Eternal torment

“ Would you still read from your Confession of Faith, or from your Catechism—this?
"The souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torment and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. At the last day the righteous shall come into everlasting life, but the wicked shall be cast into eternal torment and punished with everlasting destruction. The wicked shall be cast into hell, to be punished with unspeakable torment, both of body and soul, with the devil and his angels forever." ”

“ When the theory of eternal torment is treated of in what quotations we make under this heading, it must be remembered that it stands related to the immortality of the soul as effect does to cause. Eternal torment is a necessary outgrowth from the immortality of the soul, for if the soul is immortal and some are to be lost, what can be done with them? They cannot be destroyed ”

“ TORMENTED FOREVER AND EVER. The only remaining texts to be urged in favor of the eternal torment of the wicked, are two passages which are found in the book of Revelation. The first is Rev. 14:11: “And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever; and they have no rest day nor night who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.” ”

“ Those whose names are not written in the book of life are condemned, body and soul, to eternal torments which is the second death. Hence death and hell (the wicked) are cast into the pool of fire to be tormented for ever with the beast and his prophet. ”

“ When I have wept a thousand lives away,
When torment is grown weary of its prey,
When I have rav'd ten thousand years in fire,
Ten thousand thousand, let me then expire."
Deep anguish! but too late; the hopeless soul,
Bound to the bottom of the burning pool,
Though loth, and ever loud blaspheming, owns
He's justly doom'd to pour eternal groans;
Enclos'd with horrors, and transfix'd with pain,
Rolling in vengeance, struggling with his chain:
To talk to fiery tempests; to implore
The raging flame to give its burnings o'er ”

“ Unfortunately the Christian religion still promulgates and passionately clings to the belief in Hell as a place or state of everlasting torment—that is to say, of eternal torture inflicted for no ultimate end save that of implacable vengeance. ”

“ If we ask those who are unreasonable enough to believe in the eternal conscious existence of all wicked and depraved men, Do you believe the wicked will be tormented eternally,? they will answer yes. Then do you not believe they will live eternally in torment? Yes. Then if they live eternally, will not that be eternal life in torment? ”

“ These things considered, the texts that mention Eternall Fire, Eternal Torments, or the Word That Never Dieth, contradict not the Doctrine of a Second, and Everlasting Death, in the proper and naturall sense of the word Death. The Fire, or Torments prepared for the wicked in Gehenna, Tophet, or in what place soever, may continue for ever; and there may never want wicked men to be tormented in them ”

“ Last and crowning torture of all the tortures of that awful place is the eternity of hell. Eternity! O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it? And remember, it is an eternity of pain. Even though the pains of hell were not so terrible as they are, yet they would become infinite, as they are destined to last for ever. But while they are everlasting they are at the same time, as you know, intolerably intense, unbearably extensive. To bear even the sting of an insect for all eternity would be a dreadful torment. ”

“ Millions of years will pass away and still these torments will exist as if they were only just beginning. Alas! they will endure forever, — yes, forever. " The smoke of their torments shall ascend up for ever and ever; neither have they rest day nor night." (Apoc. xiv. 11.) 1. They will be eternal, because the human soul is immortal; "They shall desire to die, and death shall fly from them." ”

“ The torment is caused by the flames of a supernatural fire, kindled by the anger of God. There is, therefore, no relief, no hope for the lost soul. It is separated from the abode of the just by a great chaos; it can never get to them, but must remain for ever and without hope in the torment of hell. ”

“ Go sleep out a few more nights, and stir about a few more days on earth, and then thy nights and days shall end: thy thoughts, and cares, and pleasures, shall all be devoured by eternity; thou must enter upon the state which shall never be changed. As the joys of heaven are beyond our conception, so are the pains of hell. Everlasting torment is inconceivable torment. ”

“ Why does the approach of death so much affright thee? O how cold it strikes to thy heart! And would not the grave be accounted a paradise, compared with that place of torment which thou slightest?—Is it an intolerable thing to burn part of thy body, by holding it in the fire? What then will it be to suffer ten thousand times more for ever in hell?—Why does the thought or mention of hell occasion any disquiet in thy spirit?—And canst thou endure the torments themselves?—Why doth the rich man complain to Abraham of his torment in hell? ”

