3?4 I*UitGATO!tY. [BOOK II. tO be undergon? by them after the guilt of their mortal sins, and the eternal punishment has been remitted: hence, it necessarily follows, that there must necessarily be a state of temporal punishment after death, where all those must go who, dying in the state of grace, have not paid this debt before they die, and where they must remain in suf- ferings till such time as they have fully paid it." The ground of this argument is, that u? must mal?e an expiator?l sacrifice to divine justice, through t? medium either of good ,vorks or pe?al sufferings. Now, as this doctrine of merit and satisfaction has been already shown to be t?lse, the conclusion drawn from it must also be false. The argument is itself a proof of the gross unscriptural views which Roman Catholics entertain respecting their good deeds and the value of sufferings; the absurdities of which have already been exposed in the chapter on santis- faction, to which the reader is referred. 2. The reasons or arguments by which they support the doctrine of purgatory are dubious and disputable at best, and most of them are m. anifestly?bsurd and unscriptural. Such are: 1. Their distinction of sins into mortal and venial, in their own nature. 2. That the taking away the guilt of sins does not suppose the taking away the entire punishment. 3. That God requires from the sinner a full exchange of satisfactions, or penances, which must regularly be paid, here or hereafter, even by those who are pardoned. 4. That the death of Christ, his merits and satisfaction, do not procure for us a full remis- sion before we die, and sometimes for a long time after death. These propositions, new and uncertain, nay, utterly unscriptural, were invented by the school divines, and are the products of ignorance concerning the remission of sins by grace, the righteousness of faith, and the infinite value of Christ's atonement. 3. On the topic now under consideration we present to our readers the following admirable extract from Dr. A. Clarke's sermon on Salva- tion by Faith. After having triumphantly confuted the opinion of the merits of works, he proceeds as follows: "Penal sufferings, in a future state, are supposed by many to be sufficiently efficacious to purge the soul from the moral stains contracted in this life; and to make an atonement for the offences committed in time. This system is liable to all the objections urged against the preceding, and to several others peculiar to itself; for, if there had not been sin, there had not been ptmishment. Penal sufferings, inflicted by divine justice, are the desert of the crimes which require justice to inflict such punishments. If the stiflerings inflicted by this divine justice be supposed t?r be capable of annihilating the cause for which they are inflicted; if they annihilate the cause they must be greater than that cause, and consequently unjust; because, in that case, the punishment would be greater than the offence. Such penal inflictions could not proceed from a righteous God. � "But the ground of this system is absurd: we have no evidence from Scripture or reason that there are any emendator,j punishments in the eternal world. "The state of probat/on certainly extends only to the ultimate term of human life. We have no evidence, either from Scripture or reason, Sincere Christian, vol. ii, I? 109. oigitize by Goodie
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