Part IV, Chapter XLIV, 4

But he cites other passages of the New Testament that are not so easily answered. The first is Matth. 12.32: “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of man shall be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven, either in this world or in the world to come.” Here he would have Purgatory be the world to come, where some sins may be forgiven that were not forgiven in this world. Yet it is plain that there are only three worlds: one from the Creation to the Flood, destroyed by water and called in Scripture the old world; another from the Flood to the day of Judgment, the present world, to be destroyed by fire; and a third, everlasting, from the day of Judgment onward, called the world to come. In this last, all agree, there shall be no Purgatory. The world to come and Purgatory are therefore incompatible. But what, then, can our Savior's words mean? I confess they are very difficult to reconcile with all the doctrines now unanimously received. Nor is it shameful to confess that Scripture is too profound for the limits of human understanding to sound. Nevertheless, I may offer for more learned divines to consider what the text itself suggests. First, since to speak against the Holy Ghost, as the third Person of the Trinity, is to speak against the Church in which the Holy Ghost resides, the comparison seems to lie between our Savior's readiness to bear offenses against himself while he was on earth, and the severity of the pastors after him toward those who should deny their authority, derived from the Holy Ghost. It is as if he were to say: You who deny my power—even you who crucify me—shall be pardoned by me whenever you turn to me in repentance. But if you deny the power of those who shall afterward teach you by virtue of the Holy Ghost, they will be inexorable and will not forgive you. They will persecute you in this world and leave you without absolution, even if you turn to me, unless you turn to them as well, and so, as far as lies in their power, leave you to the punishments of the world to come. Thus the words may be read as a prophecy, or prediction, concerning the course of affairs in the Christian Church. Or, if this is not their meaning—for I am not dogmatic about such difficult passages—perhaps after the Resurrection some sinners may yet have room for repentance. Another passage also seems to agree with this. For when we consider St. Paul's words (1 Cor. 15. 29.), “What shall they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise at all? Why are they baptized for the dead?” we may plausibly infer, as some have done, that in St. Paul's time there was a custom of receiving baptism on behalf of the dead. Just as believers today stand as sponsors and guarantors for the faith of infants incapable of believing, so people undertook on behalf of deceased friends that they would be ready to obey and receive our Savior as their King at his return. In that case forgiveness of sins in the world to come requires no Purgatory. But both these interpretations contain so much that is paradoxical that I do not rely on them. I submit them instead to those deeply versed in Scripture, to inquire whether any clearer passage contradicts them. Only this much I see clearly supported by Scripture: neither the word Purgatory nor the thing itself appears in this or any other text, nor anything that proves the necessity of a place for the soul without the body—whether for the soul of Lazarus during the four days he lay dead, or for the souls the Roman Church claims are now tormented in Purgatory. For God, who could give life to a piece of clay, has the same power to restore life to a dead man and renew his lifeless, decayed carcass as a glorious, spiritual, immortal body.

Another passage is 1 Cor. 3., where it is said that those who build stubble, hay, and the like upon the true foundation will lose their work, but “they themselves shall be saved, yet as through fire.” He would have this fire be the fire of Purgatory. As I have said before, these words allude to Zach. 13. 9.: “I will bring the third part through the fire, refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested.” This speaks of the Messiah's coming in power and glory: that is, of the day of Judgment and the burning of the present world, in which the Elect shall not be consumed but refined. They shall put away their erroneous doctrines and traditions, having them, as it were, singed off, and afterward call upon the name of the true God. Likewise, the Apostle says that those who, holding to this foundation, Jesus is the Christ, build upon it other doctrines that are erroneous will not be consumed in the fire that renews the world. They shall pass through it to salvation, but only upon recognizing and relinquishing their former errors. The builders are the pastors; the foundation, that Jesus is the Christ; the stubble and hay, false conclusions drawn from it through ignorance or frailty; the gold, silver, and precious stones, their true doctrines; and their refining or purging, the relinquishing of their errors. None of this offers the least grounds for burning incorporeal—that is, incapable-of-suffering—souls.

