must have heard from Socrates or Plato, without pooling out on them
scalding words, such as I feel and avow to be blasphemous;)--then he
might perhaps help my faith where it is weakest, and give me (more or
less) aid to maintain a future life dogmatically, instead of hopefully
and doubtfully. But now, to use my friend Martineau's words: "His
method doubles every difficulty without relieving any, and tends to
enthrone a Devil everywhere, and leave a God nowhere."

Since he wrote his second edition of the "Defence," I have brought out
my work called "Theism," in which (without withdrawing my objections
to the popular idea of future _Retribution_) I have tried to reason
out a doctrine of Future Life from spiritual considerations. I have no
doubt that my critic would find them highly aboard, and perhaps would
pronounce them ineffably ludicrous, and preposterous feats of logic.
If I could hide their existence from him, I certainly would, lest he
misquote and misinterpret them. But as I cannot keep the book from
him, I here refer to it to say, that if I am to maintain this most
profound and mysterious doctrine with any practical intensity,
my convictions in the power of the human mind to follow such high
inquiries, need to be greatly _strengthened_, not to be undermined
by such arguments and such detestable pictures of this world, as Mr.
Rogers holds up to me.

He throws at me the imputation of holding, that "man is _most likely_
born for a _dog's life_, and there an end." And is then the life of
a saint for seventy years, or for seven years, no better than a dog's
life? What else but a _long_ dog's life does this make heaven to be?
Such an undervaluing of a short but noble life, is consistent with
the scheme which blasphemes earth in order to ennoble heaven, and then
claims to be preeminently logical. According to the clear evidence of
the Bible, the old saints in general were at least as uncertain as I
have ever been concerning future life; nay, according to the writer
to the Hebrews, "through fear of death they were all their lifetime
subject to bondage." If I had called _that_ a dog's life, how
eloquently would Mr. Rogers have rebuked me!

V. But I must recur to his defence of the profanity with which he
treats sacred sentiments and subjects. After pretending, in p. 5, that
he had ridiculed nothing but the things quoted above, he at length,
in pp. 147-156, makes formal admission of my charge and _justifies
himself_. T