divine soul, which is made perfect through virtue by participating in the grace of God. For the souls of irrational beings, and still more, of plants, may perish with the things which they inhabit, because they can not be separated from the bodies which are composed, and may be dissolved into their elements. When any thing created is eternal, it is so not by itself, nor in itself, nor for itself, but by the goodness of God; for all that is made and created has a beginning, and retains its existence only through the goodness of the Creator."1

The same doctrine is contained and adorned in these words of Jeremy Taylor: "Whatsoever had a beginning can also have an ending, and it shall die, unless it be daily watered from the streams flowing from the fountain of life, and refreshed with the dew of heaven, and the wells of God; and therefore God had prepared a tree in Paradise to have supported Adam in his artificial immortality. Immortality was not in his nature, but in the hands and parts, in the favor and superadditions of God.”

Such was the view of the most cultured and philosophic minds, abandoning their old hope of immortality in the soul's inherent nature. But this doctrine of man's middle nature was gradually disparted and corrupted, to end in the modern doctrine of man's mixed nature, of body mortal, and soul immortal, each in the absolute sense. This notion seems to have been matured as early as the time of Pelagius, against whose view of physical death as natural the Synod of Carthage framed its canon in the twelfth century. Upon which the scholiast Balsamon comments thus, applying to the body only what former writers had asserted of man's entire being: "God made man neither mortal nor immortal; but midway between greatness and humility; and having made him master of himself, and with power of free-will, he left him to choose either virtue or vice, and to receive either immortality or mortality."

2

Such has been, until the most recent times, the doctrine of the Church, Protestant as well as Catholic; of which hereafter.

1 See Hagenbach, Hist. of Doc. § 174.

2 In Synod. Carthag., Canon exii.

$ 7. THE ORIGIN OF THE CONFLICT.

The doctrine of the middle nature of man is, we think, that which alone explains a probation of man for life or death, or which makes death, either of body or soul, a possible penalty of divine law. Its natural result and application is also that which appears in our argument. But directly crossing the philosophic doctrine of man's nature and dignity, those Christians who first thought it out might fail of carrying it out consistently to its results. They did thus fail. They stood within reach of the prize that should assure life to the long despair of men; that should guard the promise against abuse; and that should bequeath to the Church a Theodicy which was hinted in the words we have cited: "and that justly." They touched this prize, and handled it, but they did not heartily grasp and

secure it.

We come now to the turning point of our history, whence opinion began to diverge on either side of the right line we have been pursuing, to the confessedly fearful doctrine of eternal woe, and to the confessedly hazardous doctrine of a final salvation of all.

About the year 138 a woman of Rome, who with her husband had led an abandoned life, became a Christian. She endeav ored to reclaim her husband, but without success. She must now, if she would observe the law of Christ, seek a divor. e. In revenge, her husband informs against her as a convert. She asks time to arrange her domestic affairs, when she will submit to a judicial investigation. Incensed at the delay, he accuses also her Christian teacher, who confesses his faith, and is condemned to death. Another person avows to the prefect his conviction of the injustice of such a proceeding, is accused, confesses, and dies. Another still remonstrates, and meets the

same fate.

The triumph of tyranny is little favorable to meditation on the end of Evil; especially in a mind of ardent temperament, fervid with the thoughts and impulses of a recent conversion.

Such an one was Justin Martyr. This early defender of Christianity, whose first Apology was occasioned by the persecutions just named, and was addressed to a philosophic Emperor, had been a Platonist. He still wore the philosopher's pallium, or cloak, and bore the name of "the Philosopher." He hoped for the salvation of upright heathens, such as Socrates, by their virtual faith in Christ as the source of all divine illumination. He claimed for the truths of philosophy and of Christianity a common source, ascribing the former to a diffused traditional revelation from God. It is a favorite argument with him, that the Greek sages were indebted to the Jews, the chosen people, for doctrines which they held in common with the Christians. Thus, in his "Exhortation to the Greeks," he alleges that Plato received from the Hebrew prophets his doctrine of the punishment of the soul in a future body, which he regards as involving the belief of a resurrection (Apol. c. 20). In the same treatise he names as truths held in common by the philosophers and the Christians, the doctrines of the divine origin of the world and creation of man, of the soul's immortality, and of judg ment after this life (c. 8).

He had escaped the Platonic form of Dualism. But that he brought the principle of Dualism into his Christianity, is clear from the following passages. He says: "To lay before you in brief what we expect, what we have received and do teach: Plato and we are agreed as to a future judgment; we differ in that Minos and Rhadamanthus are his judges; Christ is ours. For the souls of the wicked, united to the same bodies, will be punished with eternal punishment, and not for a period of a thousand years only, as Plato asserted. If then any one shall tell us this is incredible or impossible, he must go on from error to error, until the fact shall prove us to be in the right" (c. 8). Again: "Each one is going on to eternal punishment or salvation, according to the merit of his deeds. If now all men knew these things, would any one choose vice for a season, knowing that he goes to eternal condemnation by fire? and not rather, by all means, restrain himself and adorn his soul with virtue, so as to attain the blessing of God, and avoid His punishment?

