A BRIEF LETTER TO THE PRESIDING ELDER OF THE MILWAUKEE DISTRICT.
By C. W. Turner
[The following letter, which was handed to us printed in tract form, may be interesting to the readers of the REVIEW.] Dear Brother: It seems by the Sentinel, that my case occupied your attention somewhat, at your last District Conference. The unsoundness of doctrine complained of consists, I suppose, in giving the term “death,” as applied to the punishment of the wicked, its primary meaning, and not its poetic, or typical use, as is the fashion in modern pulpits. The District Conference hold that the death and punishment referred to is an eternal process. I hold that it is eternal only in its results, like “eternal judgment” and “eternal redemption,” in the book of Hebrews, and the “eternal fire” of the 7th verse of the book of Jude, that burnt out ages ago, God teaching by example, as well as precept, lest our dullness should mistake his meaning. That this was the doctrine of the church in the first and second centuries, and until corrupted by Platonism, and the teaching of Origen in the succeeding century, and that it has been the doctrine of the Church of England, since 1562, when she purged away her popish errors, and expelled a contrary doctrine, is certain. In the case of Wilson vs. Fendal, to determine whether endless torments was a doctrine of the Church of England, or not, the Lord Chancellor in the case, which occurred 1864, decided it was not. For, remarked his Lordship, to decide that it was, would be to restore the article expelled in 1562; that he had no power to do: and this was in the presence of two Archbishops, and had their approval and signature. (See the report in the Law Times for Feb. 20, 1864.) That the theological articles of the M. E. Church, were taken by Mr. Wesley, the founder of our church, from this source, and contain not one word to prove the endless misery of the wicked, cannot be denied. That in the teachings of the pulpits on this subject it has been sometimes spoken of as Hell white heated, in which sinners burn like salamanders forever, and at others as a state of ill being, something like a grumbling toothache, with all the intervening shades of woe, you will not deny. That Dr. True, whose case was before the public last winter, and myself, should be allowed to modify this doctrine, is but a fair demand. The doctrine is founded on the immortality of the soul, which, says Gibbon, Renan, Dr. John Mason, Good, and a host of Christian writers, some even who oppose us, was of Eastern or heathen origin, found by the Jews in their captivity; and unrecognized by them before that time, but endorsed by Christ, which we deny; for to admit it would be to admit that Christ endorsed a doctrine that places him in antagonism with the Hebrew prophets, with David and Solomon, who say, “The dead know not anything;” that “there is no work, nor knowledge in sheol;” and that the wicked shall “be as though they had not been.” If we put the teachings of one inspired writer in antagonism with another, all our theology will go up like dust. Says Christ: “I am come that ye may have life;” “I give unto them eternal life;” which he never could do if they had it by nature, and without him. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, who died A. D. 181, in a treatise to his friend (it may be found in his second book), says, “God made man neither mortal nor immortal, but capable of either, to be rewarded with immortality if deserving; if not, to experience mortality, or death.” As soon as Origen had taught, in the next century, his modified Platonism, he had to invent Restorationism to go with it, for the human mind can not endure the idea of eternity of woe. Dr. Albert Barnes, and many other sensible men, seem to admit this, and most all have admitted of some purgatorial process by which they get them out. You rarely allude to the subject, but hold it as a sort of home guard or army of reserve to control extreme cases. Should it be preached once a month in all its horrors in your churches, your ministers would soon preach to naked walls. But as I mean to spend the remnant of life in trying to root this doctrine, horse and foot, I withdraw from the M. E. Church, as I want no heated discussion. It is not the first time I have done this. In 1837 I endeavored to convince the church that she ought no longer to give her support to slavery. But Drs. True, Floy, Lee, Matlack, myself, and others were forced to retire, or yield to ecclesiastical will; and after thirty years of toil for reform, the General Conference rescinded its own acts against us, and received back these men as the apostles of human freedom. And the secular papers at the time made a note of the fact; that the church had come in behind the nation in the work of reform. I find Dr. True standing by my side again, though I have had no concert with him. And I think that in a short time after the laity have received this doctrine, it will cover your altars, and be heard from your pulpits. May we soon see that God is not what our imagination and theology have painted him to be; but good, even in his primitive acts, suffering the sentence of perpetual death to fall on that part of his creatures only, who fail to work out their own salvation through faith in his Son, and whose continued existence in sin would be an infinite evil to themselves; his goodness in this, appearing so striking as to lead the redeemed to say, “Hallelujah! the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!” 1. “God’s character saved from the misrepresentation of his friends.” 2. Man saved from the awful thought that some of his elder brethren have been in hell for the past five thousand years. 3. There can be no conflict in the teachings of the inspired writers. Some of them do deny immortality to sin and sinners; therefore none could have held or taught their immortality.