and do Thou pardon me. I love Thee with all my heart. Ah, Lord, and what evil hast Thou done me that I should hate Thee as my enemy for ever? What friend have I had ever, who has both done and suffered for me as Thou hast, O my Jesus? Ah, suffer me not to fall again under Thy displeasure, and to lose Thy love; grant that I may rather die than this utter ruin should befall me. O shelter me under the mantle of Thy protection, and do not suffer me again to rebel against Thee.
Third Point.
Death is the thing which is most feared by sinners whilst they are in this life; but when they are in hell, it will be the thing which is most desired. " In those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them." (Rev. ix. 6.) When, as S. Jerome wrote, " O death, how sweet thou wouldst be to those to whom thou hast been so bitter." David says of the condemned, " Death gnaweth upon them." (Ps. xlix. 14.) S. Bernard explains, that as the sheep feeding upon the grass consume the blades and leave the roots; so death feeding upon the lost, kills them every moment, but leaves them life, that it may continue to kill them with pain for ever. S. Gregory says, that the condemned " delivered up to the avenging flames, will ever die." If one dies, killed by grief, every one pities him; the condemned one will have at least some one to pity him. No, the wretched one dies through grief every moment; but he neither has, nor will have, any one to compassionate him. Zeno the Emperor, confined in a dungeon, cried out, " Unclose to me for compassion's sake." No one was mindful of him, whence he was found dead, having despaired, since he had eaten the very flesh itself of his arms. S. Cyril of Alexandria says that the lost "lament, and no one rescues them; they weep, and no one compassionates them."
And this their misery, how long will it last? For ever and ever. Poor Judas! truly eighteen hundred years have passed since he has been in hell, and his hell is even now at its beginning. Poor Cain! he has been in the flames for five thousand eight hundred years, and his hell is only at its
