Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

Scripture to prove it; save only these places concerning eternal
torments, which may otherwise be interpreted.
From whence may be inferred that, as the elect after the
resurrection shall be restored to the estate wherein Adam was before
he had sinned; so the reprobate shall be in the estate that Adam and
his posterity were in after the sin committed; saving that God
promised a redeemer to Adam, and such of his seed as should trust in
him and repent, but not to them that should die in their sins, as do
the reprobate.
These things considered, the texts that mention "eternal fire,"
"eternal torments," or "the worm that never dieth," contradict not the
doctrine of a second and everlasting death, in the proper and
natural sense of the word death. The fire or torments prepared for the
wicked in Gehenna, Tophet, or in what place soever, may continue
forever; and there may never want wicked men to be tormented in
them, though not every nor any one eternally. For the wicked, being
left in the estate they were in after Adam's sin, may at the
resurrection live as they did, marry, and give in marriage, and have
gross and corruptible bodies, as all mankind now have; and
consequently may engender perpetually, after the resurrection, as they
did before: for there is no place of Scripture to the contrary. For
St. Paul, speaking of the resurrection, understandeth it only of the
resurrection to life eternal, and not the resurrection to punishment.*
And of the first, he saith that the body is "sown in corruption,
raised in incorruption; sown in dishonour, raised in honour; sown in
weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual
body." There is no such thing can be said of the bodies of them that
rise to punishment. So also our Saviour, when he speaketh of the
nature of man after the resurrection, meaneth the resurrection to life
eternal, not to punishment. The text is Luke, 20, verses 34, 35, 36, a
fertile text: "The children of this world marry, and are given in
marriage; but they that shall be counted worthy to obtain that
world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are
given in marriage: neither can they die any more; for they are equal
to the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of
the resurrection." The children of this world, that are in the
estate which Adam left them in, shall marry and be given in
marriage; that is, corrupt and generate successively; which is an
immortality of the kind, but not of the persons of men: they are not
worthy to be counted amongst them that shall obtain the next world, an
absolute resurrection from the dead; but only a short time, as inmates
of that world; and to the end only to receive condign punishment for
their contumacy. The elect are the only children of the
resurrection; that is to say, the sole heirs of eternal life: they
only can die no more. It is they that are equal to the angels, and
that are the children of God, and not the reprobate. To the
reprobate there remaineth after the resurrection a second and
eternal death, between which resurrection and their second and eternal
death is but a time of punishment and torment, and to last by
succession of sinners thereunto as long as the kind of man by
propagation shall endure, which is eternally.
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* I Corinthians, 15
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Upon this doctrine of the natural eternity of separated souls is
founded, as I said, the doctrine of purgatory. For supposing eternal
life by grace only, there is no life but the life of the body; and