from me, not that you should return to that freedom and liberty of life that you were wont to have, nor that you should live upon the face of the earth at your pleasure, but that you should descend to the obscure prison of hell, and burn in the terrible fires that are therein; and this not for ten years, nor ten thousand, but for all the time that the fire, which is eternal, shall last, and shall do its office to torment you throughout all eternity." Oh, what affliction will that dreadful word cause in those wretched sinners, seeing themselves again condemned to return to the prison and fire whence their soul had come up, that the body also may burn in those flames in which the soul burned!
iv. " Which is prepared." — The Judge adds, that this fire " was" already " prepared," to bring back to their memory that the divine justice, as it prepared a kingdom to reward the righteous, so also it prepared a fire to chastise the wicked; which, although it were hidden from the eyes of the body, yet was so revealed that they might see it with the eyes of faith, and might endeavour to escape it With these eyes am I to penetrate the earth and see the terrible fire which at this day is in its centre, prepared for the chastisement of my sins, if I do not penance for them, remembering that of the prophet Isaiah, " Praparata est ab heri Tophet," &c.; " Tophet is prepared by the king from yesterday," that is, very long since, and from the beginning of the world; a horrid place, "deep and wide. The nourishment thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord as a torrent of brimstone kindling it." [1] He calls it "Tophet" as our Saviour Christ calls it " Gehenna ," [2] which was a place of terrible fires, where the children were burned who were sacrificed to the idol Moloch; [3] to give us to understand that by the furnaces and horrible places of fire, of smoke and brimstone that we see upon the earth, we
