The City of God: Book 21

Now that, with the help of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, "the Judge of the living and the dead," we have traced both cities (the city of God and the city of the devil) through to their intended ends, we must proceed in this book, with God's help, to describe the punishment awaiting the devil and all his followers. I have chosen to address this before turning to the glories of the blessed, because both the wicked and the righteous will receive their sentences in body and soul alike. It may seem harder to believe that an earthly body could endure forever in eternal torment without being destroyed than that it could exist forever in everlasting happiness without pain. So by demonstrating that the first is possible, I hope to make the second easier to accept. Nor does this approach lack precedent in Scripture itself, which sometimes places the blessedness of the saints first, as here: "They that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of condemnation"; and sometimes places it afterward, as here: "The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth: then shall the just shine like the sun, in the kingdom of the Father"; and again: "And these shall go into everlasting pain; but the righteous into life eternal." Anyone who looks carefully through the prophets will find this same ordering observed frequently. It would take too long to cite every instance; I have already explained my reason for following it here.

What, then, can I say to unbelievers to prove that a living body of flesh can endure forever without dissolving, resisting both death and the force of eternal fire? They refuse to accept this on the basis of God's power alone, and demand that we demonstrate it through some concrete example. If we point out that some creatures are corruptible (because they are mortal) and yet live untouched in the midst of fire, and that there are certain worms that live unharmed in the scalding springs of hot baths, where the heat is sometimes so intense that no human being can bear it, and yet these worms thrive so completely in that environment that they cannot survive without it: either our critics refuse to believe this unless they see it for themselves, or if they do see it, or hear it confirmed by reliable authority, they dismiss it as insufficient evidence for the question at hand, on the grounds that these creatures are not eternal, and that the heat serves as the means of their growth and nourishment rather than their torment. As though it were not far more incredible that fire should nourish anything at all rather than consume it. It is remarkable that something can be tormented by fire and yet survive; but it is even more remarkable to live within fire and feel no torment at all. If the latter is credible, why should the former not be as well?

Yet they say this: no body can suffer eternally without eventually perishing. But how can we be sure of that? Who can say whether the devils suffer in their bodies, when, as even our opponents admit, those devils are in extreme torment? If they respond that no earthly, visible body, no flesh, can suffer forever without dying, they are simply grounding their argument on sense and appearance alone. These men know only mortal flesh, and what they have never known or seen, they declare impossible. And what a strange argument it is, to treat pain as proof of death, when pain is actually evidence of life. Our question is whether something living can endure eternal pain and still go on living; yet we know for certain that nothing can feel pain at all unless it is alive, since pain is inseparably bound to life wherever it exists. Whatever is in pain must therefore be alive, yet there is no necessity that any particular pain should kill it, since not every pain destroys every body that eventually perishes. Some pain must indeed cause death, because the soul and body are so closely joined that they cannot part without great torment; the soul yields to that torment, and the mortal frame of man, too weak to withstand such violence, is torn apart. But afterward, soul and body will be rejoined in such a way that neither time nor torment will ever be able to separate them again. So while our flesh as it now exists cannot endure the greatest pain without dying, it will then be of an entirely different nature, just as death itself will then be of a different nature. For that death will be eternal, and the soul that suffers it will neither be able to live, having lost God who is her only life, nor to escape torment, having lost all means of dying. The first death drives the soul from the body against her will; the second holds her in the body against her will. Yet both agree in this: they force the soul to suffer in the body against her will. Our opponents will grant that no flesh as it now exists can endure the greatest pain without perishing; but they fail to notice that there is something above the body, called a soul, that rules and guides it, and this soul can suffer all torment and yet remain forever. Here, then, is something capable of sorrow and yet eternal. The power that now belongs to the souls of all people will then belong to the bodies of the damned. And if we think carefully about it, the pains of the body are really referred to the soul in any case. It is the soul, not the body, that feels the injury inflicted on any part of the body.

So we call them living, sensitive bodies even though all life and sensation comes from the soul; in the same way, we say they are bodies that feel pain, even though the pain exists only in the soul. When the body is hurt, then, the soul suffers along with it. When the mind is troubled by some inward distress, the soul suffers alone, even while it remains in the body. Moreover, the soul can suffer even when it is separated from the body, as the soul of the rich glutton did in hell, when he said, "I am tormented in this flame." But a body without a soul feels no pain, and a body that has a soul does not feel pain apart from the soul. If it were reasonable, therefore, to draw an argument about death from the capacity to feel pain, as if to say, "he can feel pain, therefore he can die," this would more logically point to the soul's mortality, since the soul is the one that actually does the feeling.

But this reasoning is absurd and false, so how can it follow that bodies in pain must therefore be subject to death? Some Platonists held that those parts of the soul where fear, joy, and grief resided were mortal and perished with the body. Virgil expressed this when he wrote, "Hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent, gaudent" (from these mortal parts of the soul came fear, hope, joy, and grief). Yet we demonstrated in our fourteenth book that even after their souls were purified to the uttermost, a desire remained in them to return to their bodies, and where desire exists, grief may follow. When hope is frustrated and misses its mark, it turns into grief and anguish. If, then, the soul that suffers pain is nonetheless immortal in some sense, it does not follow that a body must perish simply because it is in pain. Finally, if the body can cause the soul's grief without killing it, this plainly shows that pain does not necessarily lead to death. Why, then, is it any less credible that fire should torment those bodies without destroying them, than that the body should cause the soul's anguish without causing its death? Pain, therefore, is no sufficient argument to prove that death must inevitably follow.

If the salamander truly lives in fire (as the most careful naturalists report), and if certain famous hills in Sicily have burned continuously since before recorded memory while remaining whole and unconsumed, then we have sufficient proof that not everything fire burns is destroyed by it, just as the soul proves that not everything that suffers pain must perish. Why, then, should we need further examples to establish that the human soul and body can endure forever in fire and torment without dying or dissolving? The same God who gave nature so many remarkable and varied qualities will, in that final state, give the flesh a quality that allows it to endure pain and burning without end. Who but He made the flesh of a dead peacock remain perpetually sweet and free from decay? I once thought this impossible, and then by chance, while dining in Carthage, a boiled peacock was served at the table. To test the claim, I took some of the meat from the breast and had it set aside. After a period long enough for any ordinary flesh to rot, I called for it, smelled it, and found no foul odor whatsoever. I put it away again, and thirty days later I checked once more: it was exactly as I had left it. I did the same a full year afterward and found no change, except that it had grown somewhat drier and firmer. Who gave chaff such cold that it keeps snow from melting inside it, and yet such heat that it can ripen green apples? Who gave fire that remarkable power to blacken everything it burns, though fire itself is so bright, turning a glowing brand into a black coal? And yet fire does not always work this way. It will burn stones until they turn white, and though the fire is red and the stones pale, that whiteness harmonizes with light just as black harmonizes with darkness. So fire, burning wood to bake stone, produces opposite effects on materials that are not themselves opposites. Stone and wood are different from each other, but not contrary; white and black, however, are true contraries. Fire produces one of these colors on the stone and the other on the wood, whitening the first and darkening the second, though it cannot achieve the first effect except by means of the second.

What strange properties coal possesses. It is so brittle that a single blow reduces it to powder, yet so durable that no moisture corrupts it and no passage of time wears it away. For this reason, people have long placed coals beneath boundary markers and property stones, so that anyone who later disputes the location of a boundary can be proven wrong. What is it that makes coal last so long in the earth, when wood would easily rot there? The answer is that same fire which corrupts everything else. Then consider lime: not only is it whitened by fire, but it carries fire within itself, as though it absorbed the fire and holds it secretly, invisible to all our senses and unknown to us except through experience. This is why we call it quicklime, the invisible fire serving as the soul of that visible body. But the real wonder is that when it is killed, it is brought to life. To draw the fire out of it, we pour water on it, and though the lime was cold before, the water inflames it, even though water cools everything else no matter how hot. The lump, dying as it were, releases the fire it held within, and afterwards remains cold no matter how much water you add. At that point we no longer call it quicklime but quenched lime. Could anything be stranger? Yes, actually: if you pour oil on it instead of water, though oil normally feeds fire, the lime will not change at all but remain cold. Had we heard all this about some stone from India that we had never seen and could not obtain to test for ourselves, we would surely have dismissed it as an outright lie or an impossible wonder.

But things we encounter every day lose their wonder through sheer familiarity, so much so that we've stopped marveling at things that only India, the farthest continent in the world, has brought to our attention. The diamond is common among us, especially among jewelers and gem-cutters: it is so hard that neither fire, stone, nor steel can make a dent in it, yet the blood of a goat can. But do you think anyone marvels at this hardness the way the person who first discovered it did? Those who don't know about it may not believe it, or if they do believe it and then see it for themselves, they may admire it as a rare work of nature. But daily familiarity always dulls the edge of wonder. We know that the lodestone draws iron in a remarkable way, and I can say that when I first observed this, it left me genuinely astonished. I watched the stone lift an iron ring, and then, as if it had passed its own power into the ring, that ring lifted another and held it suspended, just as the ring itself hung from the stone. A third ring followed from the second, a fourth from the third, and so on, until there hung what looked like a chain of rings connected only by contact with one another, with no links joining them. Who could fail to admire the power in this stone: not only the power residing within it, but the power extending itself through so many circles and across such a distance? Yet even stranger was the experiment with this stone that my brother and fellow bishop Severus, Bishop of Milevita, showed me.

