ancient wrangler; for the latter could only fall back, ever and again, upon the same abstractions; but the former may take position on any part of a very wide frontier; for having so large and multifarious a volume as the Scriptures in his hand, and having multiplied the argumentative value of every sentence it contains almost indefinitely by adopting the rule of Origen and the Rabbis, that the whole of Scripture is mystical, and may bear every sense that can be found in it, he is at once secure from the possibility of being confuted, and revels in an unbounded opulence of proof and illustration in support of his positions. To the sober interpreter, the Bible is one book; but to the Antinomian it is as a hundred volumes. With a field so wide, and means so inexhaustible, the Christian theorist lives in a paradise of speculation; and no revolution to which human nature is liable can be less probable than that which must take place before he abandons his world of factitious happiness. The dreamer must feel that sin is a substantial ill, in which himself is fatally implicated, and not a mere abstraction to be discoursed of; he must learn that the righteous God deals with mankind not fantastically, but on terms adapted to the intellectual and moral conformation of that human nature, of which he is the author; and he must know that salvation is a deliverance, in which man is an agent, not less than a recipient.