Thomas Latham

“ With a view to expose the ignorance of those who, like my tutor, represent God as burning in an unquenchable fire, and roasting on eternal gridirons the bodies and souls of men, I have said in my lectures, the nature of man is incapable of eternal combustion; the body must quickly be consumed by fire; and material fire cannot act on the immaterial spirit, as they suppose the soul of man to be. To this last remark he has said nothing; to the former, he has pretended to reply, by asking me to inform him, how the nature of man can for an instant or for ages of ages endure future punishment? ”

“ Yet he has made it out, that the God of love pursues some with eternal hatred; that his love is modified into inexorable justice, his mercy into vindictive cruelty, his compassion into unrelenting severity; that he delights to diffuse happiness and to perpetuate eternal misery; that his tender mercies are over all his works, while he inflicts upon the great majority the unmitigated vengeance of eternal fire; that he does not afflict willingly, but takes pleasure in punishing eternally ”

“ I speak the truth when I say—first, that I esteem the Bible as the choicest gift of God, save that of his own Son, the restorer, the light and saviour of the world—Secondly, that I esteem and cordially approve the universal spread of the Bible among all nations, and in every language ”

“ How, then, can he expect reasonable men to read, or me to profit by the irrational ravings of a mere maniac; but a man is never against reason in religion, but when reason is against his religion—and here my tutor feels the shoe pinch his corns. ”

“ I have stated in my lectures, that eternal misery is irreconcileable with the character and perfections of God. At this my tutor nibbles in his usual way; and although he has denied in the last paragraph that men are capable of burning for ever, yet here he charges me with being mistaken in thinking sin does not call for the vengeance of eternal fire. When will he attain perfection whose faith thus reels to and fro and staggers like a drunken man? ”

“ I admit the divine agency, called the Holy Spirit, at the first promulgation of the gospel; but, I deny such supernatural agency now, as the orthodox pretend to. I deny regeneration to be what they make it; but, I hold the necessity of a change of mind and conduct, whereby sinners must turn themselves from all their transgressions and save their souls alive. I deny justification by faith in the popular sense of believing in the merits and righteousness of another, which is a most flagrant error ”

“ He believes him to have been shut up in a narrow room, whom heaven and earth could not contain; him to have been born in time, who was and is born from everlasting; him to be a weak child carried in arms, who is the Almighty; and him to have died, who only has life and immortality: and the more absurd and incredible any mystery is, the greater honour we do to God in believing it, and so much the more noble the victory of faith.” The same lesson Bishop Beveridge learnt in the same school: “The mysteries, (says he) which I am least able to conceive, I think myself the more obliged to believe. ”

“ My tutor next takes me to a lexicon to learn from it that the terms which I have said signify corrective punishment, signify nothing short of perdition, ruin, destruction. Admit all this: yet this does not express eternal misery; for a being destroyed or blotted out of existence cannot suffer any more, much less suffer eternal misery. I have shewn in my lectures, that the terms used in the original to express future punishment are all of a limited duration; this I have proved upon the authority of those who wrote and spoke Greek as their own vernacular tongue. ”

“ Let the professed advocates lay aside those arts and tricks which alone become mountebanks and quacks, and let them plead the cause of the Bible as becomes the dignity and grandeur of the subject, and I will wish them God speed in spreading the Bible to the remotest habitation of human beings; and, let those who cannot treat the subject as becomes truth and holiness, keep silent. Religion and the Bible require not the aid of enthusiasm, ribaldry, and buffoonery ”

“ Surely thy critical skill in Greek ought to have taught thee, that every calumniator, false accuser, traducer, and slanderer, is, according to the true import of the word, a diabolos, a devil; and that thou art such, is proved on thy title page, as well as in many other parts of thy book, which breathes calumny and slander throughout. But my tutor wonders if my doctrine be true, why Christ and his apostles never plainly taught it. ”

“ I answer, it is for him, and those who like him, blindly imagine, that God has no other means to apply than the pains of eternal fire, to determine this; but those who believe, that God has both wisdom, power, and goodness sufficient to reconcile all things to himself, and to adapt the means to the end, both in the present and future state, can leave it with him whose counsel shall stand, and who will do all his pleasure to accomplish in his own way that purpose by which he has purposed to gather together all things, and to reconcile all things to himself ”

“ Said, try what you please, there is nothing like leather.”
p. 28So my tutor seems to think, that if men are not frightened into virtue and morality, by the senseless cry of suffering the vengeance of eternal fire, and by being threatened with being devoted as a prey to the fiery tusks and burning talons of the devil, that this imaginary fiction of heathen divinity will succeed in sapping the foundation of all virtue, “and bring dishonour upon God, and ruin upon a sinful world:”—that is to say, bring ruin upon a world which my tutor asserts to be already in a state of universal ruin. ”

