1356 THE ETERNAL DURATION OR IDISC. For as the potter, if he make a vessel, and it be dis- torted in his hands, or broken, again forms it a-new; but if he bath gone so far as to throw it into the fur- nace of fire, he can no more bring any remedy to it : So we, whilst we are in this world, should repent with our whole heart for whatsoeverevil we have done in the flesh, while we have yet the time of repentance, that we may be saved by the Lord. For after we shall have departed out of this world, we shall no longer be able either to confess our sins, or repent in the other." The English reader may find this in Archbishop Wake's Translation of the most Primitive Fathers. . Justin Martyr, who is also one of the most earlywri- ters, in the eighth section of his " First Apology," tells us, " that Plato teaches that Rhadamanthus and Minos punished the unrighteous who came before them ; and that we Christians say the same thing will be done, but it is by Christ ; when their bodies are joined with their souls, and they shall be punished with eternal punish- went, and not for the period of a thousand years only, as Plato said." This same writer, also, in very many places of his works, talks of eternal punishment, and of punishment for an endless age, and eternal fire, with eternal sensation or pain. Irenuus, also, after him, as well as Ignatius and Poiycarp before him, speak of this'fire which is not to be quenched, and of death and punishment, not tempo- ral, but eternal. So that it is really an imposition upon unlearned readers to pretend, that the doctrine which denies the eternity of the punishments of hell, was the common sense of the primitive fathers, though it is granted that Origen, and some others, might be of this opinion. To concludeSince the word has expressly assured us, that these punishments of sinful men shall be eter- nal, it is not for us to hearken to any other doctrines, and neglect what God has said ; nor is it fit for us to dispute the wisdom and justice of divine conduct, nor to impeach his goodness. " Let God be true, though every man be a liar," Rom, iii. 4.; let God be wise, though every man be a fool; let God be just and right- eous in all his ways, though man vainlymurmur against him, and .raise these noisy and feeble remonstrances
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