stench as could only arise from a foul demon. Now, if one wicked spirit can assail with so horrible a stench even a holy servant of God, over whom he has no power, what will be the effect of so many millions of demons amongst the reprobate enemies of God, who are altogether delivered over to their fury, and whom they torture with all their might? If the foul odor of one of the reprobate is enough to cause a pestilence over the whole world, terrible indeed must it be to lie forever among millions of bodies packed together like herrings in a barrel! Such is the home that delicate voluptuaries prepare for themselves by gratifying their sinful passions here on earth!
Of the taste by hunger. And what am I to think of the pain of taste? Hunger and thirst cause such agony that, as the history of this city of Treves testifies, mothers have been known, when urged by the frenzy of famine, to eat their own children. Oh, may God save you all from hell! you voluptuaries, whose god is your belly, who cannot abstain from meat according to the law of the Church even during the forty days of Lent, who swear at the cook for oversaving the soup, who before saying a word of prayer in the morning must gratify the palate with food and drink! Wo to you! How are you to fare in hell? Hear what infallible Truth says: “They…shall suffer hunger like dogs;”[1] toads and adders shall be their food, not to satisfy their hunger, but to torture them all the more. We read of some zealous servants of God who, to mortify themselves, used to suck the matter from the ulcers of the sick poor; but what is that in comparison with the food of the reprobate in hell? The saints acted thus once or twice in their lives; they did it out of a burning, supernatural love of God, which made every burden light, and every bitterness sweet; yet what they did is looked on as an heroic act of mortification, it is chronicled in books, preached about from the pulpit, and eagerly listened to by an attentive audience; but we are afraid to follow the example of those heroes, and to practise a similar mortification; nay, there are some who would die of disgust if they attempted such a thing. O ye delicate, overfed gluttons! you will have to swallow filth of that kind, and still worse, riot merely once, but many thousand times, nay, for eternity; not voluntarily, but perforce; not out of a sweet, meritorious love of God, but with a despairing hatred of Him. And then you can groan forth: “The things which before my soul would not touch now, through an-
- ↑ Famem patientur ut canes.—Ps. lviii. 7.
