Page:Omniana.djvu/46

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OMNIANA.

into English was not so happy a phrase, for many a book was undone by the operation.


17. Hell.

Bellarmin makes sweating and crowding one of the chief torments of Hell, which Lessius (no doubt after an actual and careful survey,) affirms to be exactly a Dutch mile, (about a league and a half English,) in diameter. But Ribera, grounding his map on deductions from the Apocalypse, makes it 200 Italian miles. Lessius, it may be presumed, was a protestant, for whom, of course, a smaller Hell would suffice.

In the early part of the last century an enquiry was published by the Rev. Tobias Swinden, into the nature and place of Hell. The former, according to this Divine, had been accurately understood, burning being the punishment, and the duration without end; but as to the "local habitation" of the reprobate, all