"A great chief counts scalps, not hairs."
"You cannot strengthen the bow by poisoning the arrows."
"No one saves water in a flood."
ORIGEN.
Origen considered that the punishment of the wicked consisted in separation from God. There was too much pity in his heart to believe in the flames of hell. But he was condemned as heretical by the Council of Carthage, A. D., 398, and afterwards by other councils.
ST. AUGUSTINE.
St. Augustine censures Origen for his merciful view, and says: "The church, not without reason, condemned him for this error." He also held that hell was in the centre of the earth, and that God supplied the centre with perpetual fire by a miracle.
DANTE.
Dante is a wonderful mixture of melancholy and malice, of religion and revenge, and he represents himself as so pitiless that when he found his political opponents in hell, he struck their faces and pulled the hair of the tormented.
AQUINAS.