A 03 The fall angels, man confirmatory proof
III. The fall of angels, and of man, is a confirmatory proof of future, endless retribution. THIS will of course have weight only with those who believe in the existence and fall of angels, and in the fall of man. To prove either of these here, would be out of place; and, indeed, the necessity of proving them would show that everything which has thus far been said in this article is superfluous, because it takes for granted many things generally believed, which rest, however, on the same kind of evidence with the existence of angels and their fall. The apostles, the scribes and Pharisees, I have not thought it necessary to prove had a real existence, and that they were not merely personified principles of good and evil.
If the reader be one who rejects the doctrine of fallen angels, and of the fall of man, he will
read what is here said merely as showing the way in which those who believe these things are confirmed, by them, in their belief of endless retribution. Peter says, “ God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment.”* Jude says, ''And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” If God did not keep angels from falling, we are not constrained to think that he will restore them, If he will hereafter reinstate them by a direct act of power, the same power could have kept them from falling, with no greater interference with their free agency. If he allowed them to fall with a view to some great good in, their natures, suffering them, in the progress of their experience, to ruin this world, and bring in such a fearful plague as sin has been to our race, all to be compensated for in the great sweep of ages by this beneficial knowledge of evil, we are * 2 Peter 2:4. Jude 1:6. led to the conclusion that sin and “Buffering are the necessary means of the greatest good. But what manner of Supreme Being have we here for a Universalist to love and worship? His government, it would seem, cannot proceed without suffering a host of angels, falling from their thrones in heaven, to pass through centuries of sin and mischief. This seems neither benevolent nor wise. In the exercise of their liberty we are told that angels kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, and that God hath reserved them in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. If they are finally to be restored, God will restore them, or they will come back of themselves. If God foresaw that he must finally restore them, he would have kept them from falling, unless sin and misery are, under his government, the means of the greatest good. If so, this may be one of the cases in which if a little is good, more is better; and perhaps the best interests of the universe will be promoted by protracting this sin and suffering indefinitely.
It is a wholly gratuitous assumption that fallen angels and men will at last, of their own accord, repent. Who has travelled so far as to know this? What reason have we to think that hell will finally convince and persuade men? All our present knowledge respecting it contradicts this expectation. Satan and his angels have tried its redeeming power, if it has any, for at least six thousand 3^ears. We see no premises, therefore, on which to base the assertion that men will at last universally repent. It does not appear that being in torment, even, will have any better effect, forever, on men, than it seems to have had on “ the rich man,” whose only prayer to Abraham was for mitigation of pain, and for a warning to be sent to his brethren. He seems to think that if one went to them from the dead, they would repent.
Why had he not repented himself, among the dead? Surely the very experience of hell itself must be a more powerful means of good than a mere apparition. But as suffering had not made him penitent, must be that it has no such effect after death. Hell seems a very cruel
means of effecting the reformation of sinners, when we think that, if employed for this purpose through such great periods of punishment, it will be employed by Him who so easily converted Saul of Tarsus, and the woman that was a sinner, and Zaccheus, and the thief on the cross. This is, to my own mind, one of the insuperable objections to the theory of future disciplinary punishment. I can readily yield my assent to the declaration that “ he that belie veth not the Son shall not see life;” it does no violence to my understanding that those who refuse salvation by Christ, when notified that their refusal will be fatal, should reap forever that which they sowed, and continue hereafter to sow that which they reap, and thus without end.
I read this in the Bible. I have no controversy with it. But that a human soul should need ages in hell, with Satan and his angels, to be made contrite, is as contrary to all analogy as it is destitute of scriptural proof. Besides, if God does all in this world which he can do without destroying free agency, to convert certain men, it is difficult to see how the use of superior power in hell can fail to destroy it utterly. If God does not use all proper means here to save men, how is he infinitely merciful? But if here he goes to the very boundaries of their free agency, which, it is said, he never passes over, and yet fails to subdue them, it is gratuitous to say that he will certainly succeed any better hereafter.
How much longer than these six thousand years past, angels are to suffer, we cannot tell; but the consignment of wicked men at the last day to such company as that of “ the devil and his angels,” looks fearfully unlike a remedial measure for angel or man. The last sentence is utterly inconsistent with any expectation, or intention, on the part of Christ, that those on whom it is pronounced will return. Otherwise, he would not have pronounced them cursed. Probationers are not accursed. They are prisoners of hope. Everything in the last words of Christ to the wicked is as final as language can make it. But if the wicked are to be punished until they repent, we said, punishment thus far has not reformed the original inhabitants of hell. It is incumbent on those who advocate final restoration on this ground, to prove that punishment will at last have a restorative power, or they must show how long the wicked must sin and suffer to make it wrong to punish them any more, even if they continue to sin.