be something so high, disinterested, and superhuman, so removed from all
natural and common habits and feelings, that the most earnest and
devoted, whose whole life had been a constant travail of endeavor, a
tissue of almost unearthly disinterestedness, often lived and died with
only a glimmering hope of its attainment.

According to any views then entertained of the evidences of a true
regeneration, the number of the whole human race who could be supposed
as yet to have received this grace was so small, that, as to any
numerical valuation, it must have been expressed as an infinitesimal.
Dr. Hopkins in many places distinctly recognizes the fact, that the
greater part of the human race, up to his time, had been eternally
lost,--and boldly assumes the ground, that this amount of sin and
suffering, being the best and most necessary means of the greatest final
amount of happiness, was not merely permitted, but distinctly chosen,
decreed, and provided for, as essential in the schemes of Infinite
Benevolence. He held that this decree not only _permitted_ each
individual act of sin, but also took measures to make it certain,
though, by an exercise of infinite skill, it accomplished this result
without violating human free agency.

The preaching of those times was animated by an unflinching consistency
which never shrank from carrying an idea to its remotest logical verge.
The sufferings of the lost were not kept from view, but proclaimed with
a terrible power. Dr. Hopkins boldly asserts, that "all the use which
God will have for them is to suffer; this is all the end they can
answer; therefore all their faculties, and their whole capacities, will
be employed and used for this end.... The body can by omnipotence be
made capable of suffering the greatest imaginable pain, without
producing dissolution, or abating the least degree of life or