The Glories of Hell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 22, 1865

The Glories of Hell.

ALL who believe the following horrid utterances of popular orthodoxy, should, in order to secure their own highest happiness in the future, labor and pray that everybody else may be damned. And, in the light of these benignant extracts, would it be wrong to conclude that the reason why professed Christians manifest no more zeal for the conversion of sinners, is the sweet views they anticipate in the future, of their unutterable endless torments in an eternal lake of fire?

Emmons says, "The happiness of the elect in Heaven will in part consist in witnessing the torments of the damned in hell. And among those it may be their own children, parents, husbands, wives, and friends on earth. One part of the business of the blessed is to celebrate the doctrine of reprobation. While the decree of reprobation is eternally executing on the vessels of wrath, the smoke of their torment will be eternally ascending in view of the vessels of mercy, who, instead of taking the part of those miserable objects, will say, 'Amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord.'" —Sermons, XVI.

"The saints in glory will be far more sensible how dreadful the wrath of God is, and will better understand how terrible the sufferings of the damned are, yet this will be no occasion of grief to them, but rejoicing. They will not be sorry for the damned; it will cause no uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them, but, on the contrary, when they see this sight, it will occasion rejoicing, and excite them to joyful praise." —Edward's Practical Sermons, XXII.

The Rev. Thomas Boston, an orthodox divine, in his Four-fold State says, "The godly wife shall applaud the justice of the Judge in the condemnation of her ungodly husband. The godly husband shall say, Amen, to the condemnation of her who lay in his bosom! The godly parent say, Hallelujah, at the passing of the sentence on their ungodly child. And the godly child shall from his heart approve the damnation of his wicked parent who begot him, and the mother who bore him." —Page, 336.

The Rev. Thomas Vincent, a Calvinistic clergyman of the seventeenth century, indulges in the following strain: "This will fill them (the saints) with astonishing admiration and wandering joy, when they see some of their near relatives going to hell; their fathers, their mothers, their children, their husbands, their wives, their intimate friends, and companions, while they themselves are saved. . . . Those affections that they now have for relatives out of Christ will cease; and they will not the least tremble to see them sentenced to hell, and thrust into the fiery furnace!"

The orthodox Ambrose, in his sermon of Doom's Day, says: "When the damned have drunken down whole draughts of brimstone one day, they must do the same another day. The eye shall be tormented with the sight of devils, the ear with the hideous yellings and outcries of the damned; in flames the nostrils shall be smothered as it were with brimstone; the tongue, the hand, the foot, and every part shall fry in flames!"

Rev. Jonathan Edwards says: "Reprobate infants are vipers of vengeance, which Jehovah will hold over hell in the tongs of his wrath, until they turn and spit venom in his face."

And John Calvin, of Servetus memory, disposes of juvenile infants as sinners without ceremony. He tells us: "Children bring their condemnation with them from their mother's womb, being liable to punishment, not for the sins of another, but for their own; for, although they have not yet produced the fruits of their iniquity, they have the seeds enclosed in themselves; nay, their whole nature is, as it were, a seed of sin; therefore it can but be odious and abominable to God."

There is a never-ending hell, And never-dying pains; Where children must with demons dwell, In darkness, fire, and chains.

Have faith the same with endless shame, To all the human race; For hell is crammed with infants damned, Without a day of grace. —Dr. Watts.