WITHOUT for a moment forgetting the power of fire to inflict the most intense pain upon sensitive natures, the advocates of endless punishment find many other sources of exquisite torment, and sources fitted to every sense, and indeed every faculty, of our being. “Who,” exclaims Jeremy Taylor, “can express the number and greatness of their torments, since all their powers and senses, soul and body, shall suffer in the most violent manner! Besides this, every sense, from its particular object, shall receive a particular punishment.” Rev. Christopher Love goes still further, and assures us that, as to the variety of these torments, “there is not one way, but a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand ways to torment you. Indeed, were you sick here, it may be you should have but one kind of disease upon you at once; it may be stone, it may be plague, or some other disease, but you have not variety.
“But in hell there is not one kind, but variety to torment you; there is unquenchable fire to burn you, a lake of brimstone to choke you, eternal chains to tie you, utter darkness to affright you, and a worm of conscience to gnaw you: variety of torments hath the Lord made to meet upon one man; and this makes the torments of hell to be dismal indeed. There is not only variety, but universality of torments, not only many kinds, but these torments shall universally afflict both body and soul, all the parts of the body, and all the powers of the soul; and this makes the torments of hell more dreadful.”
Under this head Jeremy Taylor is particularly full and explicit. He describes the various tortures fitted to affect our several senses of sight, hearing, tasting, and smelling, and generally illustrates his subject by examples drawn from history, in which tyrants, and human monsters, the most revengeful and cruel of our race, have exhibited their ingenuity and their barbarities and injustice by devising and inflicting the most horrible torments on their fellow-creatures; and what is most amazing, he does not hesitate to compare these torments with those God is about to inflict in hell, and in every case to show that God will infinitely outdo them all!
Thus the eye is not only tormented with the heat and smoke of hell, but vision is made a means of special anguish and torture. “Many,” says he, “are affrighted very much, passing through a churchyard, only for fear of seeing a phantasm; in what a fright will be a miserable damned soul, which shall see so many, and of so many horrid shapes! Their sight shall also be tormented 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 die not once, but many deaths. This rigor shall not be wanting in hell, where fathers shall see their sons, and brothers their brothers, tormented. The torment of the eyes shall be also very great, in regard that those which have given others scandal, and made others fall into sin, shall see themselves and those others in that abyss of torments.
“To the sight of those dreadful apparitions shall be added the horrors and fearful darkness of the place. The darkness of Egypt was said to be horrible, because there the Egyptians beheld fearful figures and phantasms, which terrified them. In the like manner, in that infernal darkness the eyes shall be tormented with the monstrous figures of the wicked spirits, which shall appear much more dreadful by reason of the obscurity of that eternal night.” “The eye,” says Rev. Christopher Love, “it shall be tormented with the sight of devils.” St. Theresa, to whom I have before appealed in respect to these matters, tells us that while in hell all is the thickest and blackest darkness, “yet somehow or other, I know not how, you see there whatever is dreadful and terrible. God did not allow me to see more of hell at that time, but afterwards he let me see other much more frightful torments for particular sins. I could not understand in what manner these things were seen by me.”
Neither Jeremy Taylor, nor any one of our Protestant authors, gives us any description of the devils. That they are of very horrid and frightful shapes, appears certain, but beyond this they do not assume to go. Our Catholic neighbors are better informed, as members of the true Church have a right to be, and are also more communicative. Father Furniss gratifies our curiosity to some extent. After giving some very definite information about hell, its location, fire, and other circumstances, he takes his children, for whom he wrote, to see the Devil! “Our journey,” he says, “lies across that great sea of fire. We must go on till we come to the middle of hell. There we shall see the most horrible sight that ever was or will be—the great devil, chained down in the middle of hell. We will set off on our journey. Now we are coming near the dwelling-place of Satan! The darkness gets thicker. You see a great number of devils moving about in thick darkness.
“They come to get the orders of their great chief. Already you hear the rattling of the tremendous chains of the great monster! See! there he is—the most horrid and abominable of all monsters, the devil. His size is immense. St. Francis saw him. He was sitting on a long beam which passed through the middle of hell. His feet went down into the lowest depths of hell. They rested on the floor of hell. They were fastened with great, heavy iron chains. These chains were fixed to an immense ring in the floor, and his hands were chained up to the roof. One of his hands was turned up against heaven, to blaspheme God, and the saints who dwell there. His other hand was stretched out, pointing to the lowest hell. His tremendous and horrible head was raised up on high, and touched the roof. From his head came two immense horns. From each horn smaller horns, without number, branched out, which, like chimneys, sent out fire and smoke.
“His enormous mouth was wide open. Out of it there was running a river of fire, which gave no light, but a most abominable smell. Round his neck was a collar of red-hot iron. A burning chain tied him about the middle. The ugliness of his face was such that no man or devil could bear it. It was the most deformed, horrible, frightful thing that ever was or will be. His great, fierce eyes were filled with pride, and anger, and rage, and spite, and blood, and fire, and savage cruelty. There was something else in those eyes for which there is no name, but it made those on whom the devil’s eyes were fixed tremble and shake as if they were dying. One of the saints who saw the devil said she would rather be burnt for a thousand years than look at the devil for one moment.”
For the education of Christian children, toward the close of the nineteenth century of grace, this I think not a little remarkable. For a church boasting itself to be the ground and pillar of the truth, inspired, and blessed with an infallible Head, it is profoundly amazing and profoundly humiliating. What interest of truth and righteousness, of piety or virtue, is to be subserved by such ineffable folly and falsehood, it is impossible to imagine. It is a disgrace to our common Christianity and the age.
