The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VI. Two Illustrious Questioners of Eternal-Torment Thesis

Two other illustrious men of the century should also be noted who went part way toward the Conditionalist position—Nonconformist hymnist Isaac Watts, in the first half of the century, questioning the dogma of eternity of misery, and Anglican bishop Warburton, in the latter half, demanding to know why the teaching of the final annihilation of the wicked “impeached” the character of God, as some had charged. CFF2 218.4

1. HYMNIST WATTS—DOES NOT “DEATH” INCLUDE “DESTRUCTION” OF SOUL?

DR. ISAAC WATTS (1674-1748), world-famous Nonconformist hymn writer and author of many books, must be cited here. Precocious as a child, he started to study Latin at four, Greek at eight, French at eleven, and Hebrew at thirteen. He was an insatiable reader, and began versifying at the age of seven, even his conversation often taking a metrical turn. Besides his books on pedagogy and ethics, and his Logic (used as a text at Oxford, and other universities), he wrote twenty-nine treatises on theology (fifty-two books in all), and was honored by the Aberdeen and Edinburgh universities, as well as memorialized in Westminster Abbey. His schoolteacher father was thrice imprisoned for his religious beliefs as an Independent. (Pictured on page 217.) CFF2 219.1

Watts was the beloved minister of the noted Mark Lane Independent Chapel, London, situated in what is now the financial district, near the Bank of London. His congregation included merchant princes and other prominent men and not a few of the so-called “aristocrats” of Puritanism. He was counted among the best preachers of his time. CFF2 219.2

Watts, called the father of English hymnody, is best known as writer of some of the best-loved and most widely sung hymns in the English language—“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” “There Is a Land of Pure Delight,” “Joy to the World, the Lord Is Come,” “Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne,” “Alas! and Did My Saviour Bleed,” et cetera. For eighteen years his congregation sang his hymns as they were produced. CFF2 219.3

He wrote in revolt against the monopoly of the psalms of David in the hymnody of the Anglican and Dissenting churches, substituting hymns of “human composure” on the theory that hymns are the congregational offering of praise to God. Therefore, the words ought to be their words. He maintained the right of the New Testament church to sing Christ-centered hymns. This was in sharp contrast with the Calvinistic theory that only the psalms are a fit offering of praise to God. Watts won out after long and determined opposition. His mind was saturated with Scripture. In fact, most of his hymns are couched in the thought and modernized phrasings of Scripture—so much so that they have been aptly characterized as “rhymed theology.” His views carried weight, especially in Independent circles. CFF2 219.4

Despite his earlier views on the intermediate state of the soul between death and the resurrection, and his Calvinistic bent, he later put forth the searching proposition as to “whether the word death might not be fairly construed to extend to the destruction of the life of the soul as well as of the body.” ³¹ This caused a reaction among contenders for indefeasible immortality. In his carefully reasoned treatise The Ruin and Recovery of Mankind (1740), written near the sunset of his life, although admitting that God might continue the life of some in order that they might suffer long, he broke with the dogma of the endless eternity of suffering. Two terse excerpts must suffice. CFF2 220.1

One of the propositions propounded was:
“As human Life often includes not only Existence but all the blessings that attend it .... so the word Death in the general Notion of it, and in the most obvious and common Sense of Mankind, may reasonably include a Loss of Every Thing which Man possessed, i.e., Existence itself together with all the Blessings of it; and consequently when Death was threatned for Sin, it more obviously appeared to signify, that by Sin Man forfeited every Thing that he had received from his Maker.” ³² CFF2 220.2

He is likewise reported to have held that infants, dying in infancy without baptism, are annihilated. Moreover, in dealing with Scripture testimony he says further:
“There is not one Place of Scripture that occurs to me, where the word Death, as it was first threatned in the Law of Innocency, necessarily signifies a certain miserable Immortality of the Soul, either to Adam, the actual Sinner, or to his Posterity .... That the resurrection of the body to a state of misery is threatned in the Bible for the punishment of Adam’s first sin is what I cannot prove, nor do I know in what text of Scripture to find it.” ³³ CFF2 220.3

Those were fateful admissions. The solid wall of Immortal-Soulism was again breached by this theologian-poet of note. CFF2 221.1

2. BISHOP WARBURTON—CHALLENGES PROPONENTS OF EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT

The second to be noted is WILLIAM WARBURTON (1698-1799), English prelate, controversialist, critic, and bishop of Gloucester. He was trained for the law but abandoned it for the ministry. In this new field he advanced from vicar to prebendary, to king’s chaplain, to dean of Bristol (1757), and then to bishop of Gloucester (1759). He was a friend of John Locke, whose positions he approved. ³⁴ And he pressed for toleration of those who differed in doctrine and worship. (Pictured on page 217.) CFF2 221.2

In his Divine Legation of Moses (1738), with various editions and a German translation, he portrayed the despair and inconsistency of the ancients, and the fallacy of exalting Grecian philosophy to the disparagement of the gospel. Bishop Warburton styled the insistent contenders for everlasting misery as the “unmerciful doctors,” and demanded: “Doth annihilation impeach that wisdom and goodness which God displayed when he brought the soul out of nothing?” ³⁵ CFF2 221.3

As might be expected, Warburton’s position was attacked by many—including Broughton, Turton, Peters, and Tillard. But he stood his ground without retraction, and his challenge remained unanswered. His question stood for another break away in high ecclesiastical circles. CFF2 221.4