“everything which passes with time is trifling and short." Any pain which has an end is not very appalling. The man who labours under an imposthume or a cancer, must submit to the knife or the cautery: the pain is severe; but because it is soon over it can be borne. But a tooth-ache which lasts for three months without interruption is insupportable. Were a person obliged to lie in the same posture for six months on a soft bed, or even to hear the same music, or the same comedy, night and day for one year, he would fall into melancholy and despondency. Poor blind sinners! When threatened with hell they say: ” If I go there I must have patience." But they shall not say so when they will have entered that region of woes, where they must suffer, not by listening to the same music or the same comedy, nor by lying in the same posture, or by tooth -ache, but by enduring all torments and all evils. ” I will heap evils upon them." (Deut. xxxiii. 23.) And all these torments shall never end.
7. They shall never end, and shall never be diminished in the smallest degree. The damned must for ever suffer the same fire, the same privation of God, the same sadness, the same despair. Yes, says St. Cyprian, in eternity there is no change, because the decree is immutable. This thought shall immensely increase their sufferings, by making them feel beforehand, and at each moment, all that they shall have to suffer for eternity. In this description of the happiness of the saints, and the misery of the reprobate, the Prophet Daniel says: ” They shall wake some unto life everlasting, and some unto reproach to see it always." (Dan. xii. 2.) They shall always see their unhappy eternity. Ut videant semper. Thus eternity tortures each of the damned not only by his present pains, but with all his future sufferings, which are eternal.
8. These are not opinions controverted among theologians; they are dogmas of faith clearly revealed in the sacred Scriptures. ” Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire." (Matt. xxv. 41.) Some will say: The fire, but not the punishment of the damned is everlasting. Such the language of the incredulous, but it is folly. For what other purpose would God make this
