The New Gospel

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">[Men fall] foully groveling on the ground, crushed beneath the weight of superstition [false religion, under which gods are said to govern the world] ... And with reason; for if men saw that a limit has been set to tribulation, somehow they would have strength to defy the superstitions and threatenings of priests; but, as it were, there is no way of resistance and no power, because everlasting punishment is to be feared after death.&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Murderers … shall they cast into fire, in a place full of venomous beasts, and they shall be tormented without rest, feeling their pains; and their worms shall be as many in number as a dark cloud.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Everyone goes to eternal punishment or salvation in accordance with the character of his acts.&nbsp; If all people knew this, no one would choose wickedness even for a little while, knowing that he goes to eternal punishment by fire. ... He will ... send those of the wicked, eternally conscious, into eternal fire with the wicked demons.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Yes, there are still to come other spectacles — that last, that eternal Day of Judgment, that Day which the Gentiles never believed would come, that Day they laughed at, when this old world and all its generations shall be consumed in fire.&nbsp; How vast the spectacle that day, and how wide!&nbsp; What sight shall wake my wonder, what my laughter, my joy and exultation? as I see all those kings … groaning in the depths of darkness!&nbsp; And the magistrates who persecuted the name of Jesus, liquefying in fiercer flames than they kindled in their rage against the Christians!&nbsp; those sages, too, the philosophers blushing before their disciples as they blaze together, the disciples whom they taught that God was concerned with nothing … And, then, the poets trembling before the judgment-seat … of Christ, whom they never looked to see!&nbsp; And then there will be the tragic actors to be heard, more vocal in their own tragedy; and the players to be seen, lither [agile] of limb by far in the fire.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">QUESTION 94: On the Relations of the Saints towards the Damned</em></p><p><em>Article 1: Whether the Blessed in Heaven Will See the Sufferings of the Damned?</em></p><p><em>Answer</em><em>: It is written (Isaiah (66:24)): “They shall go out and see the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against Me” ... In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned.</em></p><p><em>Article 2: Whether the Blessed Pity the Unhappiness of the Damned?</em></p><p><em>Answer</em><em>: Whosoever pities another shares somewhat in his unhappiness. &nbsp; But the blessed cannot share in any unhappiness.&nbsp; Therefore they do not pity the afflictions of the damned.</em></p><p><em>Article 3: Whether the Blessed Rejoice in the Punishment of the Wicked?</em></p><p><em>Answer</em><em>: It is written (Isaiah (56:24)): They shall satiate the sight of all flesh.&nbsp; Now satiety denotes refreshment of the mind.&nbsp; Therefore the blessed will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">… as if any law ever regulated the duration of the punishment by the duration of the offence punished! … Must the criminal be confined only for so long a time as he spent on the offence for which he is committed? … or that murder, adultery, sacrilege, or any other crime, should be measured, not by the enormity of the injury or wickedness, but by the length of time spent in its perpetration.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Hell, which is called a lake of fire and brimstone [burning sulfur], will be material fire, and will torment the bodies of the damned [for an eternity], whether men or devils — the solid bodies of the one, aerial bodies of the others. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">&nbsp;And who is not terrified by this repetition [in the New Testament], and by the threat of that punishment uttered so vehemently by the lips of the Lord Himself?</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">If anyone shall say or think there is a time limit to the torment of demons and ungodly persons, or that there ever will be an end to it, or that they will ever be pardoned or made whole again, then let him be excommunicated [consigned to Hell].</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">These abodes [in Hell] are not all of the same nature, for among them is that most loathsome and dark prison in which the souls of the damned are tormented with the unclean spirits in eternal and inextinguishable fire ... everlasting fire, express[es] another sort of punishment, which is called by theologians the pain of sense because, like lashes, stripes or other more severe punishments, among which fire, no doubt, produces intense pain, it is felt through the organs of sense.&nbsp; When, moreover, we reflect that this torment is to be eternal, we can see at once that the punishment of the damned includes every kind of suffering. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity.&nbsp; Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.”</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">As the souls of heretics are hereafter to be eternally burning in hell, there can be nothing more proper than for me to imitate the Divine vengeance by burning them on earth. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">At once as far as angels kenn he views the dismal situation waste and wild, a dungeon horrible, on all sides round as one great furnace flam’d, yet from those flames no light, but rather darkness visible serv’d only to discover slights of woe, regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace and rest can never dwell, hope never comes that comes to all; but torture without end still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed with ever-burning sulfur unconsum’d.