Future Retribution. By Rev. George S. Mott [pp. 532-554]

Future Retribution.
of the finite duration of future punishments, let it be stated
ever so guardedly, from being perverted in various ways, by the
great mass of mankind, to their own injury." "It is oftensaid
by Cicero and others, that all philosophers, both Greek and
Roman, are agreed in this, that the gods do not punish. But as
soon as this opinion of the philosophers began to prevail among
the people, it produced, according to the testimony of all the
Roman writers, the most disastrous consequences, which lasted
for centuries." " The papal sale of indulgences, which became
general during the twelfth and the succeeding centuries, had a
tendency, in the same way, to diminish the fear of positive
divine punishments. The result of this delusion was equally
deplorable in this case as in the one before mentioned: the
greatest immoralities prevailed throughout Christian lands until this evil was arrested by the Reformation, and the fear and
the love of God were both awakened anew in the hearts of
Christians. A similar result took place in England, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, when some rationalist
philosophers, during the reign of Charles 11., undertook to
emancipate the minds of men from the fear of positive divine
punishments. The effect of their efforts is well known from
history. Frivolity of spirit, immorality, sins of impurity, and
all the dreadful consequences of forgetting God, suddenly prevailed. The principles -of these English philosophers were
gradually diffused through France by the writings of Voltaire,
Diderot, and others; and after 1740 theywere also adopted and
disseminated by some even in Germany. The history of our
own times' shows us sufficiently what has been the result of
these principles here." Knapp's Christian Theology, pp. 547 and
553. Reference in these last lines is to the state of things in
Germany at the opening of this century.
554
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