24. Furthermore, vast multitudes abide beyond, feeble and powerless, upon the shore of perpetual pain, in the land of utter darkness. Every other hour the pain ebbs away from them, and the next hour it returns upon them again. Now these are they in whom good and evil were equally balanced, and on the Day of Doom, judgment shall be passed between them, and their good shall quench their evil on that day; and then shall they be brought to the Haven of Life, in God’s own presence, through ages everlasting. 25. Another great company is there, near to the last-named group, and monstrous their torment. And this is their plight: they are fettered to fiery columns, a sea of fire about them up to their chins, and about their middle fiery chains, in the shape of vipers. Their faces are aflame with agony. They who are tormented thus are sinners, fratricides,[21] ravagers of God’s Church, and merciless Erenachs,[22] who, in presence of the relics of the Saints, had been set over the Church’s tithes and oblations,[23] and had alienated these riches to their private store, away from the Lord’s guests and needy ones. 26. Great multitudes there are, standing in blackest mire up to their girdles. Short cowls of ice are on them. Without rest or intermission, through all time, their girdles are perpetually scorching them with alternate cold and heat. Demon hosts surround them, with fiery clubs[24] in their hands, striking them over the head, though they struggle against them continually. These wretches all have their foreheads to the North, and a rough, sharp wind blowing full upon their foreheads, in addition to every other woe. Red showers of fire are raining on them, every night and every day, and they cannot ward them off, but must needs endure them throughout all ages, wailing and making moan. 27. Some of them have streams of fire in the hollows of their visages; some, fiery nails through their tongues; others, through their heads, from side to side. They who are so punished are thieves and liars, and they who have practised treachery, reviling robbery and rapine; judges of false judgment and contentious persons; women who have dealt in poison and spells, reivers,[25] and learned men who have practised heresy. Another great throng is set upon islands, in the midst of the fiery sea. About them is a silver wall [built] of the raiment and the alms [which they had bestowed]. These are they who have practised mercy without zeal,[26] and have remained in loose living, and in the bonds of their sin, until the hour of their death; but their alms are a bulwark unto them, amid the fiery sea, until the Judgment, and after Judgment they shall be brought into the Haven of Life.