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much in the same way as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath toward you burns like fire … It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God for one moment; but you must suffer it for all eternity.&nbsp; There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery … You will know that you must wear out long ages, millions and millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance …</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The preacher’s knife had probed deeply into his diseased conscience and he [Dedalus] felt now that his soul was festering in sin … The preacher began to speak in a quiet friendly tone.&nbsp; His face was kind and he joined gently the fingers of each hand, forming a frail cage by the union of their tips … Last and crowning torture of all torture of that awful place is the eternity of hell.&nbsp; Eternity!&nbsp; O, dread and dire word.&nbsp; Eternity!&nbsp; What mind of man can understand it? … An eternity of endless agony, of endless bodily and spiritual torment, without one ray of hope, without one moment of cessation, of agony limitless in extent, limitless in intensity, of torment infinitely lasting, infinitely varied, of torture that sustains eternally that which it eternally devours … Such is the terrible punishment decreed for those who die in mortal sin by an almighty and a just God.&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The heart [of the believer] secretly detests such measures of cruel and implacable vengeance, but the judgment dares not but pronounce them perfect and adorable.&nbsp; And the additional misery of this inward struggle aggravates all other terrors by which these unhappy victims to superstition are forever haunted.&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Who can estimate the misery that has been caused by this infamous doctrine of eternal punishment?&nbsp; Think of the lives it has blighted — of the tears it has caused — of the agony it has produced.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.&nbsp; And this is a damnable doctrine.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Think (he [John’s father, James Mill] used to say) of a being who would make a Hell — who would create the human race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention, that the great majority of them were to be consigned to horrible and everlasting torment … that multitudes have held the undoubting belief in an Omnipotent Author of Hell, and have nonetheless identified that being with the best conception that they were able to form a perfect goodness.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment ... I must say that I think that this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty.&nbsp; It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him as His chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Probably the hardest thing for me to deal with personally involved the core of what I had believed as an evangelical Christian.&nbsp; I had become “born again” because I wanted “to be saved” … In the view that was given to me, Christ had died for the sins of the world, and anyone who accepted him in faith would have eternal life with him in heaven.&nbsp; All who did not believe in him — whether out of willful refusal or sheer ignorance — would necessarily have to pay for their own sins in Hell.&nbsp; Hell was a well-populated place; most people went there … Roasting in hell was, for me, not a metaphor but a physical reality … This view of hell was driven into me and deeply burned, so to say, into my consciousness.&nbsp; As a result, when I fell away from my faith … I still wondered, deep down inside: could I have been right after all?&nbsp; What if I was right then, and wrong now.&nbsp; Will I burn in hell forever?&nbsp; The fear of death gripped me for years, and there are still moments when I wake up at night in a cold sweat.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">But what is the reward for those among you [unbelievers] who behave like this but disgrace in this life?—And on the Day of Judgment they shall be consigned to the most grievous penalty ... There are the people who buy the life of this world at the price of the hereafter: their penalty shall not be lightened nor shall they be helped ... But those who deny (their Lord),—For them will be cut out a garment of Fire: Over their head will be poured boiling water, With it will be scalded what is within their bodies, as well as (their) skins.&nbsp; In addition there will be maces of iron (to punish) them.&nbsp; Every time they wish to get away therefrom from anguish, they will be forced back therein, and [it will be said], “Taste ye the Penalty of Burning!”&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to Hell?”&nbsp; “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.”&nbsp; “Then why,” asked the Eskimo earnestly, “did you tell me?”</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">This teaching about hell, which the church took over from a fierce, apocalyptic strand of Judaism, and which it here put into “Jesus’” mouth, proceeds from a very impure consciousness, filled with fantasies of hatred and revenge and of an unforgiving, unjust god whose punishments are insanely disproportionate to the offences. ... If hell means anything in reality, it is the world of torment that humans create for themselves and for one another out of their own greed, hatred and ignorance.&nbsp; It is not a physical place; it is a psychological metaphor.</em></p>