Immortality; its Real and Alleged Evidences: being an Endeavour to ascertain how far the Future Existence of the Human Soul is discoverable by Reason. By I. T. Gray, Ph. D.

Dyer. 1843. pp. 32.

Notes of Lectures on Future Punishment.
London: Ward. 1844. pp. 96.

London: G. and J.

By H. H. Dobney.

PROTESTANTISM has often been reproached by Romanists, on account of its negative character. Because our protest consists in great part of a renunciation of certain dogmas retained by Papists, our religious system is charged with a strong tendency towards general unbelief. This is an objection which carries with it no little weight in the estimation of the constitutionally timid,-persons whom, on account of their certain degree of innate cowardice, Coleridge sportively describes as "born tories." For such, negation has but few charms. Hence, we find that in France, and some other popish countries, the churches are thronged by the women, and almost deserted by the men. The stronger sex of the French nation are found to be far more difficult of recovery than the weaker, from the mania of infidelity which seized all during the Revolution. The general preponderance of Protestants in the northern, and of Papists in the southern portions of Christendom, is a fact of the same kind. The hardier races are mostly for Geneva; the feebler for Rome. Buddhism descended from the mountains of Thibet, to attack the more positive creed of Hinduism. Even the Saviour himself opened the reformation of the first century in the northerly regions of Galilee. Many other illustrations might be added, to show that the softer climes are not the natural homes of religious revolution.

The fact that the negative character of Protestantism is a vulnerable point, is one of which Romish controversialists are fully aware. They never neglect appeals to the fears of their hearers or readers. Milner, for instance, urges, again and again, the consideration, that if Protestants be in the right, the Romanist may still be safe; but that if his church have truth on her side, every heretic must expect to be dealt with "as a heathen man and a publican." We ourselves are wont to argue analogously with Deists and Socinians, and we do so, as professing a creed more positive than theirs. Of course, the probabilities of the assumption are of very different value in the two cases. The fact of a revelation, and the doctrine of the atonement, are far more capable of proof than the dogma of infallibility or transubstantiation. Considered logically, therefore, or as an appeal to the reason, the argument is, we think, very strong, as used by evangelism against rationalism; and very weak, as employed by Rome against Geneva.

In a rhetorical point of view, however, or regarded as an appeal to the passion of fear, its force is much the same in both cases. It is not to be expected, therefore, that Rome should abandon it, merely on account of its logical unsoundness in her hands. She has often found a pasteboard fiend answer her purpose, nearly as well as a real one. Accordingly, the dogma of the impossibility of salvation out of the church, has been zealously pressed into her employ, and has often done her good service. It has frightened many into her ark of safety, and deterred more from quitting it. It may even be said to be her "articulum stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ." The absurdities of her system are so many and so glaring, that were she to relax but one hair's breadth of this iron article of her creed, revolt would instantly roar through every street of Babylon. We may be reminded, indeed, that the dogma of infallibility rather is the corner-stone of the Romish faith, and there can be no doubt that theoretically it is so. Practically, however, we think that Rome's daring assumption of a monopoly of mercy, is the main buttress of her power. The latter is, it is true, only a corollary from the former: but it is for the sake of the deduction chiefly, that the principle is maintained. She would dictate as an oracle, because she would thunder like a god. The keys that hang at his girdle, are the true symbols of the fisherman's power. The "anathema sit," appended to all her decrees, is the talisman by which Rome works her enchantments. Let her blot these two words, and her parchments are but soiled sheepskin: every dogma of the Tridentine fathers would at once become an open question. She is far too wise to forget that laws without sanctions, either real or fictitious, stand but small chance of obedience. No wonder, then, that she clings to her exclusive principle with so tenacious a grip. It is the breath of her nostrils. Accordingly, the subject of Chillingworth's immortal work was, we think, most happily chosen-"The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation." The Reformation itself, which was comparatively feeble when occupied with an attack on the mere outworks of the Roman system, became signally triumphant, so soon as, by being made to hinge on the doctrine of justification by faith, or in other words, salvation without the church, it assailed the palladium itself.

