In the middle ages Christian literature was mainly composed of the legendary visions of saints, in which views across the gulf had a large share. The Devil was represented bound by red-hot chains, on a burning gridiron in the centre of hell. The screams of his never-ending agony made its rafters to resound; but his hands were free, and with these he seized the lost souls, crushed them like grapes against his teeth, and then drew them by his breath down the fiery cavern of his throat. Demons with hooks of red-hot iron plunged souls alternately into fire and sea. Some of the lost were hung up by their tongues, others were sawn asunder, others gnawed by serpents, others beaten together on an anvil and welded into a single mass, others boiled and then strained through a cloth, others twined in the embrace of demons whose limbs were of flame.** * Library of the Fathers, pp. 15-16. * Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii., p. 222. Is it strange that the ages when Christian barbarism overcame Pagan civilisation were known as the Dark Ages? "George Eliot" well says that "where the tremendous alternative of everlasting torments is believed in--believed in so that it becomes a motive determining the life--not only persecution, but every other form of severity and gloom are the legitimate consequences." Grandly horrible is the reflection in Dante's _Inferno_ of the doctrine of hell, held in the palmiest days of Christianity. The gloom of that poem is relieved by a few touches of compunction at the doom of noble heathen and of tenderness for those who sinned through love; proving the poet superior to his creed. Yet consider the punishment of heretics, buried in burning sepulchres while from their furnace tombs rise endless wails. Think of the terrible inscription, _Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate_. Remember that Dante placed in this hell his political opponents, and how he depicts himself as striking the faces and pulling the hair of the tormented; then answer, is not this great poem a lasting monument of Christian barbarity? St. Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, treats of the punishment of hell under the title _Poena Damnatorum_,* and teaches (1) that the damned will suffer other punishments besides that of fire; (2) that the "undying worm" is remorse of conscience; (3) that the darkness of hell is physical darkness, only so much light being admitted as will allow the lost to see and apprehend the punishments of the place; (4) that as both body and soul are punished, the fire of hell will be a material fire, of the same nature as ordinary fire but with different properties; and the place of punishment, though not certainly known, is probably under the earth. Hagenbach, in his _History of Doctrines_, 209, note cliv., says of the blessed, "They witness the suffering of the damned without being seen by the latter," and refers to Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. Even the mystic Suso expressed himself as follows:--