5. That the reprobate cannot escape. Glorious gospel!
6. That God hates the most of the race and has from eternity doomed them to eternal woe.
And all this is the gospel of glad tidings!
Suppose we expose the delusion of eternal torments, what does man want in its place? Does he need a smaller hell to taper off on, before he can give up hell altogether? What does any one want in place of infant damnation? And so also with witchcraft, polygamy, slavery, and many other wrongs—must we have something to take their place? I heard of a kid gloved dude, who put his finger into a bucket of water, and after taking it out looked for the hole in the water. As well might the poor fellow sick in the hospital ask the doctor, who promises to cure him of the small pox, what he will give him in its stead. Does he want the itch or measles in place of the small pox?
“How does the Freethinker come to know so much more than millions of good and great men who for eighteen centuries have believed in Christianity?” (a) Here we have the old question of majorities.
Millions of good and great men once firmly believed in witchcraft.
Luther said: “I would have no compassion on these witches, I would burn them all.”
John Wesley said: “Giving up witchcraft is giving up the Bible.”
Sir Matthew Hale believed in witchcraft.
(b) The good and great men of many ages believed in hell—that is, for somebody else. Practically hell is now in the lower case, if not entirely closed up for repairs.