Fear being thus the basis of Rome's power, it is easy to perceive that those Protestants, who by pushing negation to extremes, furnish real occasion for alarm, are, to the extent to which they pursue this course, playing into the enemy's hands. The Socinians and Rationalists have, probably, in this way, damaged the Reformation more than the Jesuits by their most subtile machinations. The nearer view of Rationalism which Dr. Pusey gained during his residence in Germany, was certainly not unconnected with the rise of the Tractarian movement in this country. Every truth has some bearing on our spiritual and everlasting

welfare. Hence, men naturally dread, lest those who volunteer to weed out the errors of their belief, should pluck up the young wheat also. The ruder the hand of the reformer, the more sensitive and quick are their apprehensions. The patient demands that the surgeon's head shall be remarkable for judgment, and trembles to think of a hand only furnished with a knife. Even at the best, too, the deeper the operator cuts into the cancer, the nearer will he verge upon the flesh. And it is with men's creeds as with their bodies. A lady's hand, as well as an eagle's eye and a lion's heart, are at least as necessary for a reformer of churches as for a setter of bones.

With these views we earnestly deprecate the attempt of Mr. Dobney, in the sixth and seventh lectures of the course, whose title occupies the heading of this article, to undermine the doctrine of the eternal punishment of the wicked. We have bracketed Dr. Gray's pamphlet along with his work, because the reasonings of both are to a certain extent coincident.

Of the latter publication, seeing that Mr. Dobney goes over nearly the same ground, it will suffice to say, that while it displays competent scholarship, and challenges for its author considerable elegance of mind, it enters, as we think, upon a very grave discussion, too much in the spirit of an academic dilletantism. Souls are serious matters; and it especially became Dr. Gray, who, in his introduction, confesses himself disposed to remove the doctrine of man's immortality from under the joint guardianship of reason and revelation, to the sole tutelage of the former, to display the utmost caution in flinging about his objections and scruples, as to his favourite's worthiness of the greatness he would thrust upon her. This he has not done. We think he has misconceived both the state of the question, and the force of the arguments he has undertaken to canvass. The burden of proof lies on the opponents of the doctrine; whereas he has throughout assumed that it rests with its defenders. He deems it to be unquestionable that an immaterial soul, totally distinct from the body, does exist. It remains, therefore, with the impugners of its immortality to prove that it ceases to exist. Of this point Dr. Gray has lost sight throughout the discussion, although he seems to have caught a glimpse of it at the close, (p. 32.) His misapprehension of the arguments for immortality we shall endeavour to point out in our examination of Mr. Dobney's sixth and seventh lectures, (we pass by the others as being generally unobjectionable) because that gentleman has here trodden in his steps.

Mr. Dobney's theory may be thus stated in brief.

I. The soul

of man is naturally mortal. II. It is, however, capable of immortality. III. In regeneration it actually becomes immortal. IV. The souls of the unregenerate will exist for an indefinitely long period in a state of torment, but will ultimately become extinct.

Now the first observation that strikes us concerning this notable scheme is, that it is a manifest plagiarism. It is a Baptist pastor's edition, "carefully revised and emended," of the favourite speculation of a non-juring layman-Dodwell. Here is Dodwell's creed on the same subject. I. The soul of man (if considered without any new indulgence, beyond what it received at its creation) is naturally mortal. II. By virtue of a Divine voŋ, (i. e. the breath of life which God breathed into Adam's nostrils,) the soul is, however, qualified for the privilege of immortality. III. The soul thus qualified is farther capable of receiving a Divine veuμa, (or spirit,) by which, as by a new and adventitious principle, such particular souls as shall receive it are actually immortalised. IV. This voŋ (or breath) is common to every man from the time of his first natural formation; but the πνευμα (or spirit) can now be conveyed no otherwise since the promulgation of the Gospel but by Christian baptism. V. All baptism is not capable of conveying the Divine immortalising Spirit, but such only as is administered in communion with the true bishop. VI. As for those who never receive the immortalising Spirit, by reason of their having lived under an absolute ignorance of the Gospel, their souls do, sometime or other, actually fall under annihilation. VII. As for those who (though acquainted with the Gospel yet) never receive the immortalising Spirit, by reason of any neglect or irregularity, particularly the want of episcopal communion or of communion with the true bishop, their souls are not indeed suffered to fall under annihilation, but are immortalised, by the extraordinary power and pleasure of Almighty God, to eternal punishment.

