merit to evil doers. And although men are punished here on earth according to divine decree, their pains are but drops of the divine anger that full upon them: “The curse…is fallen upon us,”[1] says the Prophet Daniel. There in eternity there will be a full outpouring of the divine wrath: “I will heap evils upon them, and will spend my arrows among them,”[2] says the Lord. Here on earth the sorrowing David cries out: “Day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me.”[3] “The hand of the Lord hath touched me,”[4] sighs forth the suffering Job from the dung-hill. But there in hell the damned may howl forth that not alone the hand, but the arm of the Almighty, the whole Godhead has fallen upon and oppressed them! For just as in heaven God when rewarding His servants employs, so to speak, all His perfections to make an infinite happiness of joys and delights for His dear friends and chosen children, so also the avenging God will assemble all His perfections to punish His enemies who despised Him with endless torments and unceasing misery and pain. He will punish them according to His infinite wisdom, His infinite justice, His infinite holiness, His omnipotence, His immensity, His majesty, His eternity, in a word, as Tertullian says, “according to the fulness of His divinity.”[5] Therefore those torments cannot be merely natural, but are raised above natural power by God, and are incomprehensible to us mortals; and they are also general, so that there is not the smallest point in the body of the damned that will not have to suffer simultaneously all imaginable pains, as the Lord tells us by the Prophet Job: “Every sorrow shall fall upon him.”[6]
The intolerable torment of the eyes. O eyes of mine! if I should unhappily be condemned to hell for eternity, how will you fare? Now you are delighted with the beautiful light of the day, with the flowers, gardens, meadows, beautiful paintings, amusing plays; ah, what a change and what a terrible torment it will be for you when, according to the words of Our Lord, you shall be cast out into “the exterior darkness;”[7] into an eternal night, of which the Psalmist says: “He shall never see light”![8] You will burn in the midst of flames, but in
- ↑ Stillavit…super nos maledictio.—Dan. ix. 11.
- ↑ Congregabo super eos mala, et sagittas meas complebo in eis.—Deut. xxxii. 28.
- ↑ Die ac nocte gravata est super me manus tua.—Ps. xxxi. 4.
- ↑ Manus Domini tetigit me.—Job xix. 21.
- ↑ Secundum plenltudinem deitatis suæ.
- ↑ Omnia dolor irruet super eum.—Job xx. 22.
- ↑ In tenebras exteriores.—Matt. viii. 12.
- ↑ Usque in æternum non videbit lumen.—Ps. xlviii. 20.
