Day 15: On the Interior Pains of Hell
"Consider, secondly, in particular, that pain of loss, which, in the judgment of divines, is the greatest of all the torments of hell; though worldlings here have difficulties of conceiving how this can be. Alas! poor sinners, so weak is their notion of eternal goods, and so deeply are they immersed in the things of this world, amusing themselves with a variety of created objects, which divert their thoughts from God's sovereign goodness, that they cannot conceive how the loss of God can be so great and dismal a torment, as the saints and servants of God, who are guided by better lights, all agree it is. But the case will be altered when they find themselves in hell. There they shall be convinced, by their own woeful experience, what misery it is to have lost their God; to have lost him totally; to have lost him irrevocably; to have lost him eternally; to have lost him in himself; to have lost him in all his creatures; to be eternally banished from him, who was their only happiness, last end, sovereign good, the overflowing fountain of all good: and in losing him to have lost all that is good, and that for ever. As long as sinners are in this mortal life, they many ways partake of the goodness of God, "who makes the sun to rise upon the good and bad, and rains upon the just and unjust". All that is agreeable in this world, all that is delightful in creatures, and all that is comfortable in life, is all in some measure a participation of the divine goodness. No wonder then, that the sinner, whilst he so many ways partakes of the goodness of God, should not in this life be sensible of what it is to be totally and eternally deprived of him. But in hell, alas! those unhappy wretches shall find, that in losing God, they have also lost all kind of good or comfort, which any of his creatures heretofore afforded; instead of which, they find all things now conspiring against them, nor any way left of diverting the dreadful thought of this loss, which is always present to their minds, and grinds them with inexpressible torment."
Source:
"Think well on't, or, Reflections on the great truths of the Christian religion for every day of the month" by Rev. Richard Challoner
Read by: ancientchristian, Librivox https://bit.ly/2SqcBSj
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