21-I admit the force of your argument, par. 25, in favor of the immortality of human and angelic spirits. I am a firm believer in the immortality of man, not as original, but derived and dependent. (See 1 Tim, i. 16.; John xiv. 19.; Acts xvii 28.; 2 Cor. xiii. 4.) And with some of your writings which I have seen on the subject I am well pleased. But you seem to have forgotten that the word angels does not necessarily designate either the nature or character, but frequently the office of those beings to whom it is applied, and simply signifies messengers, being often applied to men in the flesh as well as to celestial spirits. Your lugging in Matt. xxv. 41.. is therefore wholly useless to your cause, unless you can prove four things-1. That the devil and his angels there mentioned are disembodied spirits; 2. that the fire is of endless duration; 3. that they are to remain and be endlessly tormented in it; and 4. that human spirits are to be tormented with them to all eternity. But neither of these being proved, or proveable, your "foursided argument" is seen to be a sword with four sides, but no edge-it looks four ways, but cuts neither.

22-You ascribe to my "crucible" some powers that it does not possess; nevertheless, I doubt your ability to break it. But you wish to know why it would not have been wiser in Omnipotence to have killed the devil in the beginning, and not suffered him to trouble our world, &c. I will answer by asking two other questions equally as wise. Why did not God create us all adults, without subjecting us to the weaknesses, wants, and sufferings of infancy and childhood? Why did he not place us all in heaven and glory at once, without subjecting us to the imperfections and sufferings of mortal life at all? Now, sir, I have the happiness to believe all these temporary evils will be overruled for final good; and that all that bears the name of evil, including the devil himself, whether personal or impersonal, shall at last be destroyed and succeeded by good, infinite and endless good, far superior to what otherwise would be experienced by the human family. See Heb. ii. 14, 15.; 1 John iii. 8.

In my next, all things concurring, I shall proceed to the consideration of the fourth proposition.

Yours in all kindness,

D. SKINNER.

MR. SKINNER:

MR. CAMPBELL TO MR. SKINNER.

No. XX.

BETHANY, Va. March 9th, 1838,

Sir-LAST night yours of the 26th ult. arrived here after the short passage of ten days. As usual you dilate upon my humor. You figure better as a humorist, than as a logician. As I have to do with you in the latter character, and not in the former, you will please excuse my unceremoniousness in returning such compliments. Your style, if not your temper, is indeed improving; but much as I may sympathize with you, neither your prayers for me, nor your great good humor can justify me in withholding a full exposure of your unenviable posture, and the singular imbecility of your present communication. And yet I could wish that its impotency was its most reprehensible attribute; for if I do

not greatly err, the sequel will show that there may be something more discreditable to your cause than a mere failure in the departments of facts, reason, and evidence.

2. In the first six paragraphs there are but three assertions worthy of a single remark. You say I do charge you with making the Saviour say, "These shall go away into temporal punishment." Certainly I do; for with me every thing is either temporal or eternal as respects duration. Do you now deny this! It is, sir, the just sentence of your lately admitted doctrine of antithesis. They must go away into either the one or the other. You say not into endless, consequently into ending; not into eternal, but into temporal punishment. So Paul contrasts when he says, "The things that are seen are temporal, but the things unseen are eternal."

3. In your defence of your theory of punishment, of which we shall speak in its proper place, you confound chastisements and punishments, and quote Paul and the Prophets speaking of God's worshipping people, as though what is said of them is true of fallen angels and wicked men! The words "for our profit" with you apply to all wicked angels and

men!

4. The third assertion, "In this discussion," you say, I "have attempted to prove endless punishment merely by the force of aionios, and can give no other reason under heaven in favor of endless misery." I merely reply that this is a double error in fact-an assertion as baseless and as truthless as your assumption of post mortem purgatorial punishment, as detailed in your standard No. for September, 1836, thankfully received here the other day, (of which in its proper place.) With what regard to truth could you say I "have no other reason under heaven in favor of endless misery"? Such is your finale of the two first propositions.

5. You then resume the proof of your first affirmative or the third proposition, and continue for nine paragraphs the attempt to repair its breaches. Your efforts on this proposition have sealed your reputation for all your distinguishing excellencies as a controversialist, and more fully show the reasons why your brethren have put you under the saddle in their team. I must therefore request our readers to read over and over your letter, from par. 7 to par. 15 inclusive, and to ponder diligently what I say upon it.

