• Introduction - To the American Reader
• Preface to the Fifth Edition
• Author's Preface
• CHAPTER 1. Future Punishment Is Eternal.
• CHAPTER 2. Eternal Death
• CHAPTER 3. Testimony Of The Old Testament.
• CHAPTER 4. Testimony Of The New Testament.
• CHAPTER 5. The Greek Of The New Testament.
• CHAPTER 6. The Primary Sense Of Terms Vindicated.
• CHAPTER 7. The Illustrations Of Scripture.
• CHAPTER 8. The Resurrection Of The Wicked.
• CHAPTER 9. The Divine Justice.
• CHAPTER 10. The Extinction Of Evil.
• CHAPTER 11. Examination Of Particular Texts.
• CHAPTER 12. Distinctions In Future Punishment.
• CHAPTER 13. Theories Of Punishment And Christian Missions.
• CHAPTER 14. Some Objections Answered.
• CHAPTER 15. The Apostolic Fathers. Clement Of Rome.
• CHAPTER 16. Justin Martyr.
• CHAPTER 17. Irenaeus, Martyr And Bishop Of Lyons.
• CHAPTER 18. Rise Of The Theory Of Eternal Life In Hell.
• CHAPTER 19. Tertullian.
• CHAPTER 20. Rise Of The Theory Of Universal Restoration Origen.
• CHAPTER 21. Conclusion.

The Duration And Nature Of Future Punishment

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By HENRY CONSTABLE, A.M.
Prebendary of Cork

Fifth Edition - 1875

CHAPTER IV

Testimony of The New Testament

WE now turn to the New Testament. We shall find in it perfect agreement with the Old. Before, however, bringing forward its statements, we will make a few observations on a new feature here introduced, viz., the change of language adopted in the publication of the Gospel revelation.

2. We remark, then, that the writers of the New Testament must not only be supposed to follow the sense already fixed on the terms expressive of future punishment in the Hebrew Scriptures, but they also give us another guarantee as to their meaning by their usage of the Greek tongue. The Gospel, revealed and recorded chiefly by Jews, is recorded, not in a provincial dialect, but in the language of the Roman world. We have here a guarantee as to their meaning; whose overpowering force upon the present question we will show a little farther on. Paul and Luke, and John and Peter, used a language which they had no hand in forming or moulding, but which was already provided for them to be the vehicle of their thoughts. They made no claim to alter the world's tongue, but to alter the faith of the world through the medium of that tongue which the world used and understood when they were children, learning the meaning of its words from their elders.¹ The ordinary Greek lexicon—not lexicons of the New Testament, frequently coloured and tainted by theological opinion—is the true guide to the Greek of the New Testament. It is only where all opinion new to the human mind is brought before it that we have a light to look for a new or modified phrase, whose sense is to be stamped upon it by the teachers of the novel truth. Neither a future life, however, nor judgment and punishment to come, were ideas novel to man. Heathen poetry and prose perpetually discussed them before the preaching of the Gospel. Nor have we throughout the whole of the New Testament Scriptures, addressed as the several portions of these were to men of different races and religions over the broad surface of the Roman world, the smallest hint or indication that the language used differed in any way or degree from that in established use. Had we but one text from John or Paul, affirming that they wrote in a Grecian tongue different from that of Hesiod and Homer, of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, we should then no longer possess in the New Testament an intelligible language, but an unknown, an unintelligible, and a useless tongue. We should have to lay it aside as of no service until God should again raise up within the Church the spiritual gift of interpretation of tongues.

3. We will first draw attention to the fact that the punishment of the wicked is as frequently described as their death in the New Testament as in the Old, without the smallest effort to show that its terms "death" or "to die" have any new sense placed on them.² These words, as all other words on this subject, are used without any explanation, as words whose sense was long established and generally known. Thus our Lord, speaking of Himself, says, "This is the bread which came down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die." And again He says, "Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."³ In these passages he implies that they who do not believe in Him shall die. What our Lord implies of the ungodly Paul affirms of them: "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die."⁴ Very frequent are the passages in which the expression "death" is used for future punishment. Thus our Lord says, "If a man keep my sayings, he shall never see death." Paul affirms of wicked works that their end is death—"that the wages of sin is death:" of those who perish, he says, that to such "we are the savour of death unto death." James declares that "sin, when finished, bringeth forth death," and that "he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death." John declares that the ungodly shall suffer "the second death."⁵ We have thus, in repeated places, death described as the lot of the wicked in the coming age, nor is there in a single passage the least attempt made to show that death had any other than its usual sense, viz., the loss of existence.