He told me that he had seen Bathanarius (formerly a count of Africa), when he once hosted him at his own home, take that stone and hold it beneath a silver plate on which he had placed a piece of iron. As he moved the stone under the plate, the iron moved above it, while the plate itself stayed perfectly still, and the iron followed the motion of his hand exactly. I witnessed this myself, and I heard him describe it, and I trust his account as fully as if I had seen it with my own eyes. I have also read that if you place a diamond near this stone, it will no longer attract iron at all, but actually repels it the moment the diamond makes contact. These stones are found in India. But if we no longer marvel at them, how much less do the people who live where they are as common as our limestone marvel at them? We ourselves have stopped wondering at limestone's strange behavior: how it burns in water, which normally extinguishes fire, yet refuses to burn in oil, which normally feeds it. Familiarity has dulled our sense of wonder.

When unbelievers hear of miracles and other things we cannot demonstrate to their senses, they demand explanations. Since such explanations lie beyond human power to give, they mock these accounts as false and absurd. But let them first explain all the wondrous things we have seen, or can easily observe today. If they cannot, then they have no right to claim that nothing exists without a rational explanation. Since they are already convicted by the evidence of their own eyes, I will not work through every account in the literature, but instead test their skepticism against things that anyone can examine for themselves. Take the salt of Agrigentum in Sicily: put it in fire and it melts like water, yet put it in water and it crackles like fire.

The Garamantae have a fountain that is so cold during the day it cannot be drunk, and so hot at night it cannot be touched. In Epirus there is another spring where a torch extinguished in the water can be relit from it. The Arcadian asbestos, once set alight, will never be put out. There is a kind of fig tree in Egypt whose wood sinks when placed in water, yet after being thoroughly soaked (and heavier, one would think), it rises back to the surface.

The apples of the region of Sodom look beautiful to the eye, but crumble to dust and ashes at a touch. The Persian pyrites, when pressed hard in the hand, burns it, which is how it gets its name. The selenite is another stone in which the waxing and waning of the moon is always visible. The mares of Cappadocia conceive by the wind, but their foals live no more than three years. The trees of Ceylon, an island off India, never shed their leaves. All these, and thousands more, are not things of the past but can be observed today, each in their own place. It would take too long to list them all, and that is not my purpose here. Now let those unbelievers give me an explanation for these things: those who refuse to believe the Scriptures and dismiss them as fiction because they seem to describe incredible events, such as the ones I have just listed. "Reason," they say, "forbids us to believe that a body could burn without being consumed, or feel pain and yet live forever." What remarkable debaters! You who claim to have a rational explanation for every miraculous thing: give me the reasons behind those strange effects of nature I just described, those few examples alone. If you did not already know these things are observable right now, not in the future but visible to anyone willing to investigate, you would be even more skeptical of them than you are of what we say will happen hereafter. For which of you would believe us if we said (as we do say, that human bodies will one day burn without being consumed) that there is a salt that melts in fire and crackles in water? Or a spring unbearably hot at night and unbearably cold by day? Or a stone that burns the hand that grips it tightly, or another that, once ignited, never goes out? And so on with the rest. If we had claimed these things would exist in the world to come, and unbelievers had demanded we explain why, we could freely admit we cannot: the power of God in His works surpasses the limits of human reason. And yet we know that God does not act without reason, even in things that exceed the reasoning of mortal minds. We do not know His will in many things, yet we know that what He wills is in no way impossible, as He Himself has told us, and to Him we can attribute neither falsehood nor imperfection. But what do our great rationalists say about those ordinary things that are so commonplace and yet defy all explanation, seeming to contradict the very laws of nature? If we were to say these things were yet to come, unbelievers would immediately demand a reason for them, just as they do for what we say is still to come. And so, since human reason fails before these works of God, just as these things exist now and no one can explain why, so too will those other things exist hereafter, beyond the reach of human understanding.

Perhaps they will answer that these are lies, that they don't believe them, that they are false reports. If such things are credible, they might say, then believe also (if you like) what the same author reports: that there was a temple of Venus containing a lamp that neither wind nor water could ever extinguish, and so it was called the inextinguishable lamp. They may raise this as a dilemma, reasoning that if we call it false, we undermine our earlier examples, and if we call it true, we appear to acknowledge a pagan deity. But as I said in the eighteenth book, we are not obliged to believe everything that paganism has put into its historical record. Their histories, as Varro himself testifies, seem to contradict one another almost by design. We may, however, accept those accounts that do not conflict with the books we are bound to believe. Experience and reliable testimony will give us more than enough natural wonders to demonstrate the possibility of what we are arguing against these unbelievers. As for that lamp of Venus, it actually gives our argument more room to work, rather than suppressing it. We can add to it a thousand strange things produced by human ingenuity and magical practice, and if we were to deny all of these, we would contradict the very books we trust. That lamp, therefore, either burned through some clever placement of asbestos, or it was produced by the art of magic to inspire religious awe, or else some devil, honored there under the name of Venus, kept up this spectacle to preserve people in their false belief. For devils are drawn to inhabit certain bodies by the very creatures God has made, not because they take pleasure in them the way other creatures enjoy food, but the way spirits respond to signs and symbols suited to their nature: stones, herbs, plants, living creatures, charms, and ceremonies.

And this allurement they subtly use to entice people into seeking them out, either by revealing their secrets or by teaching their methods through false and flattering visions, making a few into their students and those students into teachers of many more. For people could never know what these spirits love and what they loathe without being instructed by them directly, and those instructions were the first foundations of the art of magic. They get the firmest grip on human hearts (which is all they seek and take pride in) when they appear as angels of light. Yet their works are strange, and the more marvelous they are, the more they should be avoided, as their very nature urges us to recognize: for if these foul devils can work such wonders, what can the glorious angels not do? And what can that God not do, who has granted such power even to the most despised of creatures? So then, if human art alone can produce such remarkable results that those who don't understand them would take them for divine works (as there was an iron image suspended in a certain temple so strangely that the ignorant would have genuinely believed they were witnessing the immediate power of God, it hung so perfectly between two lodestones, one placed in the roof of the temple and the other in the floor, without touching anything at all), and as there might be some similar trick of human craft behind that inextinguishable lamp of Venus: if magicians (whom the Scriptures call sorcerers and enchanters) can do such things, taught as they are by the activity of devils, as Virgil, that famous poet, describes of an enchantress in these words:

"*Haec se carminibus promittit solvere montes*

*Quas velit, ast aliis duras immittere curas,*

*Sistere aquam fluviis, et vertere sidera retro,*

*Nocturnosque ciet manes, mugire videbis*

*Sub pedibus terram et descendere montibus Ornos.*"

"She said her charms could ease one's heart of pain,

Even when she wished, and make him grieve again.

Stop floods, bring back the stars, and with her breath,

Rouse the black fiends, until the earth beneath

Groaned, and the trees came marching from the hills,"

&c.

If all this lies within the power of such figures, how much more can God's power surpass them in accomplishing things that unbelief finds incredible but His omnipotence finds effortless? He is the One who has given virtue to stones, reason to humanity, and such vast power to angels. His wonderful power exceeds all wonders; His wisdom permits and brings about each and every one of them. Can He not make the most extraordinary use of every part of the world that He alone has created?

Why, then, can God not raise the bodies of the dead, or cause the damned to suffer torment without being consumed, when He has filled heaven, earth, air, and water with countless miracles, and when the world He made is itself a greater miracle than anything it contains? Our adversaries believe in a God who made the world and the other gods through whom He governs it. They do not deny, but actively affirm, that there are powers capable of working wonders in the world, whether voluntarily or through ceremony and magic. Yet when we offer them an example worked by neither man nor spirit, they answer: it is nature, nature has given it this quality. So it was nature, then, that made the salt of Agrigentum melt in fire and crackle in water? This seems rather contrary to the nature of salt, which naturally dissolves in water and crackles in fire. Ah, but nature (they say) made this particular salt of exactly the opposite quality. Very well: that same reasoning must also explain the heat and cold of the Garamantine fountain, and the other fountain that extinguishes a torch and then lights it again, and the asbestos, and all those other wonders, which would take too long to list here. There is apparently no other reason to be given for them than this: such is their nature. A fine, brief reason indeed, and apparently sufficient. But since God is the Author of all nature, why do they demand a stronger reason from us? When we prove what they consider impossible, we say simply that it is so by the will of Almighty God, who is called Almighty precisely because He can do all that He wills. He has already created so many things that, were they not visible and confirmed by reliable testimony, would seem just as impossible as the rest, yet now we know them, some of us fully and others in part. As for things that are merely reported without testimony, that have no bearing on religion and are not taught in Scripture, they may well be false, and a person may reasonably refuse to believe them.

I do not hold everything I have set down with equal confidence, and I have my doubts about some of it. But the things I have tested myself, I believe without any hesitation: that lime burns in water and cools in oil; that a lodestone draws iron but will not move a straw; that the flesh of a peacock does not decay, while Plato's flesh did; that snow is preserved and apples ripen in chaff; that bright fire turns stones its own color and wood the opposite color. These I have seen with my own eyes. So too with these: that clear oil makes black spots, and white silver draws a black line; that coals turn black from white wood, brittle from hard pieces, and incorruptible from corruptible ones. There are many other examples as well, which I will spare the reader by not listing here. As for the rest, apart from the fountain that extinguishes and rekindles a flame, and the dusty apples of Sodom, I could not find sufficient evidence to confirm them. I never met anyone who had seen that fountain in Epirus, though I did find several people who had seen something similar near Grenoble in France. As for the apples of Sodom, there are both reputable authors and living eyewitnesses who can confirm it, so I have no doubt on that score. The remaining accounts I leave open, neither affirming nor denying them. I included them because they are recorded in our adversaries' own histories, to show how many things they accept in their own books without any rational explanation, while refusing to believe us when we say that Almighty God will do something beyond their capacity to conceive. What better or stronger reason can be given for anything than to say: Almighty God will do this, and He has promised it in those books where He promises things just as remarkable, and has already fulfilled them? He will do it because He has said He will: He who has already made unbelieving pagans accept as real the very things they once considered impossible.