“ But the greatest torments of hell affect not so much the bodies as the soul of the damned. Think for a moment what pain home-sickness inflicts upon the soul of him who endures it, and then consider the lot of him who is condemned to hell. The reprobate will know and feel what he has lost by his sins. The pain of loss is immeasurably great. Never shall he enjoy the beatific vision of God; never shall he enter heaven, the home of the saints, the place of everlasting happiness and joy. What horror, what torment, what despair, will seize upon the souls of the damned! ”

“ O man to whom, by God’s will and because the world’s end draws nigh, I unveil a portion of the mystery of my doom, learn now once and for all, that there is no possible joy in evil!—it is the despair and the discord of the Universe,—it is Man’s creation,—My torment,—God’s sorrow! Every sin of every human being adds weight to my torture, and length to my doom,—yet my oath against the world must be kept! I have sworn to tempt,—to do my uttermost to destroy mankind,—but man has not sworn to yield to my tempting. ”

“ 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 intensity, of torment infinitely varied, of torture that sustains eternally that which it eternally devours, of anguish that everlastingly preys upon the spirit while it racks the flesh, an eternity, every instant of which is itself an eternity of woe. Such is the terrible punishment decreed for those who die in mortal sin by an almighty and a just God. ”

“ Yes, a thousand years, and a thousand in horror, if it be most for the honor of God, the torment of my body being so great, awful, and overwhelming that none could bear to live in the country where the spectacle was seen, and the torment of my mind being vastly greater. ”

“ Here is a little image of what you will be in hell, except you repent and fly to Christ.—Sermon X. Do but consider what it is to suffer extreme torment for ever and ever; to suffer it night and day, from one day to another, from one year to another, from one age to another; in pain, in wailing and lamenting, groaning and shrieking and gnashing your teeth; with your bodies and every member full of racking torture ”

“ He lay about eight weeks in this condition, in a continual burning, neither desiring, nor receiving any thing but by force, and that without digestion, so spent, that he appeared a perfect skeleton, nothing appearing but sinews and bones, vehemently raging for drink; ever pining, yet fearful for living long; dreading hell, yet coveting death, in a continual torment, yet his own tormentor. And thus consuming himself with grief and horror, impatience and despair, like a living man in hell, he represented an extraordinary example of the justice and power of God, in punishing apostacy. ”

“ If he saw hell, he will retain traces of despondency, sadness, heaviness of spirit, suspicion and melancholy. If in the treasury of his imagination he has preserved these traces, it is lawful for him to communicate them to others....
The torments of the grave, O seeker after the divine mysteries, are of two kinds: one kind is spiritual and the other is material torment, and they have been repeatedly explained.
The spiritual torment cannot be understood, until a person is acquainted with his own soul and spirit. ”

“ In the night, however, when his senses have nothing to be employed about, his thoughts about his malady do not leave his mind free for one moment, and his pain increases. So also in death, the cares and thoughts of the world and the external senses cease entirely to operate on account of the torment of the spirit, and then the perfect torment of the spirit becomes manifest.
The second kind of torment in hell, beloved, is the fire of ignominy and shame. ”

“ The fire of the torment is the operation of the holy law of righteousness which they have broken, and the brimstone by the offensiveness of its smoke represents the self-condemnation and reproach of conscience with which they are tormented when their sins are laid bare in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb, who by reason of their sins was slain. ”

“ How else could there be everlasting torment for those sinners cast down by God into the Pit on the Last Day to burn for ever and for ever through all eternity? Oh, my friends, your minds are small—too small to grasp eternity. ”

“ Their punishment will be no less than destruction, not of their being, but of their bliss; not that of the body alone, but both as to body and soul. (3.) This destruction will be everlasting. They shall be always dying, and yet never die. Their misery will run parallel with the line of eternity. The chains of darkness are everlasting chains, and the fire is everlasting fire. It must needs be so, since the punishment is inflicted by an eternal God, fastening upon an immortal soul, set out of the reach of divine mercy and grace. ”

