Upon an attempted suicide, John Bunyan was shown this vision of spiritual realms. Bunyan (1628-1688), an English author and preacher imprisoned for his faith, is best known for his fictional work, The Pilgrim's Progress. However, the excerpts quoted below, from Visions of Heaven and Hell, is NON-FICTION.
In hell, Bunyan saw two ungodly persons, who had been friends on earth, but in hell, were cursing one another and blaming each other for their individual plight:
We then passed on further, among dismal scenes of unmixed sorrow, and saw two wretched souls tormented by a fiend who without ceasing plunged them in liquid fire and burning brimstone, while they at the same time accused and cursed each other.One of them said to his tormented fellow sufferer, "O cursed be your face, that ever I set eyes upon you! My misery is due to you; I may thank you for this, for it was you who ensnared me thus. It was your covetousness and cheating and your oppression and grinding of the poor that brought me hither. If you had but set me a good example as you did an ill one, I might have been in heaven, and there have been as happy as I am now miserable. But, O wretch that I was! My following your steps has made me in this wretched state and ruined me forever; O that I never had seen your face, or you had never been born to do my soul that wrong that you have done."The other wretch replied, "And may I not as well blame you? For do you not remember how at such a time and place you did entice me and drew me out and asked me if I would not go along with you, when I was about my other business, about my lawful calling? But you called me away, and therefore are as much in fault as I. Though I was covetous, yet you were proud, and if you learned of me your covetousness, I am sure I learned of you my pride and drunkenness; and though you learned of me to cheat, yet you taught me to lust, to lie, and scoff at goodness."Thus, though I stumbled you in some things, you stumbled me as much in others; and therefore if you blame me, I can blame you as much. And if I have to answer for some of your most filthy actions, you have still to answer for some of mine. I wish you never had come hither; the very looks of you do wound my soul, by bringing sin afresh into my mind. It was with you, with you it was I sinned. O grief unto my soul! And since I could not shun your company there. O that I could have been without it here!"From this sad dialogue I soon perceived that those who are companions upon earth in sin shall be so too in hell in punishment. And though on earth they love each other's company, they will not care for it in hell. This, I believe was the true reason why Dives seemed so charitable to his brethren, that they might not come into this place of torment; it was love unto himself and not to them that was his motive; because had they come hither, his torments would have thereby been increased.
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