Considerations on eternity from the Latin of Jeremias Drexelius

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Consideration I: What is Eternity? 1-17

I. Various Notions and Symbols of the

II The Secret Meaning Of Scripture Revealed

The sacred pages will not inaptly supplement with divine truth the foregoing chapter on symbols and types of eternity.

When Nabuchodonosor, King of Babylon, had ordered the three Hebrew youths who had refused to comply with his impious commands to be cast into the burning furnace, the flame over the furnace arose forty-nine cubits — a circumstance altogether wonderful and not without a certain mystery. Who so accurately measured the soaring height of a most devouring flame? Who ascended thither and applied a measuring rule, and detected not fifty cubits, but only forty-nine? Indeed, we are not accustomed to speak thus; we usually count twenty, thirty, or fifty cubits, even though the actual number is somewhat more or less. Here a single cubit is said to be lacking for the number fifty. The mystery and secret meaning is this: the number fifty formerly signified a jubilee; but the flames in that Babylonian region of death, although they prey upon both body and soul above all measure, and increase exceedingly beyond all the torments of this life, nevertheless never reach the point of attaining the grace of a jubilee. In hell there is no jubilee, no pardon, no end of torments. A jubilee at present consists, not of a hundred or of fifty years, but of single days, hours, moments. A fraction of an hour can now obtain that pardon which there a whole eternity cannot gain. Now one short day can pay more debts than whole years or centuries in the avenging fires.

Let us add to the above another exposition of the inspired pages. When the people of God were crossing the Jordan, the lower waters flowed down into the sea of desolation (which is now called the Dead Sea) until they completely failed; and Ecclesiasticus says: ^^There is one that buyeth much for a small price'^ (Ecclus. XX, 12). Galfridus unites these two statements and discourses thus upon them: "If you are deserving of perpetual affliction and you can escape it by accepting temporal affliction instead, you have certainly bought great things at a small price. I admit, it is a sea on which you are sailing, but a dead sea; and how great gratitude do you owe to God, because you had deserved a briny, raging, impassable sea, and behold, this He has mercifully changed for you into a dead sea. O that you may be able to pass over this dead sea into the land of the living!" This writer compares all the adversities of this life to a dead sea, but eternal punishments to a briny and impassable sea. No one can escape both; each must traverse either the one or the other. "What are you doing, O man?" exclaims St. Chrysostom. "You are preparing to ascend to heaven, and you ask that you nowhere encounter any difficulty." Whatever we do, this dead sea must be crossed. It depends on us whether we wish to land in the peaceful harbor of beatitude. "The word of God on high is the fountain of wisdom, and her ways are everlasting commandments" (Ecclus. I, 5). No other way lies open over this dead sea to the region of the living than the way of the commandments of God. We have the clearest oracle: "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments" (Matt. XIX, 17). Through these confines is eternity approached.

But if the question "What is eternity?" be put to a theologian of the present age (Cornelius a Lapide), he will say: ^^It is a circle returning upon itself, whose centre is Always, whose circumference is Nowhere; that is, it never ends."

What is eternity? It is an orb, round on all sides, and like unto itself, in which there is no beginning and no end.

What is eternity? A wheel which is always revolving and will revolve, rolling on into every age.

What is eternity? A year continually recurring; where it dies and perishes, there it is reborn and begins again.

What is eternity? An ever-flowing fountain, in which the waters in their winding courses always flow back to their source, that they may issue forth again.

What is eternity? A perennial spring, sending forth never-failing waters, but either the sweetest waters of benediction, or the bitterest waters of malediction.

What is eternity? A labyrinth twisting itself into innumerable curves, which continually leads through many windings those who have entered it, and finally ruins them.

What is eternity? It is an abyss of spirals and windings; it is a spiral ever curving and circling over a boundless expanse.

What is eternity? A serpent bending back upon itself with its coils, holding its tail in its mouth; which in its own end always begins again and will never cease to begin.

