CONCERNING THE ENDLESS PUNISHMENT OF THOSE WILL DIE IMPENITENT.
§ 1. THE word everlasting is used in the very sentence of the Judge at the last day, whom we cannot suppose to use rhetorical tropes and figures. The wicked that are finally impenitent, are represented as wholly cast away, lost, made no account of, &c. which is quite inconsistent with their punishment being medicinal, and for their good and purification, and to fit them for final and eternal happiness. Eternal punishment is not eternal annihilation. Surely they will not be raised to life at the last day only to be annihilated. “The words used to signify the duration of the punishment of the wicked, do, in their etymology, truly signify a proper eternity; and if they are sometimes used in a less strict sense, when the nature of the thing requires it, yet that can never pass as any reason why they are not to be understood absolutely, when the subject is capable of it. They are terms the most expressive of an endless duration, of any that can be used or imagined. And they always signify so far positively endless, as to be express against any other period or conclusion, than what arises from the nature of the thing. They are never used in Scripture in any other limited sense, than to exclude all positive abolition, annihilation, or conclusion, other than what the natural intent or constitution of the subject spoken of must necessarily admit. The word a, Greek, which is the word generally used by the sacred writers, is, we know, derived from the adverb Greek, which signifies for ever, and cannot without force be used in any lower sense. And, particularly, this is the word by which the eternal and immutable attributes of Deity are several times expressed.” Dodwell’s Sermon in answer to Whiston, p. 1.5, 16.
§ 2. If the torments of hell are purifying pains, that purge the damned from their sins, it must be by bringing them to repentance, convincing them of the evil of sin, and inducing them to forsake it, and with a sincere heart to turn from sin to God, and heartily to choose virtue and holiness. There is no other way for sinners twine purged as moral agents; and, if hell fire is the means of any other purification, it cannot be a moral purification.
If the wicked in hell are the subjects of torments, in order to their purification, and so being fitted for, and finally brought to, eternal happiness; then they are the subjects of a dispensation, that is truly a dispensation of love, and of divine and infinite goodness and benevolence, towards them. And if the design of the pains of bell be that of kind and benevolent chastisement, to bring sinners to repentance, and compliance with the divine will; then we cannot suppose that they will be continued after the sinner has repented, and is actually brought to yield and comply. For that would be to continue them for no purpose; to go on using means and endeavours to obtain the end, when the end is accomplished, and the thing aimed at is fully obtained already. Moreover, if the damned, after many ages suffering extreme torment in hell, are to be delivered, and made perfectly and eternally happy, then they must be in a state of probation during this long season of their confinement to such extreme misery. If they are not in a state of probation, or on any trial how they will behave themselves under these severe and terrible inflictions of wrath, but are to be delivered, and made eternally happy at the end of a certain period; then what restraints are they under from giving an unbounded loose and licence to their wickedness, in expressions of enmity against God, in cursing and blaspheming, and whatever their hearts are inclined to? And if they are in such a state as this, wherein they are thus left to unrestrained wickedness, and every curb to their most wicked inclination is taken off, being nevertheless sure of deliverance and everlasting happiness; how far is this state fit to be a state of purgation of rational creatures and moral agents from sin, being a state wherein they are so tar from means of repentance, reformation, and entirely reclaiming and purging them from sin, that all manner of means are rather removed; and so much is every restraint taken off, that they are given up wholly to sin, which, instead of purifying them, will tend above all things that can be conceived, to harden them in sin, and desperately establish the habits of it?
§ 3. A state of purgation of moral agents, that is, a state to bring sinners to repentance and reformation, and not a state of trial, is a gross absurdity. If any should say, that, ” though we should maintain that the pains of hell are purifying pains, to bring sinners to repentance, in order to their deliverance and eternal happiness; yet there will be no necessity of supposing, either that they may sin with impunity, and so without restraint; or that they are properly in a state of probation: for they have no probation whether they shalt finally have eternal happiness, because it is absolutely determined by the benevolent Creator, concerning his intelligent creatures, that they shall finally be brought to a state of happiness: but yet their circumstances may be such as may tend greatly to restrain their wickedness, because that the time of their torment shall be longer or shorter, according as they behave themselves under their chastisements more or less perversely; or that their torment shall be raised to a greater height, and additions be made in proportion to the wickedness they commit in then” purgatory flames.” To this I ANSWER: Even on this supposition they are in a state of probation for a more speedy possession of eternal life and happiness, and deliverance from further misery and punishment; this makes their state as much a state of probation, as their state in the present life. For here it is supposed by these men, that sinners are not in a state of trial, whether ever they shall obtain eternal happiness or no; because that is absolutely determined, and the determination known or knowable concerning all without any trial. But only it is a state of trial whether they shall obtain eternal life so soon as at the end of their lives, or at the day of judgment. Neither have they any trial during this life, whether they shall escape all affliction and chastisement for sin or not; but whether they shall be relieved from a state of suffering so soon, and shall-escape those severer and longer chastisements that, with respect to many, are to come afterwards.