These things considered,the texts that mention "eternal fire,""eternal torments,"or "the worm that never dieth,"contradict not the doctrine of a second and everlasting death,in the proper and natural sense of the word death.The fire or torments prepared for the wicked in Gehenna,Tophet,or in what place soever,may continue forever;and there may never want wicked men to be tormented in them,though not every nor any one eternally.For the wicked,being left in the estate they were in after Adam's sin,may at the resurrection live as they did,marry,and give in marriage,and have gross and corruptible bodies,as all mankind now have;and consequently may engender perpetually,after the resurrection,as they did before:for there is no place of Scripture to the contrary.For St.Paul,speaking of the resurrection,understandeth it only of the resurrection to life eternal,and not the resurrection to punishment.And of the first,he saith that the body is "sown in corruption,raised in incorruption;sown in dishonour,raised in honour;sown in weakness,raised in power;sown a natural body,raised a spiritual body."There is no such thing can be said of the bodies of them that rise to punishment.So also our Saviour,when he speaketh of the nature of man after the resurrection,meaneth the resurrection to life eternal,not to punishment.The text is Luke,20,verses 34,35,36,a fertile text:"The children of this world marry,and are given in marriage;but they that shall be counted worthy to obtain that world,and the resurrection from the dead,neither marry,nor are given in marriage:neither can they die any more;for they are equal to the angels,and are the children of God,being the children of the resurrection."The children of this world,that are in the estate which Adam left them in,shall marry and be given in marriage;that is,corrupt and generate successively;which is an immortality of the kind,but not of the persons of men:they are not worthy to be counted amongst them that shall obtain the next world,an absolute resurrection from the dead;but only a short time,as inmates of that world;and to the end only to receive condign punishment for their contumacy.The elect are the only children of the resurrection;that is to say,the sole heirs of eternal life:they only can die no more.It is they that are equal to the angels,and that are the children of God,and not the reprobate.To the reprobate there remaineth after the resurrection a second and eternal death,between which resurrection and their second and eternal death is but a time of punishment and torment,and to last by succession of sinners thereunto as long as the kind of man by propagation shall endure,which is eternally.
Upon this doctrine of the natural eternity of separated souls is founded,as I said,the doctrine of purgatory.For supposing eternal life by grace only,there is no life but the life of the body;and no immortality till the resurrection.The texts for purgatory alleged by Bellarmine out of the canonical Scripture of the Old Testament are,first,the fasting of David for Saul and Jonathan,mentioned II Samuel,1.12,and again,II Samuel,3.35,for the death of Abner.This fasting of David,he saith,was for the obtaining of something for them at God's hands,after their death:because after he had fasted to procure the recovery of his own child,as soon as he knew it was dead,he called for meat.Seeing then the soul hath an existence separate from the body,and nothing can be obtained by men's fasting for the souls that are already either in heaven or hell,it followeth that there be some souls of dead men that are neither in heaven nor in hell;and therefore they must be in some third place,which must be purgatory.And thus with hard straining,he has wrested those places to the proof of a purgatory:whereas it is manifest that the ceremonies of mourning and fasting,when they are used for the death of men whose life was not profitable to the mourners,they are used for honour's sake to their persons;and when it is done for the death of them by whose life the mourners had benefit,it proceeds from their particular damage:and so David honoured Saul and Abner with his fasting;and,in the death of his own child,recomforted himself by receiving his ordinary food.
In the other places which he allegeth out of the Old Testament,there is not so much as any show or colour of proof.He brings in every text wherein there is the word anger,or fire,or burning,or purging,or cleansing,in case any of the fathers have but in a sermon rhetorically applied it to the doctrine of purgatory,already believed.The first verse of Psalm 37,"O Lord,rebuke me not in thy wrath,nor chasten me in thy hot displeasure":what were this to purgatory,if Augustine had not applied the wrath to the fire of hell,and the displeasure to that of purgatory?And what is it to purgatory,that of Psalm,66.12"We went through fire and water,and thou broughtest us to a moist place";and other the like texts,with which the doctors of those times intended to adorn or extend their sermons or commentaries,haled to their purposes by force of wit?