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a testimony of the eternal fire; this, one example of that fire which continually nourisheth and preserveth those that are punished in it. The mountains burn and endure, and why not the guilty and enemies of God?"

Pollock has borrowed and perhaps beautified the same pleasing thought in his Course of Time. He

says,

"Through all that dungeon of unfading fire
I saw most miserable beings walk,
Burning continually, yet unconsumed;
Forever wasting, yet enduring still;
Dying perpetually, yet never dead."

3. Pains suffered by the sense of sight.

Having spoken of the fire of hell and the torments to be endured through its action upon the sense of feeling, I must now consider what tortures are inflicted through the sense of sight. And here I must apprise my unlearned readers that utter darkness, so far from being a bar to the vision in hell, only adds to its power and multiplies the frightful objects on which it must forever rest. Bp. Jeremy Taylor says, "The eyes shall not only be grieved with a scorching heat, but shall be tormented with monsters and horrible figures; many are affrighted very much, passing through a church-yard, only for fear of seeing a fantasm; in what a fright will be a miserable, damned soul, which shall see so many, and of so horrid shapes! Their sight also shall be torment

ed with beholding the punishment of their friends and kindred. Hegesippus writes that Alexander, the son of Hyrcanus, resolving to punish certain persons with exemplary rigor, caused eight hundred to be crucified; and whilst they were yet alive, caused their wives and children to be murdered before their eyes; that so they might not die once, but many deaths! This rigor shall not be wanting in hell, where fathers shall see their sons, and brothers their brothers, tormented. . . . . . To the sight of those dreadful apparitions shall be added the horror and fearful darkness of the place. The darkness of Egypt was said to be horrible, because the Egyptians beheld fearful figures and fantasms which terrified them. In the like manner, in that infernal darkness, the eye shall be tormented with the monstrous figures of the wicked spirits, which shall appear much more dreadful by reason of the obscurity and sadness of that eternal night." So Milton represents the darkness of hell as "darkness visible" which seems

only

"To discover sights of wo,

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades where peace
And rest can never dwell."

But Dr. Trapp transcends all others in describing this point of theology.

"For all that mass of fire projects no light,
But darkness visible, and glaring night;
Which to the eye serves only to reveal
Sad scenes of wo, and add affright to hell :

Pale phantoms, hideous spectres, shapes which scare The damned themselves, and terrify despair. 'Gorgons and Harpys, and Chimeras dire,' And swarms of twisted serpents, hissing fire." 4. Punishments suffered through the sense of hearing.

"The hearing." says Bp. Jeremy Taylor, "shall not only be afflicted by an intolerable pain, caused by that ever-burning and penetrating fire, but also with the fearful and amazing noises of thunders, howlings, clamors, groans, curses, and blasphemies. What shall be the harmony of hell, where the ears shall be deafened with the cries and complaints of the damned! What confusion and horror shall it breed to hear all lament, all complain, all curse and blaspheme, through the bitterness of the torments which they suffer! But the damned shall principally be affrighted, and shall quake, to hear the thunderclap of God's wrath, which shall continually resound in their ears.'

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So Dr. Trapp hears nothing in hell but

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Clattering of iron, and the clank of chains; The clang of lashing whips; shrill shrieks, and groans,

Loud, ceaseless howlings, cries, and piercing moans.

Despair, despair, despair!

Is still the sound that breaks the dusky air.
Forever! Never! Never be released?

Oh no! 'Tis torment never to be eased."

Dr. Young also makes a damned soul speak of hell as a place

"Where shrieks, the roaring flame, the rattling chain,

And all the dreadful eloquence of pain

Our only good!"

So the good Christopher Love tells us "the ear shall be tormented with the yellings and hideous outcries of the damned."

Even the music in hell is rather melancholy, according to Pollock, who tells us that,

"The waves of fiery darkness, 'gainst the rocks Of dark damnation broke, and music made

Of melancholy sort, and over head

And all around, wind warred with wind, storm howled

To storm and lightning, forked lightning crossed
And thunder answered thunder, muttering sounds
Of sullen wrath."

And thus speaks Christopher Love again, "Their cursings are their hymns, howlings their tunes, and blasphemies their ditties." Odd music certainly!

5. Pains to be suffered through the sense of

smell.

"The smell," says Bp. Jeremy Taylor," shall also be tormented with the most pestilential stink. Horrible was that torment used by Mezentius, to tie a living body to a dead, and then to leave them, until the infection and putrified exhalations of the dead had killed the living. What can be more abominable than for a living man to have his mouth laid close to that of a dead one, full of grubs and worms, where the living must receive

all those pestilential vapors breathed forth from a corrupt carcase, and suffer such loathsomness and abominable stink? But what is this in respect to hell, when each body of the damned is more loathsome and unsavory than a million of dead dogs, and all these pressed and crowded together in so strait a compass? Bonaventure goes so far as to say that if one only of the damned were brought into this world, it were sufficient to infect the whole earth. Neither shall the devils send forth a better smell. .... Hell is the world's sink, and the receptacle of all the filth in this great frame, and withal a deep dungeon, where the air hath no access. How great must the stink and infection needs be of so many corruptions heaped one upon another! and how insufferable the smell of that infernal brimstone mixed with so many corrupted matters! O gulf of horror! O infernal grave! without vent or breathing place! Eternal grave of such as die continually and cannot die, with what abominable filth art thou filled!" Milton, too, does not fail to speak of the "stench and smoke" of hell.But not to dwell on this point longer, I pass to consider,

6. The pains suffered through the sense of taste. "What then shall I say of the tongue," exclaims Bp. Jeremy Taylor, "which is the instrument of so many ways of sinning, flattery, lying, murmuring, calumniating, gluttony, and drunken

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