Canon Farrar is not happy in his rejoinder to the argument that to cast a doubt on the endlessness of punishment is to invalidate the argument for the endlessness of bliss, since both rest on exactly the same Biblical sanction. There are three replies, cumulatively exhaustive, which he has failed to adduce.... (Firstly, evil and temptation are banished from heaven; Second, the two arguments do not rest on the same Biblical sanction) ... Thirdly, the difference of the two eternities, heaven and hell, consists in the presence or absence of God. Let us put α for each of those eternities or aeons, and θ to denote Him. The assertion of the equality of the two, then, is that α + θ = α - θ, which can stand only if θ = 0, the postulate of atheism.
Rev. R. F. Littledale, D.C.L.
Both these passages come from an Article in the Contemporary for April, 1878.
As this book is partly intended to revive the memories of forty years ago, I include these out of the passages in my commonplace book which refer to the intense struggle that then raged over the question of Eternal Punishment. Surely no other word, since the world began, raised so tremendous an issue, created such conflict and caused so much heart-burning as the one word αἰώνιος.
(Liddell and Scott, 1901, gives the following meanings for αἰώνιος: lasting for an age, perpetual, everlasting, eternal.)
I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of Hell, nor never grew pale at the description of that place. I have so fixed my contemplations on Heaven, that I have almost forgot the Idea of Hell, and am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one, than endure the misery of the other: to be deprived of them is a perfect Hell, and needs, methinks, no addition to compleat our afflictions. That terrible term hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof. I fear GOD, yet am not afraid of Him: His Mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before His Judgments afraid thereof.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) (Religio Medici).