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The sinner, when he sins, commits two evils: he leaves God, the highest good, and he turns over to the creature. "My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed cut cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." (Jer. ii. 13.) Since, then, the sinner turns to the creature, with a loathing at God, by those very creatures he shall be justly tormented in hell, by the fire and by demons; and this forms the pain of the senses. But since his greatest guilt, in which the sin consists, lies in his turning away from God, so the chief punishment, and that which will make hell, will be the pain of loss; that is, the pain of having lost God.

Let us consider, in the first place, the pain of the senses. It is an article of faith that there is a hell. This prison is reserved in the middle of the earth for the punishment of the rebels against God. What is this hell? It is a place of torments. " This place of torment," (S. Luke xvi. 28), as the condemned glutton called hell. A place of torments, where all the senses and the powers of the condemned will each have their especial torment; and in proportion as one sense has especially offended God, so also will be its peculiar punishment. " That