^ Who would give, saith Bernard, to my eyes a fountain of tears, that by my weeping here I may prevent weeping and gnashing of teeth hereafter. Some devout personages have caused this scripture to be writ in letters of gold upon their chimney-pieces. — Bishop of Belly in France in his ' Draught of Eternity.' [Camus, as before. — G.]
* Gen. iv. 17 ; Amos vi. 7 ; Job xxi. 12 ; Dan. v. 21 ; Amos vi. 4.
128 THAT THE TORMENTS OF HELL ARE
cannot drink wines in bowls, nor eat the lambs out of the flocks, nor the calves out of the midst of the stall. In everlasting burnings there will be no merry company to pass time away, nor no dice nor cards to pass care away ; nor no cellars of wine wherein to drown the sinner's grief. By fire in the scriptures last cited, is meant, as I conceive, all the positive part of the torments of hell ; and because they are not only upon the soul but also upon the body. As in heaven there shall be all bodily perfection, so there shall be also in hell all bodily miseries. Whatsoever may make a man perfectly miserable shall be in hell ; therefore the wrath of God and all the positive effects of this wrath is here meant by fire.
I have read of Pope Clement the Fifth, that when a nephew of his, whom he had loved sensually and sinfully, died, he sent his chaplain to a necromancer to learn how it fared with him in the other world. The conjuror shewed him the chaplain lying in a fiery bed in hell ; which when it was told the Pope, he never joyed more after it, but, within a short time after, died also.i Out of this fiery bed there is no deliverance. When a sinner is in hell, shall another Christ be found to die for him, or will the same Clmst be crucified again? Oh, no!
0 sirs, the torments of hell will be exceeding great and terrible, such as will make the stoutest sinners to quake and tremble ! If the handwriting upon the wall, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, made Bel- shazzar's ' countenance to change, his thoughts to be troubled, and his joints to be loosed, and his knees to be dashed one against another,' Dan. V. 5, vi. 25; oh, how terrible will the torments of hell be to the damned ! The torments of hell will be universal torments. All torments meet together in that place of torment. Hell is the centre of all punishments, of all sorrows, of all pains, of all wrath, and of all vengeance, &c. One of the ancients saith, [Bernard,] that the least punishment in hell is more grievous than if a child-bearing woman should continue in the most violent pangs and throes a thousand years together, without the least ease or intermission.
An ancient writer mentioned by Discipulus, de tempore, goeth much further, affirming that if all the men which have been from Adam's time till this day, and which shall be to the end of the world ; and all the piles of grass in the world were turned into so many men to augment the number; and that punishment inflicted in hell upon any one, were to be divided amongst all these, so as to every one might befall an equal part of that punishment ; yet that which would be the portion of one man would be far more grievous than all the cruel deaths and exquisite tortures which have been inflicted upon men ever since the world began. 2 A heathen poet, speaking of the multitude of the pains and torments of the wicked in hell, affirmed,
^ Jac. Reu. Hist. Pontif, Rom. 199 [tiic: but Query, * Platina Historia de Vitis Pon- tificum Romanorum. Colon : 1626, 4o ' ? — G.]
* Tytius his vulture, though feeding on his liver, is but a flea-biting to the gnawing worm that is in hell [Qu. 'Prometheus the Titan' '^ — G.] — Ixion his wheel is a place of rest, if compared with those billows of wrath, and that wheel of justice which is in hell brought over the ungodly [Cf. Schol. ad Horn.; Od. xxi. 303; Serv. ad Virgil, ^En. vi. 601; Georg. iii. 38, iv. 484. — G.] — The lash of Danaiis his daughters is but a sport compared to the torture of the damned in hell [Pindar. Xem. x. 7 ; Ovid : Met. iv. 462 ; Horat. Carm. iii. 11, &c. — G.]
MATCHLESS, BASELESS, AND ENDLESS.
* that although he had a hundred mouths, and as many tongues, with a voice as strong as iron, yet were they not able to express the names of them.' But this poet spoke more like a prophet than a poet. The poets tell you of a place called Tartarum, or hell, where the impious shall be eternally tormented. This Tartarum the poets did set forth with many fictions to affright people from vicious practices, sufch as of the four lakes of Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon^ and Cocytus ; i over which Charon, in his boat, did waft over the departed souls ; of the three judges, ^acus, Minos, and Khadamanthus,2 who were to call the souls to an account, and judge them to their state ; of the three furies, Tisophone, Megsera, and Alecto, who lashed guilty souls to extort confession from them ;^ of Cerberus, the dog of hell, with three heads, which would let none come out when once they were in ; and of several sorts of punishments inflicted, as iron chains, horrid stripes, gnawing of vultures, wheels, rolling great stones, and the like. In the chapel of Ticam, the China Pluto, the pains of hell were so deciphered that could not but strike terror into the beholders, — some roasted in iron beds, some fried in scalding oil, some cut in pieces, or divided in the middle, or torn of dogs, &c. In another part of the chapel were painted the dungeons of hell, with horrible serpents, flames, devils, &c.*
' In hell,' saith Mahomet, [Alcoran,'&c.,] ' there is the floor of brim- stone, smoky, pitchy, with stinking flames, deep pits of scalding pitch, and sulphurous flames wherein the damned are punished daily.' There the wicked shall be fed with the tree Ezecum, which shall burn in their bellies like fire ; there they shall drink fire, and be holden in chains of seventy cubits. In the midst of hell, they say, is a tree full of fruit, every apple being like to the head of a devil, which groweth green in the midst of all those flames, called Zoaccum Aga£ci, or the tree of bitterness ; and the souls that shall eat thereof, thinking to refresh themselves, shall so find them, and by them and their pains in hell, they shall grow mad, and the devils shall bind them with chains of fire, and shall drag them up and down in hell ; with much more which I am not free to transcribe. Now, although most of those things which you may -find among many poets, heathens, and Turks, concerning the torments of hell, are fictions of their own brains ; yet that there is such a place as hell, and that there are diversity of torments there, the very light of nature doth witness, and hath forced many to confess, &c.