Pagan Origin of Partialist DoctrinesPitrat, John Claudius
Religion
Pagan Origin of Partialist Doctrines
Pitrat, John Claudius
Catholic Church -- Controversial literature; Future punishment; Universalism
Priscillian, a Spaniard, was the founder of the Christian sect of
Priscillianists, in the year 380. This denomination of Christians
believed in the doctrine of Metempsychosis. They held that the souls
passed into the bodies of other men, until they were purified, by their
transmigrations, of the sins they had committed in an anterior life.
They denied the resurrection of human bodies. Priscillian was condemned
to death, and the penalty of death was decreed against the
Priscillianists. The emperor Maxime, and the pope Leon, used fire,
racks, and swords against them; they slew thousands of them,
nevertheless they increased so that they were numerous yet in the sixth
century in Spain and in Italy. Tillemont, in his Ecclesiastical Memoir,
tome 8, refers to Sulpice-Sevère, to Ambrosius, and to St. Augustine,
for the confirmation of the above, said concerning the doctrines of the
Priscillianists.
The other principal sects of the fourth century were the Donatists, the
Photinians, the Macedonians, the Apollinarists, the Jovinians, the
Collyridians, and the Pelagians. The Nestorians, the Eutichians, and the
Monothelites, sprang up in the fifth century. We have not found in their
writings any passages referring to the dogma of endless hell. However we
must state that we had the opportunity of perusing only about two-thirds
of the numerous and voluminous, we would add tedious, works composed pro
and con concerning their respective tenets.
_Remark._--Let the reader bear in mind that the most of the Christian
sects, whose disbelief of the dogma of endless hell we have traced out
above, composed the majority of the Christian body; and also that they
have existed, at least, till the middle of the sixth century, the epoch
when the fifth council of Constantinople condemned the doctrine held by
Origen--that of the transmigration of the souls, and of their temporary
punishment.
_Conclusion._ Therefore the dogma of endless hell was not generally
believed by the Christians of the third, of the fourth, and of the fifth
centuries.
General conclusion of this third article:
1. We have proved, by the testimony of the Fathers of the second
century, and by the doctrines of the numerous Christian sects of the
same century, that the dogma of endless hell was even unknown to the
Christians of the first and of the second centuries. Then we must
conclude that not only the first Christians, namely, the Christians of
the first and of the second centuries did not believe in endless hell,
but even that they knew nothing about such a dogma.
2. We have proved, by the testimony of the Fathers of the third, of the
fourth, and of the fifth centuries, and also by the many Christian sects
which existed in the third, in the fourth, and in the fifth centuries,
that the Christians did not generally believe, in the said centuries,
the dogma of endless hell. Therefore the Christians of the third, of the
fourth, and of the fifth centuries, did not _generally_ believe in
endless hell.
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