THE SCENE: Knowing full well of his damnation, the dark sorcerer Dr. Faust asked his demon familiar what Hell would be like. The creature tried to dissuade him at first, but in the end it was only too happy to provide a vivid picture.
THE TEXT: Sweet Fauste, desist. Inquire of other matters. Believe me, my account will bring thee into such remorse, despondency, pensiveness, and anxiety that thou wilt wish thou hadst never posed this question. My judgement and advice remains: desist from this purpose.
Doctor Faustus spake: And I will know it or I will not live, and thou must tell it me.
Very well, quoth the spirit, I will tell thee. It costeth me little grief.
Thou wouldst know what Hell is, but the mortal soul is such that all thy speculations can never comprehend Hell, nor canst thou conceive the manner of place where the Wrath of God is stored. The origin and structure is God’s Wrath, and it hath many titles and designations, as: House of Shame, Abyss, Gullet, Pit, also Dissensio. For the souls of the damned are so shamed, scorned and mocked by God and His Blessed Ones as to be confined in the House of the Abyss and Gullet. For Hell is an insatiate Pit and Gullet which ever gapeth after the souls which shall not be damned, desiring that they, too, might be seduced and damned. This is what thou must understand, good Doctor.
So soon as my master was fallen, and even in that moment, Hell was ready for him and received him. It is a Darkness where Lucifer is all banished and bound with chains of darkness, here committed that he may be held for Judgement. Naught may be found there but fumes, fire and the stench of sulphur. –But we devils really cannot know in what form and wise Hell is created, either, nor how it be founded and constructed by God, for it hath neither end nor bottom.
That is my first and second report, which thou hast required of me. For the third, thou didst conjure me and demand of me a report as to what manner of wailing and lamentation the damned will find in Hell. Perchance, my Lord Fauste, thou shouldst consult the Scriptures (they being withheld from me). But now even as the aspect and description of Hell is terrible, so to be in it is an unbearable, acute agony. Inasmuch as I have already given account of the former, thy hellish speculations on the latter will I also satisfy with a report. The damned will encounter all the circumstances which I recounted afore, for what I say is true:
The pit of Hell, like woman’s womb and earth’s belly, is never sated. Nevermore will an end or cessation occur. They will cry out and lament their sin and wickedness, the damned and hellish hideousness of the stench of their own afflictions. There will then be at last a calling out, a screaming and a wailing up unto God, with woe, trembling, whimpering, yelping, screaming and pain and affiiction, with howling and weeping. Well, should they not scream woe and tremble and whimper, being outcast, with all Creation and all the children of God against them, bearing perpetual ignominy while the blessed enjoy eternal honor? And the woe and trembling of some will be greater than that of others, for, as sins are not equal, neither are the torments and agonies the same.
We spirits shall be freed. We have hope of being saved. But the damned will lament the insufferable cold, the unquenchable fire, the unbearable darkness, stench, the aspect of the devils, and the eternal loss of anything good. Oh, they will lament with weeping of eyes, gnashing of teeth, stench in their noses, moaning in their throats, terror in their ears, trembling in their hands and feet. They will devour their tongues for great pain. They will wish for death, would gladly die, but cannot, for death will flee from them. Their torment and agony will wax hourly greater and acuter.
– Historia vnd Geschicht Doctor Johannis Faustj des Zauberers, 16th Century AD