4. We now proceed to examine another very frequent description of future punishment, viz., as consisting in the loss of life. ⁶ The uniform testimony of the New Testament is that "eternal life" hereafter will be the exclusive possession of the just, and that the wicked will certainly not obtain it: "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life."⁷ We are here tolerably agreed as to the sense of "everlasting:" our simple enquiry is, what is the proper and natural sense of that Greek word, Zoe, here and elsewhere translated "life."

5. If we were only to ask what was its primary sense, we should have no difficulty. All allow existence to be its primary signification. We will hereafter show that the primary sense of this term is the only one admissible; but here we will not further insist on it. We will here only ask if there was one universal sense attached to this term; so that while there might be to a greater or lesser extent a variety of senses attached to it in one place or other, still, as accepted by all mankind speaking the Grecian tongue, it had one sense which was every where accepted as a true sense, and by some accepted as the only sense. Here too we are able to come to a certain conclusion. That sense of "existence" which is undoubtedly the primary sense is as undoubtedly a sense accepted by every Grecian speaker as a true sense, and by very many Grecian speakers accepted as its only sense. Our opponents themselves cannot and do not attempt to deny this. "The unenlightened heathen," says Mattison, "understood the terms life and death as implying simple existence or non¬existence."⁸

6. A fact of this kind would seem sufficient to decide the question as to the meaning of "life" in the New Testament. "The unenlightened heathen" may appear to some minds a very unimportant portion of mankind; but they, in effect, formed the vastly-preponderating number of persons to whom the Gospel was preached. If Christ's own words were almost exclusively addressed to the Jewish ears, they were recorded for a world-wide circle of readers. If the Founder of Christianity spoke mainly to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, his apostles addressed and wrote to the heathen as well, and these heathen hearers, outside of Palestine, outnumbered their Jewish hearers as a thousand to one. No one will pretend that "life" as spoken by Paul to a heathen meant something different from "life" as spoken by Christ to a Jew. The word throughout must have the same sense, and as that word was addressed to hearers, the majority of whom only understood it in its sense of "existence," then we can but suppose that it was really intended to have this sense throughout the New Testament. If "life," spoken of to the heathen, had a sense different from what the heathen addressed put upon it, then it would have required to have been explained to them. We know how our opponents, both of the schools of Origen and Augustine, labour hard to explain the term in this sense. Page after page, chapter after chapter, are devoted by them to persuade their readers that "life" means "well being," "true functional action," "prosperity," "harmonious moral development, and fulfilment of the great moral aims of human existence," "the happiness or the glory of heaven," and so on. ⁹ But there is not throughout the New Testament one attempt at explaining the word in such a sense. For unenlightened heathen, or converts lately rescued from heathenism, there would have been all absolute necessity for such explanation of the word were it used in this sense so new to them. But of such explanation we do not find a trace. Where we do find all inspired writer defining the meaning of "life," he defines it exactly as a heathen would do: "What is your life?" saith the apostle James: "It is even," he replies, "a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."¹⁰ Life, with St. James, himself a, Jew, meant but what it meant with a heathen, existence.

7. But we have abundant proof from the New Testament that it does not use this important term "life" in that figurative sense which the Augustinian theorists put upon it. This we will now proceed to show. The importance of the point will be our full justification for dwelling upon it. The life which Christ bestows upon his redeemed is, according to our opponents, a true functional action, imparted to the believer by the renewing work of the Holy Spirit upon his heart and mind; and may be said to comprehend that great work of grace, commencing with repentance and faith, which issues more and more in the restoration of the human mind in its love for God and holiness, to a life of obedience; all this producing that peace of mind, that well-being and happiness, which may be attained even in this present state. Such is a fair explanation of what they suppose to be meant by the eternal life which Christ bestows upon His people. It is identical with their repentance, their faith, their sanctification, their present peace and joy in believing.

