Scotus Academicus, Tomus quartus: De Angelis

All Theologians agree that there is a twofold punishment of the damned: one which they call the punishment of loss, the other which they name the punishment of sense.

The first consists in the lack of the vision and enjoyment of the supreme good, toward which the rational creature tends by its natural inclination as toward its ultimate end: and for this reason it is called the punishment of loss, because this lack surely inflicts the greatest loss upon the creature, since it strips it of every perfection, rest, and delight.

But the punishment of sense, or accidental punishment, is that which consists in the privation of any other good whatsoever besides the beatific vision, and in the pain or torment which they perceive from hellfire, or even from elsewhere.

Now here the word "sense" is taken in a broad meaning, so that it extends not only to the sensible appetite of animals, but also to the rational or intellectual appetite, and to the created will: in demons, however, this appetite is admitted by the consensus of all, just as in separated souls; and hence it comes about that they are capable of no delight or joy.

That both punishments exist Christ teaches in Matthew 25, for at the last judgment he will say to the reprobate: Depart from me, you cursed, behold the punishment of loss; into eternal fire, behold the punishment of sense.

— This twofold punishment moreover corresponds to the twofold disorder which is in mortal sin; for by mortal sin we are turned away from God and turned toward the creature; therefore the punishment of loss corresponds to the aversion from God, and for this reason it consists in the lack of God himself; the punishment of sense corresponds to the conversion toward the creature, and therefore it is inflicted by a creature; for he who inordinately desires created things deserves to be tormented by them.

And since the demons, having spurned their Creator, turned themselves away from him so as to turn themselves toward creatures — that is, toward Lucifer and themselves, loving themselves and their own excellence excessively and inordinately, complacent in themselves and in their own loftiness, loving intemperately their liberty, beauty, nobility, and the other gifts of God, and in a word preferring created things to their Creator — they deserve, by the decree of divine justice, to be tormented forever by a creature, that is, by fire, just as their crimes remain forever; For their pride ascends always, as the Royal Psalmist says: and thus God makes use of created things to repress their pride, to bring upon them a horrible deformity, and to shut them up in an everlasting prison.

— In the preceding Question we have sufficiently explained the punishment of loss of the demons; now their punishment of sense must be investigated; therefore

Note 1. It was the common opinion of very many of the holy Fathers that the demons were not precipitated at once into the lowest depths of Tartarus after their sin; but that they dwell in the air and above the earth until the final close of the world and the day of judgment arrive.

So first Athenagoras in his Embassy for the Christians, where after teaching that the angels burned with lust through desire for women, and that giants were propagated from them, he immediately adds: Those angels, then, who had fallen along with the heavens, wandering about the air and the earth, can no longer be raised above the heavens, etc.

Tertullian subscribed to this in his Apology, chapter 22, where he acknowledges the demons to be inhabitants of the air: They have, he says, from their dwelling in the air, and from their proximity to the stars, and from their commerce with the clouds, a knowledge of heavenly creatures.

— That S. Augustine held this same opinion can be gathered from various of his writings, but especially from his Enarration on Psalm 149, where he says:

Therefore to that darksome region, that is, to this air, the devil was condemned as to a prison, when he fell from the array of the higher angels together with his angels: For the Apostle says this of him, Ephesians 2¹ According to the prince of the power of this air, who now works in the children of unbelief; And the other Apostle says (namely S. Peter, 2. Epistle chapter 2.) For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but thrusting them down into the prisons of gloomy hell delivered them to be reserved unto judgment under punishment: calling this hell, because it is the lower part of the world.

— Nor does S. Jerome dissent. For in his Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, explaining those words of chapter 6, against the spirits of wickedness in the heavenly places, he interprets the word "heavenly places" of the air: This, he says, is the opinion of all the Doctors, that this air, which dividing heaven and earth is called the void, is full of opposing powers.

— Rupert agrees with these, book 1. on Genesis, chapter 17, where he teaches that all the demons cast down into the air remain in it until the day of the last judgment:

He, he says, shaken out of Heaven terribly by the indignation of God while all the orders of Angels trembled, fell wretched into this air, and extinguished from all light, never again to see the light of God: and that he has now been cast down into this air, together with all his satellites whom we call the aerial bands, we have everywhere in the Scriptures: for example, in the Apostle saying: Our wrestling is not, etc. But it is to come to pass that, when all see it, he shall be precipitated into the lower Hell, into eternal fire, which was prepared for him and his angels.

To these Alcimus Avitus accords, who in book 2. On original sin introduces the devil thus speaking of man: Let him be the companion of my fall, let him enter the fellowship of my punishment. And may he divide with us the fires I foresee.

Hence Cassian, conference 8, chapter 12, says that

that air which is spread between heaven and earth is so beset with a dense throng of spirits, who flit about neither quiet nor idle, that divine providence has quite usefully hidden and withdrawn them from human sight. For either by the terror of their onset, or the horror of the faces into which they transform and convert themselves at will whenever it pleases them, they would overwhelm men with unbearable dread and make them faint away, being altogether unable to gaze upon such things with carnal eyes: or certainly they would be rendered daily more wicked by their constant examples and corrupted by imitation: and thereby between men and the unclean and aerial powers there would arise a certain harmful familiarity and pernicious union.

These words of Cassian are to be expounded thus, that God does not permit the demons to fashion horrific bodies for themselves, so as to mock the eyes of mortals with specters and phantoms, and terrify them from close at hand.

Note 2. Many likewise of the more ancient Fathers held with Origen that the fire to which the demons are already condemned or are yet to be condemned is not corporeal, nor does it signify anything other than the stinging conscience of sins, as Origen himself teaches in book 2. Periarchon, chapter 11, where, explaining these words of Isaiah chapter 51, Walk in the light of your fire, and in the flame which you have kindled, he says: By these words the sinner seems to indicate this, that he kindle for himself the flame of his own fire: and that he be not plunged into some fire that had previously been kindled by another, or existed before him.

That this was also the opinion of Origen, S. Jerome writes in his Apology 2. against Rufinus, where he says: But the fire which Origen is accustomed to understand in other cases, I think you do not fail to grasp, namely the conscience of sins, the repentance burning the inner heart, of which Isaias speaks in chapter 66. Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be extinguished.

He explains this more fully in Epistle 69. To Avitus, where, speaking of Origen, he says:

The fire also of Gehenna, and the torments which holy Scripture threatens against sinners, he places not in punishments, but in the conscience of sins: when by the power and might of God every memory of offenses is set before our eyes: and as if from certain seeds left behind in the soul the whole crop of vices springs up: and whatever we had done in life, whether shameful or impious, the whole picture of them is drawn before our sight, and the mind gazing upon past pleasures is punished by the burning of conscience and is pierced by the goads of repentance.

— Theophilactus embraces the same opinion on the 9th chapter of Mark: But the worm, he says, and the fire which punish sinners, are the conscience and memory of each one, of the shameful things committed in this life: which consumes like a worm, and burns like fire.

S. Ambrose likewise favors this same interpretation in book 7. on Luke, chapter 14, where he opens his opinion in almost the very words Origen uses:

Therefore, he says, neither is there any grinding of bodily teeth, nor any perpetual fire of corporeal flames, nor is the worm corporeal; but these things are said for this reason, that just as from great indigestion fevers and worms arise, so if anyone does not boil down his sins, as it were by a certain interposed sobriety of abstinence, but by mixing sins with sins contracts a kind of indigestion of old and recent offenses, he shall be burned with his own fire and consumed by his own worms.

