'Give us a millstone,' say the damned, 'as large as the whole earth, and
so wide in circumference as to touch the sky all around and let a little
bird come once in a hundred thousand years and pick off a small particle
of the stone, not larger than the tenth part of a grain of millet, and
after another hundred thousand years let him come again, so that in ten
hundred thousand years he would pick off as much as a grain of millet,
we wretched sinners would desire nothing but that the stone might have
an end, and thus our pains also; yet even that cannot be.'**
* Summæ Suppl. qu 97.
** Quoted in Hagenbach's History of Doctrines, 210, vol.
ii., p. 152
The work of Father Pinamonti, entitled _Hell Opened to Christians_, has
been for over two hundred years one of the most popular among Catholic
Christians. It has also circulated among Protestants. An English
version, with horrible pictures of the torments of the damned, has gone
through many editions. We recommend its purchase to those who complain
of the illustrations in the _Freethinker_, or who desire to see how
savage the Christian religion is at bottom. The Christian Father of
course accepts the literal meaning of hell fire. He says (p. 28): "Every
one that is damned will be like a lighted furnace, which has its own
flames in itself; all the filthy blood will boil in the veins, the
brains in the skull, the heart in the breast, the bowels within the
unfortunate body, surrounded with an abyss of' fire out of which it
cannot escape."
_The Sight of Hell_, by the Rev. J. Fumiss, C.S.S.R., is another popular
work issued "permissu superiorum" among "Books for Children and Young
Persons." A more atrocious composition it is difficult to conceive. The
agony is piled on as though the imagination of the writer revelled in
the description of torture. One specimen, a mild one, will suffice:--
Perhaps at this moment, seven o'clock in the evening, a child is just
going into Hell. To-morrow evening at seven o'clock, go and knock at the
gates of Hell and ask what the child is doing. The devils will go and
look. Then they will come back again and say, _the child is burning!_
Go in a week and ask what the child is doing; you will get the
same answer--_it is burning!_ Go in a year and ask, the same answer
comes--_it is burning!_ Go in a million of years and ask the same
question; the answer is just the same--_it is burning!_ So if you go for
ever and ever, you will always get the same answer--_it is burning in
the fire!_
I declare I would rather put into the hands of any young child
Boccaccio's _Decameron_, or any of the works put on the Roman _Index
Librorum Prohibitorum_, with which I am acquainted, than this pious work
by a Christian Father.
Protestantism did nothing to lighten the realm of outer darkness.
Rather, by its repudiation of the priest-serving doctrine of purgatory,
it rendered more glaring the contrast between the condition of the saved
and that of the non-elect. Calvin asks: "How is it that the fall of Adam
involves so many nations, _with their infant children_, to eternal death
without remedy, unless that it so seemed meet to God?" The same holy
Christian says of the damned: "For ever harassed with a dreadful
tempest, they shall feel themselves torn asunder by an angry God,
and transfixed and penetrated by mortal stings, terrified by the
thunderbolts of God, and broken by the weight of his hand, so that to
sink into any gulf would be more tolerable than to stand for a moment in
these terrors."
According to the _Westminster Confession_, ch. xxxiii.: "The wicked who
know not God and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ, shall be cast into
eternal torments." And the _Larger Catechism_, A. 29, declares: "The
punishments of sin in the world to come are everlasting separation from
the comfortable presence of God, and most grievous torments in soul and
body, without intermission, in hell fire forever." "They that have done
good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil into
everlasting _fire_," is the doctrine of the _Book of Common Prayer_.
Bishop Jeremy Taylor, the prose poet of the Church of England, says in
his discourse on the Pains of Hell*: "We are amazed at the inhumanity of
Phalaris, who roasted men in his brazen bull: this was joy in respect of
that fire of hell which penetrates the very entrails without consuming
them." "Husbands shall see their wives, parents shall see their
children, tormented before their eyes." Picture it, think of it,
Christian, and then give praises to your demon God. The good, really
good, bishop tells us the bodies of the damned shall be crowded together
in hell like grapes in a wine press, which press one another till they
burst. "Every distinct sense and organ shall be assailed with its own
appropriate and most exquisite sufferings." Surely the creed is
accursed which led so worthy a man as Taylor to paint with unction this
description of the Pains of Hell.
