Protestantism did nothing to lighten the realm of outer darkness. Rather, by its repudiation of the priest-serving doctrine of purgatory, it rendered more glaring the contrast between the condition of the saved and that of the non-elect. Calvin asks: "How is it that the fall of Adam involves so many nations, _with their infant children_, to eternal death without remedy, unless that it so seemed meet to God?" The same holy Christian says of the damned: "For ever harassed with a dreadful tempest, they shall feel themselves torn asunder by an angry God, and transfixed and penetrated by mortal stings, terrified by the thunderbolts of God, and broken by the weight of his hand, so that to sink into any gulf would be more tolerable than to stand for a moment in these terrors." According to the _Westminster Confession_, ch. xxxiii.: "The wicked who know not God and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ, shall be cast into eternal torments." And the _Larger Catechism_, A. 29, declares: "The punishments of sin in the world to come are everlasting separation from the comfortable presence of God, and most grievous torments in soul and body, without intermission, in hell fire forever." "They that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil into everlasting _fire_," is the doctrine of the _Book of Common Prayer_. Bishop Jeremy Taylor, the prose poet of the Church of England, says in his discourse on the Pains of Hell*: "We are amazed at the inhumanity of Phalaris, who roasted men in his brazen bull: this was joy in respect of that fire of hell which penetrates the very entrails without consuming them." "Husbands shall see their wives, parents shall see their children, tormented before their eyes." Picture it, think of it, Christian, and then give praises to your demon God. The good, really good, bishop tells us the bodies of the damned shall be crowded together in hell like grapes in a wine press, which press one another till they burst. "Every distinct sense and organ shall be assailed with its own appropriate and most exquisite sufferings." Surely the creed is accursed which led so worthy a man as Taylor to paint with unction this description of the Pains of Hell. * Contemplation of the State of Man, ch. 68. Our own Milton, liberal in theology though he was, adheres to the Biblical idea of Regions of Sorrow! doleful Shades! where Peace And Rest can never dwell; Hope never comes, That comes to all: but Torture without End Still urges, and a fiery Deluge fed With ever-burning sulphur unconsum'd. Bishop Hall says: "What, oh, what is it to conceive of lying in a _fire more intense than nature can kindle_, for hundreds, thousands, millions, yea millions of millions of years, which, after all, are only a minute of time compared with eternity."