And why is this so, except that he who, while he was in the body, was not transferred to Christ, is already reckoned in the devil's portion? The same cause, therefore, by which prayer is not then made for the men who are to be punished in eternal fire, is the cause by which neither now nor then is prayer made for the wicked angels; which is likewise the cause why—although prayer is made for men—yet not even now is prayer made for unbelieving and ungodly departed ones. For prayer is heard for certain of the departed, whether that of the Church herself or of certain pious persons, but for those whose life lived in the body, after they were regenerated in Christ, was not so evil as to be judged unworthy of such mercy, nor so good as to be found not to need such mercy;
just as also, after the resurrection of the dead has taken place, there will not be lacking those to whom, after the punishments which the spirits of the dead suffer, mercy will be imparted, so that they are not cast into the eternal fire. For it would not be truly said of certain ones that it shall not be forgiven them either in this world or in the world to come, unless there were those to whom, though not in this world, yet in the world to come it is forgiven. But when it shall have been said by the Judge of the living and the dead: 'Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,' and to the others on the contrary: 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels,' and these shall have gone into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life:
it is of excessive presumption to say of any of those whom God has said shall go into eternal punishment that there shall be no eternal punishment for them, and, through the persuasion of this presumption, to bring it about that even of eternal life itself one either despairs or doubts. Let no one, therefore, so understand the Psalmist who sings: 'Will God forget to be merciful, or will He in His anger shut up His mercies?'—so as to suppose that the sentence of God is true concerning good men but false concerning the wicked, or true concerning good men and evil angels but false concerning wicked men. For this which the Psalm says pertains to the vessels of mercy and to the sons of promise, of whom even the prophet himself was one, who, when he had said:
'Will God forget to be merciful, or will He in His anger shut up His mercies?'—he immediately added: 'And I said: Now I have begun; this is the change of the right hand of the Most High.' He has indeed explained what he had said: 'Will He in His anger shut up His mercies?' For this mortal life too is the anger of God, wherein man has been made like to vanity: his days pass away like a shadow. Yet in this anger God does not forget to be merciful, making His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and sending rain upon the just and the unjust; and so He does not in His anger shut up His mercies; and most of all in that which this Psalm expressed by saying:
'Now I have begun; this is the change of the right hand of the Most High,' since in this very most wretched life, which is the anger of God, He changes the vessels of mercy for the better, although in the misery of this corruption His anger still remains, because not even in His very anger does He shut up His mercies. Since, then, the truth of that divine song is fulfilled in this way, there is no need to understand it also of that place where those who do not belong to the City of God will be punished with everlasting punishment. But let those who are pleased to extend this sentence even as far as the torments of the ungodly understand it at least thus:
that, while the anger of God remains upon them—the anger which is foretold in eternal punishment—God does not in this anger of His shut up His mercies, and causes them to be tormented not with so great a severity of punishment as they deserve; not that they either never undergo those punishments or at some time end them, but that they suffer them milder and lighter than their deserts. For thus both the anger of God will remain, and in that very anger of His He will not shut up His mercies. This indeed I do not affirm on the ground that I do not resist it. But as for those who think it was said by way of threat rather than of truth: 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire,' and: 'These shall go into eternal punishment,' and: 'They shall be tormented for ever and ever,' and:
'Their worm shall not die, and the fire shall not be quenched,' and other things of this kind—it is not so much I as the divine Scripture itself that most plainly and most fully refutes and confutes them. The Ninevites, indeed, did penance in this life, and therefore fruitfully, sowing as it were in this field, in which God willed that there should be sowing with tears, that afterward there might be reaping with joy; and yet who will deny that what the Lord foretold concerning them was fulfilled, unless he too little observes in what manner God overthrows sinners, not only in anger but also in mercy? For sinners are overthrown in two ways: either as the Sodomites, that the men themselves are punished for their sins, or as the Ninevites, that the sins of the men themselves are destroyed by repentance.
