Part III, Chapter XXXVIII, 2

Lastly, it has already been proved from several clear passages of Scripture in the 35. chapter of this book that the Kingdom of God is a civil Common-wealth in which God himself is Sovereign, first by virtue of the Old Covenant and afterward by the New, and in which he reigns through his vicar or lieutenant. Those same passages therefore also prove that after our Savior comes again in majesty and glory to reign in fact and forever, the Kingdom of God will be on earth. But because this doctrine, though proved from many passages of Scripture that are far from obscure, will strike most people as novel, I merely propose it. I maintain nothing about this or any other paradox of religion, but await the outcome of that contest of arms over authority, not yet decided among my countrymen: the authority by which all doctrines are to be approved or rejected, and whose commands in speech and writing must be obeyed by everyone who expects protection under its laws, whatever private opinions people may hold. For doctrines concerning the Kingdom of God have too great an influence on the kingdoms of men to be determined by anyone but those who hold sovereign power under God.

Just as the Kingdom of God and eternal life appear in Scripture to have their place on earth, so too do God's enemies and their torments after Judgment. The place where all remain until the Resurrection who have been buried or swallowed by the earth is commonly called in Scripture by words meaning under the ground, generally rendered Infernus and Inferni by the Latins, and Hades by the Greeks: a place where people cannot see, encompassing the grave as well as any deeper place. But the location of the damned after the Resurrection is not determined by any description of position in either the Old or the New Testament, but only by the company they keep. They are said to be where the wicked whom God destroyed from the face of the earth in former times by extraordinary and miraculous means are: for example, in Inferno, in Tartarus, or in the bottomless pit, because Corah, Dathan, and Abirom were swallowed alive by the earth. This does not mean that the writers of Scripture would have us believe that within the globe of the earth, which is not only finite but of negligible size compared with the height of the stars, there could be a bottomless pit: a hole of infinite depth such as the Greeks in their demonology, their doctrine concerning demons, and the Romans after them called Tartarus, of which Virgil says,

Twice as far it plunges down beneath the shades

As the gaze rises to heaven's ethereal Olympus:

For the proportion of earth to heaven cannot accommodate such a thing. Rather, we are to believe that the damned are there, wherever those people are on whom God inflicted that exemplary punishment.

Again, those mighty people of the earth who lived in Noah's day before the flood—called heroes by the Greeks and giants by Scripture, both of which say they were conceived by the union of the children of God with the children of men—were destroyed in the general flood for their wicked lives. Thus the place of the damned is sometimes identified by the company of those dead giants, as in Proverbs 21.16.: “The man who wanders from the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the giants”; and Job 26.5.: “Behold, the giants groan under the water, and those who dwell with them.” Here the place of the damned is under water. And Isaiah 14.9.: “Hell is stirred to meet you”—that is, the king of Babylon—“and will rouse the giants for you.” Here again, if the meaning is literal, the place of the damned is under water.

Third, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed for their wickedness with fire and brimstone by the extraordinary wrath of God, and the surrounding country became with them a stinking bituminous lake. Therefore the place of the damned is sometimes expressed by fire and a fiery lake, as in the Apocalypse, ch.21.8.: “But the fearful, unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone; which is the second death.” Thus it is clear that hellfire, here expressed in a metaphor drawn from the real fire of Sodom, signifies no particular kind or location of torment but must be understood generally as destruction. So it is in the 20. chapter, at the 14. verse, where “Death and Hell were cast into the lake of fire”: that is, they were abolished and destroyed, as though after the day of Judgment there would be no more dying and no more descent into Hell, or Hades (the word from which our word Hell may perhaps be derived), which is the same as no more dying.

Fourth, from the plague of darkness inflicted on the Egyptians, of which it is written (Exod. 10.23.), “They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days; but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings,” the place of the wicked after Judgment is called outer darkness, or, as in the original, darkness outside. So it is expressed in Mat. 22.13., where the king commands his servants “to bind hand and foot the man who did not have on his wedding garment, and to cast him out,” Eis To Skotos To Exoteron, external darkness, or darkness outside. Although this is translated “utter darkness,” it does not signify how great the darkness is but where it is to be: outside the dwelling place of God's elect.