8.Now we will find that what is thus supposed to be identical with "life eternal," is in the New Testament distinguished from it. Paul has done so, plainly and explicitly. "Eternal life," with him, is not the present obedience, or the present faith, or holiness of the believer; it is not the new hopes, desires, aspirations, joys, planted within him by divine grace: it is that which is hereafter to crown and to reward, through the goodness of our Father, such a work as He has Himself here effected in the hearts and lives of his people: "to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality," he tells us, "God will render eternal life."¹¹ That eternal life, which so many confound with God's present work of grace upon the heart, is by the apostle distinguished from it, and taught to be its result, its consequence, its reward, its crown, in the coming age ushered in by the resurrection of life. The same distinction is observable in other Scriptures.¹² Life is ever the end to be obtained, not the way that leads thereto. Man is first prepared by a divine work of grace, wrought now, for the true enjoyment and use of life, and then the eternal life is bestowed upon him in which to glorify God and to be blessed.

9. In exact conformity with this, Scripture represents eternal life as a gift, not yet enjoyed by the children of God. If it were identical, as many suppose, with that "true functional action" produced in man by God's work, in that case eternal life would be here begun. In this present world, before death came to take him from it, before resurrection restored him to existence, the believer in Christ would already have had his eternal life, as truly, though it may be not as fully, as at the resurrection. But this is not the case. While there are no doubt many Scriptures¹³ which describe the believer as now having everlasting life, we are expressly told elsewhere that this consists in his having God's pledge and promise of that everlasting life; but not its actual possession and enjoyment. It is common in Scripture to speak of that which God intends to do as already done. It is significant of God as invariable in his purposes: "As I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand."¹⁴ This is accordingly the way in which eternal life is spoken of. It is sometimes spoken of as already given, because it is pledged and promised; but it is far more frequently spoken of as a future thing, because it is not yet actually bestowed and enjoyed. Thus St. Paul, in a passage already referred to, tells us that "eternal life" is a thing which God will hereafter render to his people at the same time that he will render to the wicked their tribulation and wrath. Our Lord tells us that it is at this same coming time that the righteous will go into life eternal. Hence, Peter describes believers as "heirs of the grace of life;" Paul describes them as living "in hope of eternal life, which God hath promised;" while the Epistle to the Hebrews describes their exact position and standing here, namely, as "called to receive the promise of eternal inheritance."¹⁵ Eternal life, then, is a great gift promised by God, but not yet bestowed: the possession of his people in His unalterable purpose, but not yet placed within their hands. It is not yet theirs to use and to enjoy. It will not become theirs in the intermediate state when the spirit has left the body. God's heirs of life will enter upon its enjoyment when their Redeemer comes again to call them to the resurrection of everlasting life.

10. Having thus established the scriptural force of the word "life," as signifying "existence," we will see at once its bearing upon our present question. As the wicked are not to have an eternal life hereafter, it means that they are not to have an eternal existence then. Their existence, then, after their resurrection to judgment will but resemble their existence now; it will be temporary, and will pass away.

11. There is another Greek word constantly translated "life," in the New Testament.¹⁶ With respect to this word, one thing is certain, viz., that it never bears in classical dictionaries, nor even in dictionaries of the New Testament, so far as we know, that sense of "happiness," "well being," or "true functional action," which is so often attributed to the term Zoe. Another thing is equally certain, namely, that in passages where this word can only mean "animal life," such as we share with the lower creation, this life, it is expressly declared, shall be lost hereafter by the ungodly. Let us consider one such passage. In Matt. 10:39, our Lord declares, "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." What is this life which the fearful and the unbelieving prolonged by their denial of Christ, and which martyrs lost by their confession of Christ? It is, and can be, nothing but animal existence. It is the life which the good and the bad have in common. It is that which both alike value and would prolong, but which one are content to lose, and do lose, for Christ, and which the other will not lose for His sake. That which these latter have here prolonged for a little while, the Lord of Life tells them they shall lose in the future retribution, i.e. they shall cease to exist. Christ's words here can have no second meaning. If we want to have His great apostle's commentary on what is meant by the loss of a soul or life, we will find it in Acts 27:22. And our conclusion is only in agreement with all Scripture. Immortality is nowhere spoken of as the possession of fallen man; but it is described as a blessing to be sought by him, as much as the "glory and honour" of the future state.¹⁷

