perused it, when it was first published: but, though I am very well pleased with the spirit, and, in some respects, the ingenuity of its author; yet, I cannot but say, that it has left me, as to my sentiments, just as it found me. Whatever it may be owing to; those objections, which he has urged against the doctrines I have ventured to appear in the defence of, and which are now, it seems, insuperable difficulties in the way of his receiving them, seem to me, I must own, to be either such as may be easily removed, or such as are founded upon a wrong representation of those doctrines.

The objections indeed of that writer to which you have referred us, are only those which occur, page 15-23, several of which at least have, if I mistake not, been sufficiently obviated in the foregoing letter. But that which he himself seems to consider as the most irrefragable of all, and which alone therefore I think it needful at present to take notice of, is what we meet with p. 14, it is in short this; That the doctrine of the necessity or expediency of our Lord's dying as a sacrifice or propitiation for the sins of the world, supposes, that persons may be obnoxious

to the divine justice, and stand in need of an expiation for their sins, at the same time that they are, being truly penitent and res formed, objects of his favour and approba tion. But to this it is needless for me, as you must be sensible, to attempt an an swer; as it has already received a very good one from yourself. For as the ob jection we meet with in your 164th para graph, which is this; "If we repent and reform are we not in a fit state for par 'don? and will not God pardon, when "we are most properly qualified to receive forgiveness? Sincere repentance must, ' in itself, render sinners the objects of the 'divine mercy. What need then of the ' atonement of Christ?' As, I say, this objection is evidently the same with what we meet with in the forementioned page of the pamphlet under consideration; so the answer, which you have made to it in your 165th paragraph, will as plainly serve for an answer to the other. For as this latter objection is equally strong (if it be strong at all) against the necessity or expediency of making atonement for the sins of the world, in whatever way we suppose that atonement to be made; so your answer is manifestly such as to take away its force,

as well with regard to me, as to yourself. I shall therefore only just observe, that the objector, in this case, seems not to have considered, that supposing as many millions of rational beings as he pleases, had revolted from God, and had continued in their rebellion for thousands of ages, he could not, according to him, have treated them, as, in any degree, obnoxious to punishment, or have given them the least mark of his disapprobation of their former conduct; provided they did but at last become penitent and reformed because, in such a case, they must necessarily become objects of the divine approbation. But who does not see, that such a method of proceeding would, so far as we can judge, be inconsistent with the great ends of God's moral government? Not to observe, that the objector here plainly supposes, that that cannot in justice be done, which, perhaps, is in fact often done, viz. that one, who is now a good man, may not only be obnoxious to punishment, but be actually punished, for former instances of disobedience.

very

FINIS.