But in that thou sayest, Why do not the Souls which are without God feel
Hell in this World? I answer; They bear it about with them in their
wicked consciences, but they know it not; because the World hath put out
their eyes, and its deadly cup hath cast them likewise into a sleep, a
most fatal sleep. Notwithstanding which it must be owned that the Wicked
do frequently feel Hell within them during the time of this mortal life,
though they may not apprehend that it is Hell, because of the earthly
vanity which cleaveth to them from without, and the sensible pleasures
and amusements wherewith they are intoxicated. And moreover it is to be
noted that the outward Life in every such one hath yet the Light of the
outward Nature, which ruleth in this Life, and so the Pain of Hell
cannot, so long as that hath the rule, be revealed. But when the body
dyeth or breaketh away, so as the Soul cannot any longer enjoy such
temporal pleasure and delight, nor the Light of this outward World,
which is wholly thereupon extinguished as to it, then the Soul stands in
an eternal hunger and thirst after such vanities as it was here in love
withal, but yet can reach nothing but that false Will, which it had
impressed in itself while in the body; and wherein it had abounded to
its great loss. And now whereas it had too much of its Will in this
life, and yet was not contented therewith, it hath, after the separation
by death, as little of it; which createth in it an everlasting thirst
after that which it can henceforth never obtain more, and causeth it to
be in a perpetual anxious lust after Vanity, according to its former
impression, and in a continual rage of hunger after those sorts of
wickedness and lewdness whereinto it was immersed, being in the flesh.
Fain would it do more evil still, but that it hath not either wherein or
wherewith to effect the same, and therefore it doth perform this only
_in itself_. All is not literally transacted, as if it were outward; and
so the ungodly is tormented by those Furies which are in his own mind,
and begotten upon himself by himself. For he is verily become his own
Devil and Tormentor; and that by which he sinned here, when the Shadow
of this World is passed away, abideth still with him in the impression,
and is made his prison and his Hell. But this hellish hunger and thirst
cannot be fully manifested in the Soul, till the Body, which ministered
to the Soul that it lusted after, and with which the Soul was so
bewitched, as to doat thereupon, and pursue all its cravings, be
stripped off from it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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