If they object that they cannot believe a human body could endure perpetual burning, because they know it has no such capacity and nature has given it no such quality, we can answer them from Scripture: before the fall, the human body was of such a nature that it could not die. Yet through the fall it was transformed into the mortal, suffering condition in which all humanity now lives, moving inevitably toward death. At the resurrection, therefore, it may undergo another such transformation, one still unknown to us. But they do not believe the Scriptures that describe humanity's condition in Paradise; if they did, we would not need to dwell long on the subject of the pains of the damned. As things stand, we must demonstrate from their own authors that it is possible for any object to undergo a complete transformation of its nature from what it was before, and yet for the laws of nature to remain unviolated.

We read in Varro's book "On the Race of the Roman People" that Castor reports a most extraordinary change in the bright star of Venus, which Plautus calls "Hesperugo" and Homer calls "the glorious Hesperus": a change in color, size, shape, and motion, the like of which had never been seen before or since. According to Varro, the astronomers Adrastus of Cyzicus and Dion of Naples both recorded that this occurred during the reign of Ogyges. Varro calls it an extraordinary change, and rightly so, because it seemed contrary to nature. We say the same of all portents, but in this we are mistaken. How can anything be against nature when it is brought about by the will of God, the Lord and Maker of all nature? A portent, then, is not against nature as such, but against the most common order of nature as we observe it.

Who could recount all the portents recorded by the pagans? Let us focus on this one. What law has God laid more firmly on any part of creation than He has on the motions of the heavens? What part of nature keeps a more regular and fixed order? And yet, when it pleased the sovereign of nature, the brightest star in all the sky changed its color, size, and shape, and, most remarkably of all, its very course and motion. This would have thrown the calculations of any astrologers of that era into complete disarray: men who, studying their fixed charts of the eternal movements of the stars, would have confidently declared that no such change in Venus had ever occurred or ever would.

We also read in Scripture that the sun stood still at Joshua's prayer until the battle was finished, and that it moved backward to show Hezekiah that the Lord had added fifteen years to his life. As for the miracles performed through the saints, these unbelievers are well aware of them and therefore attribute them to magic. On this point Virgil says, as I noted earlier when speaking of the witch, that she could

"Stop floods, bring back the stars," etc.

The Jordan River parted when Joshua led the people across it, and again when Elijah crossed it, and once more when Elisha, his successor, divided it with Elijah's cloak. And as we noted earlier, the sun went backward in the time of Hezekiah. Yet Varro does not claim that anyone asked for this change in Venus. So let the faithless not deceive themselves by appealing to the laws of nature, as though God's power could not alter the nature of anything beyond what human experience has known, even though the known nature of things is itself fully as remarkable. The trouble is that people only marvel at rarities. What reasonable person cannot see that in the human face, that most uniform and yet endlessly varied product of nature, there is something truly astonishing: if all faces were not of one general form, we could not distinguish a human being from an animal, and yet if all faces were exactly the same, no one could tell one person from another? Likeness and difference coexist in the same object. The difference is the more remarkable of the two, since nature itself seems to demand a certain uniformity in its proportions. And yet, because it is rarities that we admire, we are far more astonished when we see two people so alike that one is easily, and often actually, mistaken for the other.

But perhaps they do not believe Varro's account, even though he is among their most learned historians, or perhaps they dismiss it because that star did not remain long in its new form but soon returned to its former appearance and course. Let us therefore offer them another example which, together with Varro's, I think is enough to establish that God is not bound by any conditions in assigning a particular nature to anything, as though He could not transform it entirely into something previously unknown. The land of Sodom was once very different from what it is now. It was once like the surrounding country, as fertile and as fair as any region, if not more so, and Scripture itself compares it to Paradise. But after it was struck from heaven (as even the pagan histories record, and as every traveler confirms), it now lies like a field of ash and soot, and the fruits that grow there are fair on the outside but nothing but dust within. There it is: it was not always so, and yet so it remains to this day. Here is a terrible transformation of nature, wrought by nature's Creator, and it has remained in that ruined state far longer than it stood in its original one.

So then, as God can create whatever He wills, He can also change the nature of what He has created according to His good pleasure. From this comes the multitude of monsters, visions, portents, and prodigies, which there is no room to catalog here. They are called monsters from *monstro*, "to show," because they signify something; and portents and prodigies from *portendo* and *porrò dico*, meaning to presage and foretell something to come. Whether these signs, or the devils who make it their business to ensnare and entangle the minds of the weak and those who deserve such deception, mislead the world through genuine predictions or merely stumble onto the truth by chance, let those who observe and interpret such things sort that out for themselves. What we should take from all these monsters and prodigies that occur, or are said to occur, against nature is this: as the apostle implied when he spoke of "the engrafting of the wild olive into the garden olive, whereby the wild one was made partaker of the root and fatness of the other," they all declare that God will do with the bodies of the dead exactly as He has promised, and no difficulty, no law of nature, can or will prevent Him. What He has promised, the previous book set out from both Testaments, not exhaustively, but sufficiently, I think, for the purpose and scope of that volume.

When God spoke through His prophet about the pains of the damned, this is what He said: "Their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched." Our Savior reinforces this point by using the body's offending members as a figure for the whole person, commanding us to cut them off, and adding: "Better it is for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell into the fire that never shall be quenched, where their worm dies not, and their fire is not quenched," and likewise of the foot: "Better it for thee to go halting into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell," and so on. He says the same of the eye, repeating the prophet's words three separate times. Who could hear such words thunder from the mouth of God, repeated so insistently, and not feel a cold terror? Now, regarding this worm and this fire: those who interpret them as purely spiritual torments argue that the fire represents the soul's burning grief and anguish as it repents too late for having been cut off from the sight of God, in the same way the apostle says, "Who is offended and I burn not?" The worm, they say, may carry the same meaning, as it is written: "As the moth is to the garment, and the worm to the wood, so does sorrow eat the heart of a man." Those who hold that both torments are real as well as spiritual argue that the fire is a bodily affliction of the body, and the worm a torment of conscience in the soul. This seems more plausible, since it would be absurd to claim that either the soul or the body will be free from pain. Even so, I would sooner side with those who say both torments are bodily than with those who say neither is; and therefore, even where Scripture does not say so explicitly, I understand that sorrow implies a fruitless repentance joined to a physical torment. For Scripture says: "The vengeance of the flesh of the wicked is fire and the worm." He could have said simply "the vengeance of the wicked" ; why, then, did he add "of the flesh," if not to show that both plagues, the fire and the worm, will be physical? If he added it because a person will be punished for having lived according to the flesh (since that is precisely why he incurs the second death, which the apostle has in mind when he says, "If ye live after the flesh, ye die"), then let each person believe as he sees fit: either taking the fire literally as a bodily torment and the worm figuratively as a torment of the soul, or taking both literally as bodily. We have already demonstrated at length that a creature can burn without being consumed, and can live in pain without dying. Anyone who denies this simply does not know the God who is the author of all nature's wonders, the God who has made all the miracles I recounted earlier, and thousands upon thousands more, each more astonishing than the last, all contained within the world, which is itself the most astonishing work of all. Let each person, then, choose what to believe: whether both the fire and the worm afflict the body, or whether the worm refers metaphorically to the soul. The truth of the matter will become plain at last, when the knowledge of the saints is such that it no longer needs to be tested but is fully satisfied and resolved by the perfection and fullness of divine Wisdom. For now we know only in part, until that which is perfect has come; but we must not imagine that these bodies will be such that fire can work no anguish or torment upon them.

But here another question arises: if this fire torments not spiritually but only through physical contact, can it inflict suffering on the devil and his angels? They are to share one fire with the damned, according to our Savior's own words: "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels." Some learned men suppose that devils have bodies made of dense air, like what we feel in a wind, and that such air can suffer, since it is capable of being acted upon. The heating of baths proves this, where air is set on fire to heat the water and does what it first endures. If anyone objects that devils have no bodies at all, this is not a great difficulty worth dwelling on. Why should unbodied spirits be unable to feel the force of a physical fire, when man's incorporeal soul is already enclosed in a body of flesh and will at that day be bound to one forever? These spiritual devils, then, or those devilish spirits, will be truly bound in this corporeal fire, however strange that may seem, and it will torment them despite their being incorporeal. They will not be bound to it in such a way that they animate it, as a soul animates a body, making both into one living creature. Rather, by a wonderful power, they will be bound to it so that instead of giving it life, they receive from it unbearable torment, even though the union of spirit and body by which both become one creature is itself something admirable and beyond all human understanding. I might think the devils will burn as the rich man did when he cried out, "I am tormented in this flame" (Luke 16:24), except that one could answer that his fire was of the same kind as his tongue, the cooling of which he begged when he saw Lazarus at a distance and asked him to touch the tip of his finger to water and bring him relief. He was not then in his body but in his soul alone; the fire he burned in was likewise incorporeal, as was the water he longed for, just as the dreams of sleeping men and the visions of those in ecstasy present the forms of bodies without being bodies in fact. And though a man perceives these things only in spirit, he feels so much like himself in the body that he cannot tell whether he has it on or not. But that hell, that lake of fire and brimstone, will be real, and the fire corporeal, burning both men and devils: men in the flesh, devils in the air; men in bodies joined to their spirits, and devils in spirits joined to the fire yet not animating it, only suffering from it. One fire will torment both men and devils. Christ has spoken it.

