1. This is infinite, because it deprives of an infinite good, which is Almighty God. [1] So that these wretches shall for ever be banished from heaven, and deprived of the blessedness and end for which they were created — of the clear vision of Almighty God — of love that beatifies, and of that river of delights which proceeds from all; all which shall give them terrible torment and grief, especially those who in this life believed in it For although their understanding be obscured to know other things, it shall not be so to consider and esteem this, God's divine justice so ordaining it for their greater torment
The terribleness of this pain may be considered two ways:
i. The first is; by that which holy men feel here who have the light of heaven, to know the greatness of the glory and the high felicity that it is to see Almighty God; who hold it for an extreme pain to want this sight, and tremble only to think on it, as is noted in the third point of the sixth meditation.
ii. The second way is, by that which the damned themselves feel by wanting this high felicity; not inasmuch as it is a something good, for they neither love God nor any holy thing; but inasmuch as they want that which should give them high and eternal rest, and free them from so horrible a torment This I may come to find out by some likeness of things of this life; for if men have so much feeling to be deprived of an inheritance to which they had some right, how much more shall they feel to be deprived of the eternal inheritance of heaven, to which they might have had a right, if they had not forfeited it through sin! And if the privation of finite and limited goods and delights does so much grieve the heart, how much more will it be grieved with the privation of an infinite good, in which
- ↑ S. Th. 1, 2, q. lxxxvii. art. 4.
