"Suspended to the winds"; water in that which he says: "Beneath a vast whirlpool"; but fire is expressed by its own name, when he said: "Or is burned away by fire." We, however, confess that even in this mortal life there are certain purgatorial penalties—not those by which they are afflicted whose life is either not thereby made better, or rather is thereby made worse; but they are purgatorial to those who, being restrained by them, are corrected. All other penalties, whether temporary or everlasting, according as each is to be dealt with by divine providence, are inflicted either for sins, whether past or those in which he still lives who is being chastised, or for the exercising and displaying of virtues through men and angels, whether good or bad.
For even if anyone suffers some evil through another's wickedness or error, the man indeed sins who through either ignorance or injustice does some evil to anyone; but God does not sin, who by a just, though hidden, judgment permits it to happen. But some suffer temporary penalties in this life only, others after death, others both now and then, yet nevertheless before that most severe and last judgment. Not all, however, who after death endure temporal penalties come into the everlasting penalties which are to be after that judgment. For to some, what is not remitted in this age is remitted in the age to come—that is, so that they may not be punished with the eternal punishment of the age to come, as we have already said above.
[XIV] But most rare are those who pay no penalties in this life, but only after it. Yet that there have been some who down to decrepit old age have not felt even the lightest little fever and have led a quiet life, we ourselves have both known and heard; although the very life of mortals is wholly a penalty, because it is wholly a temptation, as the sacred writings proclaim, where it is written: Is not the life of man upon earth a temptation? For no small penalty is that very foolishness or inexperience, which is deservedly judged so much to be shunned that through penalties full of pains children are compelled to learn some arts or letters;
and the very learning to which they are driven by penalties is so painful to them that sometimes they prefer to bear the very penalties by which they are compelled to learn, rather than to learn. But who would not shudder and choose to die, if it were proposed to him either that death must be undergone, or infancy over again? Infancy indeed, in that it begins this light not with laughter but with weeping, in a manner prophesies, though unknowing, what evils it has entered upon. Only Zoroaster, they say, laughed when he was born, and that monstrous laughter portended him no good. For he is reported to have been the inventor of the magic arts; which indeed could avail him nothing even for the vain felicity of the present life against his enemies;
for by Ninus king of the Assyrians, though he himself was king of the Bactrians, he was overcome in war. Assuredly what is written: A heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day of their coming out of their mother's womb until the day of their burial into the mother of all—this must needs be so fulfilled that even little children, already loosed by the laver of regeneration from the bond of original sin (by which alone they were held), yet suffering many evils, some at times even suffer the assaults of malignant spirits. But far be it that this suffering should harm them, if they finish this life at that age, even by that very suffering growing heavier and shutting the soul out of the body.
[XV] Nevertheless, in the heavy yoke which is laid upon the sons of Adam from the day of their coming out of their mother's womb until the day of their burial into the mother of all, even this wonderful evil is found, that we may be sober and understand that this life has been made penal for us because of that too nefarious sin which was perpetrated in paradise, and that the whole of what is transacted with us through the New Testament pertains to nothing but the new inheritance of the new age, so that here, having received the pledge, we may at its own time attain that of which this is the pledge; but now let us walk in hope, and, advancing from day to day, let us mortify by the spirit the deeds of the flesh. For the Lord knoweth them that are His;
and as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God—but by grace, not by nature. For the only-begotten Son of God by nature was for our sakes made by mercy the Son of man, that we, by nature sons of man, might through Him become by grace sons of God. For He, remaining unchangeable, took upon Him our nature, in which He might receive us, and took it from us; and holding fast His own divinity, He was made partaker of our infirmity, that we, changed for the better, might lose what we are as sinners and mortals through participation in Him who is immortal and just, and that what He made good in our nature we might preserve, fulfilled in the highest good, in the goodness of His nature.