Some opponents of the city of God consider it unjust that a person who sinned only for a brief time should be condemned to suffer eternally. This, they say, is completely unjust. But do they know of any law that actually calibrates the length of punishment to the length of time the crime took to commit? Cicero identifies eight kinds of punishment that the laws impose: fines, imprisonment, flogging, retaliation in kind, public disgrace, banishment, death, and enslavement. Of these, which can be carried out in as little time as the offense itself, except the fourth, which gives every person the same measure they dealt out to others, in keeping with the legal principle, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth"? It is true that under this law, a man may lose his eye in roughly the same moment it took him to put out another man's. But if a man kisses another man's wife and is sentenced to flogging for it, is not what he did in an instant paid for by a considerably longer ordeal? Is not his brief pleasure repaid with a much longer pain? And what about imprisonment? Is every offender sentenced to serve only as long as it took him to commit his crime? On the contrary, a servant who has merely struck his master violently is, by a just law, condemned to many years in chains. And as for fines, public disgrace, and banishment, are not many of these open-ended, lasting a person's entire life? In that respect, they bear some resemblance to eternal punishment. They cannot be fully eternal, of course, because the life they afflict is itself only temporary. Yet the sins they punish are all committed in an instant, and no reasonable person would argue that the length of a penalty should be measured by the time it took to commit the offense. Whether the crime is murder, adultery, sacrilege, or any other wickedness, it is quickly done, and therefore it should be weighed not by its duration but by its gravity. And when a man deserves death for his offense, does the law consider the time he spends dying to be the measure of his guilt, or is it his permanent removal from human society? What the earthly city accomplishes through the first death, the heavenly city accomplishes through the second: the removal of wrongdoers from its community. Just as the laws of the first city cannot recall a dead man back into its society, so the laws of the second city do not recall to salvation anyone who has entered into the second death. How then, they ask, are our Savior's words true: "With what measure you give, with the same shall it be measured back to you" (Matt 7:2), if temporary sins are repaid with eternal punishment? But notice: those words refer to the returning of evil for evil in kind, not in equal duration of time. That is, the one who does evil will suffer evil, without any limitation of time being implied. Though this passage is more properly understood as referring to the judgments and condemnations the Lord was speaking of in that context, so that the one who judges unjustly, if he is judged unjustly in return, receives the same measure he dealt out, even if not the identical act. He committed wrong in judgment, and he suffers something of the same kind; he acted unjustly, yet he is repaid according to justice.

But man imagines this sentence of eternal torment to be unjust because his frail, imperfect mind cannot grasp the full horror of the offense that first brought it about. The more fully man had enjoyed God, the greater the impiety of renouncing Him; and in that renunciation, man made himself worthy of everlasting evil by destroying a good that would otherwise have been everlasting. From this came condemnation upon the entire human race, parent and offspring alike falling under one curse, from which no one can ever be freed except by the free and gracious mercy of God. That mercy divides humanity in two: in one part it displays the power of grace, and in the other the force of justice. Neither could have been fully expressed if applied to all humanity alike. If everyone had received the punishment justice demands, the grace of the Redeemer would have found no place among us; and if everyone had been redeemed from death, there would have been no occasion left for the expression of God's justice. As it stands, more are left to justice than are taken to mercy, so that what was owed to all might be made plain, without any impugning of God's justice. And yet, because He has delivered so many, we are bound forever to praise His gracious compassion.

There are certain Platonists who, while they assign a punishment to every sin, maintain that all such punishments, whether human or divine, in this life or the next, serve only to purge the soul of its offenses. On this basis, Virgil, speaking of souls, wrote:

"Hinc metuunt cupiuntque," etc.

"Hence fear, desire," etc.

And immediately:

For when the soul departs with life's last light,

Not all the evil leaves those wretched ones,

Nor do all bodily plagues fully depart;

Much that has long grown deep must linger on

In wondrous ways. And so they suffer pains,

Paying the penalties of ancient wrongs:

Some hang suspended, empty, in the winds;

For others, guilt is washed in the vast deep,

Or burned away by fire.

Those who hold this view maintain that after death, no punishments exist except those that purge the soul, and that these purifying pains are cleared away by one of the three upper elements: air, fire, or water. The air is indicated by the words *Suspensae ad ventos*; the water by *Sub gurgite vasto*; and the fire is named explicitly: *aut exuritur igni*. Now, we do acknowledge that certain pains in this life serve a genuine purpose, not for those who are made worse by them rather than better, but specifically for the reform of those who receive them as correction. All other pains, whether temporary or eternal, are assigned to each person as God sees fit, administered through His angels, good or bad, either as a consequence of past sin, or of sin in which the afflicted person currently lives, or else to test and display the virtue of His servants. If one person harms another, whether intentionally or by accident, that person is guilty of causing harm through either malice or ignorance; but God, whose hidden judgment ordained that it should happen, is guilty of nothing. As for temporary pain, some endure it in this life, some endure it after death, and some endure it in both places; yet all of it ends before the last judgment. Not everyone, however, will face the eternal pains that await those who suffer only temporarily after death, for these pains will be eternal after the last judgment for those who enter into them. Some will receive pardon in the world to come who received none in this one, and will be spared from eternal punishment there even though they were not spared here, as I noted earlier.

But few people endure none of these pains until after death. Some I have known or heard of who never had an hour's sickness until their dying day, and lived very long, though man's whole life is still a pain, "in that it is a temptation and a warfare upon earth," as holy Job says. Ignorance itself is a great punishment, which is why little children are forced to overcome it through discipline and suffering. What they must learn causes them such pain that they sometimes prefer the punishments meant to drive them toward learning over the learning itself. Who would not tremble and choose death rather than return to infancy, if given such a choice? We begin life in tears, and in doing so we foreshadow the miseries ahead. Only Zoroaster, they say, smiled at birth, but his unnatural joy brought him no good. He was, by most accounts, the first inventor of magic, which did nothing to help him in his misfortunes, for Ninus, king of Assyria, defeated him in battle and stripped him of his kingdom of Bactria. It is simply impossible that those words of Scripture, "Great travail is created for all men and a heavy yoke upon the sons of Adam from the day that they got out of their mother's womb, until the day that they return unto the mother of all things," should go unfulfilled. Even infants, once baptized and thereby freed from all their guilt (which at that point is only original sin), are still frequently and greatly afflicted, sometimes even by the assault of devils, though those devils cannot truly harm them if they die at that tender age.

Yet even under this heavy burden that lies on Adam's children from birth to burial, one path remains open to us: to live soberly, to recognize that our first parent's sin has made this life a burden, and to understand that all the promises of the New Testament belong to the inheritance stored up for us in the world to come. We have pledges of that inheritance here, but the fulfillment will not come until then. Let us therefore walk in hope, and as we grow day by day, let us put to death the deeds of the flesh through the Spirit. For God knows all who are His, and all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God, though by grace, not by nature. God's only Son by nature was made the Son of man for us, so that we who are sons of men by nature might become sons of God in Him by grace. Remaining changeless, He took our nature upon Himself, and while keeping His own divinity, He enabled us to be transformed: to leave behind our frailty and our tendency toward sin, through sharing in His righteousness and immortality, and to preserve what He had made good in us through the perfection of the good that is in Him. For just as we all fell into this misery through one man's sin, so shall we rise to that glory through the righteousness of one glorified Man. No one should imagine they have arrived at that destination until they are where there is no temptation, but only the fullness of that peace we seek through these conflicts of the spirit against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit. This war would never have existed had man kept his will on the right path where it was first placed. But having refused that, he now fights within himself, and yet this trouble is not as bad as the former condition; for far happier is the one who strives against sin than the one who lets sin rule over him. Better is war with the hope of eternal peace than bondage without any thought of freedom. We long for the end of this war, and God moves us to aim at that ordered peace in which the lower obeys the higher in all things. But even if there were hope of achieving that peace in this life by yielding to sin (which God forbid we should ever imagine), we should still stand firm against it in all our misery rather than surrender our freedom by giving in.

But God's mercy toward those He has prepared for glory is so great that even the first stage of human life, infancy, where the flesh rules without restraint, and the second stage, childhood, where reason is too weak to resist temptation and the mind is entirely incapable of grasping religious instruction, need not be cause for despair. If children at either of these stages are washed in the waters of regeneration and then die, they are translated from the powers of darkness into the glory of Christ and freed from all pain, both eternal and purifying. Regeneration alone is sufficient to clear them from whatever their natural birth had contracted with death. But when a person reaches the age of reason and becomes capable of sound judgment, he must begin a fierce conflict with vice, lest it draw him toward damnation. The new soldier is more easily put to flight, it is true, but practice will make him courageous and drive him to pursue victory with everything he has. He must wage this battle continually with a weapon called "the love of true righteousness," which is sustained by faith in Christ. For if the commandment is present but the Spirit's help is absent, the very prohibition of a sin inflames the corrupt flesh to rush into it all the faster, sometimes producing open outrages and sometimes secret ones that are far worse, since pride and ruinous self-conceit convince people that these hidden sins are actually virtues.

