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JAINISM, CHRISTIANITY & SCIENCE
(6) Trades of all kinds are not recommended to the arduous followers of the Faith.
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"In vain do we flatter ourselves as to the necessities of human maintenance, if-after faith sealed we say, I have no means to live? For here I will now answer more fully that abrupt proposition. It is. advanced too late. For deliberation should have 'been made before . . . But even now you have the Lord's sayings, as examples taking away from you all excuse. For what is it you say? I shall be in need.' But the Lord calls the needy happy.' 'I shall have no food.' But think not,' says He, about food;' and as an example of clothing we have the lilies. 'My work was my subsistence.' Nay, but all things are to be sold, and divided to the needy.' 'But provision must be made for children and posterity.' 'None, putting his hand on the plough, and looking back, is fit for work.'' But I was under contract.' 'None can serve two lords.' If you wish to be the Lord's disciple, it is necessary you take your cross, and follow the Lord: [your cross] that is, your own straits and tortures, or your body only, which is after the manner of a cross. Parents, wives, children, will have to be left behind, for God's sake. Do you hesitate about arts and trades, and about professions like. wise, for the sake of children and parents? Even there it was demonstrated to us, that both dear pledges,' and handicrafts, and trades, are to be quite left behind for the Lord's sake; while James and John, called by the Lord, do leave quite behind both father and ship; while Matthew is roused up from the toll-booth; while even burying a father was too tardy a business for faith... Faith fears not famine. It knows, likewise, that hunger is no less to be contemned by it for God's sake, than every kind of death. It has learnt not to respect life; how much more food? How many have filled these conditions?"-(Tertullian) A.N.C.L. vol. xi. pp. 158-159.
(7) With respect to the description of hell, in the nonallegorical sense also there is an agreement in this respect that there are some powerful vicious beings who torment those who reincarnate in that place.
this, I say, is man's real death, when souls which know not God shall be consumed in long-protracted torment with raging
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