This guilt constitutes the malignant will of the damned, which obliges God to withhold his goodness from them; so they remain in a fixed state of despair and malignity, with a will wholly opposed to the divine will.
Chapter IV.
State Of The Soul In Hell—
Difference Between It And That Of The Soul In Purgatory—
Reflections Upon Those Who Neglect The Affairs Of Salvation.
It is, then, clear that the perverse will of man in revolt against the will of God constitutes sin, and that the guilt of sin cannot be effaced from the soul while it is under the dominion of that evil will.
Now, the souls in hell departed this life with a perverse will; consequently, their guilt has not been washed away, and now cannot be, because death has rendered their will unchangeable. The soul is for ever fixed in a state of good or evil, according to the disposition of the will at the moment of death. Wherefore it is written: Ubi te invenero, that is to say, Wherever I find thee at the hour of death—with a will to sin or to repent of sin—ibi te judicabo, there will I judge thee; and from this judgment there is no appeal, because, all freedom of choice ceasing with life, the soul must remain unalterably fixed in the state in which death finds it.
The souls in hell are guilty to an infinite degree, being found with a sinful will at the moment of death. Their pain is not so great as they merit, but it will never end.
As for the souls in purgatory, they only endure pain. Guilt was effaced before death by a true sorrow for having offended the divine goodness. This pain is finite, and the time of its duration is constantly diminishing.
O misery transcending all other woes, and so much the greater because the blindness of man takes no precaution against it!
The torments of the damned, we have said, are not infinite in their rigor. The great goodness of God extends a ray of mercy even to hell. A man expiring in a state of deadly sin merits a punishment infinite in duration and in intensity. God, in his justice, could have inflicted on the damned torments far greater than they have to endure; but while he has rendered them infinite as to their duration, he has limited their intensity.