Lastly, there was a place near Jerusalem called the Valley of the Children of Hinnon, part of which was called Tophet. There the Jews had committed the most grievous idolatry, sacrificing their children to the idol Moloch; there God had also afflicted his enemies with the most grievous punishments; and there Josias had burned the priests of Moloch upon their own altars, as appears at length in the 2 of Kings, chap. 23. The place afterward served to receive the refuse and garbage carried out of the city, and fires were lit there from time to time to cleanse the air and remove the stench of carrion. From this abominable place the Jews thereafter used the name Gehenna, or Valley of Hinnon, for the place of the damned. And Gehenna is the word now commonly translated HELL; from the fires that burned there from time to time we derive the idea of everlasting and unquenchable fire.

Now nobody interprets Scripture to mean that after the day of Judgment all the wicked will be punished forever in the Valley of Hinnon, or that they will rise again only to remain forever beneath the ground or water, or that after the Resurrection they will no longer see one another or move from place to place. It follows, necessarily, I think, that what is said of hellfire is metaphorical; and so we must seek a literal sense, since every metaphor has some real ground that can be expressed in literal words, both for the place of Hell and for the nature of its torments and tormentors.

First, the tormentors' nature and properties are conveyed exactly and literally by the names the Enemy, or Satan; the Accuser, or Diabolus; and the Destroyer, or Abbadon. These meaningful names—Satan, Devil, Abbadon—do not identify any individual as proper names do; they indicate only an office or quality, and so are common nouns. They ought not to have been left untranslated, as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles, since this makes them appear to be the proper names of demons and makes people more easily persuaded to believe the doctrine of devils, which was then the religion of the Gentiles and contrary to that of Moses and Christ.

And since the Enemy, the Accuser, and the Destroyer mean the enemy of those who will be in the Kingdom of God, if that Kingdom after the Resurrection is on earth, as I showed in the preceding chapter to be indicated by Scripture, the Enemy and his kingdom must also be on earth. For that is how things stood before the Jews deposed God: God's Kingdom was in Palestine, and the surrounding nations were the kingdoms of the Enemy. Consequently Satan means any earthly enemy of the Church.

The torments of Hell are expressed sometimes as “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” as in Mat. 8.12.; sometimes as “the worm of conscience,” as in Isa.66.24. and Mark 9.44, 46, 48; sometimes as fire, as in the passage just quoted, “where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched,” and many others; and sometimes as “shame and contempt,” as in Dan. 12.2.: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” All these passages represent metaphorically the grief and discontent of mind that arise from seeing others enjoy the eternal happiness one has lost through one's own unbelief and disobedience. And because they can feel that happiness in others only by comparison with their own actual misery, they must also suffer such bodily pains and calamities as befall people who not only live under evil and cruel governors but have as their enemy the eternal King of the saints, God Almighty. Among these bodily pains must also be reckoned a second death for every wicked person. For although Scripture is clear that there will be a universal Resurrection, we do not read that eternal life is promised to any of the reprobate. When St. Paul, answering the question of what bodies people will rise with, says (1 Cor. 15.42, 43.) that “the body is sown in corruption, and is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power,” glory and power cannot be applied to the bodies of the wicked. Nor can the name of second death be applied to those who can die only once. And though, metaphorically speaking, an everlasting life of calamity may be called an everlasting death, it can hardly be understood as a second death. The fire prepared for the wicked is an everlasting fire: that is, the state in which no one can exist without torture of both body and mind after the Resurrection shall endure forever. In that sense the fire will be unquenchable and the torments everlasting. But it does not follow that the person cast into that fire, or subjected to those torments, will endure and withstand them so as to be burned and tortured eternally, yet never destroyed or killed. Though many passages affirm everlasting fire and torments, into which people may successively be cast one after another forever, I find none that affirms the eternal life of any individual person within them. On the contrary, they affirm an everlasting death, which is the second death: (Apoc. 20. 13,14.) “For after Death and the Grave have delivered up the dead within them, and every man has been judged according to his works, Death and the Grave shall also be cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.” It is evident, then, that everyone condemned on the day of Judgment is to undergo a second death, after which he shall die no more.

