Terminator

“ See how the punishment answers the sin; he that would not forgive shall not be forgiven; He delivered him to the tormentors; the utmost he could do to his fellow servant was but to cast him into prison, but he was himself delivered to the tormentors. Note, The power of God's wrath to ruin us, goes far beyond the utmost extent of any creature's strength and wrath. The reproaches and terrors of his own conscience would be his tormentors, for that is a worm that dies not; devils, the executioners of God's wrath, that are sinners' tempters now, will be their tormentors for ever. ”

“ The tormentor is without his reach, and is unseen—you may distinguish where he is, but you have to strain the sight to penetrate the gloom in which he broods;—there is no doubt of the presence of the one, or of the cause of the agony of the other ”

“ And how is He eager for the death of those who are not sinners? Whom will not these, and perhaps other subtle devices containing heretical poisons, pierce either for doubt if not for destruction, or for irritation if not for death? ”

“ That Weary-one hath known;
For now he must fight the Lord of Hell,
In the desolate waste alone.
Oh! the burning breath of the fiery wind,
Hunger, and thirst, and woe—
What are they all to that strange, lone strife
With man's dark Demon-foe?
XIII.
What terrible form the Tempter chose,
Saw never a mortal eye—
Did he come in the flame, or the thunder-cloud,
Or flash as the lightning by?
Was his blasted brow as the midnight black,
Or wreathed with a lurid light,
Like the livid rays that play on the ice
In the gloom of a polar night?
XIV.
None can tell ”

“ What is called 'Eternal Fire,' or 'Eternal Punishment,' it seems to me, may mean simply, that long continued suffering, both negative and positive, which wilful imperfection brings. It does not seem to me that the time can ever come when the Everlasting Father will abandon His child that He has created. ”

“ Art thou come hither to torment us—to cast us out from these men, and to restrain us from doing the hurt we would do?" Note, To be turned out, and tied up, from doing mischief, is a torment to the devil, all whose comfort and satisfaction are man's misery and destruction. Should not we then count it our heaven to be doing well, and reckon that our torment, whether within or without, that hinders us from well-doing? Now must we be tormented by thee before the time; Note, First, There is a time in which devils will be more tormented than they are, and they know it. ”

“ Then did he most vehemently charge me to yield and submit myself to the Romish Church: otherwise he would pluck off one of my arms.
Whereupon I denying still, the Tormentor, in most cruel manner, wrested the ropes as if he would have rent my body in sunder. I (being now in intollerable pains; and looking for nothing but present [instant] death) cried out, in the extremity of my anguish, "Now, farewell wife and children! and farewell England!": and so, not able to utter one word more, lay even senseless.
The Inquisitor asked the woman again, What I said? ”

“ Now there could have been no sepulture without death, and no removal of sepulture except by resurrection. Then, finally, he added: “Therefore He shall have many for his inheritance, and He shall divide the spoil of the many, because He poured out His soul unto death.” ”

“ Then the old man leading the hind threw himself at the monster's feet and said, "O Prince of the Genii, I beg of you to stay your fury and to listen to me. I am going to tell you my story and that of the hind I have with me, and if you find it more marvellous than that of the merchant whom you are about to kill, I hope that you will do away with a third part of his punishment?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Die, die, die, die, death comes to all." Destruction faces us wherever we turn. Destruction below and above, destruction behind and before. Change is the only Eternal,—why not as welcome Death as Life? ”

“ The bodies of those whom you destroy will no longer be removed by me, and you must take your own measures for their concealment. It will not always be effectual, and will often lead to your detection by earthly powers, and in this will consist your punishment. Your intelligence and cunning still remain to you. I will in future assist you by omens for your guidance ”

“ Let one of them quit men’s bodies, let the other remain; let death and life meet and agree. If indeed the soul and the spirit are two, they may be divided; and thus, by the separation of the one which departs from the one which remains, there would accrue the union and meeting together of life and of death. ”

“ 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." ”

“ And while all other creatures shall escape from the doom which has come upon them in consequence of the fall of man, the serpent—the instrument used in the temptation—shall, agreeably to the words in the sentence of punishment, "All the days of thy life," remain condemned to a perpetual abasement, thus prefiguring the fate of the real tempter, for whom there is no share in the redemption. ”

“ A nose, argued the logician, cannot bleed without blood—and not only blood—but blood circulating in it to supply the phænomenon with a succession of drops— (a stream being but a quicker succession of drops, that is included, said he) —Now death, continued the logician, being nothing but the stagnation of the blood—
I deny the definition—Death is the separation of the soul from the body, said his antagonist—Then we don't agree about our weapon, said the logician—Then there is an end of the dispute, replied the antagonist. ”

“ He had no hope now for anything but death, and the only wish left to him in life was to get his hands free to wreak vengeance on the dapper little monster opposite him, to die with his hands free and fighting. ”

“ As the Regenerator or Destroyer represented the processes of Nature,—the dying away of the sun's rays at night only to reappear on the following day, and the withdrawal of its warmth in winter only to be renewed in the spring,—so this God portrayed also the beneficent Creator and Preserver of all things, at the same time that it was the Destroyer. ”

“ ALICE. [Sits down, numbed and crushed] These are the eternal torments! Is there, then, no end to them?
CAPTAIN. Yes, if we are patient. Perhaps life begins when death comes.
ALICE. If it were so! [Pause.
CAPTAIN. You think Curt a hypocrite?
ALICE. Of course I do!
CAPTAIN. And I don't! But all who come near us turn evil and go their way. Curt was weak, and the evil is strong! [Pause] How commonplace life has become! ”

