Nec tormentis aut modus aut terminus. —Minucius Felix.
“If all the severest and most barbarous tortures which were ever invented by the tyrants of the earth, who by anxious thought and hellish contrivance improved and refined the art of cruelty and brought it to perfection; if these, I say, were to be heaped upon the head of one man, and he were to endure them for a hundred years, yet they would not come near the pains of the damned for one day. So fearful a thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God. The quickest and sorest punishments which in all ages have been inflicted upon thieves, parricides, and other malefactors, are seldom known to have lasted above three or four days, or a week at farthest; but the torments of those who lie wailing under the vengeance of a power armed with omnipotence, are not for a year or an age, but for an interminable duration: God will always punish them, and he can never torment them enough, though their torments will endure to all eternity.” —Drexelius
“That the punishment will be endless is certain, but whether it will be progressive I will not venture to assert. But the thing being once admitted, consequences result enough to shake the world. Then the time will come when the smallest soul in hell will contain more misery than Satan now does;—time will come when the smallest soul in hell will endure more in one hour than has been endured on earth by all nations since the creation. And further still—it is too awful to proceed. Oh, what a God is that which lives from eternity to eternity!”—Dr. Griffen
Copyright, 1879,
By Universalist Publishing House.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambrige.
[Editor’s note (2026): Review of this book found that much of it consisted of extremely long paragraphs. Therefore, we have done a review and made a best effort to break up paragraphs into more readable ones for online reading. In addition, any noted scriptural references have been modernized from Roman numerals to Arabic numbering.]