Priscillian, a Spaniard, was the founder of the Christian sect of Priscillianists, in the year 380. This denomination of Christians believed in the doctrine of Metempsychosis. They held that the souls passed into the bodies of other men, until they were purified, by their transmigrations, of the sins they had committed in an anterior life. They denied the resurrection of human bodies. Priscillian was condemned to death, and the penalty of death was decreed against the Priscillianists. The emperor Maxime, and the pope Leon, used fire, racks, and swords against them; they slew thousands of them, nevertheless they increased so that they were numerous yet in the sixth century in Spain and in Italy. Tillemont, in his Ecclesiastical Memoir, tome 8, refers to Sulpice-Sevère, to Ambrosius, and to St. Augustine, for the confirmation of the above, said concerning the doctrines of the Priscillianists.
The other principal sects of the fourth century were the Donatists, the Photinians, the Macedonians, the Apollinarists, the Jovinians, the Collyridians, and the Pelagians. The Nestorians, the Eutichians, and the Monothelites, sprang up in the fifth century. We have not found in their writings any passages referring to the dogma of endless hell. However we must state that we had the opportunity of perusing only about two-thirds of the numerous and voluminous, we would add tedious, works composed pro and con concerning their respective tenets.
Remark.—Let the reader bear in mind that the most of the Christian sects, whose disbelief of the dogma of endless hell we have traced out above, composed the majority of the Christian body; and also that they have existed, at least, till the middle of the sixth century, the epoch when the fifth council of Constantinople condemned the doctrine held by Origen—that of the transmigration of the souls, and of their temporary punishment.
Conclusion. Therefore the dogma of endless hell was not generally believed by the Christians of the third, of the fourth, and of the fifth centuries.
General conclusion of this third article:
1. We have proved, by the testimony of the Fathers of the second century, and by the doctrines of the numerous Christian sects of the same century, that the dogma of endless hell was even unknown to the Christians of the first and of the second centuries. Then we must conclude that not only the first Christians, namely, the Christians of the first and of the second centuries did not believe in endless hell, but even that they knew nothing about such a dogma.
2. We have proved, by the testimony of the Fathers of the third, of the fourth, and of the fifth centuries, and also by the many Christian sects which existed in the third, in the fourth, and in the fifth centuries, that the Christians did not generally believe, in the said centuries, the dogma of endless hell. Therefore the Christians of the third, of the fourth, and of the fifth centuries, did not generally believe in endless hell.