Note 17 — Chapter XXVI · THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE.

Petrus L. 1. iv. dist. 50, c.4. But this passage is by no means a declaration of Peter Lombard himself. He is far too modest, timid, and dependent on the authorities of Christianity to have ventured to advance such a tenet on his own account. No! This position is a universal declaration, a characteristic expression of Christian, of believing love. The doctrine of some Fathers of the Church, e.g., of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, that the punishment of the damned would have an end, sprung not out of Christian or Church doctrine, but out of Platonism. Hence the doctrine that the punishment of hell is finite, was rejected not only by the Catholic but also by the Protestant church. (Augsb. Confess. art. 17). A precious example of the exclusive, misanthropical narrowness of Christian love, is the passage cited from Buddeus by Strauss (Christl. Glaubensl. B. ii. s. 547), according to which not infants in general, but those of Christians exclusively, would have a share in the divine grace and blessings if they died unbaptized. ↑