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III. Nor did he stand altogether alone in the church. The orthodox of this age may be divided into five classes, with respect to their views of future punishment and the final extent of salvation : 1. The most rigid among them believed that none would hereafter be saved, except those who died in the true faith, and in the exercise of godliness; and most, if not all of these held, for the less deserving saints, a mild purgatory, by which they were to be thoroughly cleansed, before their admission into heaven. Such were the sentiments of the famous Augustine", the oracle of the western church. 2. Another class held, in substance with the more ancient fathers Lactantius, Hilary, Basil and Ambrose, that all would finally be saved, who continued to the last in the catholic faith and discipline, whatever were their moral characters; but that such of them as lived wickedly should suffer a long and excruciating trial by fire in the future world, before their reception to bliss. This, probably, was the common, the popular belief; and Jerome must be numbered among its professed advocates.

"God alone, whose measure not only of mercy, but of torment is just, and "who knows whom to judge, and in what manner, and how long to punish. "We may only say, as becomes human frailty, Lord, contend not with me "in thy fury, nor in thy wrath take me away. (Ps.) And as we believe "in the eternal torments of the devil and of all deniers and impious men "who have said in their heart There is no God; so we may suppose that "the sentence of the Judge on those sinners and impious persons who "nevertheless are christians, and whose works are to be tried and purged "in the fire, will be moderated and mixed with mercy." Considering Jerome's usual positiveness, and especially his violence in the late cen tention, I cannot satisfactorily account for the foregoing language, se moderate if not even equivocal, without supposing that he himself secretly agreed with those Restorationists of whom he speaks.

n Augustin. De Civitate Dei Lib. xx. cap. 1. and xxi. 24, and 26. See also Du Pin's Biblioth. Patrum, Art. Augustine.

3, Others believed that all would eventually be saved, who had been baptized in the catholic church, and had partaken of the eucharist, into whatever crimes, errors and heresies they might afterwards have fallen; alleging in their support, the declarations of the Saviour, that whoever eateth of this bread, shall live forever, and the remark of the apostle, that the church is the body of Christ. 4, There were some of the orthodox, who, though they held agreeably to the decision of the late councils against Origen, that the devil and his angels would suffer endless punishment, believed, nevertheless, that all mankind, without exception, would be saved; the wicked, after ages of torment in hell. 5, The last class of the orthodox, which was undoubtedly small, held that God had indeed threatened future misery on the impenitent, but that the saints, at the great judgment day, would so earnestly intercede with the Almighty in behalf of the world, that all mankind, even the impious and the infidels, would be saved, without any suffering at all; while the devil and his angels should be abandoned to endless torture. To prove the right of God to remit his threatenings, they adduced the judgment denounced, but not executed, upon Nineveh.

All his variety of opinion appears to have been tolerated in the church; and it is natural to suppose that there were some who still held in secret, with Origen, that all intelligences, including the apostate angels, would ultimately be reconciled to God.

o Augustin. De Civit. Dei Lib. xxi. cap. 17-21.

A. D. 410, to 415.

IV. This last opinion, heretical as it had been adjudged, was certainly spreading, and openly taught, in the northeastern province of Spain, that now bears the name of Catalonia. About fifty miles beyond the mouth of the Ebro, stands the modern city of Tarragona, on the venerable ruins of the ancient metropolis, Tarraco; which, from the summit of a gentle eminence, overlooked the Mediterranean to the south, and a fertile country around P. Two of the citizens, by the name of Avitus, having spent some time in the east, returned not far from A. D. 410; and one of them brought from Jerome in Palestine, the correct translation of Origen's books Of Principles, together with a long Letter pointing out their erroneous doctrines . But the antidote proved only a partial preventive. While the two friends rejected some of Origen's speculations, they adopted others; and with the assistance of one Basil, a Grecian, they proceeded to teach among the people the following peculiar tenets: 1, That all things had, from eternity, a real existence in the mind of Deity. 2, That angels, human souls and demons were of one uniform, equal substance, and originally of the same rank; and that their present diversity is the consequence of their former deserts. 3, That this world was made for the punishment and purification of the souls which had sinned in the pre-existent state. 4, That the flames of future torment are not material fire but only the remorse of conscience. 5, That they are

P Swinburne's Travels in Spain.

a Hieronymi Epist. xciv. vel. 59, ad Avitum. See Sect. ii. of this chapter, Note i.

not endless; for although they are called everlasting, yet that word in the original Greek, does not, according to its etymology, and its frequent use, signify endless, but answers only to the duration of an age; so that every sinner, after the purification of his conscience, shall return into the unity of the body of Christ. 6, That the devil himself will at length be saved, when all his wickedness shall have been subdued. 7, That Christ had been employed, before his advent on to the angels and exalted powers. moon and stars, are to be reckoned among those intelligent rational creatures who, according to St. Paul, were made subject to vanity, and likewise to hoper.

A. D. 415.

earth, in preaching 8, That the sun,

These doctrines, together with the separate heresy of the Priscillianists which flourished in Spain, caused so much disturbance at Tarraco and its neighborhood, that two of the bishops at length sent a deputation on the subject to Augustine in Africa; and he wrote, immediately, in return a small book Against the Priscillianists and Origenists, but chiefly against the latter. In opposition to their views of future punishment, he asserted the materiality of its fire, and laboriously defended the eternity of its duration attempting to maintain that the original word, translated everlasting, always signified endless. But because there might be some exceptions, as he at the same time inconsistently admitted,he then changed his ground, and resorted to that declaration of Christ, These shall go

Orosii Consultatio sive Commonitorium ad Augustin. inter Augustini Opp, Tom. vi. Edit. Basil, 1569.

away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal, (Matt. xxv. 46,) where the same Greek word was applied to the torments of the damned, and to the bliss of the saints: so that if the, Origenists would, through compassion, limit the duration of the former, they must also restrict that of the latter. But even if

this should not convince them, how could they elude that declaration of the prophet Isaiah, their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched? (Isa. lxvi. 24$.)

Such is the order and substance of his arguments. It is remarkable, that here we meet with the earliest attempt at criticism on that original word which has been the subject of so much useless controversy in modern times. But Augustine, a Latin writer, was very imperfectly acquainted with the Greek language; and if we may judge from what we have observed in our own day, his criticisms were accounted satisfactory by the determined believers in endless misery, but absurd, by the Universalists. A few years afterwards, in composing a general body of Divinity, he repeated some of these arguments, with several additions, and combatted the notions of all the several classes just mentioned, who extended the happiness of heaven beyond the number who died in faith and holiness t. He has furnished the moderns with many of the trite but popular objections which are now alleged from the scriptures, against the salvation of all mankind.*

Augustini Lib. Contra Priscillianistas et Origenistas, Tom. vi. t Augustin. De Civit. Dei Lib. xxi. cap. 23-24. * As a specimen of his reasoning, or declamation, which with him

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