Note 3. There is likewise attributed to Origen the erroneous opinion that he taught the demons and the souls of the reprobate would at last sometime be released from all punishment and restored to their pristine sanctity, as Epiphanius affirms of Origen himself in the Epistle which he wrote against Origen to John of Jerusalem, where he attributes to Origen himself the teaching that the Devil would again become what he had been, would return to the same dignity, and would ascend the kingdoms of Heaven. Likewise Hieronymus in Epistle 51. to Pammachius says the same Origen judged that after many ages, and one restoration of all, Gabriel would be the same as the devil, Paul as Caiphas, virgins as prostitutes.

S. Augustine attributed the same dogma to Origen in the book On Heresies; where he says:

There are, moreover, other dogmas of this Origen which the Catholic Church does not receive at all: in which he neither falsely accuses him, nor can he be excused by his defenders, especially concerning the purgation and the liberation: and again concerning the revolution after a long time of rational universal creation to those same evils. For what Catholic Christian, whether learned or unlearned, would not shrink violently from that purgation of evils which he describes, that is, that even those who ended this life in crimes and villainies and sacrileges and impieties however great, and finally even the devil himself and his angels, though purified and liberated after most long ages, should be restored to the kingdom of God and to the light: and again after most long ages all who were liberated should relapse anew into these evils and return to them: and that these alternations of beatitudes and miseries of rational creature have always been and will always be?

That this was held by Origen is established from the Fifth Synod, in which the errors of Origen were condemned, among which this is enumerated, that he said the torments of all impious men, and even of the demons themselves, would have an end: and that the impious and the demons would be restored to their former state. Moreover, that Christ ought to be crucified for the demons, and to suffer the same repeatedly through future ages at the hands of the spirits of wickedness, who are in the heavenly places.

— S. Gregory of Nyssa seems to have subscribed to Origen in the book Catechetical, where, recounting the benefits of the Incarnation, he says:

These, and other things of this kind, he hands on as the great mystery of the divine Incarnation. For by this very fact, that he was mingled with humanity, passing through all the properties of nature — generation, upbringing, growth, even to the experience of death — he accomplished all those things which we have said; that he might free man from malice, and heal the very inventor of malice: For the healing of sickness is the purging of disease, though it be laborious.

The same he indicates in the book On the Soul and the resurrection, where, weighing those words of the Epistle to the Philippians, In the name of Jesus every knee should bow; he distinguishes a threefold genus by reason of those forenamed, namely Angels, Men, and demons; who, he says, press upon human nature to its detriment and ruin — that nature, namely, of the demons, Some, he says, say the Apostle numbers them among things underground and infernal, signifying thereby in that speech that, when wickedness shall at some time have been abolished through the long windings and circuits of ages, nothing outside the good will remain, but even the demons will confess with concord the dominion of Christ.

— Ambrose also seems to lend support to this opinion in Psal. 118. Octon. 20., where he teaches that the punishments of the devil will be eternal, and therefore that his punishment is deferred until after the judgment, so that it may be everlasting; but that the punishments of men, since they ought to be tempered and bounded by mercy, are appointed and inflicted immediately after death. For, he says, "the devil and his ministers will not be scourged with men; the punishment is separated where guilt and it stand apart." Hence he thinks that that rich man who implored the help of Lazarus would escape at some time: his words are these: "If this is wrought by a human tribunal" (that the guilty may obtain the mercy of the judge, and that return may not be cut off forever from those banished), "how much more is the judgment of Christ to be desired by all? The judgment of the devil is deferred, that he may be ever guilty in his punishments; ever bound fast in the chain of his own conscience for his wickedness, so that he may himself undergo judgment forever." Therefore that rich man in the Gospel, though a sinner, is pressed by penal afflictions, so that he may escape the sooner: but the devil is shown to be punished in no way unto judgment, in no way yet subject to punishments, except those which he, conscious of such great crimes, pays out of perpetual fear, lest he should ever be secure.

Yet it is certain that these holy Fathers were far removed from the opinion of Origen. These things having been premised, three points are to be resolved in the present Question: First, whether all the demons were straightway cast down into Hell after their sin. Second, whether they are truly tormented by corporeal fire. Third, whether their punishment is ever to have an end.

First conclusion. — The demons truly were cast down into Hell after their sin. And precipitated into it.

It is proved first from Holy Scripture, which declares in plain words that all the demons were precipitated into Tartarus. Isaiah 14: Thy pride is brought down to Hell. And below: Yet thou shalt be brought down to Hell, into the depth of the pit. So St. Peter writes in the Catholic Epistle 2, chap. 2: If indeed God spared not the angels that sinned, but dragged them down by the ropes of Hell, cast into Tartarus to be tormented, reserved unto judgment. To him St. Jude accords in the Catholic Epistle, verse 6: The angels, he says, who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day. Although, however, St. August. in Psal. 149. thinks that the Tartarus and Hell named by St. Peter are to be understood of the lower part of the air, still this interpretation is not probable. For Tartarus, hell, and darkness plainly signify the infernal regions: yet I do not think the demons are so condemned and fixed there that they never go out of it as from a prison; since the holy Apostle, Ephesians 2, calls the devil the Prince of the power of this air: to whom, namely, the demons who dwell in the air render obedience and are subject.

This same truth is proved from the Council of Florence, where it is defined,

That the souls of those who after the reception of baptism have incurred no stain of sin whatever, and likewise those souls which, after contracting a stain of sin, have been purged either while in their bodies or when stripped of those same bodies, are received into Heaven without delay and clearly behold the very God, Three and One, as He is; yet by reason of the diversity of merits one more perfectly than another: but that the souls of those who depart in actual mortal sin, or in original sin alone, descend immediately into Hell, to be punished, however, with unequal punishments.

Although it defines nothing there concerning demons, nevertheless reason itself persuades that the same must be thought of them as of souls: both because the demons, who are the assailants of men, are also their tormentors; and therefore they must needs be in the same place, to torment men damned whom they have conquered; and because that punishment was owed from the beginning to their pride; and therefore from the beginning they were condemned to it by definitive sentence: but at the beginning it was not necessary that it be suspended or deferred; and therefore it was more fitting that they be sent, so to speak, straightway into its possession, until, men having been created, on account of their good and on account of other reasons of divine Providence, they received license to go out thence. Since, therefore, the presence of the demons in hell is, so to speak, the ordinary law and rule; but their absence is by dispensation and on account of an extrinsic end; therefore per se it is credible that hell is never emptied of all the demons: but that such a number is permitted to go out of it as suffices for the exercise of men. Finally, then, because the damned souls are not in a worse condition than the demons: but those suffer that punishment without intermission: therefore a fortiori the demons. The minor is established from the aforesaid definition of the Council of Florence, and also from that passage Job 21. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment they go down to Hell: and Luc. 16. The rich man died, and was buried in Hell.

— Moreover, the same reason of the last reward and punishment intervenes in the angels; therefore as the holy angels received complete beatitude at the term of the way, from which they do not recede when they come into this world, except only as regards distance from the heavenly place; so entirely, with due proportion, must we think concerning the demons and their punishment.

St. Gregory teaches this very thing, lib. 4. Dialog. cap. 28., saying:

If you have believed, by the satisfaction of the sacred Eloquium, that the souls of the Saints are in Heaven, you must believe by all means that the souls of the wicked are also in Hell, because from the eternal retribution of justice, from which the just already glory, it must needs be by all means that the unjust also are tormented. For as beatitude delights the Elect, so it must be believed that from the day of their going forth fire burns up the Reprobate.