Then sin is truly conquered when it is beaten down by the love of God, which He alone gives, through Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and man, who made Himself mortal so that we might be made eternal. Few are fortunate enough to pass through their youth without the stain of some serious sin, whether in deed, in thought, or otherwise. But above all, let them seek to suppress by the fullness of the Spirit every evil impulse stirred up by the weakness of the flesh. Many who have turned to the law, only to become violators of it through sin, are afterward driven to flee to the law of grace for help. This grace makes them both truer penitents and stronger opponents of sin, bringing their spirits into submission to God and giving them victory over the flesh. Whoever wants to escape hellfire, then, must be both baptized and justified in Christ, for this is the only path from the devil to Him. And let that person believe without doubt that there are no purifying pains except those that come before that great and terrible judgment. It is true, however, that the fire of hell will bear more heavily on some than on others, according to the differences in what they deserve, whether the fire is adapted by its nature to the quality of each person's merits, or whether it remains one fire for all yet is not felt equally by all.

Now I must have a gentle debate with certain tender-hearted people within our own faith, who believe that God, having justly condemned the wicked to hellfire, will after a certain period (one His goodness considers appropriate to each person's guilt) deliver them from that torment. Origen held this view in an even more extreme form, believing that even the devils themselves, after a set time, would be released from their torments and restored as bright angels in heaven, as they had been before. But this opinion, along with others he held, and especially that cycling rotation of misery and bliss through which he believed all humanity would pass, gave the Church cause to pronounce him *anathema*: for he had undermined his own apparent compassion by assigning a true misery, after a time, and a false bliss to the saints in heaven, who could never be certain of remaining there. The tender-heartedness of these others is quite different, however, since they hold that release from hell will be extended only to the souls of the damned, each after their appointed time, so that all will eventually become saints in heaven. But if this opinion is good and true because it is merciful, then the farther it extends, the better it must be: on that logic, it could just as well include the release of the devils after a longer period of suffering. Why, then, does it stop with humanity and exclude them? Because, in truth, they dare not extend their compassion to the devil. Yet if anyone does go that far, he surpasses them, and sins more grotesquely and more perversely against the plain word of God, even while imagining himself to be showing greater mercy.

I have spoken with people who seem to respect the Scriptures but live poorly, and who would make God far more merciful than others do. They acknowledge that the wicked deserve punishment, but they insist that mercy will prevail at the final judgment: God will hand all the condemned over to the prayers and intercession of the saints. If the saints prayed for their enemies while those enemies were still insulting them, surely they will do so all the more when they see those same people prostrate at their feet like slaves. It is inconceivable, these people say, that the saints would forget mercy at the very moment they are most holy and perfect, given that they prayed for their enemies even when they themselves were not without sin. Surely, then, they will pray for those who have now become their suppliants, at a time when the saints themselves have no sin left in them at all. And will God not hear prayers of such perfection? They then produce the testimony of the Psalm that the other group (those who held that all the damned would eventually be saved) also cites, though these people claim it supports their position more strongly. The words are: "Hath God forgotten to be merciful, or will He shut up His mercies in displeasure?" (Ps 77:9). His displeasure, they say, condemns all who are unworthy of eternal life to eternal torment. But if that condemnation were to continue, whether briefly or indefinitely, how could the Psalm rightly ask, "Will He shut up His mercy in displeasure?" It does not say He will shut it up for a long time; it implies He will not shut it up at all. In this way they argue that God's judgment is not false even if He condemns no one, just as His threat to destroy Nineveh was not false even though it was never carried out, despite being issued without any stated condition. He did not say, "I will destroy it unless it repents," but declared plainly and without qualification, "Nineveh shall be destroyed." They hold this threat to be true because God announced plainly what the city had deserved, even though He did not say what He actually intended to do. For though He spared them, He already knew they would repent, and yet He announced their destruction in absolute terms. That announcement, they say, was true in the sense of His severity, which they had deserved, but not in the sense of His mercy, which He did not shut up in displeasure, since He chose to show mercy in response to their prayers even after threatening to punish their pride. If He showed mercy then, they ask, when He knew it would grieve His holy prophet, how much more will He show it now, when all His saints will be pleading for it together?

They believe the Scriptures do not spell this out explicitly because the fear of prolonged or eternal torment is meant to turn people away from sin, and because some should be moved to pray for those who refuse to reform. And yet, they say, the Scriptures do not entirely conceal it either. What else does the Psalm mean when it says, "How great is your goodness which you have laid up for them that fear you! You keep them secret in your tabernacle from the strife of tongues" (Ps 31:19-20)? This great sweetness of God's mercy, they explain, is kept hidden from us in order to keep us in greater awe. And so the apostle says that God "has shut up all in unbelief, that He might have mercy on all" (Rom 11:32), showing that He will condemn no one in the end. These theorists, however, do not extend this universal salvation to the devils; they limit their compassion to humanity alone, and in doing so they conveniently promise impunity for their own poor lives by appealing to a general mercy of God toward the whole human race. In this respect, those who go further and extend God's mercy even to the devil and his angels actually outdo them in the breadth of their speculation.

Others do not empty hell entirely, but only of those who have been baptized and have partaken of "Christ's body." These people, they argue, will be saved regardless of their lives or doctrines, since Christ Himself said, "This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that he which eateth of it should not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven" (John 6:50-51). Therefore, these thinkers conclude, all such people must necessarily be saved and glorified with everlasting life.

Another group narrows this position further, applying it only to Catholics, however wickedly they may live, on the grounds that they have truly received Christ and been grafted into His body. Of this body the apostle says: "We that are many are one bread and one body, because we all are partakers of one Bread" (1 Cor 10:17). On this view, even if such people fall into the worst heresies afterward, or even into paganism, the fact that they received the baptism of Christ within His Church means they will not perish forever. They will receive eternal life, and their guilt will not make their torments everlasting, only temporal, though those torments may last a very long time and be extremely painful.

Some people, pointing to the verse "He that endureth to the end, he shall be saved," argue that all who remain Catholics will be saved by virtue of the foundation the Apostle describes: "Other foundation can no man lay, than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus." They continue with the passage: "And if any man build on this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, timber, hay or stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest, for the day (of the Lord) shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by the fire, and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is. If any man's work that he has built upon abide, he shall receive wages. If any man's work burn he shall lose, but he shall be safe himself, yet as it were by fire." On this basis, they claim that all Catholic Christians, having Christ as their foundation (which no heretic has, being cut off from His body), will be saved through fire regardless of how they have lived. Whether their lives were good or bad, whether they built timber, hay, or stubble on that foundation, they will still be delivered after enduring the purifying pain of the fire that punishes the wicked at the last judgment.

Some people I have encountered hold that no one will be damned eternally except those who neglected to make amends for their sins through acts of charity, citing James: "There shall be judgment merciless unto him that sheweth no mercy." Those who do show mercy, they argue, even if they never reform their lives but continue living sinfully while performing these charitable acts, will nonetheless receive so merciful a judgment that they will either escape punishment entirely or, at least, be freed from their suffering after enduring it for some period of time, longer or shorter. They reason that the Judge of the living and the dead would mention nothing else in His words to those on both sides of Him, for the salvation of some and the condemnation of others, but only the acts of charity they had either performed or neglected. To this, they say, the relevant petition of the Lord's Prayer also applies: "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us." For the one who forgives an offense done to him performs an act of mercy, which Christ so approved that He said: "If ye do forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if ye do not forgive men their trespasses, no more will your Heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses." And so, they say, the passage from James applies here as well: "There shall be judgment merciless," and so on. The Lord did not say "your small trespasses," they argue, nor "your great trespasses," but simply "your trespasses," and therefore they hold that those who live as wickedly as possible right up to their dying day still have all their sins absolutely pardoned each day by this daily prayer, provided they remember to freely forgive all who have offended them when they themselves seek pardon. When all these errors have been refuted, I will, God willing, bring this present book to a close.

First, then, we must explain why the Church has condemned those who claim that even the devils themselves will eventually be shown mercy after a period of torment. The reason is this: those holy men, so numerous and so learned in both the Old and New Testaments, were not begrudging the devils any relief or happiness after long and severe suffering. Rather, they recognized that the words of our Savior could not be false, words He promised to speak at the last judgment: "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels." This makes clear that they will burn in everlasting fire. Likewise, in Revelation: "The devil that deceived them was cast into a lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet shall be tormented even day and night, for evermore" (Rev 20:10). In one passage He says "everlasting," and in the other "for evermore," and in both cases every possibility of an ending is ruled out. There is therefore no stronger or clearer ground for our belief that the devil and his angels will never return to the glory and righteousness of the saints than the plain testimony of Scripture, which deceives no one: "God hath not spared them, but cast them down into hell, and delivered them unto chains of darkness, there to be kept unto the condemnation" (2 Pet 2:4), at which point they will be cast into eternal fire to burn forever. If this is true, how can any person, or all people, be delivered from this eternal punishment without undermining our faith that the devil is tormented forever? For if those to whom it will be said, "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels," whether all or some of them, do not remain in that fire forever, then what reason do we have to think the devil and his angels will? Would the word of God, spoken alike to both men and devils, prove true for the devils but not for the men? That would make human speculation more reliable than God's promises. But since that cannot be, those who wish to escape eternal pain must stop arguing against God and take His yoke upon them while they still have time.

For what foolishness would it be to measure eternal punishment by a fire of long duration, yet believe with certainty that eternal life has no end at all? The Lord, in that same passage, included both in a single sentence, saying plainly, "These shall go into everlasting pains, and the righteous into life eternal" (Matt 25:46). He sets them in parallel: everlasting pains on one side, eternal life on the other. To say that this life will never end but that the pain will is simply absurd. Therefore, since the eternal life of the saints will be without end, it follows that the everlasting punishment of the damned will be just as endless as the saints' blessedness.

