DISC. XIII.) THE PUNISHMENTS IN HELL. 635 surrection should bring them to heaven : And the most wicked among mankind went also to Hades, or this state of the dead, under a long and fearful expectation of the final punishments of hell : But that great multitudes who were of an indifferent character, and who were not so bad but they might be reclaimed, had another sort of trial in Hades, whither, they say, our Lord Jesùs Christ at his death descended and preached the gospel to them, and many of them were recovered, and shall be hereafter raised to eternal life. The chief scripture whence they borrow this, is 1 Pet. iii. 19, 20: of which we have spoken before ;. and that at the great day of judgment the incorrigible sinners should be sent with the devils into the punishment of fire, which, though it may last for a shorter or longer time, yet should destroy both their bodies and their souls for ever. To this I an- swer, Answer 1. If this had been the doctrine of many an- cient christians, yet unless- they could bring plainer proofs of it from the word of God, than one difficult and obscure text of St. Peter, there is no great reason for us to receive from them such traditions. The word of God is our only test of truth, and our instructor in matters of the invisible world. Ans. 2. Though there might be a few ofthe earlywriters who seemed to incline to some of these opinions; yet this sense is drawn out from most of them by learned men with much difficulty, uncertainty, and conjecture : And there are many others of them who make the punishments of hell as durable as the writers of later ages : Nor do they mention or allow of any such sort of purgatory for souls of an indifferent character, as this objection pretends. Those who will look into their writings will find abundant evidence, that most of them talk of eternal punishment by fire, in the very words and language of the New Testament, and in direct opposition to this doctrine of temporal punishments in hell. I shall cite but two wri- ters, one of which is the very earliest of the fathers, an acquaintance of St. Paul, and that is Clemens the Ro- man, who in the eighth section of his second epistle, says thus : " Let us therefore repent whilst we are yet upon the earthfor we are as clay in the hand of the artificer.
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