clearly taught that Paradise is a part of Heaven, though he thought none were admitted into it until after the resurrection of the body. Tertullian also in one treatise distinguished between Hades and Abraham's Bosom, for he wrote: "The inferi are one place, I deem, and Abraham's Bosom another ";1 but elsewhere he speaks as if the place where the righteous are "cherished" and the others are "punished were both "in the inferi."? Origen says that at death "some go into the place called infernus, some into Abraham's Bosom, and into different places or mansions." St. Hippolitus3 and St. Jerome,1 on the contrary, speak of both the righteous and the imperfect as equally in Hades, though the one comforted and the other tormented.

Another writer is more clear, though he does not distinguish between the unjust who are altogether reprobate and those who are destined eventually for Paradise : "After the departure from the body forthwith there takes place the distinction of the just and unjust. For they are led by the angels to the places meet for them;

1 Adv. Marc. iv. 34.

2 "Why shouldest thou not think that the soul is both punished and cherished in the inferi, under the expectation of either judgment, in a sort of anticipation of it?"-De Anima, n. 58.

3 66 Passing the gates [of Hades], those who are brought down by the angels set over souls, go not by one way; but the just, light-led to the right" to the place "called Abraham's bosom ; but the unjust are dragged by avenging angels to the left . . . to the confines of hell.”—ST. HIPPOL., Adv. Græc. et Plat. n. I., Gall. ii. 451, 452.

...

4 'Infernus is a place in which souls are laid up either in refreshment or in pains, according to the quality of their deserts.”—ST. JEROME, In Os. xiii. 14, t. vi. p. 152, Vall.

the souls of the just to Paradise, where is the converse and sight of angels and archangels and of the Saviour Christ in vision, as it is written, 'being absent from the body and present with the Lord'; but the souls of the unjust to the place of Hades." And once more: “We learn from the Scriptures that the souls of sinners are in Hades, below all earth and sea, as the Psalms say, and as is written in Job. But the souls of the just (after the coming of Christ) are in Paradise. For Christ our God did not open Paradise for the soul of the holy robber alone, but for all the souls of the holy thereafter."2 Thus, although the Fathers knew of but two main abodes of the dead-Heaven and Hades—yet in each of these there were supposed to be many degrees of glory or suffering. It was evidently, therefore, in Hades that the Fathers believed that the souls of the imperfect were detained, and awaited, either the final judgment, or else the time when the work of their purification should be finished. It is difficult to say if they thought of these souls as detained in that abode in Hades where-until the resurrection of our Lord-the righteous dead had been detained, or if they thought that the imperfect were in the same abode as the reprobate, and thus literally "shut out with the condemned." The Eastern Church has always refused to allow that the imperfect suffered the torment of a purgatorial fire. Some Eastern Fathers seem to teach that these souls suffer

1 Qu. et resp. ad Orthod., p. 75; in St. Justin M., App., p. 470. 2 Qu. ad Antioch., q. 19, in St. Athanasius, Opp. ii. 272.

only the negative "pain of loss," which consists in their being for a time deprived of the Vision of God. This and the teaching of their ancient Liturgies would certainly suggest the belief that the imperfect are in the place where the righteous dead awaited the opening of the heavens by our Lord; thus they might be spoken of as in "Hell" (ie. Hades) and yet in a state of comparative happiness. This too would explain the fact that prayers were sometimes offered for the refreshment, peace, and rest of the souls of the dead, who were nevertheless spoken of as if they already enjoyed in a measure the blessings that were desired for them. Such prayers would be a petition that the souls who were already so far at rest that they were sure of their final salvation,1 were no longer harassed with the trials and anxieties of this life, and were perhaps also conscious of a growing nearness to God, might attain the fuller rest, the perfect joy of the Vision of God in Paradise.

There was, however, another aspect of the state of these imperfect souls. If they were thought of as already in some degree enjoying rest and peace, yet they were excluded from Paradise; they were in the inferi, not in the supernal realms; they were, that is to say, in Hades, not in Heaven.

Hence we may say that by the time of St. Augustine the whole Church-East and West-had arrived at the

1 But here again is the difficulty that St. John Chrysostom-apparently speaking of the common belief of his day-implies that some of the imperfect, if not all of them, were not sure of salvation.

belief that the souls of the imperfect were, to quote the words of St. John Chrysostom, “outside the Palace," and therefore in so far as they were outside the Palace they were said to be "with the culprits, with the condemned," and not with Christ." It was, as we have seen, for these souls especially that the Church was fervent in prayers and in offering the "awful Sacrifice." Such souls were indeed in need of all that could be done for them, since although they were capable of salvation they, perhaps, were not aware of this, and were not yet clothed with the perfect robe of the spotless righteousness of Christ. The absence of guilt is by no means the same thing as the possession of sanctity. The one is a negative, the other a positive state. The removal of the filthy garments from Joshua the high priest was but a preparation for his being clothed in robes of glory. Thus it is written, “Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment." 1 Repentance strips a man of his filthy garments, but the putting on of Christ is another

matter.

If a man be not perfectly clothed with the glory of the righteousness of Christ here, he certainly must be hereafter, if he is ever to enter Heaven.

When we ask the question, whether or no the Fathers taught that the souls of the imperfect were

1 Zech. iii. 4.

R

made "perfect through suffering" of a more positive kind than the deprivation of the Vision of God, we come to a point on which the East and West eventually came to the same conclusion, though differing in details. Speaking generally, the earlier Eastern Fathers did not go beyond the assertion that-as the Vision of God is not granted to any except the spirits of the just made perfect, in Heaven-the souls of the imperfect detained in Hades do not enjoy the Beatific Vision; they suffer, that is to say, the pœna damni- the pain of loss. In the West, on the contrary, we find a growing inclination to interpret the words of St. Paul, "saved, yet so as by fire," in a more literal way. St. Augustine returns to this passage again and again in various parts of his writings. At one time he interprets it quite figuratively, at another he inclines to something very like the more modern belief of the Schoolmen, that the sufferings in Hades are due not only to the pain of loss, but also to sensible torments that are inflicted by material fire. This belief was not by any means the invention of St. Augustine; it had been expressed in more or less figurative language by some of the earlier Fathers. But it was undoubtedly due to St. Augustine that the doctrine became the popular belief of the whole Western Church for many centuries, and has maintained a firm hold upon the belief of the Roman Church down to the present day. Among the Fathers who wrote as if the souls of the imperfect suffered not only the pain of loss, but also the pain of sense