The reverend and orthodox Mr. T. Surnden, in an express _Inquiry into the nature and place of Hell_, not contented with any of the places hitherto assigned, contends for a new one. According to him, the sun itself is the _local hell_. This does not seem to be his own discovery: it is probable he was led into it by that passage in Rev. xvi. 8, 9. Though it must be added, that Pythagoras seems to have the like view, in that he places hell in the sphere of fire; and that sphere in the middle of the universe. Add, that Aristotle mentions some of the Italic or Pythagoric school, who placed the sphere of fire in the sun, and even called it Jupiter’s Prison.—_De Cælo_, lib. ii. To make way for his own system, Mr. Swinden undertakes to remove hell out of the centre of the earth, from these two considerations:—1. That a fund of fuel or sulphur, sufficient to maintain so furious and constant a fire, cannot be there supposed; and, 2. That it must want the nitrous particles in the air, to sustain and keep it alive. And how, says he, can such fire be eternal, when by degrees the whole substance of the earth must be consumed thereby? It must not be forgot, however, that Tertullian had long ago obviated the former of these difficulties, by making a difference between _arcanus_ and _publicus ignis_, secret and open fire: the nature of the first, according to him, is such, as that it not only consumes, but repairs what it preys upon. The latter difficulty is solved by St. Augustine, who alleges, that God supplies the central fire with air, by a miracle. Mr. Swinden, however, proceeds to shew, that the central parts of the earth are possessed by water rather than fire; which he confirms by what Moses says of _water under the earth_, Exod. xx. from Psalm xxiv. 2, &c. As a further proof, he alleges, that there would want room in the centre of the earth, for such an infinite host of inhabitants as the fallen angels and wicked men. Drexelius, we know, has fixed the dimensions of hell to a German cubic mile, and the number of the damned to an hundred thousand millions: _De Damnator_, _Carcer_, &c. Rogo. But Mr. Swinden thinks he need not to have been so sparing in his number, for that there might be found an hundred times as many; and that they must be insufferably crowded in any space he could allow them on our earth. It is impossible, he concludes, to stow such a multitude of spirits in such a scanty apartment, without a penetration of dimensions, which, he doubts, in good philosophy, even in respect of spirits: “If it be (he adds,) why God should prepare, _i. e._ make, a prison for them, when they might all have been crowded together into a baker’s oven.” p. 206.