(c. 12). Again: "When we teach a general conflagration, what do we more than the Stoics? When we assert that the souls of the wicked are punished in a state of sensibility after death, and that the souls of the virtuous escaping those punishments, pass a happy life, we seem to assert no more than your poets and philosophers have done" (c. 20). Again: "Christ has foretold to us that he [Satan] with his host and the men who follow him, will be sent into fire to be punished for a boundless duration" (c. 28). And again: "He [Christ] shall raise up the bodies of all men who have ever lived; those of the worthy he will clothe with incorruption; those of the wicked he will send, in eternal sensibility, with evil dæmons, into eternal fire. . . . But with what sensation and punishment the wicked will suffer, hear such statements as these: Their worm shall not be quiet, and their fire shall not be quenched; and then shall they repent when it will avail them nothing" (c. 52). And in his second Apology, written probably a short time after, Justin uses similar language, adding that he is not employing the empty alarms and affrights. of the so-called philosophers, and would not drive men to the love of virtue by terror, as might be supposed (c. 13).

Here the use of the plural (punishments) instead of the singular, is to be noted, as also a disquieted if not burdened faith. "O, if men would only believe what impends over them!" is the saddening reflection of his mind, the rising cloud that began to begloom the Christian's sky.

Yet he never calls the soul immortal. The reason of this is very apparent in his "Dialogue with Trypho," from which some have inferred that when he wrote this Dialogue he held the immortality of the righteous alone. We are not prepared to say that this became his settled faith. We think, rather, that this seemed to him probable, and relieved the distress that is manifest in his Apologies. This might be true, though in one or two expressions he should give another view. But let us read his own words.

After a discussion of the soul's preëxistence and eternity, he represents the aged Christian with whom he converses as saying: "But if the world was created, it must follow that souls were

created also, and that there was a time when they were not; for they were created for the sake of men and other living creatures, even if you should say that they were created separately, and without their proper bodies." JUSTIN.-"This has the appearance of truth." C.-"Therefore they are not immortal." J."No, they are not, seeing it is evident that the world was created." C.-"However, I do not say that all souls will die; for that would be good news indeed to the bad. What then? Why, that the souls of the righteous remain in some better place, but the evil and wicked in a worse, waiting until the time of judgment. And so the former, being worthy to appear before God, shall not die any more; and the latter shall be punished so long as it shall please God that they exist and be punished."

It is well known that in this passage the Greek phrase for "all souls" (rácac tùs yvxúc) is in itself ambiguous; the words may also mean "any souls." We decline this translation as not demanded by the words immediately following; for Christian, we think, does not mean that annihilation would be gain to the wicked as their special doom, but either as painless, or as a common lot of man. This translation is also less consistent with the subsequent expressions; one person who makes it betrays a strong bias in rendering the term "worse” (xɛipov) “a place of misery and torment;" and the translation we have given is approved by the best authorities.1

1 Our rendering of the disputed passage is supported by Thirlby, ed. Justini Opp. Lond. 1722;- Otto, ed. Lips. 1847, where, however, he regards Justin as holding the modern opinion; so likewise, Bp. Kaye, Writings and Opinions of Justin, c. 5. He is regarded as holding the final destruction of the wicked by Grotius, Comm. in Matt. xxv. 46:-(who is quoted by Calovius, ibid.); — by Huet, Origeniana, 1. 2, q. 11, c. 25; - Rössler, Bibliothek d. Kirchenväter, I. 141; Lehrbegriff d. Chr. Kirche, p. 202; - Du Pin, Biblioth. Pat., art. Justin; - Doederlein, Inst. Chr. Theol. § 224;- Münscher, Handbuch d. Chr. Dogm. II. 483, 516;- Munter, Handbuch d. ältesten Chr. Dogm. II. 2. 191, 279;Daniel, Tatianus d. Apologet. pp. 225, 229; - Hase, Lehrbuch d. evang. Dog*matik (2 Aufl.) p. 126;- Starck, Freimüthige Betracht. über d. Christenthum, pp. 345, 347;-Kern, Chr. Eschatologie, Tüb. Zeitschrift f. Theologie, 1840, III. 82;-Otto, De Justini Mart. Scriptis et Doctrinâ, 1841, §§ 62, 76; — Ritter, Geschichte d. Chr. Phil. I. 304;-Jer. Taylor, Christ's Advent to Judgment; — J. Pye Smith, First Lines of Chr. Theol.;- Bloomfield, Critical Digest, on Matt. XXV. 46;- Giese er, Dogmengeschichte, § 45, who makes perhaps the truest state