Finally, chapter 35. of this book has already used several clear passages of Scripture to show that the Kingdom of God is a civil Commonwealth. God himself is sovereign there, first under the Old Covenant and then under the New Covenant, governing through his vicar or lieutenant. Those same passages also show that after our Savior returns in majesty and glory to reign in fact and forever, the Kingdom of God will be on Earth. Most people will find this teaching new, even though many clear passages of Scripture support it. So I merely put it forward. I do not insist on this or any other disputed point of religion. Instead, I wait for the outcome of the dispute fought with swords over which authority approves or rejects every kind of doctrine. Among my countrymen, that dispute is not yet settled. Everyone who wants the protection of that authority's laws must obey its commands about speech and writing, whatever private opinions they hold. Teachings about the Kingdom of God affect human kingdoms so deeply that only those who hold sovereign power under God should decide them.

Scripture also appears to place God's enemies and their punishment after judgment on Earth, just as it places the Kingdom of God and eternal life there. In Scripture the place where buried people, or people swallowed by the earth, remain until the resurrection is usually described by words meaning underground. The Latin texts usually call it Infernus or Inferni, and the Greek texts call it Hades, meaning a place where people cannot see. This includes both the grave and any deeper place. But neither Testament specifies the location of the damned after the resurrection. It identifies their place only by the company they keep: they will be where wicked people whom God once destroyed from the face of the Earth by extraordinary miracles are found. For example, people say they are in Inferno, in Tartarus, or in the bottomless pit because Corah, Dathan, and Abirom were swallowed alive by the earth. The writers of Scripture did not mean us to believe the finite globe of Earth contains a bottomless pit, a hole infinitely deep. Earth is also tiny in comparison with the height of the stars. The Greeks called such a pit Tartarus in their Daemonologie, their teaching about daemons, and the Romans adopted the name. Virgill says of it:

It opens downward and stretches twice as far into the shadows

As the height of heaven's airy Olympus rises above us:

But Earth's size in relation to heaven does not allow for such a pit. Rather, we should understand the damned to be somewhere, without specifying where, in the company of those whom God punished in this exemplary way.

Likewise, powerful people who lived before the flood in Noah's time were destroyed by the worldwide deluge for their wicked lives. The Greeks called them Heroes, and Scripture called them Giants. Both accounts say they were born from the union of the children of God with the children of human beings. So Scripture sometimes identifies the place of the damned by the company of those dead Giants. Proverbs 21.16. says, “The person who wanders from the path of understanding shall remain among the Giants.” Job 26.5. says, “Look, the Giants groan beneath the water, along with those who live with them.” Here the damned are placed beneath the water. Isaiah 14.9. says, “Hell is disturbed to meet you”—the king of Babylon—“and will move the Giants for you.” Here too the damned are under water, if the words are taken literally.

Third, God punished the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in an extraordinary way. He destroyed them with fire and brimstone and turned the surrounding region into a foul-smelling lake of bitumen. So the place of the damned is sometimes described as a fire or a fiery lake. The Apocalypse, ch.21.8., says, “The fearful, unbelieving, and abominable, murderers, sexually immoral people, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their share in the lake burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” Hellfire here is a metaphor drawn from Sodom's real fire. Clearly it does not indicate a particular kind or location of torment. It means destruction generally, as in the 20. Chapter, verse 14: “Death and hell were thrown into the lake of fire.” That is, they were abolished and destroyed. After the day of judgment there will be no more dying or going to hell, that is, going to Hades—a word from which our word “hell” may come. No more going to Hades means no more dying.

Fourth, the plague of darkness struck the Egyptians. Scripture says (Exod. 10.23.), “They did not see one another, and no one rose from his place for three days; but all the children of Israel had light in their homes.” From this, the place of the wicked after judgment is called outer darkness, or, in the original wording, darkness outside. In Mat. 22.13., the king orders his servants “to tie up the man without a wedding garment, hand and foot, and throw him out”—Eis To Skotos To Exoteron, external darkness, or darkness outside. Although this is translated “utter darkness,” it tells us not how deep the darkness is but where it is: outside the home of God's elect.

