Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 136

GREGORY. It is exceedingly certain, and it is without hesitation true, that just as there is no end to the joy of the good, so there shall be no end to the torment of the wicked. For since the Truth says: The wicked shall go into everlasting punishment, but the just into life eternal (Matt. 25:46), because that which He promised is true, that which God threatened shall beyond all doubt not be false. PETER. What if someone should say: God threatened eternal punishment to sinners for this reason, that He might restrain them from the perpetration of sins? GREGORY. If what He threatened, in order to correct from unrighteousness, is false, then also what He promised, in order to provoke to righteousness, is false. But who, even insane, would presume to say this?

And if He threatened what He was not going to fulfill, then while we wish to assert Him to be merciful, we are compelled to proclaim Him deceitful — which it is unspeakable to say. PETER. I should like to know how it is just that a fault which was perpetrated with an end should be punished without end. GREGORY. This would rightly be said, if the strict Judge weighed not the hearts of men, but their deeds. For the wicked therefore sinned with an end, because they lived with an end. For they would indeed have wished, had they been able, to live without end, so that they might have been able to sin without end. For they show that they desire to live always in sin, who never cease to sin while they live.

It pertains therefore to the great justice of the Judge, that those should never lack punishment, who in this life never wished to lack sin. PETER. But no just man is fed by cruelty; and an offending servant is ordered to be beaten by a just master for this reason, that he may be corrected from wickedness; to this end therefore he is flogged, that he may be amended. But the wicked, handed over to the fires of Gehenna, if they do not come to correction, to what end shall they burn for ever? GREGORY. Almighty God, because He is merciful, is not fed by the torment of the wretched; but because He is just, He is never appeased from the punishment of the wicked for ever.

But all the wicked, appointed to eternal punishment, are indeed punished for their own iniquity; and yet they shall burn for some purpose, namely, that all the just may both behold in God the joys which they receive, and may look upon in them the punishments which they have escaped, so that they may recognize themselves to be so much the more debtors to divine grace unto eternity, the more they behold punished unto eternity the evils which by His help they overcame. PETER. And where is it that they are holy, if they shall not pray for their enemies, whom they then see burning, to whom it has certainly been said: Pray for your enemies (Matt. 5:44)? GREGORY. They pray for their enemies at that time when they can convert their hearts to fruitful penance, and by that very conversion save them.

For what else is to be prayed for enemies, except this which the Apostle says: That God may grant them penance to the acknowledging of the truth, and they may recover themselves from the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his will (2 Tim. 2:25-26)? And how shall they then pray for those who can now in no way be changed from iniquity to the works of righteousness? The same cause, therefore, is why prayer is not then made for men damned to eternal fire, as is now also the cause why prayer is not made for the devil and his angels appointed to eternal punishment.

What is now also the cause why holy men do not pray for unbelieving and impious men who have died, except that they refuse to have the merit of their prayer nullified before the sight of the just Judge on behalf of those whom they already know to be appointed to eternal punishment? And if even now the living just have no compassion for the dead and damned unjust, at a time when they still know that they themselves are enduring something judgeable concerning their own flesh — how much more strictly shall they then look upon the torments of the wicked, when, stripped of every vice of corruption, they shall themselves already cleave to justice more closely and tightly?

For so does the force of strictness absorb their minds, through this that they cleave to the most just Judge, that it in no way pleases them to have anything which is discordant from the subtlety of that eternal rule. PETER. There is now nothing which ought to be answered to so plain a reasoning. But this question now moves me as I consider it: how the soul is said to be immortal, since it is agreed that it dies in perpetual fire.