Breviloquium

Next, with regard in particular to the state of the final judgment, certain matters are to be considered as preliminaries, some as concomitants, and some as consequences. The preliminaries are two, namely, purgatorial punishment and ecclesiastical suffrages.¹ First, therefore, concerning purgatorial punishments, this must be held: purgatorial fire is a bodily fire, by which, nevertheless, the spirits of the just who in this life did not complete penance and worthy satisfaction are afflicted to a greater or lesser degree, according as they carried with them from this life more or less combustible material. — They are afflicted less severely than in hell, and more severely than in this world; yet not so severely that they do not always hope and know that they are not in hell, although perhaps, because of the magnitude of the punishments, they do not notice this at certain times. — By this affliction inflicted by the bodily fire, the spirits are purged of guilt, dross, and also the remnants of sins; once these have been sufficiently purged, they immediately fly away and are brought into the glory of paradise.² The reason for understanding the foregoing is this: since the first principle, by the very fact that it is first, is the best and most perfect, and by the very fact that it is the best, is supremely loving of good and supremely hateful of evil, just as the highest goodness does not permit good to remain unrewarded, so it must not permit evil to remain unpunished.³ Since, therefore, just men sometimes die without having fully completed penance in this life, and since the merit of eternal life in them cannot remain unrewarded, nor the vice of guilt unpunished, lest the beauty of the order of the universe be disturbed, they must ultimately be rewarded; they must also be punished temporally according to the exigency and guilt of their faults. — And because the fault committed and offensive was an insult to divine majesty, damaging to the Church, and deforming of the divine image impressed on our mind—especially if it was mortal sin, though venial sin also disposes toward this—and because punishment is required for the offense, satisfaction must be made for the damage, and expiation is required for the deformation, hence that punishment must be justly punitive, worthily satisfactory, and sufficiently expiatory. First, therefore, since that punishment ought to be justly punitive, and since the spirit which, having scorned the eternal and highest good, subjected itself to the lowest, ought justly to be punished by being subjected to inferior things, so that it may receive from them the punishment on account of which it committed the fault, and because of which it both scorned God and made itself vile,⁴ hence the order of divine justice requires that the spirit be punished by material fire, so that, just as according to the order of nature the soul is united to the body to impart life, so according to the order of justice it may be united to material fire as the punishable to that which punishes, receiving punishment from it. — And because just men who are in grace deserve no punishment except a passing one, and they deserve a greater punishment in proportion as they committed greater sins and did less penance, hence they are punished temporally by material fire—some longer, some shorter, some more bitterly, some more lightly, according as the guilt of their offenses requires. «For it is necessary, as the outstanding doctor Augustine says,⁵ that pain burn as much as love had clung.» For one is purged with greater difficulty in proportion as love of worldly things had clung more intimately to the marrow of his heart. Moreover, since that punishment ought to be satisfactory, and satisfaction regards freedom of will and the state of the way—especially since there is no longer there a state of meriting and those punishments in no way have the character of the voluntary—it is necessary that what is lacking on the part of freedom in the will that endures be supplied in the bitterness on the part of the punishment. — But because those who are being purged possess grace, which they can no longer lose, hence they can neither be wholly absorbed by sadness, fall into despair, nor lapse into blasphemy; nor do they wish to leap forth in any way; and consequently, although they are severely punished, yet in a wholly different and gentler way than in hell; and they know with certainty that that state too is other than this one, in which are those who are irredeemably tormented in hell.⁶ Finally, since that punishment ought to be expiatory and that purification is spiritual, it is necessary either that that fire possess a spiritual power divinely given to it or—as I am more inclined to believe—that the very power of grace dwelling within, aided by external punishment, purify the soul itself, already punished for its offenses and relieved of the burden of guilt, with sufficient purification, so that no dissimilarity to glory now remains. — And since such spirits are supremely disposed to receive within themselves the likeness of God that belongs to glory, once the door is open and purification completed, it is necessary that those spirits fly away, since they possess the fire of charity lifting them upward, with nothing impeding them from the impurity of the soul or guilt. For it is fitting neither to divine mercy nor to justice that it further defer glory when it finds a suitable receptacle, and since delay of rewards is a great punishment; nor ought a spirit already purged to be punished any further.⁷⁸