Proof-Texts of Endless Punishment, Examined and Explained in Bloomington, MN

FROM THE PREFACE. THE object of this work is to assist the reader to a correct understanding of those controverted passages which are supposed to teach the doctrine of endless punishment. We have given the Bible a thorough examination, and are convinced that this doctrine finds no support in the sacred pages. It is of human origin. The best heathen writers admit that this doctrine was INVENTED to frighten those who could not be restrained from vice by the punishments of this life! It was regarded by the heathen, as it now is by some professing Christians, as the most efficient motive to deter men from sin. Cicero, in his seventh oration, p. 207, says that "It was on this account that the ancients INVENTED those infernal punishments of the dead, to keep the wicked under some awe in this life, who without them, would have no dread of death itself." Polybius, who was a celebrated Greek historian, speaking upon this subject, says: "Since the multitude is ever fickle and capricious, full of lawless passions and irrational and violent resentments, there no way left to keep them in order, but by the terrors of future punishment, and all the pompous circumstances that attend such kind of FICTION! On which account the ancients acted, in my opinion, with great judgment and penetration, when they CONTRIVED to bring those "notions of the gods and a future state," into the popular belief."