* Contemplation of the State of Man, ch. 68.
Our own Milton, liberal in theology though he was, adheres to the
Biblical idea of
Regions of Sorrow! doleful
Shades! where
Peace And Rest can never dwell;
Hope never comes,
That comes to all: but
Torture without End
Still urges, and a fiery
Deluge fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsum'd.
Bishop Hall says: "What, oh, what is it to conceive of lying in a _fire
more intense than nature can kindle_, for hundreds, thousands, millions,
yea millions of millions of years, which, after all, are only a minute
of time compared with eternity."
Dr. Barrow asserts that "our bodies will be afflicted continually by a
sulphurous flame piercing the inmost smews." Wesley says:
Eternity and deep despair
On every flame is written there.
Again he says: "From the moment wherein they are plunged into the lake
of fire, _burning with brimstone_, their torments are not only without
intermission, but likewise without end."
The sight of the torments of the damned in hell will increase the
ecstacy of the saints in heaven. This is the doctrine of St. John,
and it has been repeated by orthodox Christian preachers times without
number. And though orthodox Christian preachers dare not preach it now,
it is the legitimate outcome of their belief. In heaven the angels see
all, and must therefore witness the torments of the damned; and these do
not diminish their happiness, though the damned be their own parents or
their own children.
Jonathan Edwards, one of the most consistent Christians that ever
breathed, devoted a work to the subject. The Thirteenth Sermon of
his _Works_ is entitled "The End of the Wicked contemplated by the
Righteous," and is particularly devoted to the illustration of the
doctrine that "the sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of
the saints forever." "It will," he continues, "not only make them more
sensible of the greatness and freeness of the grace of God in their
happiness, but it really makes their happiness the greater, as it will
make them more _sensible_ of their own happiness. It will give them a
more lively relish of it; it will make them prize it more. When they
see others who were of the same nature, and born under the same
circumstances, plunged in such misery, and they so distinguished, it
will make them the more sensible how happy they are."* In his direful
poem on the Last Day, the once popular Dr. Young makes one of God's
victims vainly ask:
This one, this slender, almost no request:
When I have wept a thousand lives away,
When torment is grown weary of its prey,
When I have ran of anguish'd years in fire
Ten thousand thousands, let me then expire.
The pious Dr. Samuel Hopkins thus displays the Divine character and
illustrates the loving kindness of the blessed Scripture promises: "The
smoke of their torment shall ascend up in the sight of the blessed for
ever and ever, and serve, as a most clear glass before their eyes, to
give them a bright and most effective view. This display of the Divine
character will be most entertaining to all who love God, will give them
the highest and most ineffable pleasure. Should the fire of this eternal
punishment cease, it would in a great measure obscure the light of
heaven and put an end to a great part of the happiness and glory of the
blessed."
Contrast with this holy utterance of the pious Christian, the burning
words of the Atheist poet, James Thomson:
If any human soul at all
Must die the second death, must fall
Into that gulph of quenchless flame
Which keeps its victims still the same,
Unpurified as unconsumed,
To everlasting torments doomed;
Then I give God my scorn and hate,
And turning back from Heaven's gate
(Suppose me got there!) bow, Adieu!
Almighty Devil, damn me too.**
Baxter, in his _Saint's Everlasting Best_, declares: "The principal
author of hell torments is God himself. As it was no less than God whom
the sinner had offended, so it is no less than God who will punish them
for their offences. He has prepared those torments for his enemies....
The everlasting flames of hell will not be thought too hot for the
rebellious; and when they have burnt there for millions of ages, he will
not repent him of the evil which is befallen them."
* The Eternity of Hell Torments, p. 25 (London. 1789).
** Vane's Story.