This argument is also directed against those who, out of misplaced compassion, set themselves against the clear word of God. They claim that God's promises are true in the sense that people deserve the punishments He threatens, but not that those punishments will actually fall on them. God will relent, they say, in response to the prayers of His saints, who will be all the more eager to intercede at that time precisely because they are more purely holy, and whose prayers will be all the more powerful because they are entirely free from sin and corruption. But if that is so, then why, in that state of pure holiness and powerful prayer, will they not also intercede for the angels condemned to everlasting fire, asking God to soften His sentence and deliver them from that unbearable torment? Some may try to argue that the holy angels will join with the saints in praying for both the angels and the people condemned to damnation, asking God in His mercy to pardon their wicked deeds. But no sound Christian has ever held this view, nor ever will; for if it were true, there would be no reason why the Church should not pray for the devil and his angels, since her Lord has commanded her to pray for her enemies. The very reason that keeps the Church from praying for the damned spirits (her known enemies) today is the same reason that will prevent her from praying for the reprobate at the day of judgment, even in her fullness of perfection. Right now, she prays for her enemies among humanity because this is the time of wholesome repentance, and so her chief petition for them is that God would grant them repentance and rescue them from the devil's snares, from which, as the apostle says, they are held captive at his will. But if the Church somehow knew which people, though still living on earth, are predestined to go with the devil into everlasting fire, she would pray for them no more than she prays for him. Since she does not have that knowledge, she prays for all her enemies in the flesh; yet she is not heard for all of them, but only for those predestined to become her children, even while they are still her adversaries. Does she pray for those who die as her unrepentant enemies, never returning to her embrace? No, because those who are not grafted into Christ before death are afterward counted among the devil's companions. The same reason that prevents her from praying for the reprobate souls at the last day also prevents her from praying for the fallen angels now; and the same logic explains why we pray for all the living, yet will not pray for the wicked or the unbelieving once they are dead. The prayers of the Church, or of devout individuals, are heard on behalf of some who have departed this life: but only for those who, having been born again in Christ, did not live so wickedly as to be judged unworthy of such mercy, nor so devoutly as to have no need of it. In the same way, after the resurrection there will be some among the dead who receive mercy following the punishments their spirits endure, so that they are not cast into everlasting fire. Otherwise, the statement that certain sins "shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, nor in the world to come" (Matt 12:32) would be meaningless, unless there were indeed some who, though they receive no forgiveness in this life, may receive it in the life to come. But when the Judge of the living and the dead declares, "Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world," and to the others, "Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt 25:34, 41), it would be the height of presumption to claim that any whom the Lord has condemned to eternal torment might escape everlasting punishment, and to use that presumption to lead people either to despair of, or to doubt, eternal life. Let no one, therefore, read the psalmist's words, "Will God forget to have mercy, or will He shut up His lovingkindness in displeasure?" (Ps 77:9), and conclude that God's sentence is true for the righteous but false for the wicked, or true for good people and evil angels but false for evil people. Those words in the psalm belong to the vessels of mercy and the children of promise, among whom the prophet himself was numbered. After asking, "Will God forget to have mercy? Will He shut up His lovingkindness in displeasure?" he immediately adds, "And I said, this is my infirmity; I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High" (Ps 77:10). He has made plain what he meant by asking whether the Lord would shut up His lovingkindness in displeasure. This mortal life is itself the displeasure of God, in which "man is made like vanity, and his days pass away like a shadow" (Ps 144:4). Yet even in this displeasure, "God does not forget to be gracious, causing His sun to rise on the good and the evil, and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust" (Matt 5:45); and so He does not shut up His lovingkindness in displeasure. This is especially clear in what the psalm goes on to say: "I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High," because even in this most miserable life, which is the displeasure of God, He transforms the vessels of mercy into a better condition, even while His displeasure still rests on the misery of this corruption. He does not shut up His mercies in His displeasure. Since the truth of the divine song can be fulfilled in this way, there is no need to apply it to the place where those who do not belong to the City of God will suffer everlasting punishment. But those who insist on extending this verse to the torments of the damned should at least understand it this way: that while God's displeasure remains on them, as is due for eternal punishment, He nevertheless does not shut up His lovingkindness in that heavy displeasure, and so does not torment them with the full severity they have deserved. This would not mean they escape punishment or that their punishment ever ends, only that it is lighter than what they deserve. In that way, God's wrath would remain, and yet He would not shut up His lovingkindness in His displeasure. I do not affirm this interpretation, but neither do I reject it.

But not only I, but the sacred and divine Scripture itself reproves and convicts them most plainly and fully: those who think the words are spoken merely as a threat rather than as a genuine statement, when it is said, "Depart from Me, ye wicked, into everlasting fire," and also, "They shall go into everlasting punishment: and their worm shall not die, and the fire shall not be extinguished," and so on. For the Ninevites "did sow a fruitful repentance in this life, as in a field, in which God would have that sown with tears which should afterward be reaped with joy." And yet who will deny that what the Lord had spoken beforehand was fulfilled in them, unless he simply cannot perceive that the Lord overthrows sinners not only in His anger but also in His mercy? For sinners are brought low in two ways: either as the Sodomites were, in that people suffer punishment for their sins, or as the Ninevites were, in that people's sins are destroyed through repentance. For the Nineveh that was evil is destroyed, and a good Nineveh is built in its place, one that did not exist before; for with the walls and houses still standing, the city is overthrown in its wicked ways. And so, though the prophet was grieved that what those people had feared from his prophecy did not come to pass, what was foretold by the foreknowledge of God was nonetheless fulfilled, because He who had spoken it beforehand knew how it was to be fulfilled in a better way. But so that those who show mercy toward an obstinate sinner may understand what is meant by the words, "How great, O Lord, is the multitude of Thy sweetness, which Thou hast hidden for them that fear Thee" (Ps 31:19), let them also read what follows: "But Thou hast performed it to them which hope in Thee." For what does it mean that He has hidden it for those who fear Him, yet performed it for those who hope in Him, if not that the righteousness of God is not sweet to those who do not know it, those who establish their own righteousness out of fear of punishment, the righteousness that is in the law? They have not tasted it. They hope in themselves, not in Him, and therefore the multitude of the sweetness of God is hidden from them; for they do truly fear God, but with that servile fear which has no love in it, because perfect love casts out fear. Therefore He performs His sweetness to those who hope in Him by pouring His love into them, so that when they glory with a pure and reverent fear, not in what love drives away but in what remains forever, they may glory in the Lord. For Christ is the righteousness of God: "Who unto us of God," as the apostle says, "is made wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (1 Cor 1:30). As it is written, "Let him which rejoiceth, rejoice in the Lord" (1 Cor 1:31); those who seek to establish their own righteousness do not know this righteousness that grace gives apart from merit, and therefore they are not subject to the righteousness of God, which is Christ. In that righteousness there is a great abundance of the sweetness of God, which is why the Psalm says, "O taste and see how sweet the Lord is" (Ps 34:8). And we, having a taste of it but not our fill during this pilgrimage, hunger and thirst after it all the more, so that we may be satisfied with it when we see Him as He is, and that which is written will be fulfilled: "I shall be satisfied when Thy glory shall be manifested" (Ps 17:15). So Christ brings about a great abundance of His sweetness for those who hope in Him. But if God hides that sweetness from those who fear Him, as these people suppose, because He will not condemn the wicked, so that not knowing this and fearing condemnation they might live well, and so there might be some who pray for the wicked, then how does He perform it for those who hope in Him? For by their reasoning, this same sweetness means He will not condemn even those who do not hope in Him. Let us therefore seek that sweetness of His which He performs for those who hope in Him, and not the sweetness He is supposed to show toward those who despise and blaspheme Him. It is useless, then, for a person to seek after death what he neglected to obtain while still alive in the body. That saying of the apostle, "For God has shut up all in unbelief, that He may have mercy on all" (Rom 11:32), is not spoken to mean that He will condemn no one; the sense in which it was spoken is made clear earlier in the passage. For when the apostle was speaking to the Gentiles, to whom, now believing, he was writing his letters, concerning the Jews who would afterward believe, he says: "As ye in time past have not believed God, yet now have obtained mercy through their unbelief: even so now have they not believed by the mercy shewed unto you, that they may also obtain mercy" (Rom 11:30-31). Then he adds the words on which these people flatter themselves in their errors: "For God hath shut up all in unbelief, that He may have mercy on all" (Rom 11:32). Who are "all," if not those of whom he was speaking, meaning both Gentiles and Jews together? Therefore God has shut up in unbelief all those, both Gentiles and Jews, whom He foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that, humbled and broken by repentance for the bitterness of their unbelief and turned by faith toward the sweetness of God's mercies, they might declare what the Psalm proclaims: "How great is the multitude of thy sweetness, O Lord, which Thou hast laid up for them which fear Thee: but hast performed it to them which hope, not in themselves, but in Thee" (Ps 31:19). Therefore He has mercy on *all* the vessels of mercy. What does "on all" mean? It means on those from among the Gentiles and also on those from among the Jews whom He has predestined, called, justified, and glorified, not on every single person without exception, and He will condemn none of those.

