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IN the infancy of christianity it was thought a
hard matter to get to heaven, and that when once in
hell, there was no getting out. A certain father of
the church, of the name of Origen, was the first to
be more liberal in his sentiments, and thought, that
after a certain period, there would be a jail-delivery
of the damned. I do not know that he went so far
as to let the devils themselves out upon a furlough,
but at the present time, we all know very well, that
the time will come when they will be out all together:
at least the universalists tell us this, and
prove it.

The doctrine was received in some part by the
early councils, but in other parts rejected. The
matter was compounded by establishing a purgatory,
for not consenting to liberate from hell, in order to
satisfy the advocates of a temporary punishment,
they fixed up a middle place, where all the advantages
of penal purgation could be enjoyed, without the
necessity of contradicting the eternity of hell torments.

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Indeed under the catholic church, the straight
gate and the narrow way, and the many called and
few chosen, was a good deal laid aside, and the road
made pretty plain by indulgencies and absolutions.
But at the reformation, the matter was brought
back to its old bed again, and the cry of there being
but a remnant saved, was raised in every pulpit.
There has been some relaxation of late years with
almost every sect of protestants; and there is not
just such a fury of tumbling great crowds into the
tolbooth, as there was in the days of John Knox,
and the framers of the Westminster confession of
faith, and the catechisms. Dr. Bellamy, a New-England
divine, some years ago, stated in his pamphlet,
that the damned would be to the saved, as the
malefactors of a country to honest people, that came
to an untimely end by jail or jibbet. Some now
preach boldly, not perhaps a total exemption from
future punishment, but a final restoration from it;
so that the matter is now brought nearly to what it
was in the days of Origen. I do not know that I
would be of opinion with the Scotch gentleman, and
wish the matter carried farther, establishing that
there is no hell at all; because if the thing should
take a turn, it might go to the other extreme, and be
all hell, so that none should be saved; and instead
of universal salvation, we should then have the doctrine
of the damnation of the whole, bodily.

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