Of its
Eternity.

arises repentance that is too late, and a beseeching for comfort that is unavailing. S. Ambrose, commenting on the words There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth,'' says: "What is the outer darkness? Are there any prisons and dungeons to be there undergone? By no means. But whoever are outside of the promises of the heavenly commandments are in outer darkness, for the commandments of GOD are light; and whoever is without CHRIST is in darkness, for CHRIST is light in the darkness. There is neither then any gnashing of bodily teeth, nor any perpetual fire of bodily flames, nor is the worm corporeal. But these are therefore set down, because, as both fevers and worms are bred of much surfeit, so, if a man doth not stay his sins as it were by interposing some sobriety of abstinence, but by mingling sins with sins contracts as it were a surfeit of old and recent offences, he shall be burnt by his own fire and be consumed by his own worms. Whence too Esaias saith; 'Walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled.'s The fire is that which sorrow for offences begets; it is a worm for this reason, that the sins of the irrational soul sting the mind and feeling of the guilty and eat out certain bowels of conscience, which are bred like worms out of each sin, as though out of the body of the sinner. Lastly, the LORD hath declared it by Esaias, saying; They shall look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against Me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched.' The gnashing of teeth also betrays the feeling of one that is indignant, for that it repenteth him too late; too late he bemoans himself; too late he is wroth with himself, that he hath sinned so obstinately." u

§. 6. As the speculations of Origen touching the termination of hell-torments and of death have lately been freely indulged in, I desire to draw attention to the following considerations, namely, that the question mainly turns on 1. the

Erigena, p. 288.

S. Luke xiii. 28.

• Isa. 1. 11.

Ibid lxvi. 24.

" S. Ambros. in Lucam, Lib. vii.

§§. 204-206, T. I. p. 1460.-So Damascene describes the eternal fire, οὐχ ὑλικὸν, οἷον τὸ παρ' ἡμῖν, ἀλλ' οἷον εἰδείη ὁ Θεός. (cap. ult.)

nature of Eternity; 2. the cause of the continuance of punishment after death.

1. If Eternity be an ever-present Now, 'a circular duration, whose instants are always,' (see above, p. 88,) it appears that the damned, bearing their sins with them out of Time into Eternity, are, upon this hypothesis, involved in a circle from which there is no escape. If, again, we admit succession in Eternity, understanding it as a never-ending succession of cons or ages, what ground have we for supposing that what once enters its domain can terminate any more than the endless Time, which is Eternity on that supposition?

2. If the cause of the everlasting continuance of the punishment of the reprobate be (as the Schoolmen maintain) the infinite sinfulness of sin, by reason of the infinite nature of GOD, Whom sin outrages, there is no ground to expect its cessation. If, again, the cause be the voluntary impenitence of the damned themselves, the doctrine of the power of Habit, (as insisted on by Butler,) translated into a state of endless Time, affords little ground for hope. And if Evil belongs to the region of eternal verities, it will surely abide there.

On the other hand may be pleaded the notion, that Evil being finite and a negation rather than a positive entity, and a shadow attendant on sin, its limits may be traversed, as when the moon disappears behind the driving clouds, and again emerges, bright as ever. Believing that the soul is indiscerptible and indestructible, I must in any case reject the notion of its annihilation. "There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease." (Job xiv. 7.) Yet hope as we will, Good and Evil are antithetical in our very conception of

them.

Eternal rest implies its opposite unrest and trouble. Light perpetual suggests the contrast of darkness, or of intermittent light. If fire illumines, it also consumes. And "our GOD is a consuming fire." Terrible thought, if that which makes up to the saved the Beatific Vision of Gon prove an eternal blasting to the lost! I would urge with tenderness and awe, how that when the world lay in wickedness the FATHER so loved it as to give His Only-Begotten to

K K

The Con

clusion.

save it, and that the WORD Who created it became Man and died for it. Hence we infer how heinous is the sin that tramples on such love, and also how the violation of it implies a conscious knowledge and rejection thereof. (See above, pp. 301-333.)

Enough that GOD can do nothing but what is good and just. We will respect the KING's secret, and lay aside contentions about the uncertain.

§. 7. The sure ground we have is, that Gop "will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil." Therefore, to conclude with S. Ambrose; "let us be preachers of the LORD, and praise Him in the sound of the trumpet, not thinking slightly and cheaply of His power, but what may fill the ear of the mind and penetrate the secret of the inmost conscience; so that we may not suppose that those things which suit the body are to be applied to Divinity; nor measure the greatness of Divine power by human strength, so as to seek, how each man may rise again, or with what kind of body he may come, or how things loosened may come together, things lapsed be repaired; for these, as soon as they are determined, are fulfilled by the will of GOD. Neither look we for a sensible hearing of trumpets, but the invisible power of the heavenly magnificence operates, for with GOD to will stands for doing; nor is an effort of the resurrection to be required, but its fruit to be sought for by us."

▾ Rom. ii. 6-9.

LAUS DEO.

De Fide Resurrectionis, Lib. ii. §. 114, Tom. II. p. 1165.