(2) Positive. The positive punishments have been already indicated. It is to these chiefly that the Scripture directs our attention. 'There are but few men in such a state that the merely nat ural punishments of sin will appear to them terrible enough to deter them from the commission of it. Experience also shows that to threaten positive punishment has far more effect, as well upon the cultivated as the uncultivated, in deter ring them from crime, than to announce, and lead men to expect, the merely natural consequences of sin, be they ever so terrible. Hence we may see why it is that the New Testament says so little of natural punishments (although these beyond question await the wicked), and makes mention of them in particular far less frequently than of positive punishments; and why, in those passages which treat of the punishments of hell, such ideas and images are constantly employed as suggest and confirm the idea of positive punishments (Knapp's Christian Theology, sec. 136).
(3) Varying. As the sins which shut out from heaven vary so greatly in quality and degree, we should expect from the justice of God a corre sponding variety both in the natural and the positive punishments. This is accordingly the uniform doctrine of Christ and his apostles. The
more knowledge of the divine law a man pos sesses, the more his opportunities and inducements to avoid sin, the stronger the incentives to faith and holiness set before hini, the greater will be his punishment if he fails to make a faithful use of these advantages. 'The servant who knows his lord's will and does it not, deserves to be beaten with many stripes :"To whom much is given, of him much will be required' (Matt. x: 15; xi :22, 24; XXIII:15; Luke xii :48). Hence St. Paul says that the heathen who acted against the law of nature would indeed be punished; but that the Jews would be punished more than they, be cause they had more knowledge (Rom. ii:9-29). In this conviction, that God will, even in hell, justly proportion punishment to sin, we must rest satisfied. We cannot now know more; the precise degrees as well as the precise nature of such punishments are things belonging to an other state of being, which in the present we are unable to understand (Knapp's Christian Theol ogy, translated by Leonard Woods, Jun., D. D., secs. 156-158; Storr and Flatt's Biblical Theology, with Schmucker's Additions, sec. iii. 58; Alger's Critical Hist. of the Doctrine 'of a Future Life, N. Y.)