The “Distressed One” writes, unfeignedly owning his mistake, and feeling that he wants further light.
Tertius’s pamphlet is to hand, but calls for no particular notice. He finds “seven” strange doctrines in his brethren: might he not have filed a bill of “seventy times seven” as well-founded as his complete number? It is true that strange engines have been put into requisition to give appearance to the present indictment; but the end and the means are worthy of each other: who can say what they may achieve yet?
It is surprising that any should have interpreted as a publication the statement (in the “Bible Treasury” for January, p. 205, col. 1) that a certain person had just written on the subject of Christ’s Sufferings (14 November last). It is not usual to notify a book but a letter thus precisely. The fact stated is correct, and it is not without God’s hand in it How far it is in circulation by copies I know not; but I have seen two. Let me add that it exhibits the usual lack of plain honesty which characterizes both real heretics and those who would make others seem such who are sounder than themselves. It denies what the author is not accused of, and conceals what he really maintained. False itself in doctrine, it confesses that those who have of late been wrongfully charged with his views, he knows to be his strongest adversaries; and it presses the same error or ignorance as to Christ’s sufferings which has been broached in other recent assaults.
A. F. (M., Ireland) will feel, the more he weighs both 1 Peter 3:18 and the use of the word “spirits” in scripture, how harsh it is to deny it to the disembodied (angels’ and other purely spiritual beings being excluded by the nature of the case), and to predicate the whole phrase as a description of the state of the antediluvian unbelievers while alive. They are characterized as in prison, but there is no hint that they were so when preached to. The legendary view (which is not A. F.’s) fails also in moral connection and import. The judgment of all flesh at that time came in the flood; their spirits are in prison since, kept for a more solemn judgment in the resurrection of the unjust.