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punishment of those who die impenitent that there is no room for us to doubt what was the teaching in the early Church. It is necesary to quote from only a few of them, and without

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"Err not, my brethren; they who corrupt houses shall not inherit the kingdom of God. If then they who do these things according to the flesh, how much more, if one, in evil teaching, corrupt the faith of God, for which Jesus Christ was crucified! One so defiled will go into the unquenchable fire, and in like way he who heareth him." St. Ignatius of Antioch. A. D. 110.

St. Polycarp when threatened with death by burning, said, "You threaten me with fire that burns for one hour and then cools, not knowing the judgment to come nor the perpetual torment of eternal fire to the ungodly." Epistle of the Church of Smyrna.

"The fire of the savage tortures became cool to them, for they had before their eyes to escape the eternal fire which is never extinguished, and with the eyes of their heart they looked up to the good things stored for those who endured, which neither ear hath heard nor eye seen, nor came into the heart of men. Epistle of the Church of Smyrna.

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"Plato said to the same effect, that Rhadamanthus and Minos would punish the wicked when they came to them; we say that the same thing will take place; but that the Judge will be Christ, and that their souls will be united to the same bodies, and will undergo an eternal punishment; and not, as he said, a period of a thousand years only." St. Justin Martyr. A. D. 150.

"There is one God, Who when this world shall have been brought to an end, shall judge His own worshippers unto the restitution of eternal life, the wicked unto fire equally perpetual and continual." Tertullian. A. D. 200.

"The punishment of such as believe not the Word of God, and despise His coming and turn backward, is extended: in that it is made not only temporal, but likewise eternal. For to whomsoever the Lord shall say, ' Depart from Me ye cursed, into perpetual fire,' those will be for ever condemned; and to whomsoever He shall say, Come ye blessed of My Father,

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receive the inheritance of the Kingdom which is prepared for you for ever,' these receive the Kingdom and go on profiting for ever." St. Irenaeus. 4. D. 202.

"To those who have done well shall be assigned righteously eternal bliss, and to the lovers of iniquity shall be given eternal punishment. And the fire, which is unquenchable and without end, awaits these latter, and a certain fiery worm which dieth not." St. Hippolytus. A. D. 237.

"Let him fear to die, who is to pass from death here into the second death; let him fear to die, on whom at his going away from life, an eternal flame will lay pains that never cease." St. Cyprian. A. D. 250.

"I know of a cleansing fire, which Christ came to cast upon the earth, Who Himself is mystically called also a fire. And the quality of this fire is to consume what is material, and evil dispositions, which also He willeth to be kindled very quickly. For He longeth to do good quickly, since He giveth coals of fire also to our succour. I know also a fire, not cleansing, but also punishing; whether that fire of Sodom, which God raineth on all sinners, mingled with brimstone and storm; or that which was prepared for the devil and his angels; or that which goeth before the face of the Lord, and shall burn up His enemies round about; and that which is more formidable than these, which is joined with the sleepless worm, which is not quenched, but is co-enduring throughout eternity with the wicked. For all these belong to destructive power, unless anyone willeth to understand this too in a milder way, and worthily of Him Who punisheth." St. Gregory. A. D. 320.

"Wherefore the Lord hath declared that for such things the punishment shall be to both [Arians and Pharisees] without pardon, in that He says, Whoso shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in the world to come. "" St. Athanasius. A. D. 326.

"But if, considering the long patience of God, which is lengthened out to the advancement of man's salvation, he shall behave insolently to his fellow-servants, and give himself up to the evils and vices of the world, living only for things present in

provision for the belly, the Lord will come, on a day unlookedfor, and sever him from the good things which He had promised, and will appoint his portion with hypocrites in an eternity of punishment." St. Hilary. A. D. 350.

"That fire which is unquenchable, not consuming what it devoureth, for it was not appointed to consume, but to cause suffering and agony.- It burneth with mingled darkness and gnashing of teeth: it devoureth and wasteth and consumeth; darkness and not light; causing suffering and not extinguished; for it is for ever, as it is written." St. Ephraem. A. D. 370.

"And perhaps more fearful than the darkness and the eternal fire is that shame, which sinners will have as their companion in eternity, having ever before their eyes the traces of that sin in the flesh, as a dye which cannot be washed out, abiding for ever in the memory of their souls." St. Basil. A. D.

370.

