It was in the 1960's for a brief time I attended a Protestant church where a minister used to go on about hell and mean it, and his listeners sat there with no surprize whatsoever. Those who really do may end like poor Cowper, or take to other desperate neurotic behaviors. It is as vile as the act of capital punishment. Now of course it's hard to know what people think at any given time because the press and public discourse is always variously controlled by various establishments which maintain their own interests. It's not much easier for the 18th century.
People say what it is in their interest to say.
I believe a profoundly honest man displayed contradictory attitudes. Many a merry bout have these frolic beings at the vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not why. Thus the terror and the rage. One might say well why give Richardson such a hard time when Dante is acceptable, and look lots of people in Dante's hell seem to be there because they were his political opponents. One might mischievously say the Dante folks explain it all away by talking about how Dante's hell is a metaphor, not something literally to be believed in.