4. CHAP. IV.
Containing Observations.
IN the infancy of Christianity it was
thought a hard matter to get to heaven;
and that when once in hell, there
was no geting out. A certain father of
the church, of the name of Origen, was
the first to be more liberal in his sentiments,
and thought, that after a certain
period, there would be a jail-delivery of
the damned. I do not know that he went
so far as to let the devils themselves out
upon a furlough; but at the present time,
we all know very well, that the time will
come, when they will be out all together;
at least the universalists tell us this, and
prove it.
The doctrine was received in some part
by the early councils; but in other parts
rejected. The matter was compounded
by establishing a purgatory; for not consenting
to liberate from hell, in order to
satisfy the advocates of a temporary punishment,
they fixed up a middle place,
where all the advantages of penal purgation
could be enjoyed, without the necessity
of contradicting the eternity of hell
torments.
Indeed under the catholic church, the
strait gate, and the narrow way, and the
many called, and few chosen, was a good deal
laid aside, and the road made pretty plain
by indulgencies and absolutions. But at
the reformation, the matter was brought
back to its old bed again, and the cry of
their being but a remnant saved, was raised
in every pulpit. There has been some
relaxation of late years with almost every
sect of Protestants; and there is not just
such a fury of tumbling great crowds into
the tolbooth, as there was in the days of
John Knox, and the framers of the Westminster
confession of faith, and catechisms.
Dr. Bellamy, a New-England divine, some
years ago, stated in his pamphlet, that the
damned would be to the saved, as the malefactors
of a country to honest people that
came to an untimely end by jail or gibbet.
Some now preach boldly, not perhaps a
total exemption, from future punishment,
but a final restoration from it; so that the
matter is now brought nearly to what it
was in the days of Origen. I do not know
that I would be of opinion with the
Scotch gentleman, and wish the matter
carried farther, establishing that there is
no hell at all; because if the thing should
take a turn, it might go to the other extreme,
and be all hell; so that none should
be saved; and instead of universal salvation,
we should then have the doctrine of
the damnation of the whole, bodily.
