not, and without it all the rest will perish. [1] Have peace, as much as in thee lieth, with all men, that thou mayest not enter into the company of so many wicked!
POINT VI.
Sixthly, I am to consider the terribleness of those hellish tormentors and executioners.
1. First, generally in hell, every one of the damned is a tormentor of all, and all are tormentors of one, saying and doing things (as is mentioned above) to torment them.
2. Moreover, the devils are terrible tormentors of men, revenging themselves upon them, for the rage they have against Almighty God and against Jesus Christ; and therefore they torment them with affrighting visions, with horrible imaginations, and with all other means that their fierce cruelty can invent.
3. Besides all this, the third and the most cruel tormentor is the worm of conscience, which gnaws, and will eternally gnaw, with terrible cruelty; for the damned wretch, remembering the sins he has committed, and the inspirations he has to get out of them, and to have freed himself from those torments, and yet that through the sin of his own perverse freewill he entered into them, will himself be his own torturer, and will bite himself, and would rend himself in pieces (if he could) with incredible bitterness and rage, herein fulfilling that punishment of which St. Augustine [2] speaks: " Thou didst command it, O Lord, and so it cometh to pass, that the inordinate mind should be its own torment;" for his sins are his tortures, and his unbridled passions his tormentors, so that he himself is most grievous to himself.
Colloquy. — Learn, then, O my soul, to hearken to