What is eternity? It is duration ever present, it is one perpetual Today, which does not go over into the past or the future.

What is eternity? It is the age of ages, says Dionysius (De Divinis Nominibus, Ch. 10), which does not perish, but maintains itself always in the same way.

What is eternity? It is a beginning without beginning, without middle, without end. It is a beginning ever interminable and always beginning, in which the blessed continually enter upon a blessed life and perpetually abound with new delights; in which the damned always die, and after all death and the struggle of death again begin continually to die and to struggle with death. As long as God will be God, so long will the blessed be blessed, so long will they reign and triumph; so long will the damned endure unspeakable burnings and cry out: ^We are tormented in this flame," only to be tormented and tortured eternally.

Ill

WHY THE PLACE OF ETERNITY IS CALLED A MANSION

John, Patriarch of Alexandria, a man of eminent piety, frequently visited the sick, and on one occasion had as a companion Troilus, a bishop, who loved money more than he did the sick. John whispered in his ear: ^^Come, brother, let us aid the friends of Christ." Hereupon Troilus, being crafty and cleverly concealing the disease of his soul, ordered all the money which his servant was then carrying with him for the purchase of other things to be given to the needy. Not long after this he was seized with a fever, which avarice had produced in him. The patriarch of Alexandria heard of this, and having shrewdly surmised the cause of the disease, brought with him to the fever-stricken man as much silver as had lately been distributed among the sick, and in the course of conversation said: "I was jesting when a short time ago I asked from you an alms for the sick since my servant had none with him. Now in good faith I return to you the borrowed philippi, and thank you.'' When Troilus beheld the ready money, immediately that obliging fever ceased, its heat abated, and everything seemed brighter. Accordingly, Troilus having regained his strength, arose for dinner, and together they went to table. Later when dinner was over Troilus fell asleep at home and enjoyed a mid-day nap, during which he saw in a dream a very spacious house and on its front over the door an inscription: ^^Eternal mansion and rest of Bishop Troilus." He rejoiced in this dream, but afterwards he had another which caused him grief. There came a man who, bearing his works with him, said in a tone of stern command: "Remove that inscription from the house and fasten up this one in its place: ^Eternal mansion and rest of John, Archbishop of Alexandria, purchased for thirty pounds of silver.' " Troilus shuddered at this dream and resolved that it should not be without good effect. Accordingly, from avaricious and harsh he became much more liberal, especially toward the poor: such a change did that eternal mansion, seen only in sleep, produce in him.

O blessed mansions, and blessed for the reason that they are eternal! How Christ desires that we despise our tents and huts, which are destined shortly to crumble, and love and hasten to those eternal mansions! "In my Father's house," says He, "there are many mansions" (John XIV, 12). No one is debarred from these except by himself; the place excludes no one, being as widely extensive as possible; time sends no one away, for there is there an abiding, and an abiding that is eternal.

O eternal, merciful God! O eternal truth! O true charity! O dear ternity! So heal our blindness that from present brief sufferings we may understand future, horrible, eternal torments. Lead us and teach us, that we may so possess perishable goods as not to lose the eternal; that we may so grieve over faults committed as to escape eternal punishment; that we may so conduct ourselves in the inn of this life as not to be debarred from the eternal mansions; that we may so advance along our journey as not to be excluded from our country.

IN WHAT THINGS NATURE REPRESENTS ETERNITY

EVEN idolaters, as we have seen, recognized what the nature of eternity was and represented it by certain symbols; for '^God hath manifested it imto them, so that they are inexcusable" (Rom. I, 19, 20). How much more ought this thought to commend itself to Christians, to whom eternity is represented in a manner far different and better. Wherefore you are inexcusable, O man, who consign this most salutary remembrance of eternity to heedless forgetfulness, even though thus reminded. Often before your eyes are rings and circles, spheres and globes, chairs and couches; sun and moon repeatedly meet your gaze. And the sight of these things forces upon you the remembrance of eternity. But even Nature herself, a good mother, places in full view objects of such a kind that by the sight and hearing of them you are invited to meditate on eternity.