Wherefore I can scarcely conceive how he judges, lib. 4. Moral. cap. 10., that the demons have not yet been precipitated into Tartarus, since the same reason seems to hold of them as of the souls of the Reprobate.

But that this sentiment may accord with the words of the holy Fathers praised in the first Notable, I should judge it must be said that not all the demons, perhaps, were wholly unloosed in the prisons of the lower world, nor are those who were shut up there held perpetually in fiery chains; but that most of them were hurled down into Tartarus, while the rest have their station in the air and neighboring places; and that they change abodes in turn, and those who were in the lower regions emerge thence; and penetrate to the inhabitants of the lower regions, of the earth, and of the air, and pass to and fro, as Eusebius taught, lib. 7. De praeparatione Evangelica, where he declares that a multitude of angels stood above the earth: but that most of them were cast down into the lowest Tartarus:

Innumerable, he says, is another kind subjected to them, liable to the same faults: which, falling away through impiety from the lot of the former, compelled to exchange the shining and more divine adornment with which it had long ago been encircled, and the degree of honor which it had obtained in the royal Palace while it dwelt among the blessed choirs of angels, for a dwelling consonant with the impious, and the habitation of Tartarus, which the divine Scriptures call the abyss, and darkness in no way like ours, but such as the sacred Letters signify, by the just judgment and sentence of the great God; a most tiny particle of whom, left behind around the earth and the sublunary air for the exercise of athletes of piety, gave occasion to men for that superstitious error which admits a multitude of Gods, nor differs from utter ignorance and contempt of the Divinity, > gave cause to men.

This very thing can be urged from that passage of Luke 8., where the demons besought Christ not to command them to go into the abyss; for thence it is clear that some demons, cast out of human bodies, do not return to Tartarus unless urged by divine command.

— Hence in Holy Scripture a threefold place is assigned to the demons, altogether darksome, namely the air, the earth, and the abyss. From which perhaps it is that some have devised many kinds of demons, aerial, terrestrial, subterranean, infernal; yet it is not repugnant that these are the same who inhabit this air, and now roam over the earth, now are relegated to the abyss. But that they cannot change place at pleasure as they wish, and choose for themselves whichever they want, that stands in the way, that he is said to be delivered and kept in chains of darkness, and indeed eternal ones, unto the judgment of the great God. Wherein also every hope of return to God, and remission of guilt, is cut off from him, and his powers and ability to hurt and harm are so bound and constrained by the nod of divine Providence, that as a lion bound in chains can run no further than they permit, nor break them, so neither can he without the will and permission of God move himself, or undertake or do anything.

Second conclusion. — The demons are tormented in Hell by true and corporeal fire: Not physically, but intentionally, so holding and affecting the intellect of the demon that it cannot turn it to other objects at its own pleasure.

This Conclusion has two parts, of which the first is proved: That must especially be asserted which Holy Scripture expressly indicates, and the holy Fathers constantly affirm: but Holy Scripture often pronounces that men and demons damned are tormented with fire, and repeats it so frequently that it does not seem to be taken metaphorically: therefore it must be confessed that they are tormented with corporeal fire. The minor is proved from various texts of the same Scripture, especially from that Deut. 32.² A fire is kindled in my wrath, and shall burn even to the lowest hell; and Judith 16. The Lord omnipotent will vindicate them, in the day of judgment he will visit them; for he will give fire and worms into their flesh. Psalm. 10. He shall rain snares upon sinners, fire and brimstone, and storms of winds, the portion of their cup. Ecclesiastic. 7. The vengeance of the flesh of the impious is fire and worms. And cap. 21. The stubble gathered of the synagogue of sinners, and their consummation is a flame of fire.

— The same appears from the New Testament. Thus Matth. 3. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down, and cast into the fire. And the same 5. 22. and 18. hell, Gehenna of fire, is so called, and the damned are said to be cast into eternal fire. Marc. 9. Into the unquenchable fire, where their worm dieth not, etc.

But so constant a manner of speaking of Scripture savors not of a merely metaphorical sense; for according to the rule handed down by St. August., lib. 3. De Doctrina Christiana cap. 10., Holy Scripture is to be taken literally as often as the literal sense presents neither any contradiction nor any absurdity; which rule holds chiefly when the usage is frequent and uniform, and when the proper sense has not only nothing inconvenient, but is even more useful for good morals: and both are found in the present case.

The same the holy Fathers constantly teach, in the first place St. Cyprian in the book De laudibus Martyrii cap. 12., where he describes Hell thus elegantly:

A raging place whose name is Gehenna, with the great murmur of those wailing, and groaning, and with flames belching forth through the horrible night of thick darkness breathes forth ever savage burnings of a smoking furnace; a mass of fire hemmed in is obstructed, and relaxed into various issues of punishment. Then it rolls within itself many kinds of raging, whatsoever the ravening flame emitted has tortured with burning mouths.

The same, serm. De Ascensione Domini: The incorruptible flames, he says, shall lick round the naked body: the purple-clad rich man shall burn... In his own fat the pleasures rubbed raw shall boil, and amid frying-pans and flames wretched bodies shall be consumed.

— This truth St. Augustine expressly weighs lib. 21. De Civit. Dei, cap. 10. where, having inquired, if the fire of Hell be not spiritual, how the demons can be tormented in it: but if it be not corporeal, how it will be able to torture the bodies of men, since the same fire will be attributed to the punishment of men and of demons, Christ saying Matth. 25. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil, and his angels; he answers thus;

Except that there are certain bodies proper even to the demons, as learned men have judged, made from this gross and humid air, whose impulse is felt when the wind blows. If this kind of element could suffer nothing from fire, it would not burn when heated in baths: for as it burns, it is first burned itself, and makes what it suffers.

But although the demons are incorporeal, he presently asserts that they are affected and tormented by fire:

But if anyone asserts that the demons have no bodies, there is no need either to labor at this matter with painstaking inquiry, or to contend with contentious disputation. For why should we not say that, though in wonderful ways, yet in true ways, even incorporeal spirits can be affected by the punishment of bodily fire, if the spirits of men, themselves assuredly incorporeal, both now could be enclosed in bodily members, and then will be able to be insolubly bound with the bonds of their bodies? There will adhere, therefore, if no bodies are theirs, the spirits of the demons; nay rather, spirits, the demons, though incorporeal, shall be tormented by corporeal fires: not that the fires themselves, to which they will adhere, may be inspired with their junction, and become animals, that they may consist of spirit and body: but as I said, adhering in wonderful and ineffable ways, receiving from the fires punishment, not giving to the fires life.

— The same truth St. Gregory lucidly expounds, lib. 4. Dialog. cap. 28., where he speaks thus: As beatitude delights the Elect, so it must be believed that from the day of their going forth fire burns up the Reprobate. But Peter the disciple asks: And by what reason is it to be believed that corporeal fire can hold an incorporeal thing? which he pursues in chapter 29, and finally asks expressly: Is the fire of Hell corporeal? and Gregory answers: I do not doubt that it is corporeal.

