Tertullian, according to Lecky, had written a treatise dissuading the Christians of his day from frequenting the public spectacles. He had collected on the subject many arguments, some of them very powerful, and others extremely grotesque; but he perceived that to make his exhortations forcible to the majority of his readers, he must point them to some counter-attraction. He accordingly proceeded--and his style assumed a richer glow and a more impetuous eloquence as he rose to the congenial theme--to tell them that a spectacle was reserved for them, so fascinating and so attractive that the most joyous festivals of earth faded in insignificance by the comparison. That spectacle was the agonies of their fellow-countrymen as they writhe amid the torments of hell. "What!" he exclaimed, "shall be the magnitude of that scene! How shall I wonder! How shall I laugh! How shall I rejoice! How shall I triumph, when I behold so many and such illustrious kings, who were said to have mounted into heaven, groaning with Jupiter their god in the lowest darkness of hell! Then shall the soldiers who had persecuted the name of Christ burn in more cruel fire than any they had kindled for the saints. Then shall the tragedians pour forth in their own misfortune more piteous cries than those with which they had made the theatre to resound, while the comedian's powers shall be better seen as he becomes more flexible by the heat. Then shall the driver of the circus stand forth to view, all blushing in his flaming chariot, and the gladiators pierced, not by spears, but by darts of fire. Compared with such spectacles, with such subjects of triumph as these, what can prætor or consul, quæstor or pontiff, afford? And even now faith can bring them near, imagination can depict them as present!"
Crabb Robinson says some one at a party at which he was present, abusing Mahometanism in a commonplace way, said: "Its heaven is quite material." He was met with the quiet remark, "So is the Christian's hell;" to which there was no reply. In the time of Tertullian, the angel in the Last Judgment was constantly represented weighing the souls in a literal balance, while devils clinging to the scales endeavored to disturb the equilibrium. The redbreast, according to one popular legend, was commissioned by the Deity to carry a drop of water to the souls of unbaptized infants in hell, and its breast was singed in piercing the flames. In Wales, the robin is said to bear in its bill one drop of water daily to the place of torment, in order to extinguish the flames.