Therefore that came to pass which God foretold: Nineveh, which was evil, was overthrown, and a good Nineveh, which did not exist, was built up. For while the walls and houses stood, the city was overthrown in its lost morals. And thus, although the prophet was saddened because that did not happen which those men feared would come, as he prophesied, nevertheless that came to pass which had been foretold by God's foreknowledge, since He who foretold it knew in what manner it was to be fulfilled for the better. But that these perversely merciful ones may know to what that pertains which is written: 'How great is the multitude of Your sweetness, O Lord, which You have hidden from them that fear You!'—let them read what follows: 'But You have perfected it for them that hope in You.'
What is 'You have hidden it from them that fear, You have perfected it for them that hope,' except that for those who, out of fear of punishments, wish to establish their own righteousness which is in the law, the righteousness of God is not sweet, because they do not know it? For they have not tasted it. For they hope in themselves, not in Him, and therefore the multitude of God's sweetness is hidden from them; since they do indeed fear God, but with that servile fear which is not in love, because perfect love casts out fear. Therefore for them that hope in Him He perfects His sweetness, by inspiring in them His love, so that, with a chaste fear—not the kind which love casts out, but that which remains for ever and ever—when they glory, they may glory in the Lord.
For the righteousness of God is Christ, who, as the Apostle says, was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, so that, as it is written, he that glories may glory in the Lord. This righteousness of God, which grace bestows without merits, those do not know who wish to establish their own righteousness, and therefore they are not subject to the righteousness of God, which is Christ. In this righteousness is the great multitude of God's sweetness, on account of which it is said in the Psalm: 'Taste and see how sweet the Lord is.' And tasting this indeed in this pilgrimage, not taking it to satiety, we rather hunger and thirst for it, that afterward we may be filled with it, when we shall see Him as He is, and that shall be fulfilled which is written:
'I shall be satisfied, when Your glory shall be made manifest.' Thus Christ perfects the great multitude of His sweetness for them that hope in Him. But further, if God hides from them that fear Him that sweetness of His which they imagine—the sweetness by which He will not condemn the ungodly—so that, not knowing this and fearing to be condemned, they may live rightly and so may be such as pray for those who do not live rightly: how does He perfect it for them that hope in Him, when, as they dream, by this sweetness He will not condemn those who do not hope in Him? Let that sweetness of His therefore be sought which He perfects for them that hope in Him, not that which He is supposed to perfect for those who despise and blaspheme Him.
In vain, therefore, does a man seek after this body for that which he neglected to procure for himself in this body. That apostolic saying too: 'For God has shut up all in unbelief, that He may have mercy upon all,' was not said on the ground that He will condemn no one; but from what precedes it appears whence it was said. For when the Apostle was speaking to the Gentiles—to whom indeed, as already believers, he was writing his epistles—concerning the Jews who would afterward believe, he said: 'For as you also at one time did not believe God, but now have obtained mercy through their unbelief, so these also have now not believed in your mercy, that they too may obtain mercy.' Then he added that whereby these men flatter themselves in their error, and said:
'For God has shut up all in unbelief, that He may have mercy upon all.' What 'all,' except those of whom he was speaking, as though saying: 'Both you and them'? God, therefore, has shut up all—both Gentiles and Jews, whom He foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son—in unbelief, so that, confounded by repenting of the bitterness of their unbelief and converted by believing to the sweetness of God's mercy, they might cry out that word in the Psalm: 'How great is the multitude of Your sweetness, O Lord, which You have hidden from them that fear You; but You have perfected it for them that hope, not in themselves, but in You!' He has mercy, therefore, upon all the vessels of mercy. What is 'all'?
Namely both those whom He predestined, called, justified, glorified from among the Gentiles, and those from among the Jews—He will condemn none of these 'all,' not of all men, but of all these. CHAPTER XXV. Whether those who have been baptized among heretics and afterward have been made worse by living wickedly, or those who, born anew among Catholics, have passed over to heresies or schisms, or those who, not departing from the Catholics among whom they were born anew, have persisted in living criminally, can hope, by the privilege of the sacraments, for remission of eternal punishment.
But now let us also answer those who promise deliverance from the eternal fire, not, like these, to the devil and his angels, nor even to all men whatsoever, but only to those who have been washed in the baptism of Christ and made partakers of His body and blood, in whatever way they have lived, in whatever heresy or impiety they have been. But the Apostle contradicts them, saying: 'Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, the service of idols, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, as I have foretold, that they who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God.'