But the second part of our Conclusion, that that fire torments the demons not really, but intentionally, the same Greg. teaches in the same place. For Peter asking: How can corporeal fire hold an incorporeal thing? he meets him in this manner: If the incorporeal spirit of a living man is held in the body, why not after death, since the spirit is incorporeal, is it not also held by corporeal fire? Then he declares of what kind that punishment is:

But we say the spirit is held by fire, so that it is punished by the torment of fire, seeing and feeling. For the fire it suffers by the very fact that it sees it; and because it beholds itself being burned, it is burned. And thus it comes about that a corporeal thing burns an incorporeal one, both ardor from the visible fire, and > invisible pain is drawn, so that by corporeal fire the incorporeal mind is tormented even by incorporeal flame. Although we can gather from the words of the Gospel that the soul suffers the conflagration not only by seeing, but also by experiencing.

But how this punishment is inflicted upon spirits by corporeal fire, the Doctor teaches in 4. dist. 44. quaest. 2., where, supposing n. 5. that according to St. Aug. 14. De Civitate Dei cap. 15. The pain of the flesh is only the offense of the soul from the flesh, and a certain dissension from its possession, as the pain of the soul, which is called sadness, is from those things which happen to us unwillingly; From this, says the Doctor, it appears that pain is a passion consequent upon sensitive apprehension, and in the sensitive appetite: but sadness is properly in the intellectual appetite, or in the will, and consequent upon the apprehension of the event of some object unwilled. Then he declares n. 7. that

the fire of Hell is an object uncongenial to the demons, and that in two ways: First, as definitively detaining the spirit: Second, as objectively changing it. And in both ways it torments the demons: First indeed, because they do not wish to be detained by fire, and to this not-wishing, says the Doctor, inclines the affection of commodity according to which it appetites the free use of its power; as by its nature it is indifferent to any body whatever, so it could make itself present to any body. But pride promotes it, on account of which it appetites to use its own power: envy consummates it, on account of which it would never wish determinately to be on account of the sentence or action of God. This not-wishing precedes detention, and the apprehension of detention: but upon this not-wishing, though posited inordinately in its will, follows a certain apprehension of the event of that unwilled thing: and from this third, or fifth, counting those two which precede the not-wishing, follows sadness.

He observes next that fire does not detain the angel, neither effectively, nor formally per se.

Not indeed effectively, because, he says, no corporeal place can detain a spirit; because that which does not localize effectively, does not impede it from moving, nor does it detain it effectively. Nor yet formally necessarily; for a spirit freed from body is shut in and encompassed by no corporeal place; since, being devoid of matter and quantity, it has no surrounding surface, nor consequently a formal place. But it is detained only formally by the fire itself according to the divine ordination, so that God effectively detain the demon in the fire, as in a prison; but the fire by the ordination of God detains and binds it as a prison, so that it cannot go out from it. Whence it is saddened supremely; for it hates not only the active detention of God, and its passive one from God: but also, says the Doctor, n. 9., it hates the formal perpetual detention by that fire: and consequently it is saddened by that formal detention. But since to be saddened is formally to be tormented, it follows that the fire, as formally detaining the devil, also somewhat effectively torments it. Nor does it matter that it does not detain it effectively: for thence it does not follow that it cannot also effectively torment it; because as formally detaining, it is an object unwilled and apprehended, as uncongenial; but an object unwilled effectively inflicts sadness.

— The same St. Thomas teaches, quaest. De anima art. 21. Every, he says, spiritual substance, as far as its nature goes, is not bound to any place; but transcends the whole order of corporal things: Therefore that it be bound to anything, and determined to some place by a certain necessity, is against its nature, and contrary to natural appetite.

Hence in book 4 of Contra Gentes, chapter 90, he infers:

Incorporate substances therefore suffer from corporeal fire by way of a certain binding: for spirits can be bound to a body either by way of form, as the soul is bound to the human body so as to give it life; or even without being its form, as necromancers bind spirits to images or things of this kind through the power of demons. Much more therefore, by divine power, can spirits to be damned be bound to corporeal fire: and this very thing is an affliction to them when they know themselves bound to lowest things in punishment.

— But how this detention of the demons by fire can torment them, the Doctor opens in the same place, num. 7: I say, he says, that that fire is an object so disconvenient, and this in two ways: first as definitively detaining the spirit; second as objectively altering it. And he proves the first at num. 11, teaching that the demons most intensely hate that binding and detention, because it most highly offends their dignity and liberty, and hence afflicts and torments them vehemently, which he declares thus at num. 11:

For first, he says, the intellect of an angel is determined perpetually to consider the fire intensely as an object. Second, it apprehends that determination to such consideration. Third, it hates it, and as before, this hatred arises from the affection for the pleasant, from which it wills to consider now this, now that object, according as it is delightful to itself; and it is promoted by pride, from which it wills to use its intellective power according to the command of its own will; and it is consummated by envy, on account of which it hates to be determined by God to any single consideration. Fourth, there follows the apprehension, not merely bare of that consideration, as in the second step, but a certain apprehension of the outcome of that intense and perpetual consideration. Fifth, from this follows sadness. — And if you ask, says the Doctor, how that can belong to fire, since no body can move the intelligence of a spirit so efficaciously that the intelligence itself and the operation of the intellect are not subject to the will of that spirit itself, so that it may recall it at pleasure from the disconvenient object and turn it to another; I answer, that this does not belong to fire by its own power, because with the whole active power of fire posited, the angel left to himself could indifferently consider the fire or another body according to the command of his own will. Therefore it is necessary that that detention in the intense and perpetual consideration of fire, and against the will of the angel, be effectively from God principally, and from fire actively indeed, but less principally. For just as the agent intellect and the phantasm are related to moving the passive intellect in us, so God, acting in the manner of an agent intellect, and fire in the manner of a phantasm, most efficaciously move the passive intellect of the angel against its will. Nor does it stand in the way, says the Doctor, that the principal agent and the instrument are not here in the same supposit, as the agent intellect and the phantasm are in the same man; this, he says, does not stand in the way, because the order of those agents does not require identity of supposit.

From these things it appears, according to the Doctor's opinion, that demons are tormented by fire with a twofold punishment: one by the binding in it and detention by it; the other by the consideration of it as the instrument of divine vengeance and of God's chastisement upon them.

— Nevertheless the Doctor infers at num. 13 that the demons are tormented far more gravely and bitterly by that perpetual detention of their intelligence in the intense consideration of fire than by the formal detention of themselves locally from the fire. Because, he says, angels are far freer according to their power of understanding than with respect to the force of their motive power; indeed, according to the command of their own will their intellect ought to be occupied with whatever object, in keeping with the exigency of the perfection of their nature, which perfection is certainly far nobler in them than that by which they can change place at pleasure by their nature.

But that detention in the most intense consideration of fire impedes the first liberty; for thereby the intellect is detained in the consideration of that avenging fire so that it can in no way consider other objects: but local detention from fire only impedes the free use of the motive power, so that it cannot present itself to any body; from which it follows that the sadness will be far greater from that objective detention than from the local one; because where there is greater unwillingness and an equally certain apprehension of the outcome, greater sadness follows. Add that fire objectively detaining the intellect of an angel torments it more effectively than insofar as it detains it locally: for as detaining locally, it afflicts the demons effectively only insofar as it is an object of unwillingness: but as it detains it objectively, it causes effectively the first apprehension to which the intellect is determined, which is unwilled: and so this latter detention has as it were a double action upon the intellect of the demon; whereas the former has only a simple and single one.

