Chapter 13.—Against the Opinion of Those Who Think that the Punishments of the Wicked After Death are Purgatorial.

The Platonists, indeed, while they maintain that no sins are unpunished, suppose that all punishment is administered for remedial purposes,1492    Plato’s own theory was that punishment had a twofold purpose, to reform and to deter.  “No one punishes an offender on account of the past offense, and simply because he has done wrong, but for the sake of the future, that the offense may not be again committed, either by the same person or by any one who has seen him punished.”—See the Protagoras, 324, b, and Grote’s Plato, ii. 41. be it inflicted by human or divine law, in this life or after death; for a man may be scathless here, or, though punished, may yet not amend.  Hence that passage of Virgil, where, when he had said of our earthly bodies and mortal members, that our souls derive—

“Hence wild desires and grovelling fears,

And human laughter, human tears;

Immured in dungeon-seeming night,

They look abroad, yet see no light,”

goes on to say:

“Nay, when at last the life has fled,

And left the body cold and dead,

Ee’n then there passes not away

The painful heritage of clay;

Full many a long-contracted stain

Perforce must linger deep in grain.

So penal sufferings they endure

For ancient crime, to make them pure;

Some hang aloft in open view,

For winds to pierce them through and through,

While others purge their guilt deep-dyed

In burning fire or whelming tide.”1493    Æneid, vi. 733.

They who are of this opinion would have all punishments after death to be purgatorial; and as the elements of air, fire, and water are superior to earth, one or other of these may be the instrument of expiating and purging away the stain contracted by the contagion of earth.  So Virgil hints at the air in the words, “Some hang aloft for winds to pierce;” at the water in “whelming tide;” and at fire in the expression “in burning fire.”  For our part, we recognize that even in this life some punishments are purgatorial,—not, indeed, to those whose life is none the better, but rather the worse for them, but to those who are constrained by them to amend their life.  All other punishments, whether temporal or eternal, inflicted as they are on every one by divine providence, are sent either on account of past sins, or of sins presently allowed in the life, or to exercise and reveal a man’s graces.  They may be inflicted by the instrumentality of bad men and angels as well as of the good.  For even if any one suffers some hurt through another’s wickedness or mistake, the man indeed sins whose ignorance or injustice does the harm; but God, who by His just though hidden judgment permits it to be done, sins not.  But temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment.  But of those who suffer temporary punishments after death, all are not doomed to those everlasting pains which are to follow that judgment; for to some, as we have already said, what is not remitted in this world is remitted in the next, that is, they are not punished with the eternal punishment of the world to come.

CAPUT XIII. Contra opinionem eorum qui putant criminosis supplicia post mortem causa purgationis adhiberi.

Platonici quidem, quamvis impunita nulla velint esse peccata, tamen omnes poenas emendationi adhiberi putant, vel humanis inflictas legibus, vel divinis, sive in hac vita, sive post mortem, si aut parcatur hic cuique, aut ita plectatur ut hic non corrigatur. Hinc est Maronis illa sententia, ubi cum dixisset de terrenis corporibus moribundisque membris, quod animae Hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent gaudentque, nec auras Suspiciunt, clausae tenebris et carcere caeco;secutus adjunxit, atque ait: Quin et supremo cum lumine vita reliquit;id est, cum die novissimo reliquit eas ista vita. Non tamen (inquit) omne malum miseris, nec funditus omnes Corporeae excedunt pestes, penitusque necesse est Multa diu concreta modis inolescere miris. Ergo exercentur poenis, veterumque malorum Supplicia expendunt: aliae panduntur inanes Suspensae ad ventos, aliis sub gurgite vasto Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni. (Aeneid. lib. 6, v. 733-742.)Qui hoc opinantur, nullas poenas nisi purgatorias volunt esse post mortem, ut quoniam terris superiora sunt elementa, aqua, aer, ignis, ex aliquo istorum mundetur per expiatorias poenas, quod terrena contagione contractum est. Aer quippe accipitur in eo quod ait, Suspensae ad ventos: aqua in eo quod ait, Sub gurgite vasto: ignis autem suo nomine expressus est, cum dixit, Aut exuritur igni. Nos vero etiam in hac quidem mortali vita esse quasdam poenas purgatorias confitemur, non quibus affliguntur quorum vita 0728 vel non inde fit melior, vel potius inde fit pejor; sed illis sunt purgatoriae, qui eis coerciti corriguntur. Caeterae omnes poenae, sive temporariae, sive sempiternae, sicut unusquisque divina providentia tractandus est, inferuntur, vel pro peccatis sive praeteritis, sive in quibus adhuc vivit ille qui plectitur, vel pro exercendis declarandisque virtutibus, per homines et angelos, seu bonos seu malos. Nam etsi quisquam mali aliquid alterius improbitate vel errore patiatur, peccat quidem homo, qui vel ignorantia, vel injustitia cuiquam mali aliquid facit: sed non peccat Deus, qui justo, quamvis occulto, judicio fieri sinit. Sed temporarias poenas alii in hac vita tantum, alii post mortem, alii et nunc et tunc, verumtamen ante judicium illud severissimum novissimumque patiuntur. Non autem omnes veniunt in sempiternas poenas, quae post illud judicium sunt futurae , qui post mortem sustinent temporales. Nam quibusdam, quod in isto non remittitur, remitti in futuro saeculo (Matth. XII, 32), id est, ne futuri saeculi aeterno supplicio puniantur, jam supra diximus.