The Rev. Archer Gurney, a gentleman with whom we ourselves
have had some little controversy, has written a letter to the Oxford (Committee on the subject of the two new articles which they are compelling English clergymen to sign. It is by many degrees the best letter, in a literary point of• view, which has yet appeared upon the subject. Mr. Gurney, of course, resists the dogma of verbal inspiration from the High-Church point of view, that if we have the literal "words," as well as" word," of the Almighty, the Church" has nothing to teach, a view with which we have no sympathy but the argument against the necessary eternity of punishment is placed upon broader grounds :—" Is it necessary to -teach learned men like you that whatever begins in time may also know an end in time ; that there is this essential and infinite difference between the eternity of good and of evil—that the one has never begun, but was from all eternity ; that the other has begun, and may therefore end ; that it is nothing less than blas- phemous to draw comparisons between the eternity of the ever- lasting Son of God and the relative eternity of his sinful creatures that evil having nothing divine in it is essentially finite, not in- finite; that it consists in rebellion to the will of God, and has no inherent enclose vitality ; that the happiness of the blessed rests not on a word, or a syllable, but on their perfect union with God, who is infinite life and joy."
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