— But if you ask how the intellect of demons and of the damned is so determined to the apprehension of fire as a disconvenient object and as the instrument of divine justice: the Doctor explains in the same place, saying that God concurs with the fire in imprinting its species into the intellect of the angel, just as the agent intellect with the phantasm produces the intelligible species in the patient intellect: and this happens connaturally. For since the angel is bound to the fire and held in it as in a prison so that he cannot go out of it, he always has the intelligible species of the fire present, which he cannot fail to know and behold continually, from whose intense consideration he is afflicted far more than by his simple detention, and is tormented more vehemently than the soul is racked while the body which it informs is scorched by fire.

You will say. By that by which the demons are tormented formally and effectively, by that they are torunted unequally: but they are not tormented unequally by that local or objective detention: therefore, etc. The major is evident, and St. Augustine openly hands it down in book 21 of De Civitate Dei, chapter 10: It must by no means be denied, he says, that the eternal fire itself will be lighter for some and heavier for others; whether the heat of it varies according to the desert of each one's punishment, or whether it burns equally, but is not felt with equal distress. Then, if fire makes its impression upon the demons only intelligibly, it is far from tormenting them; rather it delights them; for that impression is fitting to the intellective power. Finally, if the demon does not will against, or hate, being so detained, or being so altered by the object, he will not be sad: but it is in his power not to will against: therefore it will also be in his power not to be tormented. Add that he could equally be afflicted in a stone, in the Sun, or in the

Empyrean Heaven, if he were definitively detained by them and altered objectively.

— The Doctor answers the first, denying the minor: and to its proof he says that the formal detention of the demons by fire is indeed equal, but their unwillingness is not equal: rather that unwillingness is far more intense in those who sinned more, and therefore the sadness in them is far greater.

To the second he says that it is not in the power of the demons not to have this unwillingness; since it is continued by a superior agent cause, which binds them thus perpetually in the fire and holds their intellect in the consideration of the fire. Hence it follows that no one of the demons can at some time will against more remissly than he now wills against; because as the act is not in his power, neither is the mode of the act: and as the superior cause acts uniformly to produce that willing-against together with the will of the demon, so that this cannot operate otherwise; so also it acts uniformly toward the intensification of this willing-against, so that he cannot will anything against more remissly.

But if you should say, says the Doctor, that that first apprehension of fire caused delight in the intellect of the demon, at least in the first instant.

— He answers, that this cannot be said, because in the same instant in which the intellect of the demon apprehended the fire, it conceives vehement sadness, which excludes every joy not only contrary, but altogether irrelevant.

If you urge, saying, that the cause of delight is naturally prior to the cause of sadness.

— He answers, that in things having only an order of nature, and which exist simultaneously in time, the less efficacious excludes the more efficacious more effectually, although the more efficacious be later in nature: Nor is it wonderful, he says, because that which impedes or prohibits is sometimes later naturally; yet the first is impeded through its contrary action, if the generation of one is the corruption of the other. So the Doctor.

You will insist. If the whole punishment of the demons consisted both in the formal and in the objective detention, it would follow that the demons going out of hell and flying about through the airs or the earth would not be tormented; since they would not be so detained by the infernal fire itself, neither formally nor objectively: but the consequent is false; therefore also the antecedent.

— I deny the major, for, as Rupert says in book 4 of De Victoria Verbi Dei, wherever the devil turns himself, he carries with him the torturing fire. It must be known, he says, meanwhile, that wherever he turns himself, he carries his punishment with him, and the wound of the fire of ignited stones, with which he was once struck by lightning, perseveres intrinsically in himself. This punishment of his can be understood from those words of the Lord to blessed Job, saving a more sacred understanding: Out of his mouth go lamps, like torches of kindled fire: out of his nostrils proceeds smoke, like pots set on fire: and his fervent breath makes coals burn, and a flame shall go forth out of his mouth. The same thing St. Augustine had explained expressly above, lib. 21. De Civit. Dei, cap. 10. where, after he had said, If the spirits of men, themselves also certainly incorporeal, could now be included in bodily members, then they will be able to be bound insolubly by the bonds of their bodies; he concludes: Therefore, if they have no bodies, the spirits of demons, nay rather the spirits that are demons, though incorporeal, will adhere to corporeal fires to be tormented.

Bede explains this same thing excellently in his Commentary on chapter 3 of the Epistle of James. Wherever, he says, they fly through the air, or wander on the earth, or > beneath the earth, whether they roam or are detained, they always carry with them the torments of their flames: like one in fever, who even if he lies on beds of ivory, even if he is placed in sunny spots, cannot nevertheless avoid the burning or chill of the malady implanted in him. Thus therefore the demons, even if they are honored in gilded temples, even if they run through the airs, always burn with Gehenna's fire: and admonished by their very punishment, enviously suggest to deceived men also the fuel of vices, whence they themselves perish.

But you will object against the first part, namely, that the demons are tormented by real and corporeal fire; First indeed with various texts of Scripture, by which it is signified that the fire with which the demons are tormented must be taken not really and properly, but metaphorically.

Which indeed is urged, first, from that passage of Luke 16, where that rich man, who said I am tormented in this flame, is afterwards said to have raised his eyes and seen Abraham afar off, and to have said to him: Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue: but it is manifest that eyes, finger, and tongue are attributed to souls only metaphorically: therefore in like manner that flame in which they are tormented must also be taken metaphorically.

Second, the same is urged from that passage of Job 24: Let him pass to the excessive heat from the waters of snow, and his sin even to hell: but whether these words are understood of the cold of the sins of this life passing to the heat of the punishments of hell; or of the alternation of punishments in hell itself, those waters of snow are always taken metaphorically: therefore by equal reason fire must be said to be only metaphorical.

Finally, fire must be understood to torment the damned in the same way in which worms gnawing them: but the worms in hell are only metaphorical, namely those goads of conscience with which the soul of the damned is pricked and as it were gnawed: therefore, etc. The major is plain, for Sacred Scripture speaks of fire in the same way as of worms; thus Isaiah 66: Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be extinguished: which words the Lord Christ interpreted of the punishments of the damned, saying: It is good for you to enter lame into life, rather than having two feet to be cast into Gehenna, into unquenchable fire, where their worm dies not, and the fire is not extinguished: therefore by equal reason fire and worm are to be taken, and accordingly since worm is used only metaphorically, fire also must be taken only metaphorically.

— Origen championed this opinion before all others, who judged that that eternal fire, into which the impious are to be sent by the capital decree of Christ, was nothing else than the worm of conscience. Let chapter 11 of book 2 of De Principiis be consulted, in which he threshed out that argument:

There, he says, when the memory of sins, recalled by divine power and placed before the eyes of the impious (according to that of Rom. 2. 15. 16. Their thoughts mutually accusing or also defending one another, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men), pricks his mind, so that it may be its own accuser and witness, and burns it with avenging flames: the food of this fire is the sins committed beforehand, which therefore the Apostle called wood, hay, and stubble; hence it is written in Isaiah 50. 11.: Walk in the light of your fire and the flame which you have kindled. By which words, he says, this seems to be indicated, that the sinner kindles for himself the flame of his own fire, and is not immersed into some fire which was previously kindled by another, or stood ready before him.

He asks next whether, besides those fires of wrath, or fury, or madness, or grief, with which the impious were tortured in this life, they are also to be tormented in the future, they are to be punished by some general punishment after death.

Then he says that the soul is affected by that torture, torn away from the order and harmony for which it was constituted by God, as the body is affected when its members are torn apart dissolved from their compact frame: Which dissolution and rending apart of the soul, he says, when it has been explored by reason of the applied fire, doubtless is solidified for the firmer frame and restoration of its structure.

