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overwrought fancy seemed to see hideous beings hovering around, and hell itself yawning to receive its victim. St. Gregory describes how a monk, who, though apparently a man of exemplary and even saintly piety, had been accustomed secretly to eat meat, saw on his deathbed a fearful dragon twining its tail round his body, and, with open jaws, sucking his breath; and how a little boy of five years old, who had learnt from his father to repeat blasphemous words, saw, as he lay dying, exulting dæmons who were waiting to carry him to hell.2 To the jaundiced eye of the theologian, all nature seemed stricken and forlorn, and its brightness and beauty suggested no ideas but those of deception and of sin. The redbreast, according to one popular legend, was commissioned by the Deity to carry a drop of water to the souls of unbaptised infants in hell, and its breast was singed in piercing the flames.3 In the calm, still hour of evening,

Look

been this red-hot floor.
at my burnt and bleeding feet. Let
me go off this burning floor for one
moment, only for one single short
moment. The fourth dungeon
is the boiling kettle . . . in the
middle of it there is a boy. . .
His eyes are burning like two burn-
ing coals. Two long flames come
out of his ears. Sometimes
he opens his mouth, and blazing
fire rolls out. But listen! there is
a sound like a kettle boiling.
The blood is boiling in the scalded
veins of that boy. The brain is
boiling and bubbling in his head.
The marrow is boiling in his bones.
The fifth dungeon is the red-
The little child is
in this red-hot oven. Hear how
it screams to come out. See how
it turns and twists itself about in
the fire. It beats its head against
the roof of the oven. It stamps its
little feet on the floor. . . . God

hot oven.

was very good to this child. Very
likely God saw it would get worse
and worse, and would never repent,
and so it would have to be punished
much more in hell. So God in His
mercy called it out of the world in
its early childhood.' If the reader
desires to follow this subject fur-
ther, he may glance over a com-
panion tract by the same reverend
gentleman, called A Terrible Judg-
ment on a Little Child; and also a
book on Hell, translated from the
Italian of Pinamonti, and with
illustrations depicting the various
tortures.

1 St. Greg. Dial. iv. 38
2 Ibid. iv. 18.

3

Alger's History of the Doc trine of a Future Life (New York, 1866), p. 414. The ignis fatuus was sometimes supposed to be the soul of an unbaptised child. There is, I believe, another Catholic legend about the redbreast, of a very

when the peasant boy asked why the sinking sun, as it dipped beneath the horizon, flushed with such a glorious red, he was answered, in the words of an old Saxon catechism, because it is then looking into hell.1

upon

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It is related in the vision of Tundale, that as he gazed the burning plains of hell, and listened to the screams of ceaseless and hopeless agony that were wrung from the sufferers, the cry broke from his lips, Alas, Lord! what truth is there in what I have so often heard-the earth is filled with the mercy of God?' 2 It is, indeed, one of the most curious things in moral history, to observe how men who were sincerely indignant with Pagan writers for attributing to their divinities the frailties of an occasional jealousy or an occasional sensuality-for representing them, in a word, like men of mingled characters and passions-have nevertheless unscrupulously attributed to their own Divinity a degree of cruelty which may be confidently said to transcend the utmost barbarity of which human nature is capable. Neither Nero nor Phalaris could have looked complacently for ever on millions enduring the torture of fire-most of them because of a crime which was committed, not by themselves, but by their ancestors, or because they had adopted some mistaken conclusion on intricate questions of history or metaphysics.3

different kind-that its breast was stained with blood when it was trying to pull out the thorns from the crown of Christ.

'Wright's Purgatory of St. Patrick, p. 26. M. Delepierre quotes a curious theory of Father Hardouin (who is chiefly known for his suggestion that the classics were composed by the medieval monks) that the rotation of the earth is caused by the lost souls trying to escape from the fire that is at the centre of the globe, climbing, in consequence, on the inner

VOL. II.

crust of the earth, which is the wall of hell, and thus making the whole revolve, as the squirrel by climbing turns its cage! (L'Enfer décrit par ceux qui l'ont vu, p. 151.) 2 Delepierre, p. 70.

3 Thus, in a book which was attributed (it is said erroneously) to Jeremy Taylor, we find two singularly unrhetorical and unimpassioned chapters, deliberately enumerating the most atrocious acts of cruelty in human history, and maintaining that they are surpassed by the tortures inflicted by the

To those who do not regard such teaching as true, it must appear without exception the most odious in the religious history of the world, subversive of the very foundations of morals, and well fitted to transform the man who at once realised it, and accepted it with pleasure, into a monster of barbarity. Of the writers of the medieval period, certainly one of the two or three most eminent was Peter Lombard, whose 'Sentences,' though now, I believe, but little read, were for a long time the basis of all theological literature in Europe. More than four thousand theologians are said to have written commentaries upon them1

among others, Albert the Great, St. Bonaventura, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Nor is the work unworthy of its former reputation. Calm, clear, logical, subtle, and concise, the author professes to ex

Deity. A few instances will suffice. Certain persons' put rings of iron, stuck full of sharp points of needles, about their arms and feet, in such a manner as the prisoners could not move without wounding themselves; then they compassed them about with fire, to the end that, standing still, they might be burnt alive, and if they stirred the sharp points pierced their flesh.

