The “Damnatory Clauses” of the Athanasian Creed
The “Damnatory Clauses” of the Catholic creed rationally explained in a letter to The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., by Rev. Malcolm MacColl, M.A. Printed in 1872. (Apart from the original book, a copy of the Athanasian Creed is included, an english translation by Marquess of Bute.)
“...The incorrigible sinner is in hell wherever his local habitation may happen to be, for he carries the undying worm and the unquenchable fire within him. Material flames, if applicable at all to an immaterial being, could add but little to the agony of “a mind diseased.” The immaterial part of man is, after all, the real seat of pain, and we know that even in this life a powerful mental emotion will make a man insensible to the pangs of bodily wounds. In the aberration of noble endowments, in the anarchy of a ruined constitution, in the consuming restlessness of matured selfishness--“seeking rest and finding none”--in the remembrance of joys that might have been, but now can be no more, a soul abandoned to the intolerable tyranny of its own “will-worship” will find its surest and most terrible hell....”