12. And here we will refer for a moment to a passage in the history of Moses which strongly confirms our view. Moses intercedes with God that Israel may be forgiven, and asks that, if his prayer be not granted, he may be blotted out of the book which God had written.¹⁸ This book can be no other than that "book of life" frequently referred to in Scripture, and in which the names of the redeemed are written.¹⁹ What then did Moses mean by his receiving the doom of sinners, and being blotted out of the book of life? We cannot suppose that be could even for a moment have wished throughout eternity for a life of pain and moral corruption. He could only have wished for the utter cessation of a life which he then felt would be intolerable if his prayer was refused. Since this must be his meaning, it follows that what he asked for himself shall be the condition of the ungodly; for God declared that what Moses sought for himself He will inflict on them— "Whosoever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book."

13. We now proceed to consider other expressions significant of future punishment. Of these none is more common than the Greek noun, Apoleia, translated by the term "destruction." ²⁰²¹ "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction," saith Christ; and Paul speaks of the ungodly as "vessels of wrath fitted for destruction.²² "There is not in the Greek language a word more strongly significant of the utter loss of existence. Its proper meaning, says Schleusner in his Lexicon, is "the destruction of anything so that it ceases to exist." Schleusner, who gives this as its proper sense, himself held the Augustinian theory of punishment. We will show from some passages in the New Testament that it uses the word in this its proper sense. In Acts 8, we read of the intercourse of Simon Peter with Simon Magus at Samaria. The latter offers money to the apostles, in order that he may have bestowed upon him a power equal to theirs. He is met by the indignant rebuke from Peter: "Thy money perish with thee," literally "thy money go with thyself to destruction." Here we see Peter's sense of destruction. It had the same meaning when applied to a man as it had when applied to metal: disorganization and wasting away until it should disappear, was the idea which Peter attached to it in both cases alike. The notion of the perpetual existence of anything which met with destruction was absent from his mind. From another example of the word in this book of Acts we find that such was the sense attached to it in the common usage, and accepted by the inspired writer, Luke.²³ Festus here tells Agrippa that it was not the "manner of the Romans to deliver any man to death," (literally "to destruction,")before the accused had an opportunity of defending himself. Festus here calls the "destruction" of a man his "death;" and as Festus doubtless, with almost every man of his station at that time, ridiculed the very idea of any future life after this, he could only have intended by the "destruction" of a man, the putting him out of all existence. Luke, by using, accepts the term in the sense of Festus, and we have thus in the usage of two of the inspired writers of the New Testament, Peter and Luke, the sense of "destruction" established as the putting out of existence. Such, we are told, will be the end of the wicked.

14. Besides the Greek noun which we have just spoken of, its verb, Apollumi, is constantly employed to signify the punishment which God will inflict in hell upon wicked men and wicked spirits.²⁴ This is a most important word, and deserves special attention. We will now take the verb in its active voice . In this voice, it is used either in an active or a neuter sense. In this latter sense, it signifies "to lose utterly:" in its active sense, when applied to persons, it means "to destroy utterly, kill, slay." In this its active sense it is applied to God's treatment of wicked men and devils in hell. A close search into classical writings may perhaps discover a very few instances, and these even doubtful and disputed, where the term has a lower sense, but, beyond any doubt, its true, well-established, general, if not absolutely-invariable sense is "to kill" or "slay."

15. That such is its meaning in classical Greek, we assert on the authority of Greek classical dictionaries. (See Liddell and Scott's Dictionary, &100.) If our opponents can disprove our assertion let them do so, and we will withdraw it. Till they do so, we take it as an established fact that Apollumi in its active sense, and as applied to persons, never has any other established sense in classical Greek writers than to deprive those persons of existence. This fact ought to be sufficient to decide the sense of this term so used in the New Testament . For we maintain that the Greek of the New Testament differs in no imaginable respect from the ordinary Greek of its own place and period. We challenge our opponents to show that it does. Let them remember that, if they succeed, they also succeed in converting the Greek of our New Testament into an unknown tongue.

16. But we will not rest satisfied with asserting on the authority of classical dictionaries that the above sense is that of the word, we will show that such is its invariable sense in the New Testament itself. We will for this purpose refer to its use in two of our Gospels, that written by the Jewish Matthew and that written by the Gentile Luke. We will refer to every place in these two Gospels where the word is thus used. We are thus referring to books which use the term more frequently than any other of the New Testament Scriptures, and which also show its sense as well with Jewish as Gentile writers. The whole of the New Testament is open to our readers to confirm or to controvert our statement.

