What I would say is this: many degrees, and undoubtedly extreme degrees, of pain and torment, are necessary before the man cast out from the presence of God can be wholly and completely transformed into an evil spirit. And this is, perhaps, the proper meaning and essential character under which we are to think of these endless torments of spiritual death and ruin. If, moreover, this eternal death is often described as an unquenchable fire, then unquestionably there lies in this figure, even physically considered, a certain truth, inasmuch as even in this world and in visible nature, fire, when left to itself and to its true essential character, is the proper element of destruction. In the sun’s genial influence, indeed, and in the blood of the living soul, it is constrained and moderated into the wholesome warmth of life; but in itself, and working in its elementary state, it is destructive and opposed to all the other elements. To the light all that has life turns instinctively, and in the air it breathes and pulsates, and from water it draws a part at least of its nourishment. It is only incidentally that the air and water become destructive, but the fire is so in its proper nature. A perfectly organized animal that lived in fire would, in a greater or less degree, fill every mind with horror and alarm, as having no part in and wholly alien from that nature which is known to and friendly to man. On this account, many even of the ancient philosophers taught that the end of the present visible and the external and sensible world, would be brought about by a general conflagration.