“ God, he tells us, is the source of all excellence. This we know, and rejoice in the truth; but can fury, anger, indignation, wrath, and vindictive cruelty, such as he represents God manifesting towards his offspring, be reckoned among the moral excellencies of the divine character? Strange if they can! My tutor thinks these perfections belong to his God, the God of Calvinism; and so they may, but not to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. ”

“ And who acts the most like a rational being—he who knows what and why he believes, or he who, laying aside reason, believes the wildest contradictions, under pretence of believing mysteries, which is a thing just as possible as believing in the existence of non-entities, or seeing invisibilities, or possessing non-existences. But if I had the superior light with which my tutor is blessed, I might learn from him that Socinianism is scepticism and infidelity ”

“ To overthrow what I said, that if sin be infinite in demerit, because committed against an infinite God, obedience must be infinite in merit, as obedience to the same infinite God. My tutor tells me, the case is just the reverse, and that as sin rises in turpitude, merit sinks in the same proportion. He who can reason with the same logical precision, may possibly arrive at the same conclusion, which is this: that the more virtuous a man is, the less is he entitled to the rewards of virtue ”

“ Shall finite evil overcome infinite good? My tutor says, for any thing we know, the good of the universe may require the perpetuation of punishment, rather than the termination of sin. He does not know this: Why assert what he does not know? [18] But we know the contrary, and my tutor needs not remain in ignorance on this point if he will read his Bible—that will inform him, that God has exalted that same Jesus, who was crucified, to reign as his anointed king in Zion ”

“ This is the faith of the gospel, the faith at first delivered to the saints; and, to believe otherwise, is to believe a lie, and to believe what God has not required. I deny the immateriality and natural immortality of the soul; but, I firmly believe what the scriptures teach, that at the resurrection, that which is mortal, shall put on immortality. These remarks will serve to explain how I wished to be understood, when I said in page 14, that you had stated my disbelief honestly and accurately—that is, according to orthodox sentiments, I disbelieve all you have stated. ”

“ Aion is singular, aionian is its plural, and so must, according to my tutor, mean everlastings, everbeings, eternities. This may be good Greek; but I, “who have got to learn English,” venture to pronounce it no English, but sheer nonsense. But my tutor informs me, “that it is an established canon of criticism, that an author is the best commentator on his own words; and that because in Matt. xxv. 46, the word aionian is connected both with future punishment and future happiness, it must have the same unlimited signification in both cases, and denote equal periods of time.” ”

“ I tell him, that the future punishment of the wicked will be in nature suited to the nature of man; but God will have other means of punishing than roasting men in fire, as Calvin roasted Servetus. He says, Socinianism affords no answer to the question, how they can endure the fire that never shall be quenched for a single instant and not be consumed? ”

“ I have said aion and aionian never mean unlimited duration, except when connected with the existence of God, or the future happiness of good men. In every other case they have only a limited signification. Many proofs of this I have produced from the scriptures in my lectures: not one of which has been corrected nor even noticed by my tutor. He asserts, that words are to be always taken in their literal and primary sense, unless there be something in the nature of the subject which requires them to be differently understood. ”

“ Should he admit, as truth will compel him to admit, that Christ suffered only as a man, then he has to explain the mystery how the sacrifice of a human victim could make, by finite sufferings, an infinite satisfaction. In describing what he judges proofs, that sin is an infinite evil, he musters together many things which without proof he assumes as points granted ”

“ Convinced as I am, that the Scriptures contain a full, clear, and plain revelation of every thing that is essential for mankind to know, believe, and practice; of all that God requires from them, or gives them ground to expect from him, in order to promote their virtue and peace on earth, and final happiness in heaven. ”

“ No: the Bible teaches, “he will render unto every man according to his deeds;” but my tutor teaches, that God might have made all men to be damned, and he might or might not have saved any; and, that those few who will be saved, will be saved irrespective of their own deserts, by the merits and sufferings of another. ”

“ To lounge, is to live idle, or lazy; to slip from the foundation is, in his sense, to deny the truth; and these two words combined make a very intelligible sentence—nearly as intelligible as when the Welch curate, having to say the lamb, said the little mutton, and left the people to guess at the meaning. But, had I lounged and, like the orthodox in general, been too lazy to examine into sentiments, and willing to take opinions upon trust, I should not have had the mishap to slip from their foundation ”

“ That this is the general run of hearers hereabouts, no one can deny; and this sufficiently accounts for the spread of mysticism and enthusiasm, and the tardy progress of pure scriptural and rational truth; to say nothing of the salvo which orthodoxy affords, to those who can fancy themselves entitled to an interest in its inexhaustible and unconditional stores;—pardon, righteousness, and heaven, and all procured by the merits and sufferings of another, on the very easy terms of “only believe and be saved.” ”