"The unspeakable light shall receive the one, and the contemplation of the holy and royal Trinity, now shining in them more clearly and purely, and wholly mingling Itself with the whole mind, which I conceive alone to be especially the kingdom of heaven; but to those others, the torment will be, with the rest or rather above all the rest, to be cast off from God, and that shame in the conscience which hath no end." St. Gregory Nazianzen. A. D. 370.

"He who hath not received here remission of sins, will not be there. For he will not be able to attain to eternal life; for eternal life is the remission of sins." St. Ambrose. A. D. 380.

"In that time, when all shall be of one age, and the holy and the sinner shall be perfect in the like resurrection and shall not vary in time, but one shall be taken to reward, another dragged to punishment, and therein shall the sinner be cursed, that, his body being uncorrupt, he shall suffer eternal punishment." St. Jerome. A. D. 395.

"Such are their circumstances in this world; but those in the next, what discourse shall exhibit? the intolerable furnaces, the rivers burning with fire, the gnashing of teeth, the chains never to be loosed, the envenomed worm, the rayless gloom,

the never-ending miseries. Let us fear them, beloved, let us fear the fountain of so great punishments, the destroyer of our salvation." St. Chrysostom. A. D. 400.

"For to die unredeemed, yet laden with the weight of sin, to whom is it doubtful where this will conduct the soul of man? For deep Hades will, I deem, receive such an one, and he will continue in great darkness, yea he will inhabit fire and flames, with reason numbered among those, of whom it has been said by Prophet's voice, Their worm shall not die neither shall their fire be quenched,' and they shall be for a sight to all flesh." St. Cyril of Alexandria. A. D. 412.

"After the resurrection, when the general Judgement hath been made and finished, then shall the two kingdoms have their accomplishment; the one, that is, the kingdom of Christ, the other, the kingdom of the devil; the one of the good, the other of the evil; either, however, both of angels and men. To the one there shall not be possible the will, to the other the power, of sinning, or any occasion of death; the one in eternal life living truly and happily, the other abiding unhappily in eternal death without the power of dying; since both are without end." St. Augustine. A. D. 430.

"The just shall be separated from the unjust, the innocent from the guilty; and when the sons of mercy, after the rehearsal of works of mercy, shall have received the kingdom prepared for them, the unjust will be upbraided with the hardness of their barrenness; and those on the left, having nothing in common with those on the right, shall, by the condemnation of the Almighty Judge, be sent into the fire prepared for the torment of the devil and his angels, to have community of punishment with him, whose will they chose to do. Who then would not be in terror of that lot of eternal tortures? Who would not fear ills, never to be ended? But since severity is denounced with a view to mercy, we must, in these days, live with largeness of mercies, that it may be possible for man, after a perilous negligence, by returning to works of mercy, to be freed from this sentence." St. Leo. A. D. 440.

"After death there is no longer turning, no longer repentance, not that God would not accept repentance, for He cannot deny Himself, nor doth He cast away His compassion: but the soul is no longer converted. Wherefore, although any one do all righteousnesses, but, turning, sins and departs from life, longing for sin, he will die in his sin. In like way also the sinner, if he repent and die in his repentance, his sins are remembered no more. For as the daemons do not repent after their fall, nor do the angels now sin, but both have come to have unchangeableness, so men too after death acquire unchangeableness." St. John Damascene. A. D. 730.

The appeal to reason. The appeal to reason, in the face of the teaching of the whole Church throughout her whole history, borne out by the teaching of Holy Scripture, would seem to be unnecessary. But the argument that the love of God for man is so great that He will not see any perish eternally, seems on the face of it so strong that it may hinder some from a proper apprehension of His doctrine. Of course it is not true that God's love demands that all souls shall be saved eternally. The love of God demands that every human being shall have the choice between good and evil, else were we not created in God's image. As a matter of fact, we know that we have the right of choice. If we had not, we should be reduced to the condition of the "beasts that perish." In other words, although God desires all souls with a "love that passeth knowledge," He still does not ordain that any soul shall be saved against its will. And if the soul wills not to believe in, to love, and to obey God, that soul chooses to be separated from God; and it would be a violation of divine justice to force that soul at any time during its eternal existence into the presence of God. St. Justin Martyr says: "Because God in the beginning created the race both of Angels and of men, with free-will, they will justly suffer in eternal fire the penalty of whatever they have done amiss; for it is the nature of every creature to be capable of vice and of virtue; nor would any of them be praise-worthy, if it had not the power of being turned toward either." St. Irenaeus says: "If then the Advent of the Son

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