Now let us address those who not only exclude the devils from salvation (as the previous group does) but also exclude all people whatsoever, except those baptized in Christ and made partakers of His body and blood. These people, they insist, will be saved no matter how deeply their lives are stained by sin or heresy. But the apostle plainly refutes them, saying, "The works of the flesh are manifest, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, wantonness, idolatry," and so on, "of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (Gal 5:19-21). This would be false if such people could somehow become saints at any point whatsoever. But this is true Scripture, and therefore that will never come to pass. And if they are never made partakers of the joys of heaven, then they will be bound forever in the pains of hell, for there is no middle ground where someone who is not in bliss might find a place free from torment.

And so it is fitting that we consider how our Saviour's words should be understood, where He says: "This is the bread that came down from heaven, that he that eateth of it, should not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever," etc. Those whom we must answer later hold a somewhat more restricted interpretation of these passages than those we are addressing now. The latter group does not promise salvation to everyone who receives the sacraments, but only to Catholics (whatever their manner of life), since they alone receive the body of Christ not merely sacramentally but truly as well, being genuine members of His body, of which the apostle says, "We that are many are one bread and one body." Therefore, whoever belongs to this unity of Christ's members in one body, the sacrament of which the faithful receive daily, is truly said to receive the body and drink the blood of Christ. Heretics and schismatics, cut off from this body, may indeed receive the same sacrament, but it does them no good; rather, it does them great harm at that final judgment, where it will both increase the weight of their punishment and make it eternal. For they are not part of that unity of peace which this sacrament expresses.

But those who recognize that someone outside of Christ cannot truly receive His body are overreaching when they promise absolution, sooner or later, to everyone who falls away into superstition, idolatry, or heresy. First, they should notice how absurd it is to suppose that those who have left the Church and become arch-heretics are in a better position than the people they seduced into heresy, who were Catholics in the Church before being led astray. This would only follow if being baptized and receiving Christ's body in the Church were the causes of those arch-heretics' deliverance. But an apostate, someone who opposes the very faith he once professed, is worse off than someone who opposes what he never professed in the first place. Second, the apostle himself refutes this view when he concludes his list of the works of the flesh by saying, "They which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."

Sinners and wicked men, therefore, should not take comfort in their continued membership in the Church simply because it is written, "He that endureth to the end, he shall be saved." Nor should they renounce Christ, their righteousness, through fornication or any of the other fleshly works the apostle lists, or through the kinds of uncleanness he would not even name. Of all such people, he says plainly, "These shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Those who do such things cannot escape eternal punishment, since they are shut out from everlasting joy. Their kind of perseverance is no perseverance in Christ at all, because it is not true perseverance in His faith, which the apostle defines as the kind that works through love. "And love,"

(as he says elsewhere) "worketh no evil." So these are not true receivers of Christ's body, because they are not His true members. For (to leave aside other arguments) they cannot be both the members of Christ and the members of a harlot. And Christ Himself says, "He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me and I in him" (John 6:56), showing what it means to receive Christ, not only sacramentally but truly: it means "to dwell in Christ and Christ in him." He spoke as if to say, "He that dwelleth not in Me, nor I in him, cannot say he eateth My flesh, or drinketh My blood." Those who are not members of Christ are not in Him; those who make themselves members of a harlot are no members of Christ, unless they purge away their corruption through repentance and return to His goodness through genuine reconciliation.

Ah, but Christian Catholics (they say) have Christ as their foundation, from whom they never fell, even if they built poorly on it, in the manner of timber, straw, and stubble. So their faith is true: it holds Christ as the foundation, and though it suffers some loss when the things built on it burn away, it still has the power to save the one who holds it, after a period of suffering. But let St. James answer these men plainly: "If a man say he has faith, and have no works, can the faith save him?" (Jas 2:14). Who, then, is the person (they ask) of whom St. Paul says, "He shall be safe himself, yet so as by fire"? We will get to that; but it is certainly not the person these men have in mind, or else the apostles contradict each other. For if one says, "Though a man have lived wickedly, yet shall he be saved by faith, through fire," and the other says, "If he have no works, can his faith save him?" (Jas 2:14), then we will soon discover who it is that shall be saved by fire, once we first establish what it means to have Christ as the foundation.

To work this out, start with the nature of the analogy: in building, no work comes before the foundation. Now, everyone holds Christ in his heart to this extent: that his desire for temporal things, and sometimes for unlawful things, still claims Christ as its foundation. But if he places those things above Christ, then even if he appears to hold the faith, Christ is no foundation to him, because he has put those vanities before Him. And if a man both ignores good instruction and pursues bad actions, how much more quickly will he be shown to regard Christ as nothing, to value Him at nothing in his vainer pursuits, by neglecting His commands and permissions and, in violating both, following his own disordered desires. Therefore, if any Christian loves a prostitute and "become one body with her by coupling with her," he does not have Christ as his foundation. And if a man loves his wife according to Christ, who can deny that he has Christ as his foundation? Suppose his love is carnal, worldly, and driven by desire, as the Gentiles loved who did not know Christ: the apostle still bears with all of this, and so Christ may still be such a man's foundation. For if he does not place these carnal affections above Christ, then even if he builds straw and stubble on his foundation, Christ remains the foundation still, and such a man will be saved by fire. The fire of tribulation will purge away those carnal and worldly affections which the bond of marriage keeps from being damnable; and all the calamities that belong to this sphere, such as barrenness and the loss of children, point toward that same fire. In this case, the man who builds this way will suffer loss, because his building will not last, and those losses will grieve him in proportion to the delight he once took in them. Yet the worth of his foundation will save him, in that if a persecutor forced him to choose between Christ and his earthly pleasures, he would choose Christ and leave everything else behind.

Now hear St. Paul describe a builder on this foundation with gold, silver, and precious stones: "The unmarried," he says, "careth for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord." And now for the one who builds with wood, straw, and stubble: "He that is married careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife. Every man's work shall be made manifest, for the day of the Lord shall declare it" (1 Cor 3:13), that is, the day of tribulation, for it shall be revealed by the fire.

This tribulation he calls fire, as we read elsewhere: "The furnace proves the potter's vessel, and so does the trial of affliction try a man's thoughts." The fire, then, will test every man's work. If any work survives (as will the work of the man who cares for the things of the Lord and how to please Him), "he shall receive wages," meaning he will receive the One he thought about and cared for. "But if any man's work burns, he shall lose," because he will not have the pleasures he loved. Yet he will be safe, since he held to his foundation through all tribulation, though as it were by fire, because what he possessed in alluring love, he will pass through in the furnace of afflicting sorrow. This, I believe, is the fire that will enrich one and damage the other, testing both yet condemning neither.

If we say that the fire spoken of here is the same fire Christ mentioned to those on His left hand, "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire," and that all who built timber, straw, and stubble on their foundation are among those cursed who will nonetheless be delivered after a time of torment by the merit of their foundation, then we cannot think that those on the right hand, to whom He will say "Come, ye blessed," and so on, are anyone other than those who built gold, silver, and precious stones on that same foundation. But the fire the apostle speaks of will serve as a trial for both the good and the bad: both will pass through it, for the text says, "Every man's work shall be made manifest, for the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by the fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is." If the fire tests both, and the one whose work survives is rewarded while the one whose work burns suffers loss, then this cannot be that everlasting fire. For none will enter that fire except the cursed on the left hand at the last judgment, whereas the blessed will pass through this fire, in which some will be so tested that their building stands unconsumed, while others will have their work burned yet be saved themselves, because their love for Christ exceeded all their carnal imperfections. And if they are saved, they will stand at Christ's right hand and be among those to whom it is said, "Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom," and so on, not on the left hand among the cursed, to whom it will be said, "Depart from Me," and so on. For none of those will be saved by fire; all of them will be bound forever in that place where the worm never dies, burning without end.

As for the time between bodily death and the last judgment: if anyone says that the spirits of the dead are throughout that period tried in such a fire as never touches those who did not build wood, straw, or stubble, afflicting only those who did build such things, whether here, or there, or both; or that a person's worldly desires, being venial, will pass through the purging fire of tribulation only in this world and not in the next, I will not contradict him. He may well be right. To this tribulation may also belong the death of the body, drawn from our first parents' sin and inflicted on each person sooner or later according to what he has built. So too may the Church's persecutions, in which the martyrs were crowned and all the rest were afflicted. These calamities, like fire, tested both kinds of building: consuming both works and workmen where they found no foundation in Christ, and consuming the works only (saving the workmen through that very loss) where they did find Him, with "stubble," and so on, built upon Him. But where they found works that would endure to eternal life, they consumed nothing at all.

In the last days, in the time of Antichrist, there will be a persecution unlike any that came before. Many buildings, both of gold and of stubble, all founded on Christ, will be tested by this fire, which will bring joy to some and loss to others, yet destroy none of them because of their firm foundation. But whoever loves, and I am not speaking of carnal affection for a wife, but even such outward expressions of piety as are utterly removed from that kind of desire, with such a blind longing that he places them above Christ, that man does not have Christ for his foundation. He will be saved neither by fire nor by any other means, because he cannot be joined to Christ, who says plainly of such people, "He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is unworthy of Me. And he that loveth son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me." But the man who loves them with carnal affection yet still holds Christ as his foundation, and would rather lose everything else than lose Christ if forced to choose, such a man will be saved, though as it were by fire: his grief in losing them will be as great as his delight was in having them. The man who loves father, mother, and so on according to Christ's standard, seeking to bring them into His kingdom, or delighting in them because they are members of Christ, that love will never burn away like wood, straw, or stubble. It will stand as a building of gold, silver, and precious stones. For how can a man love more than Christ the very thing he loves only for Christ's sake?

