arose to eminence in the church, particularly Alexander, afterwards bishop of Jerusalem, and the celebrated Origen. But about A. D. 202, the persecution under the emperor Severus, which spread death and terror through the church at Alexandria, drove Clemens from the city. It is supposed that he embraced this opportunity to revisit the eastern countries; and we find him, in the year 205, at Jerusalem, in company with his scholar, Alexander. From this place we trace him to Antioch; whence he returned, it is thought, to Alexandria, and in connection with Origen, resumed for a while, the care of the school. He died not far, probably, from A. D. 217.15

IV. So imperfect is the account preserved of this distinguished father. Of his learning the ancients uniformly speak in terms of admiration. His reading was certainly extensive, almost universal history, poetry, mythology and philosophy, seem perfectly familiar to him; and the sacred Scriptures, together with all that related to the concerns of the church, were treasured in his memory. With his great learning and piety, the placid benevolence of his disposition must have conspired to render him esteemed and beloved. If we may judge from the character of his writings, his passions were naturally moderate, his heart benignant and incapable of sourness and severity. Impartiality obliges us, however, to remark, that like the rest of the early fathers, he wanted sober judgement: he was credulous, fanciful and incorrect, ignorant of rational criticism, and delighted with allegorical interpretations

15. For his life, see Cave's Lives of the Fathers, and Lardner's Credibility, &c. Chap. Clement of Alexandria.

of Scripture. His fondness for the heathen systems of philosophy was extravagant; and it is thought that his example had the pernicious influence to recommend those systems to a more general admiration in the church. He was naturally of a poetical genius ; his style often runs into metre, and his works abound with quotations from the ancient poets and philosophers, as well as from the Scriptures. His method of writing is careless, feeble and sometimes very rambling.

A. D. 200,

to 204.

V. Passing over several writers of little note, we shall now make some observations on the only succeeding fathers of eminence, before Origen. Cotemporary with Clemens, but belonging to the Western or Latin church, was the celebrated Tertullian, a presbyter of Carthage in Africa: a man of extensive learning, of strong and vehement genius, but severe and morose, superstitious and fanatical, even when compared with those of his own age. He is thought to have been the first Christian writer who expressly asserted that the torments of the damned will be of "equal 16 duration" with the happiness of the blest. This circumstance is, indeed, no proof that the same opinion had never been entertained before; but we may safely say that, of all the early fathers, there was none with whose natural disposition the doctrine of endless misery better

16. Tertulliani Apologet. cap. 18. At the general resurrection and judgement, says he, "God will recompense his worshippers "with life eternal; and cast the profane into a fire equally per"petual and unintermitted." See Whiston on the Eternity of Hell Torments, p. 86. N. B. Tertullian's Apology was written about A. D. 200,

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accorded, than with Tertullian's: "You are fond of your spectacles," said he, in allusion to the pagans; "there are other spectacles that day disbelieved, "derided, by the nations, that last eternal day of "judgement, when all ages shall be swallowed up "in one conflagration - what a variety of spectacles "shall then appear! How shall I admire, how laugh, "how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many kings, "worshipped as gods in heaven, together with Jove himself, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness! "so many magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kin"dled against Christians so many sage philosophers "blushing in raging fire, with their scholars whom "they persuaded to despise God, and to disbelieve "the resurrection; and so many poets shuddering be"fore the tribunal, not of Radamanthus, not of Minos, "but of the disbelieved Christ! Then shall we hear "the tragedians more tuneful under their own suffer“ings; then shall we see the players far more sprightly "amidst the flames; the charioteer all red-hot in his "burning car; and the wrestlers hurled, not upon the "accustomed list, but on a plain of fire."17 Such is the relish with which his fierce spirit dwells on the prospect of eternal torments. His gloomy and enthusiastic disposition soon led him to abandon the regular churches, as not sufficiently austere and visionary, and to join himself to the fanatical sect of Montanists. VI, Next to Tertullian is Minucius FeA. D. 210. lix, another writer of the Western church, either a Roman or an African, a lawyer

17. Tertull. De Spectaculis, cap. 30.

or 204.

Written about A. D. 203,

by profession, and a man of considerable learning. His Dialogue, the only work he has left us, is a popular disputation, elegantly written, in defence of Christianity against paganism; but its beauty is somewhat sullied by a mixture of heathen superstitions, and its force impaired by frequent declamation instead of argument. The author seems to assert the strict eternity of hell-torments, and to represent that his was the common opinion of Christians, on the subject. In allusion to the Grecian fable of the tremendous oath of the gods, he says that Jupiter swears by the broiling banks of the river of fire, and "shudders at the tor"ments which await him and his worshippers: torments "that know neither measure nor end. For there the "subtile fire burns and repairs, consumes and nourish"es; and as lightenings waste not the bodies they

blast, and as Etna, Vesuvius and other volcanoes "continue to burn without expending their fuel, so "these penal flames of hell are fed, not from the dimi"nution of the damned, but from the bodies they prey

upon without consuming."18 The objector to Christianity is, in another passage, represented as saying that Christians threaten all but themselves "with tor"ments that never shall have an end."19

VII. Clemens, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix, in treating of the infernal region and its torments, frequently adopt the language, and some of the views, of the ancient heathen poets. Ever since Justin Martyr, it had been a common opinion among the orthodox

18. Minucii Fel. Dialog. cap. 34. Lardner dates this Dialogue at A. D. 210; some critics have assigned it to an earlier period, and others to a later, even to the year 230. 19. Ditto. cap. 11.

fathers, that at death all souls, both the righteous and the wicked, descended to the Hades of the Greeks, or Infernum of the Latins; which was a subterranean world consisting of two general divisions, the mansions of the just, and the abodes of the guilty. Here the separate spirits dwelt, either in joy or suffering, according to their different characters and deserts; undergoing various courses of discipline and purification, as was thought by some; or, fixed in their respective stations, awaiting the decision of the approaching general judgement, as was represented by others. Some of the fathers,20 however, do not seem to have believed in the conscious existence of the soul in the interval between death and the general judgement; but the latter event, they all agreed, was near at hand, when the world should be destroyed by fire, Tertullian says, in the end of his own age.

VIII. In concluding this chapter, it may be proper to give, as far as practicable, a succinct account of the state of Universalism, at the period now under consideration. It appears, then, that of the orthodox Christians, some believed the eventual salvation of all mankind, after a future punishment for the wicked; while others, again, held the doctrine of endless misery. This diversity of opinion, however, occasioned no divisions, no controversies nor contentions among them; and both sentiments existed together in the church without reproach. If we may hazard a conjecture, the generality of the orthodox had not any fixed nor definite opinion on the subject. That there

20. Viz. Tatian, and perhaps Minucius Felix.