All the early Fathers considered the fire of hell as a real material fire. Justin Martyr, who wrote before the collection of the Gospels, said in his first Apology, chap. xxi., "We believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire." In numerous other passages he refers to punishment in eternal fire; and says (First Apol., chap. hi), "then shall they repent, when it profits them not." Athenagoras, too (chap. xxxvi.), declares that "the body which has ministered to the irrational impulses of the soul, and to its desires, will be punished along with it."
St. Irenæus, the first of the Fathers who definitely alludes to the four Gospels, says, in his work against heresies (bk. ii., chap. 28, § 7), "That eternal fire is prepared for sinners, both the Lord has plainly declared, and the rest of the Scriptures demonstrate. And that God foreknew that this would happen, the Scriptures do in like manner demonstrate, since He prepared eternal fire from the beginning for those who were afterwards to transgress His commandments." What a blessed thing is Christianity to reveal such a nice loving Father as this!
So Bishop Hippolytus, in his Refutation of all Heresies, bk. x. chap. 30, speaks of "the boiling flood of hell's eternal lake of fire, and the eye ever fixed in menacing glare of [wicked] angels chained in Tartarus as punishment for their sins."
Tertullian, in his treatise on the Resurrection of the Flesh, chap. xxxv., declares "The fire of hell is eternal—expressly announced as an everlasting penalty," and he asks, "whence shall come the weeping and gnashing of teeth if not from eyes and teeth?" In his treatise, De Anima, chap. vii., he thus alludes to the story of Dives. "Do you suppose that this end of the blessed poor man and the miserable rich man is only imaginary? Then why the name of Lazarus in this narrative, if the circumstance is not in [the category of] a real occurrence?" This Christian Father absolutely gloats over the prospect of witnessing these torments:—"Which sight gives me Joy? which rouses me to exultation?—as I see so many illustrious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove himself, and those, too, who bore witness of their exaltation; governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more fierce than those which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ!" He exultingly continues: "I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; of viewing the play-actors much more 'dissolute' in the dissolving flame; of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his chariot of fire; of witnessing the wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows."* An echo of this famous passage may be traced in Cardinal Newman's sermon "On Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings."
St. Cyprian, in his address to Demetrianus, says: "We are rendered patient by our security of a vindication to come. The innocent give place to the guilty; the guileless acquiesce in their punishments and tortures, certain and assured that anything we suffer will not remain unavenged.... What joy for the believers, what sorrow for the faithless; to have refused to believe here, and now be unable to return in order that they may believe! Hell ever burning will consume the accursed, and a devouring punishment of lively flames; nor will there be that from whence their torments can ever receive either repose or end. Souls with their bodies will be saved unto suffering in tortures infinite. There that man will be seen by us for ever, who made us his spectacle here for a season; what brief enjoyment those cruel eyes received from the persecutions wrought upon us will be balanced against a spectacle eternal." And the savage saint backs up his pleasant prospect with "Holy Scripture."
* De Spectaculis, c. 30. I have quoted the rendering in the
orthodox Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. xi., pp. 34-35.
Gibbon's version is more forcible.
Lactantius, in his Divine Institutes, bk. vi., chap. 3, contrasts the immortality promised to the righteous with "everlasting punishment threatened to the unrighteous." In bk. vii. chap. 21, he says, "because they have committed sins in their bodies, they will again be clothed with flesh that they may make atonement in their bodies; and yet it will not be that flesh with which God clothed man, like this our earthly body, but indestructible and abiding for ever, that it may be able to hold out against tortures and everlasting fire."
St. Chrysostom represents the torments of the damned in a variety of horrid pictures. He says: "But if you are speaking against luxury, and introduce discourse by the way concerning hell, the thing will cheer you and beget much pleasure. Let us not then avoid discourses concerning hell, that we may avoid hell. Let us not banish the remembrance of punishment, that we may escape punishment. If the rich man had reflected upon that fire, he would not have sinned; but because he never was mindful of it, therefore he fell into it."*
* Homily on 2 Thess. i., 1-2.
In Homily on 2 Thess. i., 9-10, "It is not only not milder, but much more terrible than is threatened." Hear the golden-mouthed Father (Homily on Heb. i., 1-2): "Let us then consider how great a misery it must be to be for ever burning, and to be in darkness, and to utter unnumbered groanings, and to gnash the teeth and not even to be heard.... Think what it is when we are burning with all the murderers of the whole world neither seeing, nor being seen.... Wherefore I entreat you," continues the saint, "to be ever revolving these things with yourselves, and to submit to the pain of the words, that we may not have the things to undergo as our punishment." Again he says (Hom. Heb. xi. 37-38), "Why, what are ten thousand years to ages boundless and without end? Not so much as one drop to the boundless ocean.... Were it not well to be cut [by scourging] times out of number, to be slain, to be burned, to undergo ten thousand deaths, to endure everything whatsoever that is dreadful both in word and deed?"*