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424 Reply to J.N. respecting Dr. Clarke's Recantation, &c.
Biographia Britannica. Art. Chevalier Ramsay. The favourers of Dr. Clarke's opinions will, perhaps, say, that they give no credit to those testimonies ; but other people are at full liberty to say the same of Mr. Clarke's letter : though I must do him the justice to acknowledge, that, by J. N.'s account of that letter (for I never say it), he does not there deny the fact ; he only says, that he has not the least reason to believe that his father ever retracted his sentiments ; which amounts to no more than that he does not know that he did it : but this is a very different thing from saying, he knows that he did NOT do it. I know much may be said of the probability of his telling his son, if he had done it ; but probabilities prove nothing. After all, that passage in Mr. Clarke's letter can refer only to the death-bed retraction above mentioned ; for it is notoriously known to all the world, the Dr. Clarke did, in his life time, make a public recantation of his opinions before the convocation, which recantation I have seen in print ; and, if he did recant, the time of his doing it is not very material : I hope he did it with great sincerity, and therefor am willing to believe that his design in revising his book upon the Trinity, in order to his publishing another edition of it, was to correct those passages in it which had given offence; for I cannot conceive that any man can act so inconsistently, as to republish opinions which her had publicly recanted, without some alleviating explanations. Arius, indeed, acted thus by the Council of Nice ; but I will not suppose that Dr. Clarke intended to follow his example ; if he did, he was a worse man than ever I took him to be. I never saw the third edition of that book ; but nothing can be concluded from the posthumous publication of a book left unfinished by its author, as, I take it for granted, this revisal was, or the Doctor would have published it himself.
Your correspondent J. N. does me great injustice in another point, relating to the word yeevva: he charges me with saying that I do not recollect that the Greek word yeevva is used in the New Testament, except in St. Matthew's Gospel. I will go father than this, for I assert that no such Greek word is used in the New Testament at all ; it is a Hebrew word, as all his Greek lexicons will shew him : and my argument rests entirely upon my assertion that it is a Hebrew, not a Greek word. I am a layman, and not at all versed in the technical books of divines ; I do not deal in concordances, but wrote from memory, and therefore said, I do not recollect, &c. I beg leave to return my thanks to J. N. for his obliging reference to the other places where the word is used, as well as to those where the word [[adng?]] is used in St. Matthew's Gospel : but these make no difference in my argument ; they only prove, that both the Apostles and the Greek translator of St. Matthew's gospel, sometimes used the original Hebrew word, and sometimes the corresponding Greek one. That these words do correspond in their meaning, it is plain from J. N's own concession ; for he acknowledges, that the writers of the New Testament used the word [[yeevva?]] for Hell, or the place of torment by fire. But on whom, or on what, are those torments to be inflicted ? Most certainly, on the souls of wicked men. If so, [[yeevva?]] is the name of the place appointed for their punishment.
As to the Greek word [[adng?]], I suppose that the Apostles understood it in the same manner that the Greeks did ; and, if the Greeks did not mean by it the place appointed for the torment of wicked men after death, I should be glad to know what the name J. N. will give to the place where Prometheus, Ixion, &c. were said by them to be punished. I must leave it to him to reconcile his not believing that the Apostles meaned Hell with his concession above mentioned. I confess I cannot do it. 
After what has been said, I think J. N. can no longer doubt that the Hebrew word [[yeevva?]] and the Greek one [[adng?]] do, in their respective languages, signify the same thing, namely, the place appointed for the punishment of the wicked after death ; which is all that I ever attempted to prove. Where, or what that place is, is no part of the present question.
Lord King's Critical History of the Apostle's Creed is, undoubtedly, a work of great learning, and I often read it with much pleasure and satisfaction ; but, as to the separate state of departed souls, we none of us know any thing about it : and all that is wrote or said upon that subject is mere human conjecture, and to such conjectures I pay no regard, whether they come from Lord King, or from any body else. 
I hope I have by this time sufficiently