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| Of Hell, and the Nature of Eternal Punishments.
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Chapter 9.—Of Hell, and the
Nature of Eternal Punishments.
So then what God by His prophet has
said of the everlasting punishment of the damned shall come to
pass—shall without fail come to pass,—“their worm shall not
die, neither shall their fire be quenched.”1505
In order to impress this upon us
most forcibly, the Lord Jesus Himself, when ordering us to cut
off
our members, meaning thereby those persons whom a man
loves as the most useful members of his body, says, “It is better
for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go
into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where their
worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched.” Similarly of
the foot: “It is better for thee to enter halt into life, than
having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never
shall be quenched; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not
quenched.” So, too, of the eye: “It is better for thee to
enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to
be cast into hell fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire
is not quenched.”1506
He did not shrink from using the
same words three times over in one passage. And who is not
terrified by this repetition, and by the threat of that punishment
uttered so vehemently by the lips of the Lord Himself?
Now they who would refer both the
fire and the worm to the spirit, and not to the body, affirm that
the wicked, who are separated from the kindgdom of God, shall be
burned, as it were, by the anguish of a spirit repenting too late
and fruitlessly; and they contend that fire is therefore not
inappropriately used to express this burning torment, as when the
apostle exclaims “Who is offended, and I burn not?”1507
The
worm, too, they think, is to be similarly understood. For it is
written they say, “As the moth consumes the garment, and the worm
the wood, so does grief consume the heart of a man.”1508
But they
who make no doubt that in that future punishment both body and soul
shall suffer, affirm that the body shall be burned with fire, while
the soul shall be, as it were, gnawed by a worm of anguish.
Though this view is more reasonable,—for it is absurd to suppose
that either body or soul will escape pain in the future
punishment,—yet, for my own part, I find it easier to understand
both as referring to the body than to suppose that neither does;
and I think that Scripture is silent regarding the spiritual pain
of the damned, because, though not expressed, it is necessarily
understood that in a body thus tormented the soul also is tortured
with a fruitless repentance. For we read in the ancient
Scriptures, “The vengeance of the flesh of the ungodly is fire
and worms.”1509
It might
have been more briefly said, “The vengeance of the ungodly.”
Why, then, was it said, “The flesh of the ungodly,” unless
because both the fire and the worm are to be the punishment of the
flesh? Or if the object of the writer in saying, “The vengeance
of the flesh,” was to indicate that this shall be the punishment
of those who live after the flesh (for this leads to the second
death, as the apostle intimated when he said, “For if ye live
after the flesh, ye shall die”1510
, let each one make his own choice,
either assigning the fire to the body and the worm to the
soul,—the one figuratively, the other really,—or assigning both
really to the body. For I have already sufficiently made out that
animals can live in the fire, in burning without being consumed, in
pain without dying, by a miracle of the most omnipotent Creator, to
whom no one can deny that this is possible, if he be not ignorant
by whom has been made all that is wonderful in all nature. For it
is God Himself who has wrought all these miracles, great and small,
in this world which I have mentioned, and incomparably more which I
have omitted, and who has enclosed these marvels in this world,
itself the greatest miracle of all. Let each man, then, choose
which he will, whether he thinks that the worm is real and pertains
to the body, or that spiritual things are meant by bodily
representations, and that it belongs to the soul. But which of
these is true will be more readily discovered by the facts
themselves, when there shall be in the saints such knowledge as
shall not require that their own experience teach them the nature
of these punishments, but as shall, by its own fullness and
perfection, suffice to instruct them in this matter. For “now
we know in part, until that which is perfect is come;”1511
only, this
we believe about those future bodies, that they shall be such as
shall certainly be pained by the fire.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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