_Hell_ is not
such a Place as we are taught to understand it to be.

Indeed according to some, _Hell_ should be a Place of Fire and Torment
to the Souls that are cast into it, but not to the _Devils_ themselves;
who we make little more or less than keepers and Turnkeys to Hell, as a
Goal; that they are sent about to bring Souls thither, lock them in when
they come, and then away upon the Scent to fetch more: That one Sort of
_Devils_ are made to live in the World among Men, and to be busy
continually debauching and deluding Mankind bringing them as it were to
the Gates of _Hell_; and then another Sort are Porters and Carriers to
fetch them in.

This is, _in short_, little more or less than the old Story of _Pluto_,
of _Cerberus_, and of _Charon_; only that our Tale is not half so well
told, nor the Parts of the Fable so well laid together.

In all these Notions of _Hell_ and _Devil_, the Torments of the first,
and the Agency of the last Tormenting, we meet with not one Word of the
main and perhaps only Accent of Horror, which belongs to us to judge of
about Hell, I mean the Absence of Heaven; Expulsion, and Exclusion from
the Presence and Face of the chief Ultimate, the only eternal and
sufficient Good; and this loss sustain'd by a sordid Neglect of our
Concern in that excellent Part, in exchange for the most contemptible
and justly condemn'd Trifles, and all this eternal and irrecoverable:
These People tell us nothing of the eternal Reproaches of Conscience,
the Horror of Desperation, and the Anguish of a Mind hopeless of ever
seeing the Glory, which alone constitutes Heaven, and which makes all
other Places dreadful, and even Darkness it self.

And this brings me directly to the Point in Hand, (_viz._) the State of
that Hell which we ought to have in view when we speak of the _Devil_ as
_in Hell_: This is the very Hell, which is the Torment of the _Devil_;
in short, the _Devil_ is in HELL, and HELL is in the _Devil_; he is
fill'd with this unquenchable Fire, he is expel'd the Place of Glory,
banish'd from the Regions of Light, Absence from the Life of all
Beatitude is his Curse, Despair is the reigning Passion in his Mind, and
all the little Constituent Parts of his Torment, such as Rage, Envy,
Malice, and Jealousy are consolidated in this, to make his Misery
compleat, (_viz._) the Duration of it all, the Eternity of his
Condition; that he is without Hope, without Redemption, without
Recovery.

If any thing can