{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/102/1020646.htm","path":"chr/ecf/102/1020646.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/102/1020646.htm","text":"Chapter 13.\u2014Against the Opinion of Those Who Think that the Punishments of the Wicked After Death are Purgatorial.\nThe Platonists, indeed, while they maintain that no sins are unpunished, suppose that all punishment is administered for remedial purposes, 1519 be it inflicted by human or divine law, in this life or after death; for a man may be scathless here, or, though punished, may yet not amend. Hence that passage of Virgil, where, when he had said of our earthly bodies and mortal members, that our souls derive\u2014\n\u201cHence wild desires and grovelling fears,\nAnd human laughter, human tears;\nImmured in dungeon-seeming night,\nThey look abroad, yet see no light,\u201d\n\u201cNay, when at last the life has fled,\nAnd left the body cold and dead,\nEe\u2019n then there passes not away\nFull many a long-contracted stain\nPerforce must linger deep in grain.\nSo penal sufferings they endure\nFor ancient crime, to make them pure;\nFor winds to pierce them through and through,\nWhile others purge their guilt deep-dyed\nIn burning fire or whelming tide.\u201d 1520\nThey who are of this opinion would have all punishments after death to be purgatorial; and as the elements of air, fire, and water are superior to earth, one or other of these may p. 464 be the instrument of expiating and purging away the stain contracted by the contagion of earth. So Virgil hints at the air in the words, \u201cSome hang aloft for winds to pierce;\u201d at the water in \u201cwhelming tide;\u201d and at fire in the expression \u201cin burning fire.\u201d For our part, we recognize that even in this life some punishments are purgatorial,\u2014not, indeed, to those whose life is none the better, but rather the worse for them, but to those who are constrained by them to amend their life. All other punishments, whether temporal or eternal, inflicted as they are on every one by divine providence, are sent either on account of past sins, or of sins presently allowed in the life, or to exercise and reveal a man\u2019s graces. They may be inflicted by the instrumentality of bad men and angels as well as of the good. For even if any one suffers some hurt through another\u2019s wickedness or mistake, the man indeed sins whose ignorance or injustice does the harm; but God, who by His just though hidden judgment permits it to be done, sins not. But temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment. But of those who suffer temporary punishments after death, all are not doomed to those everlasting pains which are to follow that judgment; for to some, as we have already said, what is not remitted in this world is remitted in the next, that is, they are not punished with the eternal punishment of the world to come.\nPlato\u2019s own theory was that punishment had a twofold purpose, to reform and to deter. \u201cNo one punishes an offender on account of the past offense, and simply because he has done wrong, but for the sake of the future, that the offense may not be again committed, either by the same person or by any one who has seen him punished.\u201d\u2014See the Protagoras, 324, b, and Grote\u2019s Plato, ii. 41.\n463:1520","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II: City of God: Cha...","type":"page"}