h that in hell every sense of the human body shall
have its own peculiar punishment; and that the sense of feeling,
especially, shall be tortured; because, in most cases, it is
principally in that sense that the reprobate have most offended God.
Surely we must not imagine that God is more severe in punishing the
wicked, than He is good and liberal in rewarding the just. Now, is it
not precisely in the senses of taste and feeling that the saints have
suffered most for God? Look at that countless multitude of martyrs.
Many were starved to death; others were scourged until they died
under the torture; others were torn by the wild beasts; others were
crucified; others were burnt with a slow fire; while others were
tortured for days together in every limb and sense, and that, too,
with all the ingenuity and appliances that the most refined cruelty
could devise.

Then again, look at that countless multitude of confessors, virgins,
and others, who, in the practice of virtue, became their own
executioners. They suffered inconceivably by frequent and long
fastings, by coarseness of diet, by wearing hair-cloths, and by
otherwise torturing their flesh. And now, shall these senses go
unrewarded in the blessed, while they are so terribly punished in the
reprobate? Certainly not. All that we can say is that, at present, we
do not know how all this is to be realized; but as the whole man in
all his senses has served God, and suffered for Him, it is but just
that he should be rewarded in his whole being, which includes every
sense of the body, as well as every faculty of the soul.

Hence, in our meditations on heaven, we must let the pleasures of the
glorified senses enter as an integral element of man's happiness. We
must contemplate these pleasures as seriously as we do the pain of
sense in the reprobate, only avoiding the introduction of anything
gross or carnal, and, therefore, repugnant to a state of
incorruption. Hence we must, as already shown, avoid introducing
eating, drinking, sleep, or anything else which, by its very nature,
belongs to the animal life of man.

We must also banish from our ideas of heaven all the carnal pleasures
of this world, as they are now understood. Our blessed Lord himself
told the Jews, who believed such pleasures to exist in heaven: "You
err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For, in the
resurrection, they shall neither marry nor be married; but shall be
as the angels of God in h