ous, the [293]
envious take pleasure in the very things that only augment their misery.
Furthermore the ungodly will have so accustomed their mind to wrong
judgements that they will henceforth never make any other kind, and will
perpetually pass from one error into another. They will not be able to
refrain from desiring perpetually things whose enjoyment will be denied
them, and, being deprived of which, they will fall into inconceivable
despair, while experience can never make them wiser for the future. For by
their own fault they will have altogether corrupted their understanding,
and will have rendered it incapable of passing a sound judgement on any
matter.'

271. The ancients already imagined that the Devil dwells remote from God
voluntarily, in the midst of his torments, and that he is unwilling to
redeem himself by an act of submission. They invented a tale that an
anchorite in a vision received a promise from God that he would receive
into grace the Prince of the bad angels if he would acknowledge his fault;
but that the devil rebuffed this mediator in a strange manner. At the
least, the theologians usually agree that the devils and the damned hate
God and blaspheme him; and such a state cannot but be followed by
continuation of misery. Concerning that, one may read the learned treatise
of Herr Fecht on the _State of the Damned_.

272. There were times when the belief was held that it was not impossible
for a lost soul to be delivered. The story told of Pope Gregory the Great
is well known, how by his prayers he had withdrawn from hell the soul of
the Emperor Trajan, whose goodness was so renowned that to new emperors the
wish was offered that they should surpass Augustus in good fortune and
Trajan in goodness. It was this that won for the latter the pity of the
Holy Father. God acceded to his prayers (it is said), but he forbade him to
make the like prayers in future. According to this fable, the prayers of
St. Gregory had the force of the remedies of Aesculapius, who recalled
Hippolytus from Hades; and, if he had continued to make such prayers, God
would have waxed wroth, like Jupiter in Vergil:

_At pater omnipotens aliquem indignatus ab umbris_
_Mortalem infernis ad lumina surgere vitae,_
_Ipse repertorem medicinae talis et artis_
_Fulmine Phoebigenam Stygias detrusit ad undas._

[294]
Godescalc, a monk of the ninth centu