For as through one man sinning we came into this so grievous evil, so through one man, the same being also God, justifying us, we shall come to that so sublime good. Nor ought anyone to be confident that he has passed from the one to the other, except when he shall have been there where there will be no temptation; except when he shall have held that peace which by many and various struggles he seeks in this war, in which the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. But this war would never have existed at all, if human nature by free will had stood firm in the rectitude in which it was made. Now, however, that nature which was unwilling to have happy peace with God, wars unhappily with itself; and although this is a miserable evil, yet it is better than the former part of this life.
For it is better to be at strife with vices than that they should reign without any conflict. It is better, I say, war with the hope of eternal peace, than captivity without any thought of deliverance. We desire indeed even to be without this war, and to embrace the most well-ordered peace, where by a most firm stability the lower may be subjected to the higher; and we are kindled by the fire of divine love. But if (which be far from us) there were no hope of that so great good, we ought rather to have remained in the trouble of this conflict, than by not resisting the vices to permit them dominion over us.
[XVI] But so great is the mercy of God upon the vessels of mercy, which He has prepared for glory, that even man's first age, that is, infancy, which without any resistance lies subject to the flesh, and the second, which is called childhood, where reason has not yet taken up this fight and lies well-nigh subject to all vicious delights (because, although it may already be able to speak, and therefore seems to have passed beyond infancy, yet the weakness of mind in it is not yet capable of a precept)—if it have received the sacraments of the Mediator, even if it finish this life in those years, being namely transferred from the power of darkness into the kingdom of Christ, not only is not prepared for eternal punishments, but does not even suffer any purgatorial torments after death.
For spiritual regeneration alone suffices, that after death there may not harm him what carnal generation contracted together with death. But when one has come to the age which now is capable of a precept and can be subjected to the command of the law, war must be undertaken against the vices and waged sharply, lest it lead on to damnable sins. And if indeed they are not yet strengthened by the habit of victories, they are more easily conquered and give way; but if they have grown accustomed to conquer and to command, they are overcome with laborious difficulty. Nor is this done truly and sincerely except by delight in true righteousness; and this consists in faith in Christ.
For if the law be present to command, but the Spirit be absent to help, then through the very prohibition, as desire grows and sin gains the mastery, the guilt of transgression is added as well. Sometimes, indeed, the most manifest vices are overcome by other, hidden vices, which are reckoned to be virtues, in which pride reigns and a certain ruinous loftiness of self-complacency. Vices, then, are to be counted as truly conquered only when they are conquered by the love of God, which God Himself alone bestows, and in no other way than through the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who was made a partaker of our mortality that He might make us partakers of His divinity.
But very few are of such great felicity that from their earliest youth they commit no damnable sins, whether in shameful deeds or in crimes or in the error of any impious wickedness, but by the great bounty of the Spirit crush whatever might have mastered them through carnal delight. The greater number, however, having received the precept of the law, when they have first been overcome by prevailing vices and have become its transgressors, then flee to the helping grace, whereby, both by repenting more bitterly and by fighting more vehemently, they become victors, with the mind first made subject to God and thus set over the flesh.
Whosoever, therefore, desires to escape the everlasting penalties, let him not only be baptized, but also be justified in Christ, and so truly pass over from the devil to Christ. But let no one suppose that there are to be any purgatorial punishments except before that last and dread judgment. Yet it is by no means to be denied that even that eternal fire itself will be, according to the diversity of the merits of the wicked (evil though they all be), lighter for some and heavier for others—whether its own force and heat be varied to suit the punishment each deserves, or whether it burns equally but is not felt with equal grievousness. Now indeed I see that I must deal, and dispute peaceably, with our tender-hearted friends, who are unwilling to believe that eternal punishment awaits either all those men whom the most just Judge shall have judged worthy.