A third passage is the previously mentioned 1 Cor. 15., concerning baptism for the dead. From it he concludes, first, that prayers for the dead are not useless; and from that, that there is a fire of Purgatory. But neither conclusion follows rightly. Among many interpretations of baptism, the one he approves first is that baptism means, metaphorically, a baptism of penance, and that people are baptized in this sense when they fast, pray, and give alms. Thus baptism for the dead and prayer for the dead become the same thing. But this metaphor has no example in Scripture or in any other use of language, and it conflicts with the harmony and purpose of Scripture. The word baptism is used (Mar. 10. 38. & Luk. 12. 59.) for being dipped in one's own blood, as Christ was on the Cross, and as most of the Apostles were in bearing witness to him. But it is hard to say that prayer, fasting, and alms have any likeness to dipping. The word is also used in Mat. 3. 11. (which may seem to lend some support to Purgatory) for a purging with fire. Yet clearly the fire and purging mentioned there are those of which the prophet Zachary speaks (chap. 13. v. 9.): “I will bring the third part through the fire, and refine them, etc.” So too St. Peter (1 Epist. 1. 7.): “That the trial of your faith, much more precious than gold that perishes though it be tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ”; and St. Paul (1 Cor. 3. 13.): “The fire shall test every man's work, of what sort it is.” But St. Peter and St. Paul speak of the fire at Christ's second appearing, and the prophet Zachary of the day of Judgment. This passage of St. Matthew may therefore be interpreted in the same way; and then there is no need for the fire of Purgatory.

Another interpretation of baptism for the dead is the one I mentioned earlier, which he ranks second in probability; from this too he infers the usefulness of prayer for the dead. For if after the Resurrection those who have not heard of Christ, or have not believed in him, may be received into Christ's Kingdom, it is not in vain that their friends should pray for them after their death, until they rise. But even granting that God, at the prayers of the faithful, may convert to himself some who have not heard Christ preached and consequently cannot have rejected Christ, and granting that human charity in this matter cannot be blamed, it proves nothing about Purgatory. To rise from death to life is one thing; to rise from Purgatory to life is another, a rising from life to life, from a life of torment to a life of joy.

A fourth passage is Mat. 5. 25.: “Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him, lest the adversary deliver you to the officer and you be cast into prison. Truly I say to you, you shall by no means come out until you have paid the last farthing.” In this allegory the offender is the sinner; both the adversary and the judge are God; the way is this life; the prison is the grave; and the officer is death. From there the sinner shall not rise to eternal life but to a second death, until he has paid the last farthing, or Christ pays it for him through his Passion, which is a full ransom for every sort of sin, lesser sins as much as greater crimes, both made equally pardonable by Christ's Passion.

The fifth passage is Matth. 5. 22.: “Whoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be liable to judgment. Whoever says to his brother, RACHA, shall be liable to the council. But whoever says, You fool, shall be liable to hell fire.” From these words he infers three kinds of sin and three kinds of punishment; that only the last of these sins shall be punished by hell fire; and consequently that after this life lesser sins are punished in Purgatory. But no interpretation yet given of these words lends the least support to that inference. Will there be distinct courts of justice after this life, as there were among the Jews in our Savior's time, to hear and decide different sorts of crime—the judges and the council? Will not all judgment belong to Christ and his Apostles? We must therefore read this text not in isolation but alongside what precedes and follows it. In this chapter our Savior interprets the Law of Moses, which the Jews thought they had fulfilled if they did not break its grammatical wording, however much they violated the lawgiver's meaning. Thus they supposed that the Sixth Commandment was broken only by killing a man, and the Seventh only by sleeping with a woman who was not one's wife. Our Savior tells them that a man's inward anger against his brother, if without just cause, is homicide. You have heard, he says, the Law of Moses: “You shall not kill,” and “Whoever kills shall be condemned before the judges,” or before the Session of the Seventy. But I say to you, to be angry with one's brother without cause, or call him Racha or Fool, is homicide, and shall be punished with hell fire on the day of Judgment by the Session of Christ and his Apostles. These words were not used to distinguish different crimes, courts, and punishments. Rather, they rebuke the distinction the Jews drew between one sin and another, not from any difference in the will to obey God, but from the differences between their temporal courts of justice. They show that a person who wills to hurt his brother, even if the result goes no further than abuse or produces no outward result at all, shall be cast into hell fire by the judges and the Session, which on the day of Judgment shall be the same court, not different ones. With this considered, I cannot imagine what in this text could support Purgatory.

The sixth passage is Luke 16. 9.: “Make friends for yourselves by the unrighteous mammon, so that when you fail they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.” He cites this to prove the invocation of departed saints. But its meaning is plain: we should use our riches to make friends of the poor, and so obtain their prayers while they live. “He who gives to the poor lends to the Lord.” The seventh is Luke 23. 42.: “Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” Therefore, he says, sins are remitted after this life. But the conclusion does not follow. Our Savior forgave the man then; and when he comes again in glory, he will remember to raise him again to eternal life.

The eighth is Acts 2. 24., where St. Peter says of Christ “that God raised him up and loosed the pains of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it.” He interprets this as Christ's descent into Purgatory to release some souls there from their torments. Yet plainly it was Christ who was released, Christ who could not be held by death or the grave, not the souls in Purgatory. And if we pay due attention to what Beza says in his notes on this passage, everyone will see that in place of pains it should read bonds; then there is no further reason to look for Purgatory in this text.