6. In paragraph 7 you charge me of an ingenious and evasive course in examining your words indicative of absolute interminable duration: for that is the purpose for which you produce them; and yet you do not make a single specification of evasion or ingenuity in the case. I affirm that time, eternity, and duration are substantive ideas; and that but one of your words is ever found in any book applied to the substantive ideas of time, eternity, or duration. This is evasion! This is ingenuity! And what is your affirmation in the proposition, but that there is a word in human language that signifies duration without end, never applied to the future punishment of the wicked? This is your proposition. Well, now, where is the ingenuity and the evasion in affirming and proving that five of your words are never used in the sacred scriptures in reference to simple duration at all, whether of time or eternity! Is it evasive to keep to the very terms of your proposition! In all logical truth and propriety every word you have adduced is an evasion of your own proposition; for not one of the terms is found in

the Bible as an epithet of duration. Again, though you enter upon this subject in a mighty bluster about ingenuity and evasion, and with a threatening aspect, what misapplication, or mistatement, or deception have you adduced? Not one: I say again, not one. You even only attempt it in a single instance, and in that you humble your own understanding to the dust.

7. I said in my last that neither aptharsia nor athanasia is ever applied to God or angels, heaven or happiness. You add, "I am surprised at your recklessness;" and say, "Had you forgotten that the Apostle has said of God, 'Who only hath immortality?' If you were, indeed, astonished at my recklessness, I am truly so at your assumed stupidity. Why, sir, is it possible that you confound a person's possessions with his attributes of character! Is every item of your property an attribute of your character! or is every adjective applicable to you that is applicable to your property! Should I say of you, 'that you only have a certain mystery,' will that authorize any one to say that I called you a mysterious character, or applied to you the word mystery! Do you, sir, apply the word earth to the Lord, because you read "The earth is the Lord's"!!! This is the sum total of all your specifications of evasion, ingenuity, recklessness, &c. &c. &c. on my whole exposure of the sophistry of the proof of your third proposition by a class of words not one of which is ever applied to duration, to heaven, or to happiness, in the sacred Scriptures, and, I believe, in no other volume.

8. But you say I concede "that five of them embrace the idea of duration." Why did you not quote my words? I said of the whole six-"One of them excepted, the others never but by implication import duration." If you thus pervert my words, I cannot wonder at your freedom with the dead Apostles. As in some of them is found the idea of corruption, of distance, (as aperantos,) of divisibility, and of mortality, so is the idea of duration found in them. These ideas are just as much in these words as duration; and you might as well say that either they or their contraries indicate absolute corruption, distance, divisibility, or mortality, as that they necessarily signify indefinite duration. Even take their negatives in composition, and I ask, can you say immortal, indivisible, uncorrupt, frontierless, or borderless (aperantos) duration! There is no affinity or congruity between such epithets and simple duration. Indissoluble, immortal, incorruptible, &c. apply to things that are compound. Our present life is partly animal, intellectual, spiritual. Our nature is now partly corruptible, divisible, and mortal. Hence such compound terms as immortal, incorruptible, indivisible, &c. are applied to a future state.

9. If you, sir, had looked your Dictionary, you would not have asked me, unless for some of your readers, why aperantos refers to space and not to time. Recollect, too, that your proposition is to adduce a word Literally signifying absolute duration, which the Holy Spirit might have applied to the punishment of the wicked had he wished to have communicated such an idea. Well, then, let us try it; for you have proved the proposition and found such a word. These shall go away into-immortal, incorruptible, indivisible, borderless punishment!!This is your proof.

10. "Not all of it," you say, "for I gave you the word aidios, which

you have mispelled aeidios in order to deduce it from aei, always; whereas I and other learned men deduce it from hades, invisible," &c. Such is your strong proof: for this word aidios, you say, is applied to God denoting his absolute eternity. I thanked you thrice for your candor on your producing this word; but, alas for the frailty of your candor! It is all gone. And here is where I think you have sealed your reputation for both learning and candor. It is here, I fear, there is something more reprehensible than sheer imbecility.

11. Sir, is it a fact that you cannot read Greek, much less understand it! If not, why do you commit yourself in this way and produce the impression upon all scholars that you are wholly destitute of even an elementary knowledge of the language? There is not a Greek scholar on earth that would say I had mispelled acidios when I spelled aeioon along side of it to show that both words, aioon and aidios, sprung from the same root and are formed in the same manner. Please read again my 19th paragraph, and see how I have spelled these words. Open your Greenfield, Parkhurst, Schrevellius, Robertson, Stokius, or any other Greek Lexicon in America, and see whether they do not all spell both words alike and derive them both from one root.