of the punishment of Gehenna, or unwilling to believe that eternal punishment awaits at least some of them; but they think that after the bounds of a fixed time—longer or shorter according to the magnitude of each one's sin—these are to be delivered from thence. In this matter Origen was assuredly more merciful, who believed that even the devil himself and his angels, after graver and more prolonged torments proportioned to their deserts, were to be rescued from those torments and joined to the holy angels. But for this, and for certain other things, and most of all for those beatitudes and miseries alternating without cease, and for the endless goings and returnings from these to those and from those to these at fixed intervals of ages, the Church has not without reason condemned him;
for even that which seemed merciful he lost, by giving to the saints true miseries in which they should pay penalties, and false beatitudes in which they would not have the true and secure—that is, the fearless and certain—joy of the everlasting good. But far otherwise does the mercy of these men err through human affection, who think that the miseries of men condemned in that judgment are temporal, but that the felicity of all who are delivered, whether sooner or later, is eternal. If this opinion is good and true because it is merciful, it will be so much the better and truer the more merciful it is. Let the fountain of this mercy, then, be extended and deepened even to the condemned angels, that they too may be delivered, at least after many and however prolonged ages.
Why does it flow forth to the whole of human nature, and yet, when it has come to the angelic, at once dry up? They dare not, however, extend their pity further and reach even to the deliverance of the devil himself. But if anyone should dare this, he assuredly outdoes these men; and yet he is found to err all the more misshapenly, and all the more perversely against the right words of God, the more clement he seems to himself to feel. There are also some—such as I myself have found in our conversations—who, though they seem to venerate the Holy Scriptures, are to be reproved for their morals, and who, in pleading their own cause, attribute to God a mercy toward the human race much greater than these do. For they say that concerning wicked and unbelieving men it has indeed been divinely foretold as true that they are worthy of punishment;
but when it comes to the judgment, mercy will prevail. For a merciful God, they say, will pardon them at the prayers and intercessions of His saints. For if they prayed for them when they suffered them as enemies, how much more when they shall see them humbled and prostrate as suppliants! For it is not to be believed, they say, that the saints will then lose their bowels of mercy, when they shall be of the fullest and most perfect holiness, so that those who then prayed for their enemies, when they themselves were not without sin, should then not pray for their suppliants, when they have begun to have no sin at all.
Or will God then not hear so many and such sons of His, when in their so great holiness He will find no hindrance to their prayer? Moreover, the testimony of the psalm—both those who allow that unbelieving and impious men are at least tormented for a long time and afterward rescued from all those torments, but still more these others—say that it is on their side, where it is read: 'Will God forget to be merciful, or will He shut up His compassions in His anger?' His anger, they say, is that all who are unworthy of everlasting blessedness should, by His judgment, be punished with everlasting punishment. But if He shall have permitted it to be either long, or at all existing, then assuredly, in order that this may come to pass, He will 'shut up His compassions in His anger'—which the psalm says He will not do.
For it does not say, 'Will He long shut up His compassions in His anger?' but it shows that He will not shut them up at all. Thus, then, these men would have it that the threatening of God's judgment is not false, although He is going to damn no one—just as we cannot call false that threatening of His by which He said He would overthrow the city of Nineveh; and yet, they say, what He foretold without any condition did not come to pass. For He did not say, 'Nineveh shall be overthrown, if they do not repent and correct themselves'; but, without adding this, He foretold the future overthrow of that city. This threatening they hold to be truthful on this account, that God foretold what they were truly worthy to suffer, although He Himself was not going to do it.
For even though He spared the penitent, they say, He assuredly was not ignorant that they were going to repent, and yet He foretold their overthrow absolutely and definitely as future. This, then, they say, was in the truth of His severity, because they deserved it; but it was not in the reckoning of His compassion, which He did not shut up in His anger, so that by that compassion He spared the suppliants the penalty He had threatened against the obstinate. If, therefore, He then spared, they say, when by sparing He was going to grieve His holy prophet, how much more mercifully will He then spare the suppliants, when that He may spare, all His saints will pray!
But this, which they surmise in their own hearts, they think the divine Scriptures have kept silent about for this reason: that many may correct themselves through fear either of prolonged or of eternal punishments, and that there may be those who can pray for such as have not corrected themselves; nor yet do they suppose that the divine oracles have altogether kept silent about this. For to what, they say, does that which is written pertain: 'How great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, O Lord, which Thou hast hidden for them that fear Thee'—unless that we may understand that this so great and secret sweetness of the divine mercy was hidden because of fear? They add that the apostle also said, on this account: 'For God hath concluded all in unbelief, that He may have mercy upon all'—whereby he meant that no one shall be damned by Him.
Nor do these, however, who hold this view extend their opinion even to the deliverance, or the non-condemnation, of the devil and his angels; for they are moved by a human compassion concerning men alone, and they chiefly plead their own cause, promising false impunity to their own lost morals through what they represent as a general mercy of God toward the human race. And by this they will be surpassed, in preaching the mercy of God, by those who promise this same impunity even to the prince of the demons and to his satellites.
There are yet others who promise deliverance from eternal punishment not even to all men, but only to those washed in the baptism of Christ who become partakers of His body—howsoever they have lived, in whatever heresy or impiety they have been—on account of that which Jesus said: 'This is the bread which came down from heaven, that if any man eat of it, he shall not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.' From eternal death, therefore, they say, these must needs be rescued, and at some time or other be brought to eternal life.
There are, again, those who promise this not to all who have the sacrament of the baptism of Christ and of His body, but only to Catholics, however ill they may live, because they have eaten the body of Christ not merely in the sacrament but in reality, being set within His very body, of which the apostle says: 'We being many are one bread, one body'—so that, even if afterward they have lapsed into some heresy or even into the idolatry of the heathen, yet, merely because within the body of Christ, that is, in the Catholic Church, they received the baptism of Christ and ate the body of Christ, they shall not die eternally, but shall at some time attain eternal life;
and all that impiety, however great it may have been, avails not against them unto eternity, but only unto the long duration and magnitude of their punishments. There are, moreover, those who, on account of what is written—'He that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved'—promise this only to those persevering in the Catholic Church, although living ill in it, who are to be saved through fire by the merit of the foundation, of which the apostle says: 'For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble: every man's work shall be made manifest;'
for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall burn, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire. They say, therefore, that a Catholic Christian of whatever life has Christ in the foundation, which foundation no heresy has, cut off as it is from the unity of His body; and therefore, on account of this foundation, even if the Catholic Christian has been of evil life, as one who has built thereon wood, hay, stubble, they think that he is saved through fire—that is, delivered after the penalties of that fire by which the wicked shall be punished in the last judgment.
I have also learned that some suppose that only those shall burn in that eternity of punishment who neglect to do fitting almsdeeds for their sins, according to that saying of the apostle James: 'Judgment without mercy to him that hath not done mercy.' He therefore who has done it, they say, although he has not changed his morals for the better, but amid those very almsdeeds has lived wickedly and vilely, shall have judgment with mercy, so that either he is smitten with no condemnation, or after some time—whether short or long—he is delivered from that condemnation.
For this reason they think that the Judge Himself of the living and the dead was unwilling to mention that He would say anything else, either to those on His right, to whom He is to give eternal life, or to those on His left, whom He is to condemn to eternal punishment, except almsdeeds either done or not done. To this, they say, pertains also that daily petition in the Lord's Prayer: 'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.' For whosoever forgives, by pardoning, the sin of him who has sinned against him, without doubt does an almsdeed. This very thing the Lord Himself so commended as to say: 'For if ye forgive men their sins, your Father also will forgive you your sins;'
but if ye forgive not men, neither will your Father, who is in heaven, forgive you. Therefore to this kind of almsdeeds also pertains what the apostle James says: that judgment shall be without mercy to him who has not done mercy. Nor did the Lord say, they observe, 'great or small,' but: 'Your Father will forgive you your sins, if ye also forgive men.'
And on this account they think that even for those who have lived in a lost manner until they close the last day of this life, through this prayer—whatsoever and howsoever great their sins may have been—all their daily sins are daily forgiven, just as this prayer is itself daily repeated, provided only they remember to keep this one thing: that, when those who have wronged them by any sin ask pardon of them, they forgive from the heart. When, with God's help, I shall have answered all these things, this book must be brought to a close. And first it behooves us to inquire and to learn why the Church could not endure the disputation of men promising to the devil, even after the greatest and longest punishments, either purgation or indulgence.
For it was not that so many holy men, learned in the sacred writings both old and new, begrudged cleansing and the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven, after punishments of whatever kind and however great, to angels of whatever kind and however many; but rather they saw that the divine sentence could not be made void or weakened which the Lord foretold that He would pronounce in the judgment, saying: 'Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels' (for thus He shows that the devil and his angels shall burn in eternal fire); and that which is written in the Apocalypse: 'The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where both the beast and the false prophet are; and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.'
What is there called 'eternal' is here called 'for ever and ever,' by which words divine Scripture is wont to signify nothing else than that which has no end of time. Wherefore no other cause, nor any more just and manifest, can be found why by most true piety it should be held fixed and immovable that the devil and his angels shall have no return to the righteousness and life of the saints, than that Scripture, which deceives no one, says that God spared them not, and that they have meanwhile been thus condemned beforehand by Him, that they were delivered to be kept in the prisons of the darkness of hell, to be punished at the last judgment, when the eternal fire shall receive them, where they shall be tormented for ever and ever.
But if this be so, in what way shall either all or some men be withdrawn, after however long a time, from the eternity of this punishment—and not at once shall the faith be enervated whereby it is believed that the punishment of the demons shall be everlasting? For if those to whom it shall be said, 'Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels,' shall either all or some of them not be there always, what reason is there why the devil and his angels are believed to be there always? Or is it perhaps that God's sentence, which shall be pronounced upon both wicked angels and men, will be true in respect to the angels, but false in respect to men? So indeed it will be, if what men surmise, rather than what God said, is to prevail.
But since this cannot be, those who desire to be free from everlasting punishment ought, while there is time, not to argue against God, but rather to obey the divine precept. Besides, what kind of thing is it to reckon eternal punishment as a fire of long duration, and to believe eternal life to be without end, when Christ, in the very same place, in one and the same sentence, embracing both, said: 'So these shall go into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal'? If both are eternal, assuredly either both are to be understood as long-lasting with an end, or both as perpetual without end. For they are set as like to like: on this side everlasting punishment, on that side eternal life. But to say, in this one and same sense,
'Eternal life shall be without end, but eternal punishment shall have an end'—is exceedingly absurd. Whence, since the eternal life of the saints shall be without end, eternal punishment also, for those to whom it shall be, will without doubt have no end. This, moreover, avails also against those who, in pleading their own causes, try to come against the words of God as though by a greater mercy, so that His words are true, forsooth, on this account: that those things which He said men were going to suffer, they are worthy to suffer, not that they are going to suffer them. For God, they say, will pardon them at the prayers of His saints, who then pray so much the more for their enemies, the holier they are, and whose prayer is more efficacious and more worthy of being heard by God, now having no sin at all.
Why, then, with that same most perfect holiness and with those most pure and most merciful prayers, availing to obtain all things, will they not pray also for the angels for whom eternal fire is prepared, that God may soften His sentence and turn it to something better, and make them strangers to that fire? Or will there perhaps be anyone who would presume that even this shall come to pass, affirming that the holy angels also, together with the holy men who shall then be equal to the angels of God, will pray for the angels and men who are to be condemned, that they may not suffer by mercy what they merit by truth to suffer? This no one of sound faith has said, nor will any say.
Otherwise there is no reason why the Church should not even now pray for the devil and his angels, since God her Master commanded her to pray for her enemies. This cause, therefore, whereby it comes to pass that the Church now prays not for the wicked angels, whom she knows to be her enemies, is the very same cause whereby it shall come to pass that in that judgment she shall not pray even for the men to be tormented in eternal fire, however perfect she be in holiness. For now she prays for those whom she has as enemies in the human race, on this account: that it is a time of fruitful repentance. For what does she chiefly pray for on their behalf, except that God may grant them, as the apostle says, repentance, and that they may recover themselves from the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive according to his will?