Note 93 — Chapter IV · PROBATION, AS IMPLYING TRIAL, DIFFICULTIES, AND DANGER.[84]

[They are an answer, but a cavil remains,—viz.: “the difference between temporal and eternal things, is so vast that the cases are not analogous.” Fairly considered, the cases are analogous, differing only in degree, and not at all in principle. What would be wrong on a great scale, is wrong on a small one.Perhaps the analogy may be pressed further. As the happiness and life of some animals, may be sacrificed for the benefit of man, why may not the happiness and life of some men, be sacrificed for the good of innumerable beings of a higher order, who witness the affairs of this earth? It would but be securing “the greatest good of the greatest number.” No analogies could teach this, for analogies of course teach nothing. But if the Scriptures contained this doctrine, immensely more repugnant than that which our author is here defending, would analogy offer repellant presumptions?]