17. The verb Apollumi, to destroy, is used in its active sense and as applied to persons, five times in the Gospel of Matthew. Herod's attempt to take the life of the infant Jesus: the Pharisees' plot to deprive of life that same Jesus when he was grown to manhood: the Lord of the vineyard decreeing death to the unfaithful husbandmen: the King punishing with death the slayers of his servants: these are four of the places where the word is thus used in Matthew: the fifth passage is that solemn one wherein Christ declares that God can "destroy both body and soul in hell."²⁵ This same verb is used as above seven times in the Gospel of Luke. To take away life from man: the universal death produced by Noah's flood: the plots of the enemies of Christ against his life: the decree of death to the unfaithful husbandmen: these occupy six of the places where the word thus occurs in the Gospel of Luke: the seventh place is where wicked spirits, meeting with Christ, are filled with terror, lest He should have come, before they expected, to destroy them.²⁶

18. We have thus seen the usage of this word in the New Testament, and have seen that it agrees exactly with its usage in other Greek writings. In ten of these passages it speaks of the loss of existence here: in the other two it speaks of the loss of existence hereafter. For this second loss of life, the second and eternal death, hell has been provided. The bodies and souls of wicked men will there suffer eternal destruction. There devils, whose well being and happiness and moral order have long since departed, will suffer the loss of that existence to which, with all its present drawbacks, they fondly and desperately cling. Annihilation is a fearful thought to the mind of angels, fallen though they be: annihilation they know to be their doom.

19. We will not here enter any further into the sense of this verb Apollumi, when, in its middle voice, applied to future punishment. We will merely say that we could here too show it, as used in the New Testament, to signify the loss of existence by the wicked. We wish to avoid tedious, because needless, verbal discussion. To the verb, as used in its active voice and sense, we invite the attention of our opponents. We challenge their contradiction of what we have written. We assert that they do, not wilfully but really and grossly, put false senses upon the plainest words of Scripture. We reaffirm the indignant protest of one of the best Greek scholars of the day against their perversion of language, when we record a portion of a letter from R. F. Weymouth (D. Lit. Lond.), Head Master of Mill-Hill School, addressed to the Rev. Edward White, in which he says, "My mind fails to conceive a grosser misinterpretation of language than when the five or six strongest words which the Greek tongue possesses, signifying "destroy," or "destruction," are explained to mean maintaining an everlasting but wretched existence. To translate black as white is nothing to this." Even the leading modern advocate of the Augustinian view, who all but closed his literary labours in the defence of this wretched cause, looking in blank dismay at there words of doom, can only say of them that they "do not invariably mean annihilation."²⁷ We, on the contrary, assert that such is in the New Testament, as used of the wicked, their invariable sense: they are there ever connected with death.²⁸

20. We now proceed to consider some of the other terms in the New Testament relative to future punishment. Thus Paul, in his solemn warning to his Jewish hearers at Antioch, in Pisidia, adopts the teaching of the Old Testament as truly descriptive of future punishment, and sums it up in these words, "Behold, ye despisers! and wonder, and perish."²⁹ The Greek word here translated "perish," when, as here, used in the passive voice, means properly "to become unseen, to disappear, and to be heard of no more." We have a striking instance of its sense in the active voice in an address of Titus to his soldiers. He is speaking of the immortality which bravery in war would secure for the brave in a future life, while the sluggish and the cowardly would in death be reduced to annihilation. He thus describes the latter process: "A subterranean night dissolves them to nothing. "³⁰ We have in Josephus' account of the doctrines of the Jewish sects a yet stronger instance of the recognised force of this word. He is describing the views of the Sadducees who taught there was no future life at all either for wicked or good men. He describes their view in these few words: "The doctrine of the Sadducees is this, that souls perish with their bodies ."³¹ Josephus, a contemporary of the apostles, and whose Greek corresponds perhaps more closely to that of the New Testament than that of any other writer, here shows that there is no ambiguity about the phrase. It means with him, plainly and without a doubt, when applied to human life, its vanishing utterly and entirely away. And exactly so we find it used by the apostle James when speaking of the transitory nature of this present life.³² Such is the word which Paul uses to describe the consummation of retribution. That which the Sadducees taught would happen to all men at the first death the apostle tells us will be to unbelievers the sad result of the second death: they will rise from their graves and see what they have rejected, will marvel at their folly, and will vanish out of existence.

