from some of the doctrines of the former Christian church regarded as fundamental and essential, such as the doctrine of vicarious atonement, and justification and salvation by faith alone.
The evidence, therefore, is abundant and undeniable, that the general and well-nigh universal belief both of Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians prior to Swedenborg's time, was, that all of the non-Christian or Gentile world who die unconverted to Christianity, must inevitably be lost, and forever suffer the torments of the damned.
We need not stop to show the unreasonableness and cruelty of such a doctrine; nor how it mars the beauty of the Divine character, and militates against every right conception of God's love and justice. This must be sufficiently apparent to all. To suppose that God would permit hundreds of millions of human beings to be born in regions where He knew they would live and die without any belief in the Gospel of our Lord, or any knowledge even of the existence of such a Gospel, and that He would provide no means for the salvation of these innumerable hosts; and to suppose, further, that they are all to be doomed to eternal hell torments for not believing doctrines which they never had the opportunity of learning, were a supposition so extreme in its unreasonableness, that we can only wonder it should ever have been entertained for a moment by any sane people. The belief is too absurd and revolting to merit a serious refutation. Talk about Swedenborg's madness! Why, if he had ever taught anything half so absurd and monstrous as this old dogma, once so generally accepted