Surely this apostolic sentence is false, if such men, after however long a time, shall be delivered and possess the kingdom of God. But since it is not false, surely they shall not possess the kingdom of God. And if they shall never be in possession of the kingdom of God, they shall be held in eternal punishment; since there is no middle place where he is not in punishment who has not been set in the kingdom. Wherefore, as to what the Lord Jesus said: 'This is the bread that came down from heaven, that, if anyone eat of it, he may not die. I am the living bread, who came down from heaven; if anyone eat of this bread, he shall live for ever,' how this is to be understood is rightly inquired.
And from these indeed, to whom we are now answering, this interpretation is taken away by those to whom we must answer next; and these are those who promise this deliverance not to all who have the sacrament of baptism and of the body of Christ, but only to Catholics, however wickedly living, because, they say, they ate the body of Christ not by the sacrament alone, but by the thing itself, being namely set within His very body, of which body the Apostle says: 'We who are many are one bread, one body.' He, therefore, who is in the unity of His body—that is, in the structure of the members of Christians, the sacrament of whose body the faithful, communicating, are accustomed to receive from the altar—he is truly to be said to eat the body of Christ and to drink the blood of Christ.
And on this account heretics and schismatics, separated from the unity of this body, can receive the same sacrament, but not to their own profit—nay rather even to their harm, whereby they are judged more grievously than that they should be more tardily delivered. For they are not in that bond of peace which is expressed by that sacrament. But again, even these, who rightly understand that he is not to be said to eat the body of Christ who is not in the body of Christ, do not rightly promise to those who slip away from the unity of that body into either heresy or even the superstition of the Gentiles, deliverance at some time from the punishment of eternal fire; first,
because they ought to consider how intolerable and too far astray from sound doctrine it is, that many—indeed almost all—who, going out from the Catholic Church, have founded impious heresies and become heresiarchs, should have a better case than those who were never Catholics when they fell into their snares, if this is what makes those heresiarchs to be delivered from everlasting punishment: that they were baptized in the Catholic Church and first received the sacrament of the body of Christ in the true body of Christ; whereas surely a deserter of the faith, and one who from a deserter has been made an assailant of it, is worse than he who has not deserted what he never held;
next, because the Apostle meets these too, uttering the same words, and after enumerating those works of the flesh, foretelling with the same truth: 'For they who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God.' Hence not even those ought to be secure in their lost and damnable ways who indeed persevere to the end as it were in the communion of the Catholic Church, looking to what was said: 'He that shall persevere to the end, the same shall be saved'—and yet, through the iniquity of their life, desert the very righteousness of life, which is Christ to them, whether by fornicating, or by perpetrating in their own body other uncleannesses of disgraceful deeds which the Apostle would not even express, or by dissolving in the foulness of luxury, or by doing some other of those things of which he says:
'For they who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God'; and on this account, whoever do such things will be nowhere but in everlasting punishment, since they cannot be in the kingdom of God. For by persevering in these things to the end of this life they are by no means to be said to have persevered in Christ to the end, because to persevere in Christ is to persevere in His faith; which faith, as the same Apostle defines it, works through love; and love, as he himself says elsewhere, works no evil. Neither, therefore, are these to be said to eat the body of Christ, since they are not even to be reckoned among the members of Christ. For, to pass over other things, they cannot be at once both members of Christ and members of a harlot. Finally He Himself says:
'He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.' He showed what it is to eat the body of Christ and drink His blood not merely as a sacrament, but in very truth; for this is to abide in Christ, so that Christ also may abide in him. For He said this as though He said: 'He who does not abide in me, and in whom I do not abide, let him not say or think that he eats my body or drinks my blood.' Those, therefore, do not abide in Christ who are not His members. But they are not members of Christ who make themselves members of a harlot, unless they have ceased to be that evil by repenting and have returned to this good by reconciliation. CHAPTER XXVI.
