Читать книгу Centuries of Meditations - Thomas Traherne - Страница 22

entirely at variance with the general spirit of the work. I wish indeed I could have omitted it ; and I would have done so could I have reconciled the act to my conscience. But Traherne, like Cromwell, is too great to need to have his blemishes concealed. So great was his sense of the necessity of faith in God and in the Christian doctrines that he thought no punishment could be too great for those who, as he judged, wilfully rejected the means of salvation. This was pardonable enough, since it was the frame of mind in which most believers of his time regarded the sins of heresy or unbelief. But Traherne went a step farther even than this. It was a sensation no less of grief than of astonishment that filled me when I first came upon the following passage in the first " Century " (No. 48) :—

" They that look into Hell here may avoid it hereafter. They that refuse to look into Hell upon earth to consider the manner of the torments of the damned shall be forced in Hell to see all the earth, and remember the felicities which they had when they were living. Hell itself is a part of God's kingdom, to wit His prison. It is fitly mentioned in the enjoyment of the world : And is itself by the happy enjoyed, as a part of the world."

That Traherne should have believed in a material hell, can be, of course, no matter of surprise ; though we may regret that he was not, in that respect, in advance of his time. But that he should actually have thought that the knowledge that countless multitudes were suffering eternal torments would add to the xxiv