Solinus relates that a stone of Arcadia, called asbestos, when it has received the seeds of flame, burns with almost continual fires. For this reason lamps used at shrines and tombs were in former times made of it. This fact is also mentioned by St. Augustine. Furthermore, Pliny, Volateranus, Dioscoris and several others relate wonderful things about a certain kind of linen. This has various names, for it is called asbestian, Carystian, Indian, and also live linen. It is not only not consumed by jfire, but is washed and dried by it. Therefore, when the bodies of several kings were about to be placed upon the pyre and burned, they were wrapped in this linen, to avoid mingling their ashes and to distinguish them one from the other. Nero had a mantle made of it, which he esteemed more precious than gems and gold. Behold nature, your guide and teacher, who points out clearly that she does not find her own death in fire. So all the damned will be on fire and will not be destroyed; they will burn perpetually and will never be consumed; they will seek death in these flames and will not find it. Rightly does Amandus exclaim: "O wretched eternity, never to have an end! O end without end; death more grievous than all death; always to die and never to be able to die!" So the inspired Isaias says: "Their fire shall never be quenched" (Isai. LXVI, 24); and that angel of the Apocalypse: "They shall desire to die, and death shall fly from them" (Apoc. IX, 6).

That the salamander can maintain life in the fire, for some time at least, is believed by St. Augustine, as well as by Aristotle, Pliny, Galen, Aelian, and Dioscoris. This animal, produced from moisture, is very cold; sun and dryness cause its death; hence, in flames, according to the opinion of Pliny, it retains the coldness of ice. From its skin are made lamps for the purpose of providing ever burning lights. The good God, who produces the salamander from earth and mud, formed man also from the same matter it is true, but with a nature far nobler. '^He made him a little less than the angels'' (Ps. VIII, 6). At any rate he has destined for him the same kingdom as for the angels, after he has passed through the probationary period of this life. But "man when he was in honor did not imderstand; he is compared to senseless beasts, and is become like to them'' (Ps. XLVIII, 13). By his own malice he has made himself like a salamander, either to live forever or to die forever in eternal flames.

In those fiery prisons of hell all things are eternal, yet six are especially deserving of consideration.

I

WHAT THINGS ARE ETERNAL IN HELL?

First, the damned soul itself is eternal, immortal. No one will be able to destroy another or himself. "They shall seek death and shall not find it" (Apoc. IX, 6). Nay, this very desire of death will be for them a mighty torment, because they will know that it can never be realized.

Secondly, the prison is eternal: it cannot fall, it cannot be broken open, it cannot be melted away; it is barred with mountains and rocks, and these bars and barriers are so firm that they will afford egress to none. If any one of the damned comes to us from there before the day of judgment, this happens by the permission of God; but he carries around with him his own hell and is not free from torture.

There arises here a discussion of two theologians, which is no idle one, about the location and place of bodies in hell. One of them, who was also a skilled geometrician, reasoned in this wise: It is certain from the words of Christ that the majority of men are lost, so that there will be few of the blessed in comparison with the incredible number of the damned. These are the words of truth: ^^Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. Hov/ narrow is the gate and strait is the way that leadeth to Hfe, and few there are that find it" (Matt. VII, 13-14). Pray tell me, is this believed in the world? Are these thought to be the words of Christ?

But to return to my subject: the middle and centre of the earth is the abode of hell, and how could this contain so many millions of men, unless we say that there body is penetrated by body? This is not necessary, says the other, but they shall be as fish in a jar, which are so tightly packed together that salt only can be placed between them; so is fire between the damned. Or they shall be as bricks in a lime-kiln, one closely pressed upon the other, while the force of the flame penetrates all. Sacred Scripture clearly agrees with this, but by a different simile: ^They are laid in hell like sheep: death shall feed upon them" (Ps. XLVIII, 15). They shall be like sheep, not in the pastures, but in the market-place, already strangled and thrown into one heap.

