[291] 267. I have observed that sundry able theologians have accounted for the duration of the pains of the damned as I have just done. Johann Gerhard, a famous theologian of the Augsburg Confession (in _Locis Theol._, loco de Inferno, Sec. 60), brings forward amongst other arguments that the damned have still an evil will and lack the grace that could render it good. Zacharias Ursinus, a theologian of Heidelberg, who follows Calvin, having formulated this question (in his treatise _De Fide_) why sin merits an eternal punishment, advances first the common reason, that the person offended is infinite, and then also this second reason, _quod non cessante peccato non potest cessare poena_. And the Jesuit Father Drexler says in his book entitled _Nicetas, or Incontinence Overcome_ (book 2, ch. 11, Sec. 9): 'Nec mirum damnatos semper torqueri, continue blasphemant, et sic quasi semper peccant, semper ergo plectuntur.' He declares and approves the same reason in his work on _Eternity_ (book 2, ch. 15) saying: 'Sunt qui dicant, nec displicet responsum: scelerati in locis infernis semper peccant, ideo semper puniuntur.' And he indicates thereby that this opinion is very common among learned men in the Roman Church. He alleges, it is true, another more subtle reason, derived from Pope Gregory the Great (lib. 4, Dial. c. 44), that the damned are punished eternally because God foresaw by a kind of _mediate knowledge_ that they would always have sinned if they had always lived upon earth. But it is a hypothesis very much open to question. Herr Fecht quotes also various eminent Protestant theologians for Herr Gerhard's opinion, although he mentions also some who think differently.