dreadful fear. Though their present pains shall be intolerable, yet they shall be made constantly to fear still greater torments, and every day shall add something to their miseries. "The nature of fear," says Dr. Goodwin, "is to outstrip a man's misery; and to take them up afore they come, as hopes use to do our comforts. So as by reason thereof it comes to pass that the soul is not only tormented by what it at present feels, but with the thought of all that is to come; which still further strikes the soul through and through." Jeremy Taylor describes this among the pains to be inflicted by the imagination. "If in this life," says he, "the imagination is sometimes so vehement, that it hurts more than real evils; in the other, the torment which it causes will be excessive. . . . If the apprehension of human justice, which hath power only over the body, give so dreadful alarms to the imagination, what will the sense of the darts of the Divine justice do, which are so many instruments of death and burning arrows shot at damned souls ?"

The good Bishop just now quoted, describes at length the pains to be inflicted upon the damned by the will, the memory, the understanding, etc. But I must not follow him, nor must I introduce other sources of hell torments, sometimes insisted upon by individual authors. Still there are two or three aggravations which I must mention as they make no unimportant part of Hell's Horrors. And

First. Dr. Goodwin, before quoted, has a whole volume to show that the punishment of sin in hell is caused immediately by the wrath of God. And from this he argues strongly its greater terribleness. "If creatures," he says, "be able, or God by them, to scourge us with whips, then God himself immediately with scorpions.. In hell God draws out all his forces, all his attributes into the field, whereof wrath is the leader and general. . . All in God is turned into fury."

Second. The torments of hell shall be as severe as possible. Some suppose that there will be degrees in the severity of hell torments, falling more or less heavily on sinners according to the number and turpitude of their sins. But it is very difficult to conceive how this can be, while these torments are taken as they are described. Mr. Swinden says that in hell"there is the absence of all good, and the presence of all evil." Can there be any degrees here? So Jeremy Taylor says, "the evils of hell are truly evils, and so purely such that they have no mixture of good; in that place of unhappiness, all is eternal sorrow and complaint; there is no room for comfort, there shall not be the least good which may give ease; nor shall there want a concourse of all evils which may add affliction: no good is to be found there, where all goods are wanting; neither can there be want of any evil, where all evils whatsoever are to be found; and by the want of all good, and

the collection of all evils, every evil is augmented." Can there be here any degrees of punishment? So Dr. Goodwin says, "In hell God's anger breaks forth into raging flames of the fiercest fires, that fill every corner, and break out at all the windows of the soul." Can there be any thing worse than this?

Third. These horrible torments of hell are to be suffered endlessly. It is this circumstance that is to give emphasis to all hell's horrors. If there were any end to them, they might be borne, but of this, alas! there is no hope; and this seals the despair of the damned! It is this circumstance, too, which constitutes the peculiar orthodoxy of the doctrine under consideration. No man can belong to the Catholic Church, or any of her legitimate daughters,if he denies or even doubts the absolute eternity of hell torments. It matters not how sincerely one believes in future punishment, or how severe he supposes it will be, or how long he thinks it will continue. If it be not strictly endless it avails nothing!

Drexelius says, that "if for every sin, or for every hour of a man's life, he was doomed to suffer a year in hell, and no longer, the punishment would be tolerable. Upon such a presumption, men would be tempted to continue in their sins, and I do not at all doubt, but that a great many would never leave them, could they be assured that the torments of the damned would ev

er have an end." Hence the absolute eternity of punishment must be maintained! And for the same reason must the torments of hell be exhibited in the most horrible aspects; otherwise sinners would not heed them!

Many authors have attempted to give some faint idea of e ernity and thus heighten the fears which a description of hell torments is calculated to be. get. It is acknowledged that no adequate conception of eternity can be formed It transcends the power of numbers. Cornelius a Lapide asks, "How long shall the damned burn in hell? Forever. How long is that? Imagine a hundred thousand years; but that is nothing in respect of eternity. Imagine ten hundred thousand years, yea, as many ages; but that also is nothing in respect of eternity. Imagine a thousand millions of years still they are nothing. Eternity is the same and always will be so. Proceed and number as many more as you can; add millions of millions more, as long as you please, and then suppose the damned to burn in hell all this vast duration. When you have done all this, you have not yet found the beginning of eternity. Imagine again as many millions of millions of years as there are drops in the sea, and you cannot yet come to the beginning of eternity. Such is the duration of that eternity of torments which God hath decreed to the damned in hell!"

Drexelius says," Should God say to the damn

ed, let the earth be covered with the finest sand, and let the world be filled therewith; let heap be piled upon heap till it reaches up to the highest heavens; and let an angel every thousand years take a grain from it, and when the whole shall be removed, after so many thousand years as there were grains, I will release you out of hell ; should God, I say, make any such promise to those miserable spirits, what a mighty consolation it would be to them! How would they exult and rejoice! Their damnation would seem somewhat easy to them. But alas! after millions and millions of years, there remain more millions and still more millions, forever and ever!"

Gulielmus Peraldus, a very learned and religious man," and withal Bishop of Lyons, adopted this mode of illustration. "Should the damned," says he, "every day distil from their eyes but one tear only, and should the tears which they thus distil day after day, be preserved in a convenient place, they would at length exceed the vast ocean of waters, The drops of the sea have their number and measure: it is an easy thing for God to say, they are just so many and no more; but the tears of the damned can never be numbered."

Another takes this method. He supposes a skin of parchment, in breadth a span, but of sufficient length to encompass the globe: this parchment is filled with figures of 9 so close together