Is Sin Eternal?

FULKE makes reference to the Catholics seeking to maintain their doctrine by the Fathers, particularly Augustine, but he quotes from him in opposition to their ideas of a hell with one part of it a paradise, as follows: "I could never find the word hell in the Scripture, taken in good part, which if it be never read in the divine authorities, verily that bosom of Abraham, that is, that habitation of quiet rest, is not to be believed to be any part of hell." He then says, "But Bede, no doubt out of more ancient Fathers, peradventure out of Athanasius, whose judgment of this text also he citeth, thus interpreteth these words of Peter,—'He which in one time coming in the flesh preached the way of life to the world, even he himself came before the flood, and preached to them which then were unbelievers, and lived carnally. For he even by his Holy Spirit was in Noah and the rest of the holy men which were at that time, and by their good conversation, preached to the wicked men of that age, that they might be converted to better manners.'

"You see, therefore, that our exposition is not new, which so many hundred years ago was delivered by Bede, who, though in some things he were carried away with the error and corruption of his time, yet had he a care to interpret the Scriptures, as near as he could, according to the writing of the elder Fathers that were before him.

"They that take these words of Christ's descending into hell, and add further, that Christ by his descending delivered the captive souls, are driven to invent many things, beside the book, of their own head. The apostle speaketh only of the unbelieving and disobedient in the days of Noah, not to show their deliverance, but their just damnation, affirming that eight persons only were saved by water, the rest perishing, which is to be understood both of their bodies and of their souls. Bede rejecteth the opinion of one man that thought some comfort should come to them that had been unbelievers in the days of Noah, as contrary to the Catholic faith; because Christ, by his descending to hell, delivered none but the faithful, neither preached to the souls that are out of their bodies, and shut up in hell prison for their wickedness, but in this life, either by himself; or by the examples and words o' the faithful, he daily showeth 'the way of life.' Oecumenius also, out of Gregory, showeth that their disobedience and condemnation were testified by the Scripture, before Christ came in the flesh, and that salvation was preached to men from the beginning, but despised, because of their declining unto vanity and pleasure."*

In his discourse, the Canon made reference to the words of St. Peter in the fourth chapter of his first epistle as further proof of Christ preaching to the dead. It is where, in speaking of the judgment, he uses these words "Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick (living) and the dead. For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." 1 Peter 4:5, 6. Mark well the language he does not say, preached to them that were dead, as though they were dead when the preaching was done, but it says, "preached to them that ARE dead." That is, they were dead at the time St. Peter wrote his epistle, A. D. 66. This was some thirty-five years after Christ's resurrection, and if they were still dead at that time, they had not yet been quickened into life, and will thus be made alive in the resurrection at the last day.

This language, when carefully read, does not give an intimation that the preaching to these persons took place after they had died, but rather that the gospel had been preached to them and they were then dead. As they in their life-time had heard the gospel, and had taken their course relative to it, either accepting or rejecting, they would be treated when the Judgment shall come, just the same as "men in the flesh"—like those found living, as they will also have received or rejected gospel truth.

If, as the Canon states, this text refers to those of Noah's time, they were not delivered from hades at Christ's resurrection; they were still dead, in St. Peter's time, and will so remain until the Judgment.

Hoping for a day of grace after death, because of St. Peter's statements, reminds one quite forcibly of what the prophet Isaiah calls weaving spider's webs, saying, "Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works." Isaiah 59:6. Bildad the Shuhite said of the wicked that their "trust shall be as a spider's web." Job 8:14.

Canon Wilberforce, in advocating his theory of probation and hope for the ungodly after death, claims that the dead, between death and the resurrection, are in a state of consciousness—are in paradise. Speaking of the righteous after death, he says, "Every beauty of character which we have admired on earth will there be marvelously developed. Every capacity for greatness which we have recognized, even through the veil of the flesh, will be unfolded and perfected, every lesser weakness which has grieved us will be cast away. Mind, heart, will, spirit, hitherto deteriorated by contact with sin, will be growing purer in the light of Christ's love, attaining rapidly their perfect development, for there, in the kingdom of calm contemplation, the soul is being purified with a painless, progressive purification, until in God's time the plant is perfected for his garden, and the full beatific vision of Heaven is attained."

