III. Dobney—Explicitly Maintains Conditionalist Position

Another contemporary was HENRY HAMLET DOBNEY (fl. 1844-1864), able Baptist minister of Maidstone, Kent, who in 1846 published a treatise on The Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishment, which ran through several British and American editions. (Some contained an Appendix reprint of Milton’s The State of the Dead.) In this work Dobney maintained the mortality of man, his sleep in death, and the destruction of the wicked—the basic principles of Conditionalism. This was originally published in smaller tract form in 1844, under the title Notes on Lectures of Future Punishment. ^{1111) Abbot, The Literature of the Doctrine of a Future Life, no. 4320n. See also A. J. Mills, Life-Truth Exponents of the Early 19th Century, p. 153.} Then, in 1864, Dobney wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury protesting a position taken in his Pastoral Letter, which in one place affirmed “the Everlasting Suffering of the Lost.” Both of Dobney’s publications drew sharp fire from a number of Immortal-Soulists.CFF2 320.5

1. SINNERS WILL NOT LIVE FOREVER

The earlier work comprised a series of seven lectures to his congregation at Maidstone, number seven being “Enquiry concerning the terms of Duration employed in the New Testament on this subject.” In this he maintains that the depictions of the fate of the wicked, as given in both Old and New Testaments, instead of indicating that the “sinner will live forever,” actually teach the “opposite.” Sinners are to be “destroyed.” There is to be an “end of them.” They are to cease to be. There is an “utter destruction.” The destroying fire is “unquenchable because nothing should quench it till it had done its awful work.” ^{1212) H. H. Dobney Notes on Lectures of Future punishment, Lecture VII.}CFF2 321.1

2. SAINTS DO NOT GO To HEAVEN AT DEATH

In dealing with the popular contention that at death the saints rise immediately to be with Christ in heaven, Dobney replied that such a concept is “an invention which has not one syllable in Scripture to give it countenance.” ^{1313) Dobney, The Scripture Doctrine of Future Punishment, p. 140.}CFF2 321.2

3. IMMORTALITY NOT PROVABLE FROM REASON

As to the futility of appealing to reason to “prove” man immortal, Dobney says: “Reason cannot prove man to be immortal. We may devoutly enter the temple of nature, we may reverently tread her emerald floor, and gaze on her blue, ‘star-pictured ceiling,’ but to our anxious inquiry, though proposed with heart-breaking intensity, the oracle is dumb, or like those of Delphi and Dodona, mutters only an ambiguous reply that leaves us in utter bewilderment.” ^{1414) Ibid., pp. 107, 108.}CFF2 321.3

His was another in the growing number of Conditionalist voices heard just at this time.CFF2 322.1