pernicious influence to recommend those systems to a more general admiration in the church. He was naturally of a poetical genius; his style often runs into metre, and his works abound with quotations from the ancient poets and philosophers, as well as from the scriptures. His method of writing is careless, feeble and sometimes very rambling.

A. D. 200, to 204.

V. Passing over several writers of little note, we shall now make some observations on the only succeeding fathers of eminence, before Origen. Cotemporary with Clemens, but belonging to the Western or Latin church, was the celebrated Tertullian, a presbyter of Carthage in Africa: a man of extensive learning, of strong and vehement genius, but severe and morose, superstitious and fanatical, even when compared with those of his own age. He is thought to have been the first christian writer who expressly asserted that the torments of the damned will be of " equal duration" with the happiness of the blest. This circumstance is, indeed, no positive proof that the same opinion had never been entertained before; but we may safely say that of all the early fathers there was none with whose natural disposition the doctrine of endless misery better accorded, than with Tertullian's: "You are fond of your spectacles," said he, in allusion to the pagans; "there are other specta"cles: that day disbelieved, derided, by the nations,

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p Tertulliani Apologet. cap. 18. At the general resurrection and judgment, says he, "God will recompense his worshippers with life "eternal; and cast the profane into a fire equally perpetual and uninter"mitted." See Whiston on the Eternity of Hell-Torments, p. 86. N. B. Tertullian's Apology was written about A. D. 200.

"that last and eternal day of judgment, when all ages "shall be swallowed up in one conflagration-what a

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variety of spectacles shall then appear! How shall I "admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I "behold so many kings, worshipped as gods in heaven, "together with Jove himself, groaning in the lowest "abyss of darkness! so many magistrates who perse"cuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer "flames than they ever kindled against christians; so

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many sage philosophers blushing in raging fire, with "their scholars whom they persuaded to despise God, "and to disbelieve the resurrection; and so many po"ets shuddering before the tribunal not of Radaman"thus, not of Minos, but of the disbelieved Christ! "Then shall we hear the tragedians more tuneful un"der their own sufferings; then shall we see the play"ers far more sprightly amidst the flames; the chariot

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eer all red-hot in his burning car; and the wrestlers "hurled, not upon the accustomed list, but on a plain "of fire." Such is the relish with which his fierce spirit dwells on the prospect of eternal torments. His gloomy and enthusiastic disposition soon led him to abandon the regular churches, as not sufficiently austere and visionary, and to join himself to the fanatical sect of Montanists.

VI. Next to Tertullian is Minucius Felix, A. D. 210. another writer of the Western church, either a Roman or an African, a lawyer by profession, and a man of considerable learning. His

a Tertull. De Spectaculis, cap. 30. Written about A. D. 203, or 204.

Dialogue, the only work he has left us, is a popular disputation, elegantly written, in defence of christianity against paganism; but its beauty is somewhat sullied by a mixture of heathen superstitions, and its force impaired by frequent declamation instead of argument. The author seems to assert the strict eternity of hell-torments, and to represent that his was the common opinion of christians, on the subject. In allusion to the Grecian fable of the tremendous oath of the gods, he says that Jupiter swears by the broiling banks of the river of fire, and "shudders at the torments which await "him and his worshippers: torments that know neither 66 measure nor end. For there the subtile fire burns "and repairs, consumes and nourishes; and as lightenings waste not the bodies they blast, and Etna, Vesu"vius and other volcanoes continue to burn without ex

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pending their fuel, so these penal flames of hell are fed, "not from the diminution of the damned, but from the "bodies they prey upon without consuming." The objector to christianity is, in another passage, represented as saying that christians threaten all but themselves "with torments that never shall have an ends."

VII. Clemens, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix, in treating of the infernal region and its torments, frequently adopt the language and some of the views of the ancient heathen poets. Ever since Justin Martyr, it had been a common opinion among the orthodox fathers, that at death all souls, both the righteous and

r Minucii Fel. Dialog. cap. 34. Lardner dates this Dialogue at A. D. 210; some critics have assigned it to an earlier period, and others to a later, even to the year 230. s Ditto. cap. 11.

the wicked, descended to the Hades of the Greeks, or Infernum of the Latins; which was a subterranean world consisting of two general divisions, the mansions of the just, and the abodes of the guilty. Here the separate spirits dwelt, either in joy or suffering, according to their different characters and deserts; undergoing various courses of discipline and purification, as was thought by some; or fixed in their respective stations, awaiting the decision of the approaching general judgment, as was represented by others. Some of the fathers, however, do not seem to have believed in the conscious existence of the soul from the instant of death, till the time of the general judgment; but the latter event, they all agreed, was near at hand, when the world should be destroyed by fire, Tertullian says, in the end of his own age.

VIII. In concluding this chapter, it may be proper to give, as far as practicable, a succinct account of the state of Universalism, at the period now under consideration. It appears, then, that of the orthodox christians, some believed the eventual salvation of all mankind, after a future punishment for the wicked; while others, again, held the doctrine of endless misery. This diversity of opinion, however, occasioned no divisions, no controversies nor contentions among them; and both sentiments existed together in the church without reproach. If we may hazard a conjecture, the generality of the orthodox had not any fixed nor definite opinion on the subject. That there was a future state of suffering, they all agreed; but whether it were endless, or would terminate in anni

t Viz. Tatian, and perhaps Minucius Felix.

hilation, or whether it would result in a general restoration, were probably points which few inquired into. Such, we may suppose, was the case with the orthodox churches.

But we must not here forget the Universalists among the Gnostic christians. The Basilidians, Carpocratians and Valentinians were now thinly scattered over all christendom, and abounded in some places, particularly in Egypt and the adjacent countries. Though they agreed with the Universalists among the orthodox, in the simple fact of the ultimate salvation of all souls, yet their denial of the resurrection and of a future judgment, their views concerning the creation of this world, and, in short, the mass of Oriental fables which they held in common with the rest of the Gnostics, deprived them of all intercourse with their brethren, except as opponents. They were Gnostics, and the others were Orthodox these were the terms of distinction. As Universalism, on either side, was not a subject of abuse, so it was not an occasion for special favor and friendship; and the striking difference between their views on almost every particular in the whole circle of divinity, created a perpetual altercation, in which the few instances of their mutual agreement were overlooked or forgotten. The entire body of the orthodox, whether Universalists or not, stood in uniform array against the Gnostics of all kinds; and these, in their turn, united their various sects, in the struggle against their common adversaries.