Of the same opinion was also St. Ambrose, book 7 on Luke, chapter 14:

Therefore, he says, neither is there any gnashing of corporal teeth, nor any perpetual fire of corporal flames, nor is the worm corporal; but these things are so, because as from much crudity fevers and worms arise, so if anyone does not boil away his sins, as it were by a certain interposed sobriety of abstinence, but mixing sins with sins contracts as it were a certain crudity of old and recent offenses, he shall be burned with his own fire and consumed by his own worms.

— Jerome, otherwise sufficiently hostile to this doctrine, nevertheless bears himself kindly toward it near the end of book 18 of the Commentary on Isaiah: But the worm that dies not, and the fire that is not extinguished, is taken by most for the conscience of sins, which torments those placed in punishments, wherefore they have lacked the goods of the elect through their vice and sin. And a little after: If anyone therefore have in his conscience the tares which the enemy man sowed while the father of the family slept, the fire shall burn up these, the conflagration shall devour these. He testifies that he by no means gives faith to these things joined by himself; but he does not signify that they are disapproved by him; nor does he propose them under another's person, nor under his own.

— Gregory of Nyssa also denies a corporeal hell in the book De anima et resurrectione. — Similarly John Damascene, book 4 De orthodoxa fide, denies that the eternal fire consists of matter. Theophilactus likewise, on chapter 9 of Mark, places the infernal fire and worm in the memory of crimes. But the worm, he says, and the fire which punish sinners, is the conscience of each one and the memory of shameful deeds done in this life; which consumes as a worm and burns as fire.

— I deny all these consequences; and to the first text I say, that although in that narrative of the rich man, whether historical or parabolical, many things are to be taken metaphorically, still it is not established that the fire there mentioned must also be taken metaphorically: since from elsewhere it is established that Sacred Scripture constantly asserts that there is fire in hell, and it is also sufficiently evident that eyes, hands, and tongue can be attributed to separated souls only metaphorically: whence the same judgment must not be passed concerning the flame in which that rich man was tormented as concerning the rest.

To the second however I say, that it is doubtful whether, as fire, so also snow or cold water tormenting is in hell: for there are very many Authors who think that both truly exist in hell, that the damned may be tormented more sharply by the alternating torture of cold and heat, as in the first place St. Jerome teaches on chapter 10 of Matthew from the forecited words of Job, where, explaining the name of Gehenna, he concludes: That Gehenna is twofold, of excessive fire and of cold, is read most fully in Job. And on that word of Matthew 22, There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, he adds: So that the gnashing of teeth may arise from the rigor of the cold. The same think Bede on the cited place of Job, and Hugh of Victor, book 4 De anima, chapter 13.

— Nevertheless the aforesaid opinion is altogether uncertain, indeed seems less founded in Scripture; partly because Christ the Lord expressly threatens the punishment of fire as perpetual and irremissible, and as it were the only one: but of the other punishment of snows and waters he does not say even a word. Partly because if the punishment of cold were in hell, that rich man would not have asked for a drop of water, whereby the torment of fire might be mitigated, since sustaining the punishment of water or cold, he would have learned from it that no refreshment could be obtained. Partly because Zachariah 9 says, You brought them out of the lake in which there was no water; for that lake is a place of hell, which is said to lack water, and consequently snow and hail. Finally because that context of Job can have another sense: for St. Gregory, book 16 Moral., chapter 27, understands by the waters of snow and the excessive heat not punishments, but faults of the present life, because sinners are carried from certain vices to others extremely contrary, as from the infidelity of the gentiles to the errors of heretics, or from the cold of avarice toward the relief of the poor to the excessive heat of prodigality in vain or luxurious expenses. It can also be said that by those words of Job he imprecates the punishments of this life upon the sinner; for in the verse immediately preceding, he had said of the sinner: Cursed be his portion in the earth, and let him not walk by the way of the paths: by which words he imprecates the sterility of the earth and the want of all solace and refreshment; whence when he immediately joins: Let him pass to the excessive heat from the waters of snow, he signifies that he wishes that the sinner find no refreshment in this life, but pass from one misery to another extreme. Or also it could be expounded thus, that from the waters of snow of sins he passes to the excessive heat to come in hell.

— To the third, moreover, I answer, the same thing must not be said of worms as of fire; both because Christ spoke of fire singularly, and as it were by way of eminence: prepared for the devil and his angels; and because concerning the truth and proper nature of fire there is the common opinion of the holy Fathers. Finally, because it appears sufficiently that worms cannot gnaw a spirit, nor tear its substance; for that pain is not caused in a living being except through the vital action of the worm itself, which subtracts something from the substance of another; and a spiritual substance is not capable of such subtraction and quasi-division, and consequently it is repugnant for a worm to exercise such an action upon a spirit. And herein lies a great difference between fire and the worm; because fire acts by a merely extrinsic action, and by imparting qualities, or something of that kind, not by subtracting or dividing substance; and therefore no metaphor is necessary, which in the case of the worm with respect to a demon, or a separated soul, is necessary.

Yet I do not deny that in hell there truly are those material and living ravenous worms which perpetually gnaw the bodies of damned men: for thus we interpret literally that saying of Isaiah, chapter 66, where, when God had said: They shall see the carcasses of the men who have transgressed against me, he immediately adds: Their worm dieth not, as if to say that the worms shall live forever and shall gnaw the carcasses of the damned with insatiable bite. Similar are those words of Judith 16: He will give fire and worms into their flesh. Thence St. Maximus, in his Epistle to the Cubicularius, says of the reprobate that men placed on the left hand shall receive eternal fire, and outer darkness, and the watchful worm, and the gnashing of teeth.

You will say 2. St. Augustine, book 21³ De Civitate Dei cap. 10, adducing in favor of the reality of hellish fire those words of the Rich Man, I am tormented in this flame, says: I would indeed say that flame was corporeal, unless it could be congruously answered that such was that flame as are the eyes, such the tongue, such the finger, where souls were without bodies. Whence he concludes: Therefore incorporeal is that flame by which he burned, and that drop of water which he asked, of such a kind also as were the visions of those sleeping, or perceiving things in ecstasy, incorporeal things yet having the similitude of bodies. Therefore St. Augustine judges that fire not to be truly corporeal.

I deny the consequence. For from the words premised in the objection he indeed seems doubtful; nevertheless, immediately opening his mind, he says:

But truly that Gehenna, which is also called the pool of fire and lightning, Apoc. 20, will be corporeal fire, and will torment the bodies of the damned, whether of men, and of demons; solid the bodies of men, aerial those of demons, or only the bodies of men together with spirits; but demons are spirits without bodies adhering to them, taking punishment, not imparting life, from corporeal fires: for there will be one fire of both, as the Truth said.

Add. that although St. Augustine here might seem wavering, elsewhere nevertheless he constantly affirms the fire of Gehenna to be corporeal, especially serm. 181. de tempore etc.

You will say 3. Corporeal fire can in no way, or only by the greatest miracle, torment a spirit: but miracles are not to be affirmed unless they either clearly appear in Scripture, or are certainly known from elsewhere: but it plainly is not established, neither from Scripture nor from elsewhere, that that fire is corporeal: therefore such a fire is not to be affirmed.

