I'm straining the memory banks here, but I seem to recall being instructed that Marlowe uses the Mephistopheles character in Doctor Faustus to suggest that there is at root a form of self-loathing proportional to our distance from the Divine. YMMV.
Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God and tasted the eternal joy of heaven, am not tormented with ten thousand hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss?
Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus
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