II.—Did the Primitive Church Teach this Doctrine?

1. Justin Martyr, A.D. 150, in his Dialogue with Trypho, speaks of his Instructor teaching, "That the evil will be punished so long as God wills them to exist and to be punished." Bishop Lincoln's Justin Martyr, 1836, p. 99,

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2. St. Augustine, about A.D. 400, writes, "That some, nay very many," (non-nulli immo quam plurimi) did not in his day hold this doctrine. He calls them "our tender-hearted ones," (nostri misericordes.) He adds that this matter must be "quietly treated," (pacifice disputandum.) Aug. de Civitate Dei, xx., 25.

3. St. Gregory of Nyssa, writes in his "Catechical Oration," "Our Lord in His Incarnation, was benefiting, not only him who was lost, but even him who wrought this destruction against us," * * * "In the same way, in the long circuits of time, when the evil of nature, which is now mingled and implanted in them, has been taken away, whensoever the restoration to their old condition of the things which now lie in wickedness takes place, there will be an unanimous thanksgiving from the whole creation, both of those who have been punished in the purification, and of those who have not at all needed purification." * * He speaks of the Incarnation as "both liberating man from his wickedness, and healing the very inventor of wickedness." Farrar, Mercy and Judgment, 1881, p. 257.

St. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, A.D. 372, was one of the most eminent theologians of that age. He defended the Church against the Arians, and drew up the Nicene Creed, at the Council of Constantinople. He died A.D. 396.

4. As far as is known nothing was decided upon this matter in the first four General Councils. And if the teaching of the Church had always been distinct upon this point, it would be a strange thing, that Justin should have been instructed as he was; that Augustine did not at once urge this fact as an unanswerable argument against those tender-hearted ones who held a different belief; or that St. Gregory should have so written; and that the doctrine is not in their creeds.