[229] Ibid. p. 516.
[230] Milman, History of Latin Christianity, ix. 88, n. k.
[231] Alger, op. cit. p. 516 sq.
[232] Alger, op. cit. pp. 518, 520. Cf. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, xxi. 2 sqq.
[233] For the numbers of souls supposed to be lost see Alger, op. cit. p. 530 sqq. St. Chrysostom (In Acta Apostolorum Homil. XXIV. 4 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Graeca, lx. 189]) doubted whether out of the many thousands of souls constituting the Christian population of Antioch in his day one hundred would be saved. And at the end of the seventeenth century a History Professor at Oxford published a book to prove “that not one in a hundred thousand (nay probably not one in a million) from Adam down to our times, shall be saved” (Du-Moulin, Moral Reflections upon the Number of the Elect, title page).
[234] Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, iii. Supplementum, qu. xciv. 1. 2 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Secunda, iv. 1393).
[235] Jonathan Edwards, Works, vii. 480. Alger, op. cit. p. 541.
In the present times there is a distinct tendency among Christian theologians to humanise somewhat the doctrines of the future life.[236] But if Christianity is to be judged from the dogmas which almost from its beginning until quite recent times have been recognised by the immense majority of its adherents, it must be admitted that its conception of a heavenly Father and Judge has been utterly inconsistent with all ordinary notions of goodness and justice. Calvin himself avowed that the decree according to which the fall of Adam involved, without remedy, in eternal death so many nations together with their infant children, was a “horrible” one. “But,” he adds, “no one can deny that God foreknew the future final fate of man before he created him, and that he did foreknow it because it was appointed by his own decree.”[237]
[236] Thus the doctrine of endless torments is opposed by a considerable number of theologians (Alger, op. cit. p. 546), and, “if held, is not practically taught by the vast majority of the English clergy” (Stanley, op. cit. p. 94).
[237] Calvin, op. cit. iii. 23. 7, vol. ii. 151.