do not always, in Scripture language, mean unending.  But on this he laid no stress.  He did not doubt, he said, that this at all events was their meaning wherever they occurred in the passages in question.  He mentioned, only to set aside the objection raised by Locke and others, that death could not mean eternal life in misery.[271] He thought the solemn assertion applied typically to the Israelites, and confirmed (to show its immutability) by an oath that they should not ‘enter into his rest,’ entirely precluded Origen’s idea of a final restitution.[272] He even supposed, although somewhat dubiously, that ’whenever we break the laws of God we fall into his hands and lie at his mercy, and he may, without injustice, inflict what punishment on us he pleases,’[273] and that in any case obstinately impenitent sinners must expect his threatenings to be fully executed upon them.  But in this lay the turning-point of his argument.  ’After all, he that threatens hath still the power of execution in his hand.  For there is this remarkable difference between promises and threatenings—­that he who promiseth passeth over a right to another, and thereby stands obliged to him in justice and faithfulness to make good his promise; and if he do not, the party to whom the promise is made is not only disappointed, but injuriously dealt withal; but in threatenings it is quite otherwise.  He that threatens keeps the right of punishing in his own hands, and is not obliged to execute what he hath threatened any further than the reasons and ends of government do require.’[274] Thus Nineveh was absolutely threatened; ’but God understood his own right, and did what he pleased, notwithstanding the threatening he had denounced.’  Such was Tillotson’s theory of the ‘dispensing power,’ an argument in great measure adopted from the distinguished Arminian leader, Episcopius,[275] and which was maintained by Burnet, and vigorously defended by Le Clerc.[276] It was not, however, at all a satisfactory position to hold.  Intellectually and spiritually, its level is a low one; and even those who have thought little upon the subject will feel, for the most part, as by a kind of instinct, that this at all events is not the true explanation, though it may contain some germs of truth.  To do reasonable justice to it, we must take into account the conflicting considerations by which Tillotson’s mind was swayed.  No one could appeal more confidently and fervently than he does to the perfect goodness of God, a goodness which wholly satisfies the human reason, and supplies inexhaustible motives for love and worship.  We can reverence, he said, nothing but true goodness.  A God wanting in it would be only ’an omnipotent evil, an irresistible mischief.’[277]

But side by side with this principal current of thought was another.  Dismayed at the profligacy and carelessness he saw everywhere around him, he was evidently convinced that not fear only, but some overwhelming terror was absolutely necessary for even the tolerable restraint of human sin and passion.  ‘Whosoever,’ he said, ’considers how ineffectual the threatening even of eternal torments is to the greatest part of sinners, will soon be satisfied that a less penalty than that of eternal sufferings would to the far greater part of mankind have been in all probability of little or no force.’