What it is to have Christ in the foundation, and to whom salvation is promised as though by the burning of fire. But, they say, Catholic Christians have Christ in the foundation, from whose unity they have not departed, even though upon this foundation they have built up however wicked a life, as it were wood, hay, stubble; therefore the right faith, through which Christ is the foundation, although with loss—since those things which were built upon it shall be burned—will nevertheless be able at some time to save them from the everlastingness of that fire. Let the Apostle James briefly answer them: 'If anyone say that he has faith, but have not works, can faith save him?' And who is he, they say, of whom the Apostle Paul speaks:
'But he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire'? Let us at the same time inquire who this is; yet it is most certain that this is not he, lest we set the sentences of two apostles at strife, if one says: 'Even if a man have evil works, faith will save him by fire,' but the other: 'If he have not works, can faith save him?' We shall therefore find who can be saved by fire, if first we have found what it is to have Christ in the foundation. And that we may attend to this as quickly as possible from the very similitude: in a building nothing is set before the foundation; whosoever, therefore, so has Christ in his heart that he sets before Him nothing earthly and temporal, not even those things which are lawful and permitted, has Christ for his foundation:
but if he does set them before Him, even though he may seem to have the faith of Christ, yet Christ is not the foundation in him for one to whom such things are preferred: how much more, if, despising the precepts of salvation, he commits unlawful things, is he convicted not of having set Christ before, but of having set Him behind—Him whom he disregarded as commanding or permitting, while against His commands or permissions he chose to fulfill his lust through disgraceful deeds! If, therefore, any Christian loves a harlot and, cleaving to her, is made one body with her, he now does not have Christ in the foundation. But if anyone loves his wife, if according to Christ, who would doubt that Christ is in the foundation for him?
But if according to this world, if carnally, if in the disease of concupiscences, like the Gentiles also who know not God, this too the Apostle—nay, through the Apostle Christ—concedes by way of indulgence. Such a one too, therefore, can have Christ in the foundation. For if he set nothing of such affection and pleasure before Him, although he build up wood, hay, stubble, Christ is the foundation, and on this account he shall be saved by fire. For the fire of tribulation will burn away delights of this kind and earthly loves, not damnable for the sake of the conjugal bond; to which fire pertain both bereavements and whatever calamities take these things away.
And on this account, to him who has built, that building will be hurtful, because he will not have what he built upon it, and he will be tormented at the loss of those things in the enjoyment of which he certainly rejoiced; but through this fire he shall be saved by the merit of the foundation, because, even if it were proposed by a persecutor whether he would rather have that or Christ, that would not be preferred to Christ. See, in the words of the Apostle, the man building upon the foundation gold, silver, precious stones: 'He who is without a wife,' he says, 'thinks of the things of God, how he may please God.' See another building wood, hay, stubble: 'But he who is joined in matrimony,' he says, 'thinks of the things of the world, how he may please his wife. The work of each shall be made manifest;'
'for the day shall declare it' (the day, namely, of tribulation), 'since it shall be revealed in fire,' he says. He calls this same tribulation 'fire,' as elsewhere it is read: 'The furnace tries the vessels of the potter, and the trial of tribulation just men.' 'And the fire shall test of what sort the work of each is. If any man's work shall remain' (for that remains which a man thinks of, the things of God, how he may please God), 'he shall receive a reward for what he built up' (that is, from what he thought of, this he shall take); 'but if any man's work shall burn, he shall suffer loss' (since he shall not have what he had loved), 'yet he himself shall be saved' (because no tribulation has removed him from the stability of that foundation);
'yet so as by fire' (for what he held not without an alluring love, he loses not without a burning grief). Behold, as far as it seems to me, a fire has been found which condemns none of them, but enriches the one, damnifies the other, and tests both. But if we should choose to understand that fire as in this place—the fire of which the Lord shall say to those on the left: 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire'—so that among them too these are believed to be, who build upon the foundation wood, hay, stubble, and the merit of the good foundation delivers them out of that fire after a time imparted for their evil deserts: what shall we think of those on the right, to whom it shall be said:
'Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you,' except that they are those who have built upon the foundation gold, silver, precious stones? But if that fire, of which it was said, 'yet so as by fire,' is to be understood in this manner, both must be sent into it, namely both the right and the left. For by that fire both are to be tested, of which it was said: 'For the day shall declare it, since it shall be revealed in fire, and the fire shall test of what sort the work of each is.' If, then, the fire shall test both, so that, if any man's work shall remain—that is, shall not have been consumed by the fire—he may receive a reward for what he built up; but if any man's work shall burn, he may suffer loss: surely that fire is not the eternal one.
