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| Against Those Who are of Opinion that the Punishment Neither of the Devil Nor of Wicked Men Shall Be Eternal.
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Chapter 23.—Against Those Who are
of Opinion that the Punishment Neither of the Devil Nor of Wicked
Men Shall Be Eternal.
First of all, it behoves us to
inquire and to recognize why the Church has not been able to
tolerate the idea that promises cleansing or indulgence to the
devil even after the most severe and protracted punishment. For
so many holy men, imbued with the spirit of the Old and New
Testament, did not grudge to angels of any rank or character that
they should enjoy the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom after
being cleansed by suffering, but rather they perceived that they
could not invalidate nor evacuate the divine sentence which the
Lord predicted that He would pronounce in the judgment, saying,
“Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for
the devil and his angels.”1541
For
here it is evident that
the devil and his angels shall burn in everlasting fire. And
there is also that declaration in the Apocalypse, “The devil
their deceiver was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where
also are the beast and the false prophet. And they shall be
tormented day and night for ever.”1542
In the former passage
“everlasting” is used, in the latter “for ever;” and by
these words Scripture is wont to mean nothing else than endless
duration. And therefore no other reason, no reason more obvious
and just, can be found for holding it as the fixed and immovable
belief of the truest piety, that the devil and his angels shall
never return to the justice and life of the saints, than that
Scripture, which deceives no man, says that God spared them not,
and that they were condemned beforehand by Him, and cast into
prisons of darkness in hell,1543
being reserved to the judgment of
the last day, when eternal fire shall receive them, in which they
shall be tormented world without end. And if this be so, how can
it be believed that all men, or even some, shall be withdrawn from
the endurance of punishment after some time has been spent in it?
how can this be believed without enervating our faith in the
eternal punishment of the devils? For if all or some of those to
whom it shall be said, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels,”1544
are not to
be always in that fire, then what reason is there for believing
that the devil and his angels shall always be there? Or is
perhaps the sentence of God, which is to be pronounced on wicked
men and angels alike, to be true in the case of the angels, false
in that of men? Plainly it will be so if the conjectures of men
are to weigh more than the word of God. But because this is
absurd, they who desire to be rid of eternal punishment ought to
abstain from arguing against God, and rather, while yet there is
opportunity, obey the divine commands. Then what a fond fancy is
it to suppose that eternal punishment means long continued
punishment, while eternal life means life without end, since Christ
in the very same passage spoke of both in similar terms in one and
the same sentence, “These shall go away into eternal punishment,
but the righteous into life eternal!”1545
If both destinies are
“eternal,” then we must either understand both as
long-continued but at last terminating, or both as endless. For
they are correlative,—on the one hand, punishment eternal, on the
other hand, life eternal. And to say in one and the same sense,
life eternal shall be endless, punishment eternal shall come to an
end, is the height of absurdity. Wherefore, as the eternal life
of the saints shall be endless, so too the eternal punishment of
those who are doomed to it shall have no end.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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