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.  The pith of his general reply is in the following, p. 152:—­

“’Now (says Mr. Newman) I will not here farther insist on the monstrosity of bringing forward St. Paul’s words in order to pour contempt upon them; a monstrosity which no sophistry of Mr. Harrington can justify!’ I think the real monstrosity is, that men should so coolly employ St. Paul’s words,—­for it is a quotation from the treatise on the “Soul,”—­to mean something totally different from anything he intended to convey by them, and employ the dialect of the Apostles to contradict their doctrines; that is the monstrosity ...  It is very hard to conceive that Mr. Newman did not see this....  But had he gone on only a few lines, the reader would have seen Harrington saying:  ’These words you have just quoted were well in St. Paul’s mouth, and had a meaning.  In yours, I suspect, they would have none, or a very different one.’”