His arguments for the sun’s being the local hell are: 1. Its capacity. Nobody will deny the sun spacious enough to receive all the damned conveniently; so that there will be no want of room. Nor will fire be wanting, if we admit of Mr. Swinden’s argument against Aristotle, whereby he demonstrates, that the sun is hot, p. 208, _et seq._ The good man is “filled with amazement to think what Pyrenian mountains of sulphur, how many Atlantic oceans of scalding bitumen, must go to maintain such mighty flames as those of the sun; to which our Ætna and Vesuvius are mere glow-worms.” p. 137. 2. Its distance and opposition to the empyreum, which has usually been looked upon as the local heaven: such opposition is perfectly answerable to that opposition in the nature and office of a place of angels and devils, of elect and reprobate, of glory and horror, of hallelujahs and cursings; and the distance quadrates well with Dives seeing Abraham _afar off, and the great gulph between them_; which this author takes to be the solar vortex. 3. That the empyreum is the highest, and the sun the lowest place of the creation; considering it as the centre of our system; and that the sun was the first part of the visible world created; which agrees with the notion of its being primarily intended or prepared to receive the angels, whose fall he supposes to have immediately preceded the creation. 4. The early and almost universal idolatry paid to the sun; which suits well with the great subtilty of that spirit, to entice mankind to worship his throne. II. As to the eternity of _hell torments_, we have Origen again at the head of those who deny it; it being the doctrine of that writer, that not only men, but devils themselves, after a suitable course of punishment, answerable to their respective crimes, shall be pardoned and restored to heaven.—_De civit. Dei._ l. xxi. c. 17. The chief principle Origen went upon was this, that all punishments was emendatory; applied only to painful medicines, for the recovery of the patient’s health. And other objections, insisted on by modern authors, are the disproportion between temporary crimes and eternal punishments, &c. The scripture phrases for eternity, as is observed by Archbishop Tillotson, do not always import an infinite duration: thus, in the Old Testament, _for ever_ often signifies only for a long time; particularly till the end of the Jewish dispensation: thus in the epistle of _Jude_, ver. 7, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are said to be set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of _eternal fire_; that is, of a fire that was not extinguished till those cities were utterly consumed. So one generation is said to come, &c. but the earth endureth _for ever_.