Finally, near Jerusalem was a place called the Valley of the Children of Hinnon. In one part called Tophet, the Jews had committed terrible idolatry by sacrificing their children to the idol Moloch. God had also punished his enemies terribly there. Josias burned the priests of Moloch on their own altars there, as described in detail in the 2 of Kings, chap. 23. Later the valley received the city's refuse and waste. Fires were lit there from time to time to clean the air and remove the smell of rotting flesh. Because of this dreadful place, the Jews later called the place of the damned Gehenna, or the Valley of Hinnon. Gehenna is the word usually translated now as “hell.” The fires periodically burning there give us the idea of everlasting and unquenchable fire.

No one interprets Scripture to mean that after judgment all the wicked will be punished forever in the Valley of Hinnon. Nor does anyone think they will rise only to stay underground or under water forever, or that after resurrection they will never see one another or move from one place to another. It seems to me, then, that these descriptions of hellfire must be metaphors. We must look for their literal meaning. Every metaphor has some real basis that can be put into plain words. We must look for the real location of hell and the nature of its torments and tormentors.

First, the names given to the tormentors describe exactly what they are and what they do: the Enemy, or Satan; the Accuser, or Diabolus; and the Destroyer, or Abbadon. These meaningful names—Satan, Devil, and Abbadon—do not identify particular individuals as personal names do. They name a role or quality. They should therefore have been translated rather than left as they are in Latin and modern Bibles. Left untranslated, they look like the personal names of daemons, making it easier to persuade people to believe in devils. That belief was part of the religion of the Gentiles at the time, and opposed the teachings of Moses and Christ.

The Enemy, Accuser, and Destroyer mean the enemy of those who will belong to the Kingdom of God. If the Kingdom of God after the resurrection is on Earth, as I have shown from Scripture in the preceding chapter that it seems to be, then the Enemy and his kingdom must also be on Earth. That was also the case before the Jews removed God as their king. God's kingdom was in Palestine, and the surrounding nations were the kingdoms of the Enemy. Thus Satan means any earthly enemy of the Church.

Scripture sometimes describes the torments of hell as “weeping and grinding of teeth,” as in Mat. 8.12. Sometimes it calls them “the worm of conscience,” as in Isa.66.24. and Mark 9.44, 46, 48. Sometimes it describes fire, as in the passage just mentioned: “where the worm does not die and the fire is not put out,” as well as many other passages. Sometimes it calls them “shame and contempt,” as in Dan. 12.2.: “Many who sleep in the dust of the Earth shall wake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” All these passages use metaphors for the grief and distress people feel when they see others enjoy eternal happiness that they themselves have lost through unbelief and disobedience. They can recognize the happiness of others only by comparing it with their own actual suffering. So they must also suffer the bodily pains and hardships of people living under evil, cruel governors and opposed by an enemy who is the eternal King of the saints, God Almighty. One of these bodily pains is a second death for each wicked person. Scripture is clear that everyone will rise from the dead, but it does not promise eternal life to anyone God has rejected. St. Paul answers a question about the bodies in which people will rise (1 Cor. 15.42, 43.): “The body is planted subject to decay and raised free of decay; planted in dishonor and raised in glory; planted in weakness and raised in power.” Glory and power cannot describe wicked people's bodies. Nor can “second death” describe people who die only once. We might call an everlasting life of suffering an everlasting death as a metaphor, but it makes little sense to call that a second death. The fire prepared for the wicked is everlasting. This means that after the resurrection the condition in which no one can live without bodily and mental torment will last forever. In that sense, the fire cannot be put out and the torments are everlasting. It does not follow that each person thrown into the fire or suffering those torments can endure them forever, always burning and suffering but never dying or being destroyed. Many passages affirm everlasting fire and torments, into which people may be thrown one after another forever. But I find none affirming that any individual will live forever in that fire. Instead, Scripture speaks of everlasting death, which is the second death. The Apocalypse says (Apoc. 20. 13,14.): “After death and the grave give up the dead in them, and each person is judged according to his works, death and the grave will also be thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death.” Clearly, then, each person condemned on judgment day will undergo a second death, after which he will die no more.