Tertullian, in his treatise on the Resurrection of the Flesh, chap. xxxv., declares "The fire of hell is eternal--expressly announced as an everlasting penalty," and he asks, "whence shall come the weeping and gnashing of teeth if not from _eyes and teeth?_" In his treatise, _De Anima_, chap. vii., he thus alludes to the story of Dives. "Do you suppose that this end of the blessed poor man and the miserable rich man is only imaginary? Then why the name of Lazarus in this narrative, if the circumstance is not in [the category of] a real occurrence?" This Christian Father absolutely gloats over the prospect of witnessing these torments:--"Which sight gives me Joy? which rouses me to exultation?--as I see so many illustrious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove himself, and those, too, who bore witness of their exaltation; governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more fierce than those which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ!" He exultingly continues: "I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; of viewing the play-actors much more 'dissolute' in the dissolving flame; of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his chariot of fire; of witnessing the wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows."* An echo of this famous passage may be traced in Cardinal Newman's sermon "On Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings." St. Cyprian, in his address to Demetrianus, says: "We are rendered patient by our security of a vindication to come. The innocent give place to the guilty; the guileless acquiesce in their punishments and tortures, certain and assured that anything we suffer will not remain unavenged.... What joy for the believers, what sorrow for the faithless; to have refused to believe here, and now be unable to return in order that they may believe! Hell ever burning will consume the accursed, and a devouring punishment of lively flames; nor will there be that from whence their torments can ever receive either repose or end. Souls with their bodies will be saved unto suffering in tortures infinite. There that man will be seen by us for ever, who made us his spectacle here for a season; what brief enjoyment those cruel eyes received from the persecutions wrought upon us will be balanced against a spectacle eternal." And the savage saint backs up his pleasant prospect with "Holy Scripture." * De Spectaculis, c. 30. I have quoted the rendering in the orthodox Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. xi., pp. 34-35. Gibbon's version is more forcible.