[220] Ibid. i. 462, 468. Luther and his followers, however, speak more doubtfully about the efficacy of the parents’ unrealised intention, and lay much stress on actual baptism (ibid. i. 469).
[221] Augsburg Confession, i. 9.
[222] Prentiss, loc. cit. p. 550.
[223] Calvin, Institutio Christiana religionis, iv. 15. 10, vol. ii. 371. Norton, Tracts concerning Christianity, p. 179 sqq.
[224] Calvin, op. cit. iv. 16. 9, vol. ii. 383 sq. Wall, op. cit. i. 469. Anderson, ‘Introductory Essay,’ to Logan’s Words of Comfort for Parents bereaved of Little Children, p. xxi.
[225] Toplady, Works, p. 645 sq.
[226] Hodge, Systematic Theology, i. 26 sq.
[227] Prentiss, loc. cit. p. 559. See also Anderson, loc. cit. p. xxiii.
In order fully to realise the true import of the dogma of damnation it is necessary to consider the punishment in store for the condemned. The immense bulk of the Christians have always regarded hell and its agonies as material facts.[228] Origen, who was a Platonist and an heretic on many points, was severely censured for saying that the fire of hell was inward and of the conscience rather than outward and of the body;[229] and in the later Middle Ages Scotus Erigena showed unusual audacity in questioning the locality of hell and the material tortures of the condemned.[230] The punishment is burning—a penalty which even in the most barbaric codes is reserved for the very gravest crimes; and some great divines, like Jeremy Taylor and Jonathan Edwards, have been anxious to point out that the fire of hell is infinitely more painful than any fire on earth, being “fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements.”[231] This awful punishment also exceeds in dreadfulness anything which even the most vivid imagination can conceive, because it will last not for a passing moment, nor for a year or a hundred, thousand, million, or milliard years, but for ever and ever. In case any doubt should arise as regards the physical capacity of the damned to withstand the heat, we are assured by some modern theologians that their bodies will be annealed like glass or asbestos-like or of the nature of salamanders.[232] This, then, is the future state of the large majority of men, quite independently of any fault of their own, or of the degree of their “guilt.”[233] It would seem that even the felicity of the few who are saved must be seriously impaired by their contemplation of this endless and undescribable misery, but we are told that the case is just the reverse. They become as merciless as their god. Thomas Aquinas says that a perfect sight of the punishment of the damned is granted to them that they “may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more richly.”[234] And the Puritans, especially, have revelled in the idea that “the sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints for ever,” as a sense of the opposite misery always increases the relish of any pleasure.[235]
[228] Alger, op. cit. p. 516.