Chapter 28.—The End of the
Wicked.
But, on the other hand, they who do
not belong to this city of God shall inherit eternal misery, which
is also called the second death, because the soul shall then be
separated from God its life, and therefore cannot be said to live,
and the body shall be subjected to eternal pains. And
consequently this second death shall be the more severe, because no
death shall terminate it. But war being contrary to peace, as
misery to happiness, and life to death, it is not without reason
asked what kind of war can be found in the end of the wicked
answering to the peace which is declared to be the end of the
righteous? The person who puts this question has only to observe
what it is in war that is hurtful and destructive, and he shall see
that it is nothing else than the mutual opposition and conflict of
things. And can he conceive a more grievous and bitter war than
that in which the will is so opposed to passion, and passion to the
will, that their hostility can never be terminated by the victory
of either, and in which the violence of pain so conflicts with the
nature of the body, that neither yields to the other? For in this
life, when this conflict has arisen, either pain conquers and death
expels the feeling of it, or nature conquers and health expels the
pain. But in the world to come the pain continues that it may
torment, and the nature endures that it may be sensible of it; and
neither ceases to exist, lest punishment also should cease. Now,
as it is through the last judgment that men pass to these ends, the
good to the supreme good, the evil to the supreme evil, I will
treat of this judgment in the following book.