I answer. Granting the major, denying the minor: for to affirm this, namely that the fire of hell is corporeal, we are led not only by the divine authority of Sacred Scripture, sufficiently proposed through the Church and its Doctors, but also by the opinion of the holy Fathers and of the common run of Theologians, whereby it is established that the fire of hell is truly corporeal, and that demons, although wholly spiritual, are truly and really tormented by it, whether physically, as the Thomists will, or — which seems truer — only intentionally, as we taught above with the Subtle Doctor.

Third conclusion. — The torments of the demons will never have any end.

This is of faith, and is evidently gathered from Sacred Scripture, which as often as it mentions the punishments of the damned, so often signifies that they will be eternal. Thus Matth. 25: Depart from me, you cursed, into eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels. And further below it adds: These shall go into everlasting punishment, but those into life everlasting. Thus Daniel, chapter 12: And many, he says, who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some unto life everlasting, others unto reproach, that they may see it always. Innumerable are texts of this kind, which declare the punishments of the damned eternal, just as the perpetual felicity of the blessed. — Nor does it avail to say that the fire will be eternal, but not the combustion eternal, as St. Aug. says, book De fide cap. 15.

Nor can that be said here, whereby certain persons deceive themselves, that eternal fire is said, not the combustion itself eternal. For by means of the fire, which will be eternal, they think that those shall pass through to whom, on account of dead faith, salvation through fire is promised: namely that the fire itself be eternal; but that the combustion of them, that is, the operation of the fire, not be eternal upon them: whereas the Lord, foreseeing even this, concluded his sentence speaking thus: so shall these go into everlasting combustion: but the just into life everlasting: therefore the combustion will be eternal as the fire.

Thence St. Fulgentius, book De fide ad Petrum cap. 13:

Hold most firmly, he says, and doubt not at all, from the mouth of God the just and eternal Judge, from his everlastingly unchangeable utterance of sentence, that all the wicked shall go into eternal combustion; but the just into life everlasting: that the wicked shall burn forever with the devil: but the just shall reign without end with Christ.

The same is the opinion of the rest of the holy Fathers concerning the perpetuity of the punishments. Thus Irenaeus, book 4. cap. 67:

To whomsoever, he says, the Lord shall say: Depart from me, you cursed, into eternal fire, these shall be damned forever: and to whomsoever he shall say: Come, you blessed of my Father, receive the inheritance of the kingdom, which is prepared for you from eternity, these shall always receive the kingdom, and in it shall advance forever.

— Thus St. Clement of Rome, cited by St. Damascene in the Eclogae, preaches thus the everlasting punishments of impious souls: All souls, he says, are immortal, including those of the impious, for whom it would be better not to be incorruptible. For to be punished with everlasting punishment by unquenchable fire, and not dying, can obtain no end, to their great misery.

St. Hilary expressly expounds the same truth, Canon 5. on Matthew:

Therefore, he says, there shall be no rest for the nations, nor shall rest be given by a shortening of death, as they wish; but corporality shall be destined for them also unto eternity, that the matter of eternal fire may be eternal in them, and everlasting vengeance be exercised upon all unto everlasting ages. If therefore so great a gift of bodily eternity is granted to the Nations for this reason, that they may soon be consigned to the fire of judgment: how profane is it to drive the Saints from the glory of eternity, when the work of eternity is bestowed upon the impious for punishment?

— But that the torments of hell, both in punishing the devil and the demons, and likewise men, will be everlasting, Minutius Felix elegantly testifies in these words:

Nor is there any measure or term of torments. There a wise fire burns and restores the limbs, carves and nourishes them. As the fires of lightnings touch bodies and do not consume them; as the fires of Aetna and of Mount Vesuvius, and of burning places everywhere throughout the world, blaze and are not spent: so that penal conflagration is not fed by the damnation of those burning, but is nourished by the unimpaired laceration of their bodies.

You will say. It does not seem just that for sins however great, committed namely in a small space of time, each one should be condemned to eternal punishment; for the gravity of the chastisement ought to correspond to the gravity of the sins: but the sin was temporal, nay momentary: therefore its punishment ought not to be perpetual.

I deny the major. For, says St. Aug., book 21. De Civitate Dei:

Never has any justice or law decreed that each one be punished with so long a delay of time as the delay of that wherein he offended by which he was to be punished. Eight kinds of punishments, he says, Tullius writes to be in the laws: fine, bonds, stripes, retaliation, ignominy, exile, death, slavery. Which of these is contracted into a brief time according to the swiftness of each one's sin, so that so small a delay is exacted as is found to have been committed, unless perhaps retaliation? for that brings it about that each one suffer what he did. Whence that saying of the law: eye for eye, tooth for tooth. For it can happen that in so brief a time each one loses an eye by the severity of vengeance, as he took away the eye of another by the wickedness of his sin. Further, if the kiss fixed upon another's woman were to be avenged by the lash of reason, shall not he who did it in a point of time be scourged over an incomparable space of hours, and the sweetness of brief pleasure be punished by long-lasting pain? What of bonds? Is each one there to be judged as bound to be held for so long a time, > as long as he acted by which he deserved to be bound, when most justly a slave undergoes years-long penalties in fetters, who by a word or blow passing most swiftly either provoked his master or struck him? Now indeed fine, ignominy, exile, and slavery, since they are for the most part inflicted in such wise that no pardon relaxes them, do they not seem, in the manner of this life, like eternal punishments? For they cannot be eternal precisely because the very life in which one is chastised by them is not extended into eternity; and yet sins which are avenged by punishments of the longest time are committed in the briefest time; nor has anyone existed who judged that the torments of offenders ought to be ended as quickly as homicide, or adultery, or sacrilege, or any other crime whatsoever was done, which is to be measured not by length of time, but by the magnitude of iniquity and impiety. But he who for some great crime is mulcted with death, do the laws reckon his punishment to be the delay with which he is killed, which is very brief: and not that which they take from him forever, removing him from the fellowship of the living. But what it is in this mortal city to take men away by the punishment of the first death, that it is in that immortal city to take men away by the punishment of the second death. For as the laws of this city do not bring it about that anyone killed is recalled into it; so neither in that city, that one condemned by the second death is recalled into eternal life. How then, they say, is true what your Christ says: in what measure you shall mete, in the same shall it be measured to you again, if a temporal sin is punished by eternal chastisement? And they do not attend to the fact that not on account of an equal space of time, but on account of the requital of evil, that is, that he who has done evils should suffer evils, the same measure was spoken of: although this can properly be understood in that matter of which the Lord was speaking when he said this, namely of judgments and condemnations. Accordingly he who judges and condemns unjustly, if he is judged and condemned justly, receives in the same measure, although not that which he gave. For by judgment he acted, by judgment he suffers: although he did by condemnation what is iniquitous, he suffers by condemnation what is just.

— This same truth St. Gregory expressly hands down, book 34. Moral. cap. 16:

But, they say, a fault committed with an end ought not to be punished without end: doubtless almighty God is just, and what was not committed with eternal sin ought not to be punished with eternal torment. To whom we answer, that they would say rightly, if a just and strict judge coming weighed not the hearts of men, but their deeds. For the wicked then sinned with an end, because they lived with an end. For they would have wished to live without end, that they might have been able to remain in iniquities without end; for they desire to sin more than to live, and therefore here they wish always to live, that they may never cease sinning while they live. It pertains therefore to the justice of the strict Judge, that they never lack punishment whose mind in this life never wished to lack sin, and that no term of vengeance be given to the wicked, who as long as he was able would not have a term of crime.