Thirdly, not less eternal is that fire which no lapse of time will extinguish. Christ gives this very clear warning in St. Matthew: ^^Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire" (Matt. XXV, 41). Do you hear that word "everlasting"? The divine wrath feeds this fire, which will never die out. Isaias testifies: "The breath of the Lord is as a torrent of brimstone kindling it; night and day it shall not be quenched; the smoke thereof shall go up forever" (Isai. XXX, 33 ; XXIV, 10) . "Equally related," says St. Augustine, "are eternal punishment on the one hand, and eternal life on the other. Therefore to say 'Eternal life will be without end, and eternal punishment have an end' is the height of absurdity" (De Civ. Dei XXI, 23). Who then will hesitate to be wholly converted?

Fourthly, equally eternal with the rest is the worm and a conscience most afflicted and despairing on account of its past life. ^^Their worm shall not die" predicts Isaias (LXVI, 24). The poets in former times transferred this belief from the Sacred Writings to myths. For what else is symbolized by Vergil in the well known story of Tityus, who daily suffered the vulture that flew up to him to gnaw out and lacerate his liver; which, however, always grew again on the following night for a new rending? What else is this vulture but that worm and a conscience torn by perpetual remorse?

Fifthly, to this same eternity of hell belong the final sentence and the last judgment pronounced upon all by Christ, the Judge, a judgment, alas, irrevocable, immutable, eternal. From it there will be no appeal or recourse to another judge, where the case can be repeated two or three times in the presence of skilled lawyers; there will be no revision, no postponements or compromises. What has once been pronounced by the mouth of this Judge cannot be revoked for all eternity. Our mother, the Church, earnestly warns us and frequently repeats (Offic. Mort. Noct. 3): "The fear of death troubles me, sinning daily and not repenting, because in hell there is no redemption," none, none, but only eternal despair. The Blood of Christ, shed ever anew on the Mount of Golgotha and most efficacious in making satisfaction, yet does not reach to the damned.

"If/' says St. Bernard, "you do not believe that the yoke of the Lord, a yoke of penance, is sweet in itself, at least you are not ignorant that it is most sweet in comparison with that of which it is said: ^Depart into eternal fire.' "

In the sixth place, a thing that is without end in hell is the pain of loss, as it is called, or the eternal privation of the divine vision, a privation which, together with all the other torments and pains of the damned, will have no end; for here there can be no satisfaction. And although these torments should endure several thousand million years, nevertheless not a single day, nay, not one short hour nor moment, will be granted for rest and breathing. There will be, indeed, variety and change of torments, but only causing greater pain and suffering. Christ most clearly forewarns more than once in St. Matthew: "The children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. VIII, 12; XXII, 13; XXIV, 51); weeping in fire, gnashing of teeth in cold and ice. How, therefore, can a man so forget both himself and God, and how so degenerate into a beast, nay, rather become hardened into rock and stone, that, in reflecting upon those inexplicable and unspeakable tortures which will last for all eternity, he fears nothing, dreads nothing, does not say to himself: "In very fact I am on the road to eternity, and perhaps this road will shortly end; I am already seated upon the steps of eternity; by the very lightest movement I shall be precipitated hence into a measureless abyss.'' And if it seems so distressing and intolerable to be wide awake for only one night, although on a soft bed, and to sigh and groan on account of pains in the head or other member, or on account of toothache or gall-stones; when the morning, long in coming, can scarcely be waited for; when the sun seems to have stopped in its course; when one night seems a week, and nevertheless one lies upon feathers, and there is hope of a pleasanter day, and solace and relief from a physician are expected; ah, what will it be, day and night in the midst of flames for a thousand and a thousand and again a thousand years, to watch, to hunger, to thirst, to burn, to suffer extreme torture in all the members; to hope for no refreshment, not the least rest; to despair of all things, and thus to burn and be tortured through infinite myriads of ages, and to think that not only will there be no end of these things, but that it is not even possible to hope for any. ^^There," says Thomas a Kempis, in the ^^Imitation of Christ" (Bk. I, Ch. 24), "one hour of punishment will be more grievous than a hundred years of the most bitter penance here. There will be no rest, no consolation for the damned.'' "O Lord, rebuke me not in Thy indignation, nor chastise me in Thy wrath" (Ps. VI, i). "The sins of my youth and my ignorance do not remember" (Ps. XXIV, 7). I perish unless Thou spare me, O God.

