[59] The opinion of Ezekiel was at length the prevailing one of the synagogue; not but that there were always some Jews who, though they believed in a state of eternal punishment, yet believed at the same time that God punished the sins of the fathers upon the children. At present, indeed, they are punished even beyond the fiftieth generation, and yet are in danger of eternal punishment. It may be asked how the offsprings of those Jews who were not concerned in putting Christ to death can be temporarily punished in the persons of their children, who were as innocent as themselves. This temporal punishment, or rather this manner of living, so different from all other people, and of trading over the whole earth without having any country of their own, cannot be considered as a punishment, compared with what they are to expect hereafter on account of their unbelief, and which they might avoid by a sincere repentance. [60] Ezek. xx. 25. [61] Those who have thought to discover the doctrine of hell and heaven, such as it is now believed by us, in the Mosaic books, have been strangely mistaken; their error is owing entirely to an idle dispute about words: the Vulgate having translated the Hebrew word _Sheol_, the pit, by the Latin word _infernum_, and this latter having been rendered in French by _enfer_, hell, they have taken occasion from this equivocal translation to establish a belief that the ancient Hebrews had a notion of the _Hades_ and _Tartarus_ of the Greeks, known to other nations before them by different appellations. We are told in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers, that the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiron, and they and all that appertained to them went down alive into the pit, or grave; now certainly there is nothing said in this passage concerning the souls of these three persons, nor yet of the torments of hell, nor of eternal punishments.