“ Assuredly, most free will he be from encumbrance in persecutions, most constant in martyrdoms, most prompt in distributions of his goods, most temperate in acquisitions; lastly, undistracted by cares will he die, when he has left children behind him—perhaps to perform the last rites over his grave! ”

“ I have heard of a Sworn Tormentor and his assistants, whose fiendish task it was to torture poor creatures' souls out of their miserable bodies, and of a Chirurgeon who had to watch lest the [255] agonies used upon 'em should be too much for human endurance, and so, putting 'em out of their misery, rob the headsman of his due, the scaffold of its prey, and the vile mobile that congregate at public executions of their raree show. Of "Scavenger's Daughters," Backs, Thumbscrews, iron boots, and wedges, and other horrible engines of pain, I have heard many dismal tales told ”

“ Ven. Heart! was't not for your good, my lord?
Ant. My good! Away with 'em: such an old man as he!
You, that would murder him, would murder me.
Ven. Is't come about?
Hip. 'Sfoot, brother, you begun.
Ven. May not we set as well as the duke's son?
Thou hast no conscience, are we not revenged?
Is there one enemy left alive amongst those?
'Tis time to die, when we're ourselves our foes:
When murderers shut deeds close, this curse does seal 'em:
If none disclose 'em, they themselves reveal 'em! ”

“ Scarce three or four days were past, after this horrible fact, when the Almighty Judge, who had heard the cries of the tormented wretch, suffered the evil one suddenly to possess this barbarous and inhuman homicide, so that those cruel hands which had punished to death his innocent servant, were the tormentors of his own body: for he beat himself, and tore his flesh, after a miserable manner, till he lost the very shape of a man ”

“ For when the substitute shall have been harmlessly entrapped, the Spirits of the Threshold and Hearth will reconduct the erring soul back to this Court, whence it will be sent on to the Second Court, where its balance of good and evil will be struck, and dreadful tortures applied, being finally passed on through the various Courts to the utter misery of hell. Should any one have such intention of suicide and thus threaten a fellow creature, even though he does not commit the act but continues to live not without virtue, yet shall it not be permitted in any way to remit his punishment. ”

“ Yet flight had been and was still his only chance. Innocent as the dead in the grave, as the child in the womb, he was still compelled to choose between a guilty hiding and a surrender tantamount to certain death. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rejoicing that my tormentor has lost traces of me for once, I am making haste to leave my asylum, on pretence of following this stranger, but in reality to conceal myself still more completely from his search. Perhaps this may be the last sentence ever I am destined to write. If so, farewell, Christian reader! May God grant to thee a happier destiny than has been allotted to me here on earth, and the same assurance of acceptance above! ”

“ Thus that which does not fall even into the likeness of death, does not succumb to the reality thereof. Passing now to the other word mortuorum, I wish you to look carefully, and see to what substance it is applicable. Were we to allow, under this head, as is sometimes held by the heretics, that the soul is mortal, so that being mortal it shall attain to a resurrection; this would afford a presumption that the flesh also, being no less mortal, would share in the same resurrection. ”

“ The Scripture teaching is far otherwise. However, there are certain Scripture phrases that emphasize the severity of the punishment of sin, which are often taken as supporting the doctrine of never-ending conscious torment.
1. "Forever and Ever."—In Rev. 20:10 it is said that the devil and his chief agencies "shall be tormented day and night forever and ever." The phrase emphasizes the surety of their utter destruction.
"Forever" means age-lasting, or life-lasting—so long as a thing exists by its nature. ”

“ The tormentors threw their dead bodies to the dogs: some raged and gnashed their teeth over the dead, seeking to take yet more abundant vengeance thereon; others laughed and made mockery thereof. And others, more gentle, seeming to sympathize as much as they dared, made grievous reproaches, and said, "Where is now their God, and of what profit is their piety, which they loved better even than their own life! ”

“ But if the words are to be fulfilled in the next life, must not their fulfillment be conditioned on the theory of Restoration? Suppose there is extinction at death. How could any stripes be laid on a man who is extinct? Does not that consideration settle the idea of extinction?
And what about endless torment? Certainly many stripes are laid on the man in endless torment. But what about the man who is to be beaten with few stripes? Would it be possible to conceive of endless torment as being only a few stripes? ”

“ Before a hand could be raised to deal vengeance, death struck down the father, and but few days and nights of anguish and solicitude had passed before his heir lay dead beside him, and the life of the boy who alone of all survived, lay trembling in the balance. ”

“ Whether it was a fire kindled to burn a heretic in Geneva,—a gibbet erected to kill a witch in Salem,—or a scaffold made to put to death an ordinary “criminal,” it has ever been the same,—the punishment of the creature for the creator’s fault. There might be some excuse if man could turn from the frail, cracked vessels, and bring to trial the great potter for the imperfect work of his hand. ”

“ Closing such a life as this comes the unhonoured end, when the miserable made-up old creature totters down into the grave where paint and padding, and glossy plaits cut from some fresh young head, are of no more avail; and where death, which makes all things real, reduces her life of lies to the nothingness it has been from the beginning. ”

“ You will die the Other Death, which is two deaths, the death of the soul and the death of the body, and the one you will see with your eyes and the other will have no meaning.” He turned from me, and, as I stood wondering at his strange words, two of his officers stepped out with drawn knives. ”