II

WHY HELL IS ETERNAL

At this point there arises a question bearing on our subject, which is most deserving of everyone's attention; namely, how it is possible that that merciful and good God, whose mercy is above all His works, nevertheless most justly punishes for all eternity even one mortal sin, though committed in a moment and even in thought alone, so that it can never be sufficiently punished, and however many thousand years pass by, it can never be said: "Now this crime has been sufficiently punished, now this criminal has given satisfaction, now he has atoned for that evil thought by which he had offended God." Theologians teach that morose pleasure by itself constitutes mortal sin. They define that as morose pleasure, when anyone revolving in his mind an impure and licentious thought, has not indeed determined actually to commit what he is thinking about, but knowingly and deliberately lingers over that thought of his and takes delight in it. Has God, therefore, decreed eternal flames for a single thought? And what justice is this, to ordain eternal punishment for a momentary sin which injures no one? Why does the blessed David cry out: "Praise the Lord for He is good; for His mercy endureth forever" (Ps. CXXXV, i)? Why does he repeat this twenty-seven times, if God is so severe? In reply to this St. Augustine, St. Gregory, St. Thomas Aquinas, and others say: In any mortal sin the guilt is of its nature infinite, because sin is an injury against the infinite majesty of God. They add this also: He who dies conscious of a mortal sin and does not grieve for having committed it, acts the same as if he had sinned eternally, if indeed he had been permitted to live eternally.

He has lost, not the will to sin, but life, and would always sin if he were to live always; and so he has ceased, not to sin, but to live. Besides, this point, too, must be considered: A man who is damned, however much of his debts he pays, will yet never make satisfaction. For since he is not in God's grace, being His enemy, his payment is not worthy of acceptance, since the man himself is not acceptable. Such a man pays none of his debts, since he does nothing, but only suffers those pains with which he is afflicted against his will. The matter will be clearer from an example. Someone owes his neighbor a thousand philippi which he has borrowed from him, and puts his house under a perpetual mortgage, intending to make yearly payments. Within twenty years he pays his neighbor the same amount as he received from him. Is he therefore now free from all debt? Does nothing remain to be paid? Yes, the entire capital, which remains to be paid as completely as if nothing had yet been paid. For the law of these contracts is such that the capital of the specified sum always remains intact, although the yearly interest be regularly paid. Just so, whatever penalties the damned pay, they nevertheless do not free themselves of debt. They are eternal debtors, perpetual taxpayers to God. Isaias prophesies: ^'And your strength shall be as the ashes of tow, and your work as a spark; and both shall burn together, and there shall be none to quench it" (Isai. I, 31).

