Page 126 - Gods Plan of the Ages

nature, I fully believe it, either in this world or some after ages." The English literary
reviews of the last century contain many notices of works in defense of Universalism. In
1750 James Relly, who had been a preacher in Whitefield's connection, shocked at the
doctrine of reprobation, was by meditation and study led into another scheme of
redemption, some of the peculiarities of which may be said to have had their origin with
him. Accepting as true the common theory that all men, having sinned in Adam, justly
incurred eternal damnation, and that Christ had borne this infinite guilt and punishment
in behalf of all who should be saved, Relly was moved to find, if possible, some ground of
justice in such a scheme. The divine law explicitly declares that "the soul which sinneth,
it shall die," and that the innocent shall not suffer for the guilty. How could a transfer of
human sin and penalty to Christ be consistent with that law? How could it be reconciled
with equity? The divine sovereignty, without regard to inherent justice in the plan, could
not account for it for the absoluteness that could set justice aside might just as easily, and
more mercifully, have gone straight to its aim by remitting instead of transferring sin and
its deserts. To say that the sufferings of Christ were merely accepted as satisfaction for
human deserts, only reckoned as such, by God's sovereign pleasure, was no adequate
explanation, since they were thus only a fictitious, not a real, satisfaction; and, further,
any sufferings whatsoever, even those of a man, would have answered just as well as an
arbitrary acceptance of the coequal of God. The perfect consistency of God's procedure,
its absolute harmony with justice and equity, Relly found, as he claimed, in such a real
and thorough union of Christ with the human race as made their acts his, and his theirs.
All men, he held, were really in Adam and sinned in him, not by a fictitious imputation,
but by-actual participation; equally so are all men in the second Adam, "the head of every
man," and he is as justly accountable for what they do as is the head in the natural body,
accountable for the deeds of all the members united to that head. Accordingly Christ, in
his corporate capacity, was truly guilty of the offence of the 'human race, and could be, as
he actually was, justly punished for it; and the race, because of this' union, really suffered
in him all the penalty which he endured, and thus fully satisfied justice. There is no more
punishment, therefore, due for sin, nor any further occasion for declaring the demands
of the law, except to make men feel their inability to obey, and thus compel them to an
exclusive reliance on Christ the head. He has effected a complete and finished justification
of the whole world. When man believes this he is freed from the sense of guilt, freed also
from all doubt and fear. Until he believes it he is, whether in this world or in another,
under the condemnation of unbelief and darkness, the only condemnation now possible
to the human race. In illustration and defense of this theory, Relly wrote and published
several books, preached zealously in London and vicinity, and gathered a congregation in
the metropolis. After his death in 1778, two societies were formed from his congregation;
but both have now ceased to exist, as has the society gathered by Winchester about 1789,
and the Church founded by David Thom, D.D., in Liverpool in 1825. The Unitarians in
England are all believers in Universalism, as are also many of the Congregationalists.
3. In America
Universalism is the result of the proclamation of a variety of theories, some of them at a
very early date, all resulting in one conclusion - the final holiness of the human race. Sir
Henry Vane as was said above, was a Universalist. It is not known that while in America
he made any public avowal of that belief; but the presumption is that he did not stand
alone. In July, 1684, Joseph Gatchell, of Marblehead, Mass., was brought before the
Suffolk County Court for discoursing "that all men should be saved," and, being convicted,
was sentenced "to the pillory and to have his tongue drawn forth and pierced with a hot
iron." Dr. George DeBenneville, also mentioned above, came to America in 1741, expressly
called of God, as he believed, to preach the Gospel in the New World. For more than fifty