bewail, they detest them. But it is too late; their tears but add new strength to the fire that torments them. Oh, repentance of the damned! how rigorous art thou! - but, ah, how fruitless!
2. Never to see God-to be burning in flames for ever-the blood boiling in our veins, the marrow in our bones-to be trampled on by the devils-to have all that is hideous for ever before our eyes-to have rage, anguish, and despair eternally rooted in our heart, without comfort or mitigation. Oh, what a life!
3. These wretches are outrageous at having had so many opportunities of saving themselves, and for having neglected them. Their recollection of their past pleasure is one of their most sensible torments. But nothing more keenly gnaws them than the impossibility of forgetting that God whom by their own fault they have miserably forfeited.
[Go down in spirit into hell, and inquire of the damned what it is that has made them fall into it. Question them upon their present state, and learn of them to fear God, and your own danger.]
“Which of you can dwell with devouring flames?” (Isaias xxxiii.)
“The impious pass from one punishment to another-from the burnings of concupiscence to the flames of hell” (St. Augustine).
SEVENTH DAY: ON THE ETERNAL TORMENTS OF THE DAMNED.
1. Can the wrath of God go farther than punishing pleasures, which are so soon over, by tortures which will never have an end? To be miserable while ever God is God! can any misery be like it? It is not enough that the evils of the damned are extreme? Must they still, besides this, be eternal? To be hurt by the point of a pin is trifling, in itself; yet, were this pain to last always, it would become insupportable.- What shall it be then, dc.
2. O Eternity! When a damned soul shall have shed tears enough to make up all the rivers and seas in the world, did he shed but one tear in every hundred years, he shall not be more advanced, after so many millions of ages, than if he had only just begun to suffer, He must begin again, as if he had yet suffered nothing; and when he shall have begun as often as there are grains of sand on the sea-shore, atoms in the air, or leaves on the trees, he shall still be as far off from the end of his sufferings as ever.
3. The damned must not only suffer during eternity, but suffer every moment an eternity entire. Eternity is always present to them-it enters into their punishment-their mind is incessantly struck with the endless duration of their torments. O, cruel thought! O, deplorable condition! to rage for an eternity! to burn for an eternity! Ah, that we could conceive this as those damned souls conceive it.
[Make an Act of Faith upon the duration of the punishments which the justice of God inflicts for mortal sin. We must, at least, believe we are not able to conceive. It is a great misfortune for a Christian not to be persuaded of this eternity, but by his own sad experience.]