21. Another Greek verb, translated "destroy," "corrupt," "defile," and used to express future punishment, has, when applied to man, two main senses.³³ One is to deprave and corrupt: the other to destroy by depriving of existence. As it would be impious to suppose that God will ever do Satan's work of corrupting, we can only take the word in the second sense.³⁴ A good example of these different senses is found in 1 Cor. 3:17, "If any man defile the temple of God him shall God destroy." It is the same Greek verb which first here signifies "defile," and afterwards "destroy." The first is the sinner's guilty act; the second is God's punishment hereafter by destruction.

22. This verb in its composite form has also the same two senses, while it intensifies their force.³⁵ It signifies to "destroy utterly," to "kill," as well as "to lead astray," and "corrupt." In that book of Revelation, which is so frequently and so vainly supposed to teach the Augustinian error, it is used to describe future punishment, where John tells us that God will "destroy them that destroy the earth."³⁶ The verb occurs twice in this passage, and is in both cases translated "destroy." There can be no doubt that our translators here should have made the same distinction which they made in translating the simple verb in 1 Cor. 3:17. The Vulgate has carried out the true sense which is translated in the Rheimish Testament, "shouldest destroy them who have corrupted the earth."³⁷ The sense of the word, as signifying wasting away to utter destruction, is constantly found in the New Testament.³⁸

23. The Greek noun of this verb has in the same way the two senses of "moral corruption" and "destruction by death," and is frequently applied to future punishment.³⁹ When spoken of as what God will inflict in punishment, it can only bear the latter sense. We would direct attention to the passage in 2 Pet. 2:12, as affording indubitable proof that it is thus used in Scripture with direct reference to future punishment. Speaking of the ungodly, Peter says, "These, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, shall utterly perish, in their own corruption!" Here the same Greek word is used of the end of beasts and the end of the ungodly. We know what is the end of beasts taken and destroyed: even such, Peter declares, will be the end of the ungodly in the future life: they shall perish there as beasts perish here.

Another Greek verb and noun, translated "destroy," "destruction," is properly and primarily significant of utter extermination by death. ⁴⁰ It is applied in the New Testament to the punishment of sinners hereafter: "Every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people:" "the wicked shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord."⁴¹

We will now call attention to but one other phrase of the New Testament significant of future punishment.⁴² It occurs in Paul's wish that he "were accursed from Christ for his brethren"—a passage affording an exact parallel to the prayer of Moses already referred to.⁴³ There can be no doubt that whatever Paul here means by being "accursed from Christ," it is that condition in which the ungodly will hereafter be.⁴⁴ What then could Paul here wish for himself? Less of him than of almost any man that ever lived, are we to suppose that he could for a moment wish for himself an eternal life of blasphemy and moral corruption, which, according to the Augustinian theory, is the condition of the reprobate throughout eternity? We can only suppose him to mean that he could suffer an eternal death, a blotting out of his own name from the book of the living, if, by so doing he could gain for his kinsmen the life he had surrendered for himself.⁴⁵ This sense is in exact agreement with the use of the term "accursed" among the Greeks, by whom it was applied to any animal devoted to death and removed out of the sight of man, in order to avert calamity. We will also find abundant confirmation of our view in the usage of the corresponding Hebrew term, Cherem, [srt], in the Old Testament, when applied to things devoted to cursing. ⁴⁶ Utter death where there was life, utter destruction where no life existed, was the end of persons and things devoted to a curse.

26. We have thus gone through the various phrases of the New Testament which describe the end of the ungodly after the judgment. We have seen the proper and primary sense of each of these terms. We have seen that such a sense carries out precisely the theory which we here maintain—the destruction or annihilation of the wicked. In subsequent chapters we will proceed to show that the sense thus put upon them is in harmony with the sense of the words in the Grecian language—that the primary sense is the only sense that we are warranted in putting upon them—and, that even when taken in any of the secondary senses which the Greek tongue bears, they do not admit of that view of future punishment which the theories either of Augustine or Origen teach.