Now a word for those who believe that only people who neglect works of mercy worthy of their sins will be condemned, because St. James says, "There shall be judgment merciless to him that sheweth no mercy." Those who do show mercy, they argue, no matter how burdened their lives are with sin and corruption, will receive a merciful judgment that will either acquit them from all punishment or at least deliver them after a period of suffering. This, they say, is why Christ distinguished the elect from the reprobate solely by their performance or non-performance of works of mercy, rewarding the one with everlasting joy and punishing the other with eternal pain. As for their daily sins, they claim the Lord's Prayer proves sufficiently that these can be pardoned through works of mercy: since no day passes in which a Christian does not say this prayer, no daily sin goes unforgiven when we say, "And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us," provided we actually follow through on that second clause. Christ, they point out, did not say, "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you your small and daily ones," but said simply and generally, "He will forgive you yours." So no matter how great, how habitual, or how constant those sins may be, works of mercy will wash them all away.

To their credit, they do well to advise that works of mercy should be worthy of one's sins. Had they claimed that any works of mercy whatsoever could obtain pardon for the greatest and most habitual sins, they would have fallen into serious absurdity, since on that logic the wealthiest man could buy a daily pardon for all his fornications, murders, and every other sin with a few coins a day. But if that conclusion is plainly absurd, then we must ask what works are actually worthy of pardon for sin, the kind St. John the Baptist had in mind when he said, "Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of amendment of life." When we do, we will find that those who stab their own souls through continual sin possess no such works. First, they take violently from others far more than they ever give charitably to the poor, yet in giving a little they imagine they are feeding Christ and purchasing from Him a license to keep sinning. They rush carelessly toward their own condemnation. Even if they were to give away their entire estate to the poor members of Christ to redeem a single sin, if love that does no evil did not restrain them from further such wrongs, they would gain nothing at all from it.

Whoever wants to clear his sins through his works must begin with himself, for it is wrong to do for a neighbor what one will not do for oneself. Christ Himself said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," and again, "Love thine own soul (if thou wilt please God)." So how can someone who does not perform this work of mercy toward his own soul, that is, the pleasing of God, be said to perform works of mercy sufficient to redeem his sins? For it is written, "He that is wicked to himself to whom will he be good? for alms-deeds do lift up the prayers of men to God." And what do the Scriptures say? "My son, hast thou sinned? do so no more, but pray for thy sins past, that they may be forgiven thee." This is why we must give alms: so that when we pray, our prayer may be heard, so that we may leave our former vices behind and find refreshment through those works of mercy. When Christ says He will take into account at the judgment both the doing and the omission of alms-giving, He is showing how powerful such works are to expiate past offenses, not to shield those who continue in sin. Those who refuse to abandon their impious ways cannot be said to perform any genuine works of mercy. And Christ's words, "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these, ye did it not unto Me," imply that they performed no such works as they imagined. For if someone gives bread to a hungry Christian as though giving it to Christ Himself, God does not care to whom you give, but with what intent you give. Whoever loves Christ in His members gives alms with the intent of joining himself to Christ, not of securing permission to abandon Him without punishment. The more one loves what Christ reproves, the farther one departs from Christ. What does baptism profit unless justification follows it? Does not the same One who said, "Except a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he shall not enter into the Kingdom of God," also say, "Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven"? Why do people rush to baptism out of fear of the first warning, yet make no move toward righteousness out of fear of the second? Therefore, just as someone who rebukes his brother's sin out of genuine charity, even by calling him a fool, is not on that account guilty of hell fire, so on the other side, someone who does not love Christ in His members gives no alms to a Christian as a Christian, even if he stretches out his hand to one of Christ's poor. And whoever refuses to be justified in Christ does not love Christ in any respect.

But if someone calls his brother a fool out of contemptuous spite rather than a genuine desire to correct him, no amount of charitable giving will do him any good unless he first makes peace with the one he has wronged. As the text continues: "If then thou bringest thy gift unto the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thine offering, and go thy way: first be reconciled to thy brother and then come and offer thy gift." The point is clear: performing acts of mercy to atone for a sin while continuing in that same sin accomplishes nothing.

As for the Lord's Prayer, it does indeed wash away our daily sins when we pray each day, "And forgive us our trespasses," but only if the clause that follows is not merely recited but actually practiced: "As we forgive them that trespass against us." We say this prayer because we sin, not in order to sin. Our Savior shows us through it that no matter how carefully we try to avoid corruption, we still fall into some sins every day, and for those we should both pray for forgiveness and extend forgiveness to those who have wronged us, so that we ourselves may be pardoned.

This is why Christ does not say, "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you yours," to encourage anyone to persist in serious daily crimes, whether committed boldly under some claimed authority or through cunning and deception. He says it to teach us that we are not without sin, even if we are without grave crime, just as God instructed the priests in the Old Testament to offer first for their own sins and then for the people's. We should pay close attention to these words of our Lord and Master. He does not say, "Your Heavenly Father will forgive you any sin whatever," but "He will forgive you yours." In this passage He was teaching His disciples, who were already justified, their daily prayer. What else can "yours" mean here but those sins that even the righteous cannot entirely avoid?

Those who would use this passage as license to persist in sin argue that Christ must have meant even the gravest sins, since He said not "your smaller sins" but "yours" without qualification. We, however, taking into account who was being addressed, understand His words to concern only minor sins, since those He was speaking to had already been cleansed of the greater ones.

Nor are those great sins (which everyone should reform in themselves and avoid) ever forgiven unless the guilty person fulfills the condition stated earlier: "As we forgive them that trespass against us." If even the smallest sins, to which righteous people themselves are prone, cannot be pardoned except on that condition, then far less will the great and serious ones receive pardon, even if those who committed them have stopped practicing them, provided they remain unwilling to forgive those who have wronged them. For the Lord says, "If ye do not forgive men their trespasses, no more will your Heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses." James makes the same point: "There shall be judgment merciless to him that sheweth no mercy." Consider the servant whose master forgave him a debt of ten thousand talents, yet afterward had him thrown into prison because he refused to forgive a fellow servant a debt of a mere hundred pence. And so, among the vessels of mercy and the children of promise, the same apostle's words ring true: "Mercy rejoiceth against (or above) judgment." Those who lived so holy a life that they welcomed others into the everlasting habitations, having made friends of those who used the riches of iniquity on their behalf, were themselves delivered by the mercy of Him who justifies the sinner by grace rather than by merit. The one who declared, "I was received to mercy (that I might be one of the faithful)," belonged to this justified company. Indeed, those who are welcomed by such people into the everlasting habitations are not of such merit that they could be saved without the intercession of the Church triumphant, and so in their case mercy more visibly triumphs over judgment. Yet we should not suppose that every wicked person, unreformed, can be admitted there simply because he has been generous to the saints and helped them from his wealth, whether that wealth was gained by dishonest means or otherwise. Such riches are not true riches at all, except in the imagination of the wicked, because he does not know the true riches that fill those who help people like him into those eternal mansions. There must therefore be a certain middle ground in the lives of those who show such mercy: their lives must not be so bad that the charitable acts done toward those who, having been made their friends, might help them to heaven, are rendered entirely fruitless; nor yet so good that their own holiness, without the mercies and prayers of those they have made their friends, can secure for them so high a blessedness. I have often marveled that Virgil seems to have anticipated Christ's saying, "Make you friends of the riches of iniquity, that they may receive you into the everlasting habitations." This is much like the saying, "He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall have a prophet's reward," and so on. For this poet, in describing the Elysian fields, which they believed the blessed souls to inhabit, does not only place there those whose own merits have earned it, but adds this: *Quique sui memores alios fecêre merendo* (those who, mindful of their own future state, deserved to be remembered by others). It is as if he had said what every humble Christian commonly says when commending himself to some holy person: "Remember me," while striving to earn that remembrance through worthy deeds. But what exactly this middle ground is, and which sins prevent a person from heaven yet may be forgiven through the intercession of holy friends, is both difficult to identify and dangerous to define. I have searched long on this question and have never been able to resolve it. Perhaps it is kept hidden precisely to press us all the more urgently to avoid every sin. For if we knew which sins might be covered by the intercession of the saints, our natural laziness would lead us to rest comfortably in them and rely so entirely on the help of others that we would never seek to reform ourselves, but trust only in those friends we had secured through unrighteous wealth. As it stands, though our lesser sins remain with us, and to what degree we cannot say, our eagerness to grow through prayer is more fervent, and our desire to win the friendship of the saints is better pursued. But both of these means of deliverance, whether through our own efforts or through others, aim entirely at keeping us out of eternal fire, not at freeing us once we are already in it. Those who interpret the Scripture passage, "Some fell in good ground, and brought forth fruit, some thirty-fold, some sixty, some an hundred," as referring to the saints delivering souls according to the diversity of their merit, some saving thirty, some sixty, some a hundred, nonetheless hold that this deliverance will happen at the judgment, not after it. On this view, one observer, noticing how many people used it as license to live in complete moral looseness, supposing that by this reasoning everyone might eventually be saved, is said to have given this sharp reply: "We ought for this very reason to live uprightly, so as to increase the number of intercessors, lest there be so few that each one saves his thirty, his sixty, or his hundred, and yet an infinite multitude remains unsaved." And why should the person who comforts himself with a reckless hope of help from another not be among that unsaved multitude? So much, then, against those who do not reject the authority of our Scriptures but nonetheless twist them to serve their own purposes, following their own fancies rather than the true intention of the Holy Spirit. Having now given them our answer, we must, as we promised, bring this present book to a close.