What, then, shall be the torment of the damned where they shall burn eternally without dying, and without possibility of removing?

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is more loathsome and unsavoury
than a million of dead dogs?
Bonaventure says, if one of the
damned were brought into this
world it were sufficient to infect
the whole earth.
We are

amazed to think of the inhumanity
of Phalaris, who roasted men alive
in his brazen bull. That was a
joy in respect of that fire of hell.

This torment . . comprises as many torments as the body of man has joints, sinews, arteries, &c., being caused by that penetrating and real fire, of which this temporal fire is but a painted fire.

What comparison will there be between burning for a hundred years' space, and to be burning without interruption as long as God is God?'-Contemplations on the State of Man, book ii. ch. 6-7, in Heber's Edition of the works of Taylor.

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pound the whole system of Catholic theology and ethics, and to reveal the interdependence of their various parts. Having explained the position and the duties, he proceeds to examine the prospects, of man. He maintains that until the day of judgment the inhabitants of heaven and hell will continually see one another; but that, in the succeeding eternity, the inhabitants of heaven alone will see those of the opposite world; and he concludes his great work by this most impressive passage: 'In the last place, we must enquire whether the sight of the punishment of the condemned will impair the glory of the blest, or whether it will augment their beatitude. Concerning this, Gregory says the sight of the punishment of the lost will not obscure the beatitude of the just; for when it is accompanied by no compassion it can be no diminution of happiness. And although their own joys might suffice to the just, yet to their greater glory they will see the pains of the evil, which by grace they have escaped. ... The elect will go forth, not indeed locally, but by intelligence, and by a clear vision, to behold the torture of the impious, and as they see them they will not grieve. Their minds will be sated with joy as they gaze on the unspeakable anguish of the impious, returning thanks for their own freedom. Thus Esaias, describing the torments of the impious, and the joy of the righteous in witnessing it, says: "The elect in truth will go out and will see the corpses of men who have prevaricated against Him; their worm will not die, and they will be to the satiety of vision to all flesh, that is to the elect. The just man will rejoice when he shall see the vengeance."

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Postremo quæritur, An pœna reproborum visa decoloret gloriam beatorum? an eorum beatitudini proficiat? De hoc ita Gregorius ait, Apud animum justorum non obfuscat beatitudinem aspecta pœna reproborum; quia ubi jam com

passio miseriæ non erit, minuere beatorum lætitiam non valebit. Et licet justis sua gaudia sufficiant, ad majorem gloriam vident pœnas malorum quas per gratiam evaserunt. . . . Egredientur ergo electi, non loco, sed intelligentia vel visione

This passion for visions of heaven and hell was, in fact, a natural continuation of the passion for dogmatic definition, which had raged during the fifth century. It was natural that men, whose curiosity had left no conceivable question of theology undefined, should have endeavoured to describe with corresponding precision the condition of the dead. Much, however, was due to the hallucinations of solitary and ascetic life, and much more to deliberate imposture. It is impossible for men to continue long in a condition of extreme panic, and superstition speedily discovered remedies to allay the fears it had created. If a malicious dæmon was hovering around the believer, and if the jaws of hell were opening to receive him, he was defended, on the other hand, by countless angels; a lavish gift to a church or monastery could always enlist a saint in his behalf, and priestly power could protect him against the dangers which priestly sagacity had revealed. When the angels were weighing the good and evil deeds of a dead man, the latter were found by far to preponderate; but a priest of St. Lawrence came in, and turned the scale by throwing down among the former a heavy gold chalice, which the deceased had given to the altar.1 Dagobert was snatched from the very arms of dæmons by St. Denis, St. Maurice, and St. Martin.2 Charlemagne was saved, because the monasteries he had built outweighed

manifesta ad videndum impiorum cruciatus; quos videntes non dolore afficientur sed lætitia satiabuntur, agentes gratias de sua liberatione visa impiorum ineffabili calamitate. Unde Esaias impiorum tormenta describens et ex eorum visione lætitiam bonorum exprimens, ait, E re entur electi scilicet et videbunt cadavera virorum qui prævaricati sunt in me. Vermis eorum non morietur et ignis non extinguetur, et erunt usque ad satietatem visionis omni carni, id est electis.

Lætabitur justus cum viderit vindictam.'-Peter Lombard, Senten. lib. iv. finis. These amiable views have often been expressed both by Catholic and by Puritan divines. See Alger's Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 541.

There is a

1 Legenda Aurea. curious fresco representing this transaction, on the portal of the church of St. Lorenzo, near Rome.

2 Aimoni, De Gestis Francorum Hist. iv. 34.

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