Page:MeditationsOnTheMysteriesOfOurHolyV1.djvu/135

 been said) all the evils of this life, yet, as if it had done nothing, causes also the eternal evils of the other life; Almighty God chastising with them the sinner that remains in his sin, as if in this life he had received no chastisement at all. So that neither the ten plagues of Egypt, nor the fire of Sodom, nor the tribulations of unhappy Jerusalem, nor the pains that sinners (rebels against Almighty God) suffer here — are put in account to lighten the chastisements of hell, which shall be as great as if here they had suffered no others at all. And so, as making no reckoning of them, (says the Prophet Nahum,) that Almighty God punishes not one thing twice, because the punishment of this life is as if it were not, or is (as St. Gregory  says) the beginning of the eternal.

2. Secondly, I will consider the reason of this most just rigour. For as sin is an infinite injury, (as has been said,) and all the pains of this life are finite, it is not sufficiently punished with them if there succeed not others that have some infinity, as those of hell have in two respects: i. Being eternal and having no end in their continuance; ii. Because they deprive of an infinite benefit, which is the sight of Almighty God for ever: whereupon says St. Augustine, " Although there should be no day of general judgment for sinners, and though throughout all eternity they should live with abundance of delights, without fear of punishment, yet only for this — that they should for ever want the happy beholding of Almighty God — they should bitterly lament; for it is not possible for a man who has a lively faith of what God is to imagine any pain that is equal to this." " Quia haec amantibus paena est,non contemnentibus "This pain they feel who love, not they who despise it." And as few feel it in this life, therefore another of most terrible