Sect. 54.--There is no salvation to those that believe
not in Christ; that is, say some, since his nativity, and,
as divinity affirmeth, before also; which makes me
much apprehend the end of those honest worthies and
philosophers which died before his incarnation. It is
hard to place those souls in hell, whose worthy lives do
teach us virtue on earth. Methinks, among those many
subdivisions of hell, there might have been one limbo
left for these. What a strange vision will it be to see
their poetical fictions converted into verities, and their
imagined and fancied furies into real devils! How
strange to them will sound the history of Adam, when
they shall suffer for him they never heard of! When
they who derive their genealogy from the gods, shall
know they are the unhappy issue of sinful man! It is
an insolent part of reason, to controvert the works of
God, or question the justice of his proceedings. Could
humility teach others, as it hath instructed me, to con-
template the infinite and incomprehensible distance be-
twixt the Creator and the creature; or did we seriously
perpend that one simile of St Paul, "shall the vessel say
to the potter, why hast thou made me thus?" it would
prevent these arrogant disputes of reason: nor would
we argue the definitive sentence of God, either to heaven
or hell.
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