“ We may well ask ourselves, with mingled feelings of dread and awe, how severe must be the tribulations of those who, during no less than fifty years, have, “at every moment tormented with a fresh torment” Him Who is the Father, and who have, in addition, made His Herald—Himself a Manifestation of God—to quaff, in such tragic circumstances, the cup of martyrdom. ”

“ May all the members of my body be tortured with inconceivable agony, and all the powers of my soul tormented with horror and despair, inexpressible and eternal! Let my dwelling be in the blackness of darkness, and my companions accursed men and accursed devils! ”

“ All my nature—my intellect, my heart, my will, answer 'Yes.' But if a God died, and must die—cruelly, hideously, at the hands of His creatures—to satisfy eternal justice, what must that sin be that demands the Crucifixion? Of what revolt, what ruin is not the body capable? ”

“ I take the occasion to remark here that the above-cited clause appears to be the only passage in the Apocalypse which asserts the perpetuity of personal experience of torment, as distinct from the perpetuity of its effect ”

“ Death is privation; when inflicted by fire, capacity for torment is speedily destroyed; and death itself is cast [Pg 333] into the lake of fire. The natural conclusion is that the idea of torment belongs to the mode by which the death spoken of is inflicted—fire—and that the words with which we are dealing may mean no more than this,—that the eternity of effect following the overthrow of the beast and the false prophet is the leading conception associated with the "fire that burneth with brimstone" to which these great enemies of God's people are consigned. ”

“ Sixthly, I am to consider the terribleness of those hellish tormentors and executioners.
1. First, generally in hell, every one of the damned is a tormentor of all, and all are tormentors of one, saying and doing things (as is mentioned above) to torment them.
2. Moreover, the devils are terrible tormentors of men, revenging themselves upon them, for the rage they have against Almighty God and against Jesus Christ; and therefore they torment them with affrighting visions, with horrible imaginations, and with all other means that their fierce cruelty can invent. ”

“ Nothing more difficult than to render one worthy of the abode of felicity; nothing easier than to obtain a place in the abode of torments that Divinity prepares for the unfortunate victims of His eternal fury. Those who find the idea of another life so flattering and so sweet, have they then forgotten that this other life, according to them, is to be accompanied by torments for the majority of mortals? Is not the idea of total annihilation infinitely preferable to the idea of an eternal existence accompanied with suffering and gnashing of teeth? ”

“ Through thorns and snares our way we take,
And yet we mourn the blest!
For those who throng the eternal Throne
Lost are the tears we shed,—
They are the living,—they alone
Whom thus we call the dead. ”

“ Neither are these the greatest torments the damned suffer. There remaineth yet a more grievous, which the divines do call the punishment of loss, which consisteth in the perpetual privation of the beatifical vision of God and his saints, and of all that glorious and blessed society. For that is the greatest torment that depriveth man of the most excellent good. Seeing, therefore, that God is that effectual and chief good of all goods, to be deprived of him wust needs be the greatest of all evils. ”

“ The fourth tormentor will be the invisible hand of Almighty God, which discharges itself upon the damned, using His omnipotence against them; who, knowing this, turn their rage against Him, breaking out into horrible blasphemies, and desiring that He might cease to be. But all is turned to the increase of their anguish and torment. ”

“ Lights up the impenetrable horror of gloom,
Chilling the very soul, like an impending doom.
Is this the lone region of death and fell despair?
And is hell with all its fury lurking there?
Do Satan and Apollyon roam those deadly deeps,
Gloating o’er the suffering of the damned that ne’er sleeps?
Was’t there the rebellious hosts of heaven found their doom,
To shriek in nameless torture in so dread a tomb?
Hist! hist! did ye hear it? that shuddering roll
Of frenzied anguish, creeping up from damnation’s goal?
O relentless Time! Let’s flee away from this dread sphere ”