Book cover Leviathan

The Place After Judgment, Of Those Who Were Never In The Kingdome Of God, Or Having Been In, Are Cast Out

Leviathan
Published by:
Thomas Hobbes
Block: 1335b572187b4115bb2a5457b25ae32b

The Place After Judgment, Of Those Who Were Never In The Kingdome Of God, Or Having Been In, Are Cast Out

As the Kingdome of God, and Eternall Life, so also Gods Enemies, and their Torments after Judgment, appear by the Scripture, to have their place on Earth. The name of the place, where all men remain till the Resurrection, that were either buryed, or swallowed up of the Earth, is usually called in Scripture, by words that signifie Under Ground; which the Latines read generally Infernus, and Inferni, and the Greeks Hades; that is to say, a place where men cannot see; and containeth as well the Grave, as any other deeper place. But for the place of the damned after the Resurrection, it is not determined, neither in the Old, nor New Testament, by any note of situation; but onely by the company: as that it shall bee, where such wicked men were, as God in former times in extraordinary, and miraculous manner, had destroyed from off the face of the Earth: As for Example, that they are in Inferno, in Tartarus, or in the bottomelesse pit; because Corah, Dathan, and Abirom, were swallowed up alive into the earth. Not that the Writers of the Scripture would have us beleeve, there could be in the globe of the Earth, which is not only finite, but also (compared to the height of the Stars) of no considerable magnitude, a pit without a bottome; that is, a hole of infinite depth, such as the Greeks in their Daemonologie (that is to say, in their doctrine concerning Daemons,) and after them, the Romans called Tartarus; of which Virgill sayes,

Bis patet in præceps, tantem tendítque sub umbras, Quantus ad æthereum cœli suspectus Olympum:

for that is a thing the proportion of Earth to Heaven cannot bear: but that wee should beleeve them there, indefinitely, where those men are, on whom God inflicted that Exemplary punnishment.