But although these words are understood of damned men alone; nevertheless they can also be fitted to the wretched demons, since as long as they stood in the way they clung to sin so pertinaciously that they would not recoil from it, and would have stood forever in that perverse and rebellious will, had their state of the way been perpetual.

Thence it ought not seem wonderful that the Fathers of the Church most constantly disapproved of that playful fiction of Origen about the ending sometime of the punishments of the damned and the future restoration of all the reprobate. For Origen admitted punishments of sins in the other age only as expiatory and temporary, of which kind are those purgatorial ones which the Catholic Church acknowledges: thus book 3. Periarchon, or De Principiis, cap. 6, expounding that saying of St. Paul, 1. Cor. cap. 15. v. 26: And the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed, thinks the devil to be signified by death, whom he thinks will be so destroyed that his impious will, turned away from God, will be assailed and converted to God himself with religious worship.

Therefore, he says, also the last enemy, that is, the devil, who is called death, is said to be destroyed, that nothing sad may any longer be where death is not, nor anything adverse where there is no enemy. Truly the last enemy is to be understood as destroyed, not so that his substance, which was made by God, perish: but that the purpose and hostile will, which proceeded not from God, but from himself, pass away.

Where, when he says that the will of the demon turned away from God will sometime be converted to him, he sufficiently signifies that they will sometime be happy and endowed with eternal beatitude. — He explains his mind on this matter still more clearly, book 1. cap. 6, where he says:

Now truly if some of those orders which act under the principality of the devil, and obey his malice, can sometime in future ages be converted to goodness, on account of that which is in them, the faculty of free choice. But whether lasting and inveterate malice be converted, as it were by custom, into a kind of nature, do you also prove who readest, whether entirely in those ages which are seen, temporal, or in those which are not seen, and are eternal, this part will altogether differ from that final unity and concord.

Two things chiefly induced Origen into this error, as the Most Illustrious Huetius aptly observes, book 2. Origenianorum, quaest. 11. First indeed a perverse exposition of certain passages of Sacred Scripture. For besides those already mentioned, he thus interprets that saying of Isaiah XXIV, 22: And they shall be shut up there in prison, and after many days shall be visited. And this, Ioan. X. 16: There shall be made one fold and one shepherd, which he himself usurps in support of his dogma at the end of homil. 6. in Num. Likewise that from the parable which Christ proposes, Matth. XVIII. 34.⁴ when the angry Lord commanded the wicked servant to be delivered to the torturers, until he should repay the whole debt. Thence Origen, homil. 35. in Luc.: What is the law of this prison (hell)? I do not go out of it, nor does my exactor allow me to go out, unless I shall have paid every debt. Wrongly reckoned against him was also that saying of the Apostle, Rom. XI, 25. 26: Blindness in part has happened in Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should enter, and so all Israel should be saved. But the expiatory punishments, which I mentioned, and purgatorial ones, he defends with these words from 1. Cor. 12, in which Paul affirms that the work of each one is to be tried by fire. That the Originists are accustomed to use certain other bulwarks of this opinion, Hieronymus hands down at the end of the Commentariorum in Isaiam; namely this saying of Paul, Rom. 11. 32: God concluded all under sin, that he might have mercy on all; and that one, Mich. 7. 9: I will sustain the wrath of the Lord, because I have sinned against him: until he justify my cause, and take away my judgment, and bring me out into light; and this also, Isaiae 12. 1: I will bless thee, O Lord, because thou wast angry with me: thou hast turned away thy face from me, and hast had mercy on me. And likewise this, Oseae 14. 5.: When the wrath of my fury shall have passed over, I will heal again; and equally that, Ps. 30. 20: How great is the multitude of thy sweetness, O Lord, which thou hast hidden for them that fear thee! — The second cause of this error Huetius uncovers and opens in the same place, namely the rather vehement zeal of Origen for the dogmas of the Platonists. For Plato judged in the Phaedo that the dead are led down to the lower world by that demon which had fallen to their lot while living, and then after a long space of time are called back thence by another guide. He repeats the same thing in the Gorgias and book 10. De Republica, and in the Timaeus, where he asserts that the soul which has conducted itself rightly here is enrolled in the number of a star; but that the soul which has behaved badly is sent into a female body; and that to both, after a course of a thousand years, the option of a new life is given; and that the soul which has contaminated itself with new vices is banished into the bodies of beasts. Therefore it ought not seem wonderful that Origen, more devoted than was fitting to the doctrine of Plato, drew this error from him.

But that erroneous opinion of Origen the holy Fathers condemned, above all St. Epiphanius in epist. ad Ioannem Hierosolymitanum, cap. 3. and book 2. Panarii, c. 18. Theophilus also reproaches it, Oratione 2. De Paschate, in these words: Such a shepherd of a sick flock everywhere brands Christ with injuries, and raises the devil with honor, while he asserts that he, purged of vices and sins, will sometime receive his pristine glory: and that this one (Christ) will cease to reign, and at the same time with the devil is to be reduced under the command of the Father. St. Hieronymus also sharply rebukes it in many places, especially epist. ad Pamachium, c. 3., and ad Oceanum, c. 2., where he says that Origen held that after many ages, and with one restoration of all, Gabriel will be the same as the devil; Paul, the same as Caiphas; virgins, the same as prostitutes. See also epist. 75. ad Vigilantium, and book 1. adversus Pelagianos, c. 9. and also in the Commentaries on cap. 14. and 27. Isaiae, and on 3. Danielis, but especially on 3. Ionae, where most sharply against this doctrine he inveighs thus:

Otherwise, if all rational creatures are equals, and are raised upward or sunk downward by their own free choice, whether from virtues or from vices, and after a long circuit and in infinite ages there shall be a restoration of all things, and one dignity of those who have fought; what distance will there be between the Virgin and the prostitute? what difference between the Mother of the Lord, and (which is a crime even to say) the victims of public lusts? Will Gabriel and the devil be the same? Will the apostles and the demons be the same? Will the prophets and the pseudoprophets be the same? Will the martyrs and the persecutors be the same? Suppose anything you like, double the years and times, and heap up infinite ages of torments: if the end of all is alike, everything past is as nothing, because we seek not what we once were, but what we are always to be.

— St. Augustine also must be heard declaiming vehemently against the same error, book 21.⁵ De Civitate Dei cap. 17. et 23. where, examining the same dogma, he writes that on its account it was deservedly rejected by the Church; whence, in the book De haeresibus, num. 43, whereas he had written that certain other commentaries of Origen could somehow be defended, he confesses that this one, with which we are dealing, is excused in vain by its defenders. For what Catholic Christian, he says, whether learned or unlearned, does not violently shudder at that purification of evils of which he speaks, that is, that even those who finished this life in crimes and villainies, and sacrileges and impieties however great; and finally the devil himself and his angels, although after very long times, all who have been freed, should again relapse and return into these evils, and alternating these vicissitudes, rational creatures have always been, and will always be, in beatitudes and miseries? Concerning which most vain impiety against the Philosophers, from whom Origen learned these things, disputation is carried on most diligently in the book De Civitate Dei. — To these must be added Justinianus, Epist. ad Menam. The 5. Synodus, as Photius relates in the little book de synodis; Gregorius Magnus, book 34. Moral. c. 29. secundum cap. primi Regum, where at length he convicts this delirium of the Originists. I pass over the other more recent ecclesiastical writers who assail the same fiction.