CHAPTER XLV. OF DEMONOLOGY, AND OTHER REMNANTS OF THE RELIGION OF THE GENTILES

But he cites other places in the New Testament that are harder to answer. The first is Matthew 12.32: “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Ghost will not be forgiven, either in this world or in the world to come.” He takes Purgatory to be the world to come, where some sins may be forgiven though they were not forgiven in this world. Yet plainly there are only three worlds. The first ran from Creation to the Flood, was destroyed by water, and is called the old world in Scripture. The second runs from the Flood to the day of Judgment, is the present world, and will be destroyed by fire. The third begins on the day of Judgment and lasts forever; it is called the world to come. Everyone agrees that there will be no Purgatory in that world. So the world to come cannot be Purgatory. What, then, can our Savior’s words mean? I admit that they are very hard to reconcile with all the doctrines now unanimously accepted. There is no shame in admitting that Scripture is too deep for our limited understanding to reach its bottom. Still, I can offer more learned theologians some ideas suggested by the text itself. First, to speak against the Holy Ghost as the third person of the Trinity is to speak against the Church, where the Holy Ghost lives. The comparison may be between our Savior’s readiness to bear offenses against him while he was on earth and the severity of later pastors toward those who denied the authority they received from the Holy Ghost. It is as though he said: You who deny my power, even you who crucify me, will be pardoned by me whenever you return to me in repentance. But if you deny the authority of those who later teach you through the Holy Ghost, they will not forgive you. They will persecute you in this world and deny you absolution, even if you return to me, unless you also return to them. As far as they can, they will leave you to the punishments of the world to come. On this reading, the words are a prophecy of the conditions that have long existed in the Christian Church. Or, if that is not their meaning—for I do not insist on a definite answer to so difficult a passage—there may be room after the Resurrection for some sinners to repent. Another passage seems to agree. St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15. 29: “What will those who are baptized for the dead do, if the dead do not rise at all? Why are they baptized for the dead?” One might reasonably infer, as some have, that in St. Paul’s time people customarily received baptism on behalf of the dead. They pledged for deceased friends that those friends would be ready to obey and accept our Savior as their King when he returned. Similarly, believers now stand as sponsors and guarantors of the faith of infants who cannot yet believe. Forgiveness of sins in the world to come would then require no Purgatory. But both these readings are so surprising that I do not rely on them. I offer them to those thoroughly versed in Scripture, to see whether some clearer passage contradicts them. I see clear evidence in Scripture only for this: neither the word Purgatory nor the thing itself appears in this or any other text. Nor does anything prove that the soul must have a place apart from the body, whether Lazarus’s soul during the four days he was dead or the souls that the Roman Church claims are now being tormented in Purgatory. God could give life to a piece of clay. He has the same power to restore life to a dead man and remake his lifeless, decaying corpse into a glorious, spiritual, immortal body.

Another passage is 1 Corinthians 3. It says that those who build stubble, hay, and so on upon the true foundation will lose their work, but “they themselves will be saved, though as through fire.” He takes this fire to be the fire of Purgatory. As I said before, the words allude to Zechariah 13. 9: “I will bring the third part through the fire, refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested.” This concerns the Messiah’s coming in power and glory, at the day of Judgment and the burning of the present world. The elect will not be destroyed then but refined. That is, they will give up their mistaken doctrines and traditions as though these were burned away, and afterward call on the name of the true God. Likewise the Apostle says that people who keep the foundation that Jesus is the Christ but build some mistaken doctrines on it will not be destroyed in the fire that renews the world. They will pass through it to salvation, but will recognize and give up their former errors. The builders are the pastors; the foundation is that Jesus is the Christ; the stubble and hay are false conclusions drawn from it through ignorance or weakness. The gold, silver, and precious stones are their true doctrines; their refining or cleansing is their abandonment of error. None of this gives any reason to think that incorporeal souls, which cannot suffer, will burn.

A third passage is the one already mentioned, 1 Corinthians 15, about baptism for the dead. From it he first concludes that prayers for the dead are useful, and from that, that there is a fire of Purgatory. Neither conclusion follows. Among the many interpretations of “baptism,” his first choice is that it means, figuratively, a baptism of repentance, and that people are baptized in this sense when they fast, pray, and give alms. On this view, baptism for the dead is the same thing as prayer for the dead. But this metaphor occurs nowhere in Scripture or any other use of language, and it conflicts with Scripture’s meaning and purpose. “Baptism” is used in Mark 10. 38 and Luke 12. 59 for being dipped in one’s own blood in testimony to Christ, as Christ was on the cross and most of the Apostles were. But prayer, fasting, and almsgiving can hardly be called dipping. The word is also used in Matthew 3. 11 for a cleansing with fire, which might seem to support Purgatory. Yet the fire and cleansing there plainly are those mentioned by the prophet Zechariah in chapter 13, verse 9: “I will bring the third part through the fire and refine them,” and so on. St. Peter says afterward, in his first epistle, 1. 7: “So that the testing of your faith, much more precious than gold that perishes though tested with fire, may result in praise, honor, and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” And St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3. 13: “The fire will test what kind of work each person has done.” St. Peter and St. Paul speak of the fire at Christ’s second appearing, and Zechariah of the day of Judgment. So the passage in St. Matthew may refer to the same event. There is then no need for a fire of Purgatory.