Suetonius (Tib. 61) relates that as Tiberius Caesar was once examining prisoners, one of them asked for a speedy release from punishment. To whom the emperor replied: ^^Not yet have you been restored to favor." Christ, the most just judge, is not a tyrant, a Tiberius, yet if any of the damned, after a thousand years passed in the flames, should ask for a speedy death, Christ would make him the same reply: ^^Not yet have you been restored to favor." Should the soul make this same request after another thousand years, it will hear the same words: "Not yet have you been restored to favor." Should it offer this same petition after a hundred thousand years, there will be no other reply. Should it again present its request after several million years, Christ, the Judge, will always bring forward this same objection: "Not yet have you been restored to favor, nor shall you be. Once I wished to be reconciled; I offered you my grace thousands and thousands of times, but you rejected it. I wished to be your friend, nay, your father, but you did not wish to be a son. I dissembled my wrath, I was silent, I waited forty, fifty, sixty years, if perchance you might change your disposition and your life, but no serious or persevering repentance followed. ^You have despised all my counsel, and have neglected my reprehensions' (Prov. I, 25); you have hated and shrunk from all my correction. ^Eat therefore the fruit of your own way, and be filled with your own devices' (Prov. I, 31). I shall laugh in your destruction eternally, and after infinite ages my justice will make you no other reply than: Not yet have you been restored to favor." O heaven, O God, O sin, O steep fall of the human race into the depth of torments, into the most dismal abyss of eternity! But "Thou art just, O Lord, and Thy judgment is right" (Ps. CXVIII, 137). It is just, it is right, that he who never wished through repentance to use the mercy offered him, should through suffering always be punished by the justice with which he was threatened.

Ill

OTHER OBJECTS BY V^HICH NATURE SUGGESTS ETERNITY

But I return to the teaching of nature with respect to eternity. There are found among certain mountains and cliffs hot springs, whose resounding waters produce a dashing and roaring so great and of such a kind, that those resorting thither who seem at their first approach to hear a sort of harmony as of musical instruments, have their ears so assailed by the incessant din, that what was in the beginning sweetest music becomes, as the idea persists, a source of disgust and torture; while those who first imagine they hear a drum or some more noisy instrument, are finally driven almost insane by the harassing sound that unceasingly disturbs them. Here, too, we are led to meditate on eternity. Under those mountains, the barriers of hell, that outcry, that wailing, that din, that shrieking of the damned, which began at their first entrance, will never end, will continually torment their ears and not merely their imagination; and none of these things can be assuaged by growing familiar with them. So, on the contrary, among the blessed that heavenly trisagion. Holy, Holy, Holy, not only will not create the least weariness, but will be heard with ever new delight.

Christ in His conversation with the Samaritan woman makes mention of eternity and of eternal life more than twenty times, and says: ^^But he that shall drink of the water that I will give him, shall not thirst forever, but it shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting" (John IV, 13-14). Would that we, too, with the Samaritan woman would thirst for these fountains, and with earneset prayers entreat: "O Lord, give me this water, that I may not thirst; give me, O Christ, even a drop of this water, or at least some desire of eternal life."

But nature has something else to teach. In the eighty-first year after our Lord's birth of the Virgin, as Suetonius, Dio Cassius and Pliny the Younger relate in detail, on the first of November at the seventh hour * there occurred on Mount Vesuvius in Campania a terrible eruption of flames, preceded by unusual drought and severe earthquakes. There were heard also subterranean sounds as of rumbling thunder; then the sea roared and grew turbulent, and the entire heaven resounded, as if the mountains were rushing into conflict. Then, also, immense rocks leaped up, the whole atmosphere became filled with mingled smoke and flames, and the sun itself was darkened; whence many were convinced that the earth would be reduced to chaos or consumed by fire. For so great an abundance of ashes poured out that it filled earth, sea, and air, inflicting the greatest damage on men, lands, and animals, killing fish and birds, and completely burying two cities, Herculaneum and Pompeii, while the people were witnessing a performance in the theatre. Now, these and other cavernous precipices and

* The eruption of Vesuvius here referred to did not occur on the date given by the author, but on 24 August, a.d. 79. — Tr.

mountain heights of this kind, which glow with continual fires and yet are never consumed or burnt up, are given by God to men as living examples of the eternal fire in hell, by which the bodies of the guilty always burn and are never consumed. Tertullian, Minutius, and Pacianus especially declare this. Consider, my friend, how here too nature skilfully goes in advance and leads you by the hand to contemplate eternity.