12. Why do you not give the name of some lexicographer that has derived the word aidios from ades? You say, "There are some respectable critics who suppose it to be derived from ades." Why did you not name them? I believe, sir-nay, I am sure, you cannot name one! You will now have to sustain your veracity and your learning at the same time. I pray you, then, give us your respectable critics, chapter and verse-your Dictionary authority.

13. It is as impossible for any one skilled in Greek to imagine that aidios comes from hades, as it is to derive eternity from the word invisible. It is, I say, impossible, for five reasons. 1st. The first letter of each bears always a different spiritus or mark—aidios has the lenis, and adees, written in English hadees, has the asper. 2d. There is no i in hadees, and there is an i in aidios with a syneresis always over it. 3d. In hudes there is the long e, written double ee, which is not in aidios. 4th. They are both compound derivative words, and the one cannot be derived from the other. They are just of as different families as the word endless and the word invisible. How in the name of reason, sir, can you derive absolute eternity from the word invisible! And in the 5th place, all Dictionaries in the world, certainly all that I have seen, derive aidios and aioon from aei.

14. Mr. Skinner, your pretensions to Greek literature and a critical knowledge of those words concerning which you have scraped together from other smatterers such a farago, is forever gone. I suspected it on several occasions before-as when you introduced kolasis you always write it in the wrong case, besides other blunders which a scholar could not make; but I was determined to give you cord enough—and now, sir, see how you swing.

15. You have now finished the controversy on the philology of Universalism, as I before said, in favor of the truth, far beyond all that I expected. You have said that aidios is that word which signifies absolute endless duration; that had it been prefixed to punishment, it would have made it absolutely endless and interminable. In thus deciding you have refuted yourself and all your efforts to explain away both aci

and acinon; for it is incontrovertibly certain that aeidios derives all its endless duration from dei, and that aioonios and aidios are branches from the same root.

16. You have then, sir, sustained my proof of the first two propositions, by sealing my facts and reasonings upon those long disputed words; and you have in another way established all my positions in contending for the absolute eternity indicated by this word; for it is applied to the punishment of the wicked and to God, and to nothing else in the Bible. The everlasting chains of darkness have now, in your plastic hands, been converted into God's purposes; but this still helps the truth; for all his purposes are eternal and immutable! You now appear to have lost your sagacity at every point: for you add, par. 11, by my admitting this word to mean endless duration, I have swallowed the naked hook-(what stupidity!) and sustained your third proposition! How can this be, inasmuch as this very word is applied to the chains of darkness or prison that confines wicked angels-a prison which, while it holds them fast to the day of "eternal judgment," secures them for ever.

17. It is not my province here to descant upon all your wayward fancies-nor is it necessary. But surely your honorable allusion to the eternal counsels of God, under the appropriate imagery of "the chains of darkness," will secure to you some distinction amongst your brethren. But I shall hasten to your ten weighty arguments begun to be examined in my last letter. Your effort at philosophy-your defence of your first argument on the uselessness of endless punishment, seems to be, that because we can see the usefulness of some evils, and cannot see the usefulness of endless punishment, therefore it is useless. Of this logic we shall have occasion to speak more fully; but first we shall finish our begun review of your philosophy.

18. You assert that eternal punishment is "pernicious" to the whole universe. "It must be pernicious to the happiness of saints, angels, and all benevolent beings that know it." It exhibits too, in the "Father of all the spirit of infinite malignity and revenge insatiable." So you affirm and that is your proof. Query-Is the present punishment of sin and your "future punishment" pernicious to the happiness of saints and angels and all benevolent beings who now know it or shall hereafter know it? You dare not say it is. How then can you affirm that the mere continuance or increase of it will be so? If temporal reasons and causes justify your present and future punishment, may not eternal reasons and causes justify an increase and continuance of it for ever? How far you and the heavenly hosts differ on the subject of divine punishment for sins, and how differently you and they conceive of condign and suitable judgment, may be learned from the beginning of the 19th chapter of the Apocalypse. You regard it as an exhibition of 'infinite malignity and insatiable revenge;' while they sing as follows: "Alleluia! Salvation, and glory, and honor, and power to the Lord our God! True and righteous are his judgments, [punishments;] for he has punished the Great Whore that did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and has avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia! and the smoke of her torment rose up for ever and ever." Thus, sir, you see how far you and the heavenly intelligences differ about this pernicious thing.