nd qualified sense at least a
hundred times where it is used once with its close etymological
force. And the same is true of the corresponding Hebrew term. The
writer of the "Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs," at the close
of every chapter, describing the respective patriarch's death,
says, "he slept the eternal sleep," though by "eternal" he can
only mean a duration reaching to the time of the resurrection, as
plainly appears from the context. Iamblichus speaks of "an eternal
eternity of eternities."14 Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa, and
others, the fact of whose belief in final universal salvation no
one pretends to deny, do not hesitate with earnestness and
frequency to affirm the "eternal" punishment of the wicked in
hell. Now, if the contemporaries of the evangelists, and their
successors, often used the word "eternal" popularly, in a
figurative, limited sense, then it may be so employed when it
occurs in the New Testament in connection with the future pains of
the bad.

Thirdly, we argue from the phraseology and other peculiarities of
the representation of the future woe of the condemned, given in
the New Testament itself, that its authors

14 De Mysteriis Egyptiorum, cap. viii. sect. 10.

did not consciously intend to proclaim the rigid endlessness of
that woe.15 "These shall go away into everlasting punishment."
Since the word "everlasting" was often used simply to denote a
long period, what right has any one to declare that here it must
mean an absolutely unending duration? How does any one know that
the mind of Jesus dialectically grasped the metaphysical notion of
eternity and deliberately intended to express it? Certainly the
intrinsic probabilities are all the other way. Such a conclusion
is hardly compatible with the highly tropical style of speech
employed throughout the discourse. Besides, had he wished to
convey the overwhelming idea that the doom of the guilty would be
strictly irremediable, their anguish literally infinite, would he
not have taken pains to say so in definite, guarded, explained,
unmistakable terms? He might easily, by a precise prosaic
utterance, by explanatory circumlocutions, have placed that
thought beyond possibility of mistake.

Fourthly, we have an intense conviction not only that the leaving
of such a doctrine by the Savior in impenetrable obscurity and
uncertainty is irreconcilable with the supposition of his
deliberately holding it in his belief, but also that a bel