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Here arises the question: If the fire is not to be immaterial,
analogous to the pain of the soul, but material, burning by contact,
so that bodies may be tormented in it, how can evil spirits be punished
in it? For it is undoubtedly the same fire which is to serve for the
punishment of men and of devils, according to the words of Christ:
"Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the
devil and his angels;" unless, perhaps, as learned men have
thought, the devils have a kind of body made of that dense and humid
air which we feel strikes us when the wind is blowing. And if this
kind of substance could not be affected by fire, it could not burn when
heated in the baths. For in order to burn, it is first burned, and
affects other things as itself is affected. But if any one maintains
that the devils have no bodies, this is not a matter either to be
laboriously investigated, or to be debated with keenness. For why may
we not assert that even immaterial spirits may, in some extraordinary
way, yet really be pained by the punishment of material fire, if the
spirits of men, which also are certainly immaterial, are both now
contained in material members of the body, and in the world to come
shall be indissolubly united to their own bodies? Therefore, though
the devils have no bodies, yet their spirits, that is, the devils
themselves, shall be brought into thorough contact with the material
fires, to be tormented by them; not that the fires themselves with
which they are brought into contact shall be animated by their
connection with these spirits, and become animals composed of body and
spirit, but, as I said, this junction will be effected in a
wonderful and ineffable way, so that they shall receive pain from the
fires, but give no life to them. And, in truth, this other mode of
union, by which bodies and spirits are bound together and become
animals, is thoroughly marvellous, and beyond the comprehension of
man, though this it is which is man.
I would indeed say that these spirits will burn without any body of
their own, as that rich man was burning in hell when he exclaimed,
"I am tormented in this flame," were I not aware that it is aptly
said in reply, that that flame was of the same nature as the eyes he
raised and fixed on Lazarus, as the tongue on which he entreated that
a little cooling water might be dropped, or as the finger of Lazarus,
with which he asked that this might be done, all of which took place
where souls exist without bodies. Thus, therefore, both that flame
in which he burned and that drop he begged were immaterial, and
resembled the visions of sleepers or persons in an ecstasy, to whom
immaterial objects appear in a bodily form. For the man himself who is
in such a state, though it be in spirit only, not in body, yet sees
himself so like to his own body that he cannot discern any difference
whatever. But that hell, which also is called a lake of fire and
brimstone, will be material fire, and will torment the bodies of the
damned, whether men or devils, the solid bodies of the one, aerial
bodies of the others; or if only men have bodies as well as souls, yet
the evil spirits, though without bodies, shall be so connected with
the bodily fires as to receive pain without imparting life. One fire
certainly shall be the lot of both, for thus the truth has declared.
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