Ne nous imaginons pas que l’enfer consiste dans ces étangs de feu et de soufre, dans ces flammes éternellement dévorantes, dans cette rage, dans ce désespoir, dans cet horrible grincement de dents. L’enfer, si nous l’entendons, c’est péché même: l’enfer, c’est d’être éloigné de Dieu.
Bossuet (1627-1704).
(Let us not imagine that hell consists in those lakes of fire and brimstone, in those eternally-devouring flames, in that rage, in that despair, in that horrible gnashing of teeth. Hell, if we understand it aright, is sin itself: hell consists in being banished from God.)
... Sir Henry Wotton’s celebrated answer to a priest in Italy, who asked him, “Where was your religion to be found before Luther?” “My religion was to be found there—where yours is not to be found now—in the written word of God.” In Selden’s Table Talk we have the following more witty reply made to the same question: “Where was America an hundred or six score years ago?”
Boswell’s Life of Johnson, VIII, 176.
I do not wish to introduce sectarian questions, but these answers are interesting and clever. The next quotation is pro-Catholic.
During the horrible time of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, a French priest and a Jew became very intimate friends. The priest, very anxious for the future welfare of his friend, urged him to be received into the church: and the Jew promised to earnestly consider this advice. The priest, however, gave up all hope on learning that the Jew was called by his business to Rome, where he would see the unutterably monstrous life of the Pope and clergy. To his surprise the Jew on his return announced that he wished to be baptized, saying that a religion, which could still exist in spite of such abominations, must be the true religion.