Page:MeditationsOnTheMysteriesOfOurHolyV1.djvu/237

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POINT III.

Thirdly, running through all the interior faculties of the soul, I am to consider the pains which they suffer.

1. First, the imaginative faculty will be tormented with horrid imaginations, [1] more terrible than those which the most melancholy suffer in dreams, or than those the Egyptians suffered, which (says the Wise man) were horrible and dreadful, with most monstrous affrighting visages of wild "beasts" and "serpents;" and with roarings and " hissings," [2] that wrought in them great terror and amazement.

2. Hereupon it is that the appetites will be tormented with the fury of their own passions, which will come forth in bands, and with great vehemence, namely, fears, melancholy, irksomeness, agonies, anger, desperation, envy, and rage, with such a cruel war among themselves that they will rend one another in pieces.

3. The intellectual memory will be tormented with a continual and fixed recollection of things passed that it possessed, and of the present which it suffers, and of those which are to come in eternity; so that it cannot think upon or call to mind anything which may ease it, or divert it, so as not to think upon its misery. And if it remembers the pleasures it had in the world, it is for its greater torment. Thus its memory will be like a most tumultuous sea, tossed with innumerable waves of imaginations, more bitter than gall, some going and others coming, leaving him not so much as one moment of rest.

4. The understanding will be darkened, without being able by reasoning to understand anything that may please it: it will be full of errors and illusions, brooding over and exaggerating his evils; and, judging with obstinacy that

  1. S. Th. in addit. q. xciv.
  2. Sap. xvii. 4, et deinceps.