Even Dodwell's is not the editio princeps. The learned Edmund Chishull, who, in his "Address to the Clergy," maintaining a charge of heresy against Mr. Dodwell, fleshed his weapon in the body of this little innocent, with all the remorselessness of one of Herod's soldiers, and was generally thought to have despatched it outright, would not allow that his opponent was its genuine father. He traced its genealogy back to Socinus, who broaches his opinion of the soul's natural mortality in a private letter, to be found in the Bibl. Frat. Pol. tom.i. p. 454; and even to some Arabian heretics of the third century, whom Origen converted by his arguments, as recorded by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. lib. vi. c. 37. We would not, however, press Mr. Dobney with this argumentum ad verecundiam farther. We are aware, that in theology, especially, an opinion is not the less likely to be true because it is not new. Let us see what he has to advance in behalf of the soundness of his theory.

His fundamental position is, of course, the natural mortality of the soul. Unless this be proved his whole scheme falls to the ground. Now we speak advisedly when we say, that after repeated perusals of his lectures, we have not lighted upon a tittle of evidence to show this.

That the soul is immortal, is, disguise it how we may, unquestionably a negative proposition, which can only be overturned by positive proof that it dies. A materialist honestly makes an attempt at the requisite proof, by maintaining that the soul is a delicate organisation of matter, and that in all organisms there is a tendency to dissolution. This, stated in a logical form, is an intelligible syllogism in Barbara. It is met by a disproof of the minor premise, or of the soul's materiality. But how does Mr. Dobney, who is an immaterialist, address himself to the task before him? Why, by practically assuming a major of portentous dimensions, (viz. all living things die) in order to make room in his minor for an immaterial soul. With Dr. Thomas Brown as our guide, we used to think that the soul's immateriality granted, its immortality follows at once, on account of there being no known precedent of annihilation, and nothing in nature that could lead us to expect it. But Mr. Dobney gravely reminds us, that the soul having had a beginning may of course have an end, (p. 62,) or in other words, that annihilation is not impossible, and thence jumps to the conclusion that the soul is naturally mortal.

Evading thus the direct proof of the soul's mortality, Mr. Dobney contents himself with urging Dr. Gray's doubts as to the validity of the arguments in favour of the opposite opinion, adding, however, the proofs drawn from Scripture to the list of the proscribed. His sixth lecture is occupied with a critique upon the evidence furnished by reason and revelation, in behalf of the soul's natural immortality. The first argument he examines, is that drawn from the immateriality of the soul. To this he objects, that it equally proves the immortality of brutes. But, surely, Mr. Dobney is not unaware that the immateriality of the soul rests on the fact of man's personality, as attested by human consciousness. Now the personality of brutes can never be proved, and therefore the parity he assumes falls to the ground. In reply to the argument from the general belief and desire of immortality, he urges with Dr. Gray that the former can prove only a common origin, and that the latter would equally prove the universality of happiness. We accept his concession of the common origin of the belief in immortality, and confidently ask, whether, upon balancing the probabilities in favour of the Divinity and humanity of that origin, respectively, the preponderance does not rest with the former? The various and fantastic shapes which the belief assumes, (on which point he seems to lay stress,) no more invalidate the argument, than the thousand modifications of men's belief in a God, can enervate the analogous argument for the existence of the Divine Being. Immortality is the central point whence all their fancies radiate, and which, like the sun of a system, throws light upon them all. Our author is equally infelicitous in his treatment of the argument drawn from the universal desire for immortality. Concerning this, he says: