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'Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom' (Matthew 25:34); but to those on the left it will be said: 'Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire' (Matthew 25:41). Where there is so most certain a pastoral knowledge of merits, by which the sheep shall be separated from the goats, that thus no goat is set at the right hand, even as no sheep shall be placed at the left. For those merits with which men depart from this life shall remain with them in that life unceasingly and unchangeably, whether the good things which divine mercy conferred here, or the evil which human iniquity procured here. And therefore there shall be no removal of evils there, although there shall be a future promotion of the merits of the good. For the former shall remain in punishment, the latter shall be perfected in glory.
This is the time of which it is written in the psalm: 'He hath not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For according to the height of the heaven above the earth, the Lord hath established His mercy toward them that fear Him. For as far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our iniquities from us' (Psalm 102:10-12). But in that judgment the just judge will render the crown of justice, as the Apostle says, to those who love His coming (2 Timothy 4:8); but to those who work iniquity, as the psalm shows (Psalm 27:4), He will give according to their works.
And according to the wickedness of their endeavours, and according to the works of their hands He will repay them, He will render their recompense to them: for this reason, namely, that such as each one departs from this life, such without doubt shall he be rendered to the life to come; nor shall he be changed from corruption into incorruption in that just judgment, who was not first changed in this age from iniquity to justice, and from an evil life to a good life. CHAPTER XI. Therefore Paul says: 'We shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be changed' (1 Corinthians 15:51).
And since the blessed Apostle had said this, lest the sense of his speech should hang uncertain in the minds of any, he knew that it must thereafter be shown to the faithful whom he meant would be changed at the time of the future resurrection. For assuredly, if he had said: 'We shall all rise again, but we shall not be changed,' no future change would be believed of anyone. And again, if he had said: 'We shall all rise again, and we shall be changed,' then, just as all are believed to be about to rise, so all likewise would be believed to be about to be changed. But since he foretold the future resurrection of all, and yet did not assert that all would be changed, he admonished us to search carefully who indeed are to be changed at the resurrection of the future examination.
But not wishing to leave this ambiguous, the blessed Paul, lest the wicked should sin more licentiously if they heard that the gift of future change was common to them with the just, took care in the following words to show the gift of that change: 'In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise incorruptible: and we shall be changed' (1 Corinthians 15:52). When he says 'we,' he shows that those shall obtain with him the gift of the future change whom in this time the ecclesiastical and rightly-living communion holds with Paul and his companions. And, intimating the quality of that change, he says: 'For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality' (1 Corinthians 15:53).
In order, therefore, that in such persons the change of just retribution may then follow, now there precedes the change of gratuitous bounty. Showing which change, the blessed prophet David says: 'I said, Now have I begun: this is the change of the right hand of the Most High' (Psalm 76:11). CHAPTER XII. To these, therefore, who in the present life shall have been changed from evil to good, the retribution of the future change is promised: whereby it will come to pass that whosoever here has changed his life, being converted to better things, being also changed in that retribution, may obtain the gift of angelic equality; which the Saviour Himself, who is faithful in His words and holy in all His works (Psalm
144:13), promises not to the wicked or the impious, but only to those who live well and are just. For neither are they just who do not live well, nor shall they be punished unjustly who, loving God, despise His commandments—whom those truly love who keep His commandments: even as the Lord Himself says: 'He that loveth me, keepeth my commandments' (John 14:23). God therefore, who can neither be unjustly loved nor ever justly despised, those truly love who obey His precepts. These are they who, according to the word of the Lord (Matthew
22:30) shall be changed, and made equal to the angels of God, incorruptible namely and immortal by the gift of that change; of whom not the soul alone shall be changed for the better, so that it can no longer sin, but the flesh also, which it had held corruptible and mortal, shall so be changed in the resurrection, that it shall indeed be the very same which now is, but shall be able to be neither corruptible nor mortal, which now it is. And on this account, the flesh both of the wicked and of the just, which now dies, is the very same that shall rise again. But the flesh of the wicked shall rise to remain in eternal pain, that of the just in eternal felicity. And as the one shall rise to torment, so the other shall rise to joy. The former shall be animated for this, that it may be tormented together with the soul in eternal death;
for this the latter shall live, that it may enjoy with the soul the blessedness of everlasting life. The body of the just, therefore, according to the preaching of the Apostle: 'is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it shall rise in glory; it is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power; it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body' (1 Corinthians 15:42ff). This, therefore, is wrought in them by grace, that first here in them, through justification, in which one rises spiritually, the change of the divine gift may be begun, and afterward in the resurrection of the body, by which the changing of the justified is perfected, the perfect glorification, remaining forever, may not be changed.
For to this end grace changes them, first by justification, then by glorification, that in them that very glorification may remain unchangeable and eternal. For here they are changed through the first resurrection, by which they are enlightened that they may be converted; by which, namely, they pass from death to life, from iniquity to justice, from unbelief to faith, from evil acts to holy conversation. Therefore over them the second death has no power. Of such it is said in the Apocalypse: 'Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: in these the second death hath no power' (Revelation 20:6). Again in the same book it is said: 'He that shall overcome, shall not be hurt by the second death' (Revelation
2:11). As, therefore, the first resurrection consists in the conversion of the heart, so the second death consists in everlasting punishment. Let everyone, then, who does not wish to be condemned to the eternal punishment of the second death, hasten here to become a partaker of the first resurrection. For if any in the present life, changed by divine fear, pass from an evil life to a good life, they themselves pass from death to life, who also afterward from dishonour shall be gathered into glory. CHAPTER XIII. But of the wretched and unhappy, who neglect to be changed from evil to good in the time of this life, David the most holy both blames their obstinacy and thus foretells the future punishment of divine retribution, saying: 'For there is no change with them, and they have not feared God' (Psalm
54:20). And lest those who were unwilling to be changed should vainly promise themselves the pardon of sins, to be conferred once the threshold of this life is crossed, he added, following on: 'He hath stretched forth his hand to repay' (Psalm 54:21). The beginning of this repayment is when the wicked man, receiving in himself the wage which his error deserved, shall by just judgment be tormented in his iniquities with everlasting fire. Nor indeed is that to be reckoned a small retribution, by which the wicked man, deprived of the light of justice, is permitted to wander in his own darkness, prejudged not in the flesh but in the blindness of heart: where this also belongs to the fullness of retribution, if the blind man not only cannot receive the light, but even with delight
strives to increase the darkness of his own blindness. To such the Lord says in the Psalms: 'And my people heard not my voice, and Israel hearkened not to me; and I let them go according to the desires of their heart, and they shall walk in their own inventions' (Psalm 80:12-13). Of such also the Teacher of the Gentiles says: 'For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections' (Romans 1:26). And again: 'For this cause God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not fitting' (Romans 1:28). Such, therefore, are delivered up first to their own unjust desires, to be delivered afterward to just punishments. They are delivered up here to fitting deeds, to be delivered afterward to fitting penalties.
For not because the evil man sins with delight is he therefore to be esteemed a stranger to the torment of retribution: since he is already gravely punished by the very delight of sinning, who by consent subjects himself to such delight, from which the desert of punishment is increased. Wherein, the more fully that which unjustly delights is accomplished, the more the unjust man shall receive whereby he may the more suffer. If anyone, therefore, is here unwilling to be converted to God and to be changed from an evil life to the pursuits of a good life, neither shall he be changed there, where immortality and incorruption are conferred upon the just who are happily changed.
Accordingly, the wicked or the impious—that is, either those who believe perversely, or those who live basely—and who before the end of the present life do not depart from their unbelief or iniquity, in the future retribution shall be neither immortal nor incorruptible; but they shall be corrupted, yet not consumed; they shall die, yet not be extinguished. For a perennial sense of torments shall remain in the dead, where it is not granted to the wretched to die in their punishments. There the death of the wretched shall be such as does not shut out the soul from the suffering body, but holds it in the suffering body continually for this, that it may afflict soul and body together with the eternity of pain. And on this account the soul shall ever die with its body; with which it shall be forced to share eternal torments without end.
There the death of soul and body does not die, because the torment of body and soul is not ended. This indeed shall be the eternal death of the wicked, that in the eternal fire they may not die, lest they should ever be able to be free from punishment. Nor is anything there taken away from the burning body, although the unhappy soul is continually consumed in its own body; but so that the whole body may not cease to burn, the whole continually perseveres together with the soul in the burning. For in whatever body the soul shall have lived justly or unjustly, in the very same shall it receive eternal punishment, or joy without end. CHAPTER XIV. It is expedient, therefore, for everyone, before he ends the present life, to be converted through fear of future punishment, if he truly does not wish, after the end of this life, to be tormented without end.
Wherefore it is believed in vain that the abiding iniquity of evil men is to be remitted in the sight of God; in whose sight the barrenness of good works shall not be suffered to go unavenged. For no one set at the left hand is said to be about to go into eternal fire because he took away bread from one eating, but because he did not give to one hungering; nor because he stripped off a garment, but because he did not bestow garments; nor because he drove anyone from his own house, but because he did not receive one of the least of Christ's into hospitality. If, therefore, he who did not give his own bread to one hungering shall go into eternal burning, what shall he receive who took away another's bread?
And if he who does not cover the naked with a garment is to be cast into the pool of fire and brimstone, what is he to suffer who cruelly strips off the garment? And if the greedy possessor of his own goods shall have no rest, how shall the insatiable plunderer of another's goods, if he be unwilling to be converted in this life, afterward vainly promise himself indulgence from the just judge? Let us consider the wretched rich man, once clothed in purple and fine linen, burning in inextinguishable flames for no other reason than that, endowed with a deadly iniquity, he never wished to bestow even the crumbs of his feast upon the poor man Lazarus, labouring in continual hunger.
Who, when he was condemned to endless torment, and remained unworthy even of the refreshment of the finger of the poor man now rejoicing in eternal rest, the patriarch Abraham showed by an evident reply that after this life neither can the good in any wise pass over to the wicked, nor can the evil ever pass from their punishments to the rest of the blessed. For thus he says: 'Son, remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and Lazarus likewise evil things. But now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is fixed a great chaos, so that they who would pass from hence to you cannot, nor from thence come hither' (Luke 16:25-26). CHAPTER XV. Wherefore it is good for us that we now do good, while it is the time of work;
and that we may be richest in the harvest, we ought to remain neither slothful nor barren. It is good for everyone that he now apply to his wounds the remedy of conversion and penance, while, being converted, he can receive the remission of sins: since the penance of the future time shall be such that it cannot merit indulgence. Nor indeed shall those then do penance whom God has predestined unto life. For of them, according to the saying of the Apostle, the sorrow which is according to God works a stable salvation in the present time (2 Corinthians 7:10), that to those who are penitent and converted in this time, a stable and everlasting salvation may be rendered in the future.
But the penance of the wicked does not cease in the future, who did not perform penance in the present life. Such penance shall not be of the bounty of God, but of the torment of punishment. In such penance there shall be eternal mourning, because the fruit of penance shall there be none. For there the evil will shall not be converted to good by repenting; since for this only shall the wicked man have penance in his punishment, that he can neither at any time be free from penance, nor from punishment. But so that will, which here held the wicked man obdurate unto the end, shall for this without end have penance for his crimes, that he can neither be further converted, nor be able to be free from the eternity of punishment.
For not every penance is that wherein the sinner, prevented by the grace of a merciful God, so pronounces his sins by repenting, that through conversion he may seek the grace of remission. On the contrary, such is he who repents of the evils he has done, yet does not run to God, changed by conversion, as if one placed in a wound should grievously grieve and not seek the benefit of a physician. He indeed pronounces the pain which he suffers, but does not obtain the remedy by which he may be healed. Therefore not everyone who confesses his sin receives remission, because our God attends not only to what we carry in our heart. For of Him the psalm says: 'God searcheth the hearts and reins' (Psalm 7:10). The Saviour also says:
'Why call you me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?' (Luke 6:46). Hence it is that in the divine Scriptures we read that certain men in like manner acknowledged their sins in speech. For King Saul, sent by God to plunder Amalek (1 Samuel 15:3), incurred sin because he in no wise kept the commandment of the Lord. When the prophet Samuel had come to rebuke him, he, terrified, confessed his sin, yet did not obtain indulgence: because his heart was not right before God (1 Samuel 15:24). For that confession of sin was from fear of punishment, not from horror of sin. He did not hate what he had done, but feared what he did not wish;
he did not blame his fault by conversion (perhaps: he blamed his fault by mere converse of words), but for the present, struck by the terror of divine wrath, he trembled. King David also, overcome by the allurement of carnal concupiscence (2 Samuel 11:4), not only committed adultery with the wife of his soldier, but even slew that innocent husband himself, guilty of no crime, and moreover ignorant of the violation of his wife. Yet when the prophet Nathan was sent to him by the Lord, he, terrified by the prophetic rebuke, cried out: 'I have sinned' (2 Samuel 12:13). To whom the prophet thus replied: 'The Lord also hath taken away thy sin: thou shalt not die' (2 Samuel 12:13). Behold, Saul said: 'I have sinned.' David also said: 'I have sinned.'
Since, therefore, in the confession of sin the voice of both was one, why was not one and the same remission granted to both? Unless because in the likeness of confession God saw the unlikeness of will; nor did He attend to the sound of the speech, but discerned the intention of the heart in each. For the one, being converted, straightway cast away the desire of sinning, and by repenting himself punished his own trespass; but the other indeed uttered in word the confession of his sin, but did not cast away the affection of sinning, being bound fast by the vice of a perverse heart. CHAPTER XVI. Then, therefore, does the confession of sin profit, if the sinner, having confessed what he had done ill, does it no more, and by zeal for good works strives to surpass the deserts of his past crimes;
that, according to the saying of the Apostle, 'where sin abounded, grace did more abound' (Romans 5:20). Moreover, some, being ignorant of the virtue of penance, do not perform penance to this end, that hoping for the help of divine mercy they may be converted; nay rather, by repenting they sin the worse, when they despair of the remission of sins. Such was the penance of Judas the traitor (Matthew 27:5), which did not acquire salvation for the penitent, but procured destruction for the despairing. Finally, he bound himself in a worse chain of iniquity when he slew himself, guilty, than when he betrayed the innocent Christ. For the sin of betraying Christ could have been remitted to Judas, if, living, he had been converted;
but his self-slaying is in no wise relaxed to the man once extinguished. After the betrayal of Christ, therefore, the traitor had time in which, through that blood which was shed for the remission of sins, the sin of Judas himself might also be remitted: since Christ, who died for the impious, would not have denied to His own traitor the benefit of remission, had not that man, by despairing, taken from himself the time granted for remission. He did not, therefore, rightly perform penance, nor endure himself as a just avenger of his own crime. For as an unjust avenger he increased, not took away, the punishment of the desert of his crime, who by being slain took from his slayer the time of conversion. And on this account, because he slew himself, he assuredly took from himself the time of conversion by slaying himself.
Most wretched Judas, who, though he committed the crime of betrayal ill, performed the penitence of that crime worse, because he in no wise sought indulgence: and thus that penance for a grave fault was found worse than the fault itself. For that sin of betraying the Lord had a later time in which it might be washed away; but the sentence punishes him, which had not conversion, but despair. Therefore it did not help the penitent, but destroyed him: because by his self-slaying he took from himself the time of conversion, and by his despair took away indulgence. CHAPTER XVII. So great, therefore, is the value of the opportunity of granted time for the indulgence of sins!
And although it is much graver to have betrayed Christ than to have slain any man whatsoever, yet the slayers of Christ, whosoever in the present life are converted with their whole heart, have obtained the remission of sins by the very blood of that same Christ; but whosoever—I do not say a heretic or a pagan, of whom there is no doubt that they shall be punished with eternal fire, but even a catholic Christian—if he commit homicide, or work adultery, or plunder another's goods, or if he violate an oath by perjury, or does not hesitate to speak false testimony, and is not converted before the end of the present life, although he may seem to have sinned much less than he who slew Christ: yet the slayer of Christ, if he be converted in the present life, shall be saved;
but the other, for the reason that in the present life he is not converted, after the end of this life shall be assigned to torments which have no end. And this comes to pass, not because the latter sinned more than that impious man who slew Christ, but for this reason the one shall obtain eternal life, because, recognizing the omnipotence of the good physician, he came at a fitting time to the remedy of healing; while the other for this cause is condemned to eternal death, because he despaired of His benevolence: and thus, though his sin, compared to the slaying of Christ, be pronounced a lighter crime, yet he himself in that same lighter crime is found much the worse.
For although he did not slay Christ, yet in this he sinned more grievously than if he had slain Christ, in that he neglected the fitting time which by divine long-suffering is granted for the remission of sins. Thus it is known that the remission of sins is not granted if repentance be not performed in this present time; nor does repentance profit in this time if the remission of sins be despaired of; whereas in the world to come there will be for the wicked no conversion, and the repentance of such men will be continual, yet empty. For just as remission will never be given to them, so their repentance will never come to an end. For they neglect the time in which repentance is wholesomely performed by sinners, and in which the divine mercy bestows the remission of sins.
Wherefore the Lord Himself in the Apocalypse of John, comforting His faithful and threatening the wicked with the penalty of the punishment to come, speaks thus: He that hurteth, let him hurt still; and he that is in filth, let him be defiled still; but the just, let him do more justly still, and the holy, more holily. Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to render to each one according to his works. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are they that wash their robes, that their power may be in the tree of life, and that they may enter in by the gates into the holy city; but without shall remain the dogs, the sorcerers, the fornicators, and the murderers, and those who serve idols, and everyone who loveth and maketh a lie (Apoc. XXII, 11 et seq.).
Who, I ask, could be of so hard a neck, or who could be found so uncircumcised in heart and ears, that he is not terrified by these words, not cast down, not converted? Who would not weep? Who would not tremble in his inmost bowels? Who, shaken with fear of that just judgment, would not hasten to conversion, that he may find the remission of sins and the grace of everlasting salvation? Woe to him who does not hasten, before the time of the last winnowing-fan, to become wheat out of chaff! Woe to him who, before the reaping angels come to gather out of the midst of the grain the tares that are to be burned (Matth. XIII, 39), has not taken care to be turned from tares into grain!
Nor indeed ought the kindly admonition of the divine Scripture to be despised, which wholesomely commands us both the swiftness of conversion, and to those who delay it commends the wrath of the divine vengeance to come. For thus it says: Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and put it not off from day to day; lest suddenly His wrath come, and in the time of vengeance He destroy thee (Ecclus. V, 8). But that we may more fully recognize that the time of this present age alone is granted for human conversion, let us consider those labourers whom the Lord called to the vineyard (Matth. XX, 6). Although He performed their calling at various hours, yet at the eleventh hour, that is, before the end of the day, He brought it to completion.
Now in those hours in which the labourers were called, the ages of this world are recognized, in which God has called to the good work those whom He converted to Himself by a gratuitous justification. For the morning of this day is understood from the beginning of the world down to the flood; the calling at the third hour was from the flood down to Abraham; the calling at the sixth hour, from Abraham down to David; from David down to the migration of the people into Babylon the ninth hour was completed; then the eleventh hour was at the first coming of Christ, in which He came humble in mortal flesh, in which, immortal though He was, He deigned to be slain for the sin of the world.
This is the last calling of the labourers, which is now being carried on until the end of the present age, that is, from the coming of His humility until the coming of His majesty; from the coming in which the Good One came to be judged by the wicked, that He might mercifully make good men out of the wicked, until the coming in which He shall justly judge both the wicked and the good; from the coming of merciful remission, until the coming of just retribution; from the coming in which He delivered the souls of the poor from usuries and iniquities (Ps. LXXI, 14), until the coming in which He shall come to demand His money with interest from those by whom He shall find it either consumed, or by no zeal for good work doubled (Matth. XXV, 27). This is the hour which blessed John calls the last:
Little children, it is the last hour (1 John II, 18). After the completion of this hour the Lord does not call labourers to the vineyard, but He will come to render to each one the reward of his work, as He Himself says: Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me (Apoc. XXII, 12). Let him therefore hope for the penny of divine retribution to be bestowed upon himself, who, before the day of the present age is ended, labours praiseworthily in the Lord's vineyard. For that labour is nothing else than the true conversion of the heart; and he truly is converted to God, as he ought, in whom there is, as the Apostle says, faith which worketh through charity. And let that diversity of hours also be fittingly taken, as we set forth above, as the distinction of the ages of the world.