Another interpretation of baptism for the dead is the one I mentioned earlier, which he ranks second in probability. From it too he infers that prayers for the dead are useful. If people who have not heard of Christ or believed in him may be received into Christ’s Kingdom after the Resurrection, their friends do not pray for them in vain between their death and their resurrection. Suppose we grant that, in answer to believers’ prayers, God may turn to himself some who have not heard Christ preached and so could not have rejected him. Suppose also that there is nothing wrong with people’s charity in praying for them. This still proves nothing about Purgatory. Rising from death to life is one thing; rising from Purgatory to life is another. The latter is a move from one life to another, from life in torment to life in joy.

A fourth passage is Matthew 5. 25: “Come to terms with your adversary quickly while you are on the way with him, or the adversary may hand you over to the officer and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not come out until you have paid the last penny.” In this allegory the offender is the sinner. Both the adversary and the judge are God; the way is this life; the prison is the grave; and the officer is death. The sinner will not rise from it to eternal life, but to a second death, until he has paid the last penny, or Christ pays it for him through his Passion. That Passion is a full ransom for every kind of sin, lesser sins as well as greater crimes, making both equally pardonable.

The fifth passage is Matthew 5. 22: “Whoever is angry with his brother without cause will be liable to judgment. Whoever says to his brother, Racha, will be liable to the council. But whoever says, You fool, will be liable to hellfire.” From these words he infers three kinds of sins and three kinds of punishments. Since only the last sin is punished with hellfire, he concludes that after this life lesser sins are punished in Purgatory. Nothing in any interpretation yet given of these words supports that inference. Will there be separate courts after this life, like the Jewish judges and council of our Savior’s time, to hear and decide different kinds of crimes? Will all judgment not belong to Christ and his Apostles? To understand the text, we must read it with the words before and after it. In this chapter our Savior interprets the Law of Moses. The Jews thought they had fulfilled it if they did not violate its literal wording, even when they violated the lawgiver’s intended meaning. They thought the Sixth Commandment was broken only by killing a person, and the Seventh only by lying with a woman who was not one’s wife. Our Savior tells them that a person’s inward anger toward his brother, without just cause, is murder. He says: You have heard the Law of Moses, “You shall not kill,” and that “Whoever kills will be condemned before the judges,” or before the council of seventy. But I tell you that being angry with your brother without cause, or calling him Racha or a fool, is murder. At the day of Judgment it will be punished with hellfire by Christ and his Apostles sitting in judgment. These words do not separate different crimes, courts, and punishments. They criticize the Jewish way of distinguishing one sin from another by the differences among their earthly courts, rather than by differences in a person’s willingness to obey God. Christ shows them that someone who wants to hurt his brother will be thrown into hellfire, whether that desire appears only as an insult or never appears in action. The judges and the council will be the same court at the day of Judgment, not different courts. Given this, I cannot imagine how this text could support Purgatory.

The sixth passage is Luke 16. 9: “Make friends for yourselves with unrighteous wealth, so that when you fail they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.” He cites it to prove that we should call on departed saints. But its meaning is plain: we should use our wealth to make friends of the poor and gain their prayers while they live. “Whoever gives to the poor lends to the Lord.” The seventh passage is Luke 23. 42: “Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” He says this means sins can be forgiven after this life. But that does not follow. Our Savior forgave the man then, and when he returns in glory he will remember to raise him again to eternal life.

The eighth passage is Acts 2. 24, where St. Peter says of Christ that “God raised him up and released him from the pains of death, because it was impossible for death to hold him.” He takes this to mean that Christ went down into Purgatory to release some souls from their torment there. Yet plainly it was Christ who was released. He was the one death, or the grave, could not hold, not the souls in Purgatory. If we pay attention to Beza’s notes on this passage, everyone will see that the word should be “bonds” rather than “pains.” There is then no further reason to look for Purgatory in this text.

CHAPTER XLV. ON DEMONOLOGY AND OTHER REMNANTS OF THE RELIGION OF THE GENTILES