For into that fire only those on the left shall be sent, in the final and everlasting damnation; but He approves those on the right. Yet some of them He approves in such a way that He does not burn up or consume the building they have raised upon Christ as their foundation; others He approves in another way, namely, so that what they have built upon it is burned and they suffer loss thereby, yet are saved, because they have held with surpassing love to Christ, firmly set as their foundation. But if they shall be saved, surely they shall also stand at the right hand and hear with the rest: 'Come, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you'; not at the left hand, where those shall be who shall not be saved, and therefore shall hear: 'Depart from me, you accursed, into eternal fire.'
For no one shall be saved by that fire, since all those shall go into eternal punishment, where their worm dies not and the fire is not quenched, by which they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. After the death of this body, however, until that day comes which, after the resurrection of bodies, shall be the last day of damnation and of reward, if it is said that during this interval of time the spirits of the departed undergo a fire of such a kind that those do not feel it who did not have, in the life of this body, such manners and loves that their wood, hay, and stubble should be consumed,
while others do feel it, namely those who carried such buildings with them—whether only there, or both here and there; or here in such a way as not to feel there the worldly things which, though damnable, are yet pardonable—if they find a fire of passing tribulation that consumes them: I do not refute this, for perhaps it is true. For even the very death of the flesh, which was conceived from the commission of the first sin, may belong to this tribulation, so that the time which follows it is felt by each one according to his building. Persecutions also, by which the martyrs were crowned and which all Christians whatsoever endure, prove both kinds of building like fire, and consume some of them together with their builders, if they do not find Christ as their foundation in them;
others without their builders. If it finds Christ, then, though with loss, the builders themselves shall be saved; but other buildings it does not consume, because it finds them to be such as endure for ever. There shall also be at the end of the world a tribulation in the time of Antichrist, such as never was before. How many buildings shall there be then, whether of gold or of hay, upon that best foundation, which is Christ Jesus, so that that fire may test both kinds, and from some bring joy, from others inflict loss, yet destroy neither sort of those in whom it shall find these things, because of the stable foundation!
But whoever—I do not say a wife, by carnal union with whom one uses carnal pleasure, but the very names of devotion which are foreign to such delights—whoever, by loving carnally after the manner of men, sets them before Christ, does not have Him in his foundation, and therefore shall not be saved through fire, but shall not be saved at all, because he cannot be with the Saviour, who, speaking most plainly of this matter, says: 'He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter above me is not worthy of me.' But he who loves these bonds carnally in such a way that he nevertheless does not prefer them to Christ the Lord, and would rather
do without them than without Christ, should he be brought to such a critical point of temptation, shall be saved through fire, because the loss of them must necessarily burn him with grief in proportion as love had clung to them. Furthermore, whoever loves father, mother, sons, daughters according to Christ, so that he counsels them to obtain His kingdom and to cleave to Him, or loves in them this very thing, that they are members of Christ—far be it that such a love should be found among the wood, hay, and stubble to be consumed; rather it shall be reckoned to the building of gold, silver, and precious stones. And how can he love them more than Christ, whom he loves wholly for Christ's sake? CHAPTER XXVII. Against the persuasion of those who think that the sins in which they remained while giving alms will not harm them.
It remains to answer those who say that only those shall burn in eternal fire who neglect to perform worthy almsgiving for their sins, on account of that which the apostle James says: 'But judgment without mercy to him who has not shown mercy.' He, therefore, they say, who has shown mercy, though he has not corrected his ruined manners, but has lived wickedly and basely amid his very almsgiving, shall have judgment with mercy, so that either he is not condemned at all, or after some time he is freed from the final damnation. And for no other reason do they suppose that Christ shall make the distinction between those on the right and those on the left solely from the love or neglect of almsgiving, sending some of them into the kingdom, others into eternal punishment.