544. To this society come all souls which hold God and the neighbor in hatred. From these principles, that is to say, from the love of self, flow crimes and wicked deeds of every kind. They are defiled with vices; and when their eyes are opened and they behold truths which in this life they had endeavored to dissipate by specious arguments and sophistic reasonings, they are inmostly tormented by their own consciences. But when with them there is no ignorance but a bare knowledge of truths, as is the case in souls after death; and when the state of the soul has already been deformed and has contracted a nature so that it cannot return to a finer state; then it must needs be in inmost and deepest anguish and torture. And because this anguish and torture is in the soul, and spiritual pain cannot be described in words or conceived of in ideas-for it surpasses flames, the gnashing of teeth and the many other tortures of earth-they are inmostly tortured as though in a caldron with oil perpetually pouring in and burning and blazing.
