Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

to be effected cannot be proved to exist. Before, therefore, any
dependance can be placed on the doctrines raised on this supposition, the
existence of the place must be proved; and the possibility of purgation in
that place demonstrated.
A purgatory was reigned by the papists, for the refinement and
cleansing of offences which had not been duly satisfied for in life: and
even in this place, the prayers of the church, purchased by the money of
surviving friends, were of sovereign virtue, to alleviate and shorten the
sufferings of the deceased culprits, and get them a speedier passport from
penal fire to the paradise into which all sent thither by the church had an
unalienable right to enter.
We may safely conclude that the view which damned souls have in the
gulf of perdition, of the happiness of the blessed, and the conviction that
they themselves might have eternally enjoyed this felicity, from which,
through their own fault, they are eternally excluded, will form no mean
part of the punishment of the lost.
Even in hell, a damned spirit must abhor the evil by which he is
tormented, and desire that good which would free him from his torment.
If a lost soul could be reconciled to its torment, and to its situation, then,
of course, its punishment must cease to be such. An eternal desire to
escape from evil, and an eternal desire to he united to the supreme good,
the gratification of which is for ever impossible, must make a second
circumstance in the misery of the lost.
The remembrance of the good things possessed in life, and now to be
enjoyed no more for ever, together with the grace offered or abused, will
form a third circumstance in the perdition of the ungodly.
The torments which a soul endures in the hell of fire will form,
through all eternity, a continual, present source of indescribable wo.