9-11.)
* * * * *
It is not the fire, nor all the brimstone and tortures they endure,
which murders them alive. No, no; it is the domestical cause of all
these mischiefs that racks their consciences and is their crudest
executioner. This, this is the greatest of their evils; for a soul that
has shaken off the fetters of flesh and blood, and is full of the love
of God, no more disordered with unruly passions, nor blinded with the
night of ignorance, sees clearly the vast injury she has done to
herself to have offended so good a God, and to have deserved to be thus
banished out of His sight and deprived of that Divine fruition. She
sees how easily she might have flown up straight to heaven at her first
parting with her body, and what trifle it was that impeded her. A
moment lost of those inebriating joys, seems to her now worthy to be
redeemed with an eternity of pains. Then, reflecting with herself that
she was created only for God, and cannot be truly satisfied but by
enjoying God, and that, out of Him, all this goodly machine of the
world is no better than a direct hell and an abyss of evils. Alas! what
worms, what martyrdoms, and what nipping pincers are such pinching
thoughts as these.
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