1. Come now, when we shall have arrived at that final judgment, to be judged by that Judge who can neither be deceived by the concealment of crimes, nor be corrupted to grant impunity by the offering of any gift: when the secrets of all shall begin to be revealed, and not only acts and words, but even the very thoughts shall be shown forth—what shall we do under the majesty of so great a Judge? What plea of excuse shall we be able to put forward? By what art of defense shall we clear ourselves? What repentance shall come to our aid, which we despised in this flesh? What good works shall defend us, which in this life we did not do? To what apostles, or to what other saints, shall we flee for refuge, whose examples together with their words we have despised?
Or will perhaps the frailty of the body excuse some there? But against their excuse will cry out the examples of all the saints, who, living in the flesh together with the frailty of the flesh, conquering in the flesh the frailty of the flesh, taught that what they did could assuredly be done: above all, because not even they resisted sin by their own strength, but by the help of the merciful Lord; who showed himself even to those not seeking him, that he might be sought and believed in; and defends with invincible protection those believing in him, lest they be overcome by sin. 2. What therefore shall they answer, if the Lord say to them: «If you could, why did you not resist the desires of sins? If you could not, why did you not seek my help against sins?»
or, being wounded, why by repenting did you not apply a remedy to your wound? Will he not, while they are struck dumb at these things and have nothing of excuse to bring forward, say: «Bind them hand and foot, and cast them into the outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth; where their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched» (Matt. 22:13; Isa. 66:24; Mark 9:44). And what is it, when struck dumb, to be bound hand and foot, but, in hell where no one confesses to God, to be deprived of action? Just as to be cast into the outer darkness will be nothing else than to be driven out from the Lord, who is the light of minds.
But the weeping and gnashing of teeth show forth their most bitter pains, who, condemned to the punishment of eternal death, shall not have the faculty of seeing, but of grieving. Their continual groaning, eternal torment, supreme pain, penal sensation, torture their souls yet do not wring them out; they punish the condemned bodies yet do not make an end of them. Whom therefore the inextinguishable fire, deputed to them, does not extinguish; that, the life of feeling remaining, the penalty too may remain, and may hold fettered in alternating bodies—for grieving rather than for living—those whom in the living flames the immortality of the second death slays. Now indeed, as to what it says: «Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched» (Isa. 66:24), it is referred to the whole punishment of the condemned man;
whom the fire of ineffectual repentance burns up, and the worm of a consuming conscience immortally gnaws. Hence all who are said to be slain in Gehenna—it is not done with them that, consumed by the greatest pains, they should at some time fail; but that in those pains they should penally live. 5.
To listen to or read these and like things gladly, to bring them continually before the eyes of the mind, to believe in things to come, to fear them without any agitation, to ponder what an evil it is to be shut out from that joy of divine contemplation, to be deprived of the most blessed society of all the saints, to become an exile from the heavenly homeland, to die to the blessed life, to live to eternal death, to be cast out into eternal fire with the devil and his angels, where the second death is an exile to the condemned, life a punishment, not to feel in that fire what illumines, to feel what torments, to suffer the terrible cracklings of the overflowing conflagration, to have the eyes blinded by the bitter gloom of the smoking pit, to be plunged into the depth of surging Gehenna, to be torn to pieces forever by most voracious worms, and never to be finished off:
to ponder these and many like things is nothing else than to give a bill of divorce to all vices, and to curb all carnal allurements. But let us now, if it seems good, ascend from these terrible evils—which strike the minds of the faithful with salutary terror, and lead them away from all vicious delights, and which the lovers of their own pleasures shall then prove by the experience of their own damnation, when, what is more wretched than all unhappiness, they shall no longer be able to amend themselves—from these, I say, terrifying and sorrowful evils let us ascend to those sublime things by which the minds of those advancing rise up into the hope of meriting blessedness, and, with earthly things forsworn, long for the heavenly.
And since those who desire to advance begin from salutary fear, and by advancing arrive at love, we too, judging it sufficient that we have treated of the fear of beginners, let us discuss also concerning love—what he, whose gift it is, shall have granted.