UNITED PRESBYTERIANS AND THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION.
[To TDB EDITOR OF THE " EPEOTATOR.1 SIR,—In your article of May 31st on" The United Presbyterians and the Westminster Confession," you repeat the current language about the opposition between the divine purity which you regard as the ground of our fears, and the divine love which you regard as the ground of our hopes. I think this is neither true nor Scriptural; it may, no doubt, be deduced from scripture, but only by a somewhat arbitrary way of piecing passages together. The divine purity is, no doubt, the ground of our fears, when we consider the consequences of sin, but it is also the ground of our hopes, when we reflect that purity must desire not only the defeat and punishment of sin, but also, and still more, its extinction. The divine love is, no doubt, the primary ground of our hopes, but love may demand punishment, and will demand it, if it is necessary for the destruction of sin.
Nor can I agree with you that the language of Scripture is equally divided between the endless and hopeless misery due to sin in the future life, and the hope of a final restor- ation. St. Paul says that the end will come, when God will be all in all, after the abolition of all enemies, whereof the last is to be death,—that is to say, the collective consequences of sin. No equally decisive passage can be quoted on the other side from any part of Scripture, except perhaps the apocryphal Revelation of St. John.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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