same time preserving what it devours, of tormenting and yet never destroying what it tortures, of burning and yet never consuming what it burns. It does not destroy what it burns, says Tertullian. Our fire is kindled by weak creatures; the infernal fire by the Almighty God.” I…will refine them as silver is refined.”[1] says the Lord by the Prophet Zacharias. I Myself shall burn and torture the wicked man who is delivered over to My justice. Thus we may say that the divine omnipotence is the soul of this fire; It lights it, fans it, and, as Tertullian says, excites it to the highest pitch according to the fulness of the Godhead. It is kindled by an angry, embittered, and now implacable, avenging God, whose chastising justice shall be as sharp and severe in the next life as His long-suffering mercy is mild and meek in this. Such is the threat He utters by the wise Ecclesiasticus: “For mercy and wrath are with Him.…According as His mercy is, so His correction.”[2] Therefore this fire is so terrible that it comprises in itself all imaginable torments, so that from the severity of the punishment we may understand how far the vengeance of an offended and Almighty God surpasses any chastisement inflicted by a mere creature. Therefore Tertullian calls the fire of hell a rich treasure of torments hidden in the bowels of the earth.[3]
If earthly fire causes intolerable pain, what must the fire of hell be? Now if our earthly fire can cause such pain, that one may not hold his finger in the flame of a wax candle for the space of one Miserere; who of us, my dear brethren, shall be able to dwell in the midst of the raging flames of hell, compared to which all our fire is but a shadow? And yet the reprobate man shall be buried in this flame; that is, he shall be covered and surrounded with it on all sides, and shall have to remain so for all eternity. Holy Writ always represents this fire to us by most terrible pictures, and by the awful effects it produces; it is a place where a fiery shower falls from above like a stream on the damned, and inundates them from below: “Burning coals shall fall upon them; thou wilt cast them down into the fire.”[4] Elsewhere it is described as a madly rushing torrent, which drowns the wicked in its foaming and raging waves: “The breath of the Lord as a torrent of brimstone kindling it.”[5] Again it is likened to a fierce dragon that bites, tears, and devours: “Thou shalt make them
- ↑ Uram eos sicut uritur argentum.—Zach. xiii. 9.
- ↑ Misericordta enim et ira est cum illo…Secundum misericordiam suam, sic correptlo illius.—Ecclus. xvi. 12, 13.
- ↑ Ignis arcani subterraneus ad pœnam thesaurus.
- ↑ Cadent super eos carbones, in ignem dejicies eos.—Ps. cxxxix. 11.
- ↑ Flatus Domini sicut torrens sulphuris.—Is. xxx. 33.