But our poets on this point are quite as strong and clear as the divines themselves. Milton calls the darkness of hell “darkness visible,” and represents it as fit only
- To discover sights of woe,
- Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
- And rest can never dw ell.
In matters of orthodox theology Rev. Dr. Trapp is more in his proper element than even Milton, as will appear in the following lines:—
- For all that m ass of fire projects no light,
- But darkness visible, and glaring night;
- Which to the eye serves only to reveal
- Sad scen es of woe, and add affright to hell.
- Pale phantoms, hideous spectres, shapes which scare
- The damned themselves, and terrify despair;
- “Gorgons and H arpys, and Chimeras dire,”
- And swarms of twisted serpents hissing fire.
The ear in like manner, says 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. Sylla, being dictator, caused six thousand persons to be enclosed in the circus, and then appointing the senate to meet in a temple close by, where he intended to speak unto them about his own affairs, and make them know he was their master, he gave order that so soon as he began his oration, the soldiers should kill this multitude of people, which was effected; upon which were heard such lamentations, outcries, groans, clashing of armor, and blows of those merciless homicides, that the senate could not hear a word, but stood amazed with terror of so horrid a fact.
“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, all blaspheme through the bitterness of the torments which they suffer! But the damned shall principally be affrighted, and shall quake to hear the thunder-clap of the wrath of God, which shall continually resound in their ears.” So Christopher Love says: “The ear shall be tormented with the yellings, and hideous outcries of the damned in flames.” In like manner Dr. Trapp hears nothing in hell but
- Clattering of iron, and the clank of chains,
- The clang of lashing whips, shrill shriek s and groans;
- Loud ceaseless howlings, cries and piercing moans.
- In like manner Dr. Young makes the damned in hell speak of it as a place
- Where shrieks, the roaring flame, the rattling chain,
- And all the dreadful eloquence of pain
- Our only good.
“You have heard, perhaps, a horrible scream in the dead of night,” says Father Furniss, “but listen now,—listen to the tremendous, the horrible uproar of millions and millions and millions of tormented creatures mad with the fury of hell. Oh, the screams of fear, the groanings of horror, the yells of rage, the cries of pain, the shouts of agony, the shrieks of despair, from millions on millions. There you hear them roaring like lions, hissing like serpents, howling like dogs, and wailing like dragons. There you hear the gnashing of teeth, and the fearful blasphemies of the devils. Above all you hear the roaring of the thunders of God’s anger, which shakes hell to its foundations.”
In a similar way the sense of taste is to be offended and tormented. “What shall I say of the tongue,” asks Jeremy Taylor, “which is the instrument of so many ways of sinning, flattery, lying, murmuring, calumniating, gluttony, and drunkenness? Who can express the bitterness which the damned shall suffer, greater than that of aloes and wormwood? The Scripture tells us the gall of dragons shall be their wine; and they shall taste the poison of asps for all eternity, unto which shall be joined an intolerable thirst and a dog-like hunger. Famine is the most pressing of all necessities, and most deformed of all evils; plagues and war are happiness to it. If hunger be so terrible a mischief in this life, how will it afflict the damned in the other! Without all doubt the damned would rather tear themselves in pieces than suffer it; all the most horrible famines that Scripture histories propose unto us are but weak pictures to that which the damned suffer in this unfortunate residence of eternal miseries; neither shall thirst torment them less.” Drexelius thus describes the change in the condition of the rich man: “How strangely is his condition altered!
“Instead of a lofty bed of down, on which he was wont to repose himself, he now lies frying in the flames; his sparkling wine and delicious dainties are taken from him; he is burnt up with thirst, and has nothing for his food but smoke and sulphur!” “The beggar,” says St. Augustine, “purchased blessedness by his poverty, the rich man bought punishment with his wealth. The former was raised by angels to Abraham’s bosom, the latter was taken to the depths of hell. The whole body of the rich man was burned in the flames of hell, but his tongue alone beyond doubt was more especially tormented; because by this he had spoken proudly and contemned the beggar. For that tongue, which had been unwilling to command that alms should be given to the beggar, is now severely tortured in the flames of Gehenna. O Dives, with what face canst thou ask for a drop of water, who wert unwilling to give a crumb? If thou hadst given, justly mightest thou require.”
Finally, we come to the sense of smell. “The nostrils,” says Christopher Love, “shall be smothered with brimstone to choke you.” The sense of smell, says Jeremy Taylor, “shall 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 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 carcass, and suffer such loathsomeness and abominable stink? But what is this in respect to hell, where 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 only one of the damned were brought into this world, it were sufficient to infect the whole earth! Neither do 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 oh, how insufferable the smell of that infernal brimstone mixed with so many corrupted matters! O gulf of horrors! O infernal grave! without vent or breathing place!” Milton, it may be remembered, also speaks of the stench and smoke of hell. St. Theresa, who often had the opportunity of going personally to hell, tells us that “the entrance to hell seemed like a long narrow passage, or a low dark oven. The floor was very filthy, and the smell which came from it was abominable.” “What is the smell of death in hell?” asks Father Furniss. “St. Bonaventure says that if one single body was taken out of hell, and laid on the earth, in that same moment every living creature on the earth would sicken and die. Such is the smell of death from one body in hell. What then will be the smell of death from countless millions and millions of bodies laid in hell as sheep! How will the horrible smell of all these bodies be, after it has been getting worse and worse for ten thousand years?”