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tragedians more tuneful in the expression of 

 their own sufferings; so many dancers tripping 

 more nimbly from anguish than ever before from 

 applause." De Spectaculis, 30. 



" Souls with their bodies will be reserved in. 

 infinite tortures for suffering. Thus tiie men 

 will forever be seen by us who here gazed upon 

 us for a season; and the short joy of those cruel 

 eyes in the persecutions that they made for us 

 will be compensated by a perpetual spectacle, 

 according to the truth of Holy Scripture which 

 says, " Their worm shall not die, and their fire 

 shall not be quenched and they shall be for a 

 vision to all flesh. v " The pain of punishment 

 will then be without the fruit of penitence: weep- 

 ing will be useless, and prayer ineffectual. Too 

 late they will believe in eternal punishment/ 7 " 

 Cyprian, A. D. '200-258; Lactantius (A. D. 312) 

 says with precision and exactness what can be 

 reconciled with nothing else than the orthodox 

 theory. Hear him speak: ''If the soul, which 

 has its origin from God, gains the mastery, it is 

 immortal, and lives in perpetual light: if, on the 

 other hand, the body shall overpower the soul 

 and subject it to its dominion, it is in everlastings 

 darkness and death. And the force of this is 

 not that it altogether annihilates the souls of the 

 unrighteous, but subjects them to everlasting 

 punishment. We term that punishment the^ 



