be inflicted on both soul and body? What proportion is there between a moment and eternity? between such a wretched, short-lived pleasure and everlasting fire? Yes, my dear brethren, that is what we cannot grasp with our weak intellect now, and that very consideration led Origen into an error that has been long ago condemned and rejected by the Catholic Church; for he held that the punishment of the damned would come to an end some time or other. But, great God! we submit our minds, we believe with a simple faith what we cannot understand, because Thou hast said that the man who dies with even one mortal sin on his soul unrepented of must be punished with eternal fire. And since it is Thou who pronouncest that severe sentence on the sinner, and breakest the staff and decidest his destiny, since Thou art justice itself, Thy sentence cannot be otherwise than right and just. This should be enough for us without any further examination or scrutiny, and we should humbly acknowledge with Thy servant David: “Thou art just, O Lord! and Thy judgment is right.”[1] Meet and just is it that Thou shouldst condemn the sinner to eternal fire!
And no injustice is done the sinner, because he makes deliberate choice of it. Yet to represent in some degree to our weak understanding the justice of this sentence, I will tell you, my dear brethren, what I have learned of the matter from the holy Fathers and Scripture. In the first place it is a common saying that no injustice is done by acting towards a man according to his will.[2] He who can choose between good and bad and deliberately selects the latter, cannot complain of being ill-treated; if he did so we might say to him: but, you fool! why did you not make a different choice? You were quite at liberty to do so. He who voluntarily and without compulsion takes up a heavy load cannot have the least right to say that people oppress him. It is no doubt very painful to burn in a fire; but if I wilfully leap into it, or compel another to throw me in by violence, can I say that I am treated unjustly and cruelly? No; let the punishment be as severe as you wish, the man who undergoes it has no right to complain if he chooses it himself. Now who is there to compel a man to go into that terrible fire of hell? Has not every one, as long as he lives, the free choice of making his eternal dwelling in heaven or in hell? God, says the wise Ecclesiasticus to us all, “hath set water and fire before thee: stretch forth