Speaking of the wicked in the state of the dead, he says, "Awful must be the sadness, the restlessness, the intensified consciousness, the vivid remembrance of the unhappy spirits in hades." Again, he says, "The action of memory will be the test of personality—memory, full, free, unclouded memory—the flashing into the imprisoned soul of that intolerable light which makes all past present. If we but realized the keen torture that this will be, we should hardly dare to sin. What fire is to the shrinking body, that is memory to the shrinking soul. No words can paint the torture that remorseful memory can inflict on this side the grave. A cruel, wicked deed, beyond human power to undo, lying blistering on the memory like a living coal on the hand, has burned and agonized many a man till it has driven him into a suicide's grave. What must it be in the silence of the prison of spirits?"

Relative to this state the Canon inquires, "Where is the dear soul we loved? What are the present conditions of his existence? Does he sleep unconscious of the lapse of time? Does he grieve? Does he pine in loneliness?" Regarding the dead he states: "We surrounded with the ministrations of love the dying bed; we whispered the last farewell; we pressed the hand for the last time; we laid them in the grave—

Before decay's effacing fingers

Had marred the lines where beauty lingers.

And the silence of eternity seems to have dropped between us. Yes, and it is God's silence; it is not to be broken by the desire or curiosity of man. There have been mortals whose favored eyes have beheld the deep and rapturous repose of paradise, and who for the benefit of others have been recalled to this earthly sphere. They might have told us much, but the finger of God has closed their lips in an iron silence. The blessed apostle, St. Paul, was caught up into paradise and tasted of the rest that remaineth for the people of God. Thus was he strengthened for the life of exceptional trial that awaited him, but it was forbidden him to speak of the mysteries of disembodied life. He simply declares that what was there revealed to him 'it is not lawful for a man to utter,' and he never did utter it. It was his personal experience of the peace of paradise which drew from him that saying of unspeakable consolation, 'I reckon,' 'I pronounce my deliberate conviction, that the sufferings of this life are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us;' and it was his experimental knowledge of that perfect rest where, tears and sorrows never come, that wrung from him that yearning cry, 'I desire to depart and be with Christ.' Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, the brother of Martha and Mary, was recalled from paradise, and though tradition says he never smiled again, there is no record of his divulging the secrets of Abraham's bosom. Many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of their graves after the resurrection of Christ, but there is no intimation that any communication was made to mortal ear of what they had experienced in the world of disembodied spirits."

If these persons said nothing of the "world of disembodied spirits," may it not be because they knew of no such world? The Bible writers have used the word that is rendered spirit, eight hundred and twenty-seven times, but in not one single instance have they called it immortal spirit, deathless spirit, or disembodied spirit. They have told us in plain language of the state of the dead, and that God only hath immortality; that man is a mortal being; that if he is faithful in obeying God he may, in the resurrection, obtain immortality. In no place in the Scriptures have these writers stated that man is now possessed of a nature or entity capable of a conscious existence without the body.

We must look a moment at the scriptures the Canon presented, as quoted above. St. Paul was "caught up into paradise." 2 Cor. 12:4. He was not dead. He was in vision. He was no more dead while in that condition than were Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, or St. John when they had their visions and revelations from God. Then his case of going to paradise has no bearing on the condition of the dead. In the record of Lazarus, and those raised after Christ's resurrection, there is not a word said about "the world of spirits" or coming from the land of "disembodied spirits." Of Lazarus, it is said, "He that was dead came forth" (St. John 11:44), not that he came forth who did not die. In the other case, "Many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection." Matt. 28:52, 53.

*Fulke's Confutation, p. 366.