Annotation CCXC
”That we may be unto the praise of his glory, who before hoped in Christ.” — Ephesians 1:12
Whether the punishments of the damned are to be ended.
Rufinus objects to Jerome, that in the commentaries on the epistle to the Ephesians, expounding these [words], he asserted that the punishments of the damned are to be ended, and that the devil, and his angels, and all sinners and unbelievers, after the day of judgment — some ages of years being completed — will not only receive pardon of [their] offenses, but will also attain the heavenly rewards. This same [thing] he writes that he [Jerome] held in the exposition of the second chapter to the Ephesians, upon that [text], “That he might show in the ages to come,” etc.; and upon that [text] from the fourth chapter to the Ephesians, “From whom the whole body, compacted and knit together,” etc. Stanislaus Pannonius [of Hungary], a minister of the Anabaptist sect, in the book On Divine Philanthropy, in which he defends the error of Origen, among other [things] which he brings for its defense, uses also the authority of Jerome — affirming that he, in this matter, partly denied to Origen, but partly assented. And that he first indeed denied [it], because he believed that the torments both of the demons and of the unbelieving impious would be eternal; but assented, because he thought that the sins of the wicked and damned faithful [Christians] would not be punished eternally with eternal punishments, but, out of divine clemency, would be pardoned after a certain measure of penalties. And this he [Pannonius] says is evident from those [things] which he [Jerome] wrote at the end of the commentaries on Isaiah, in these words: “ALL which [things] those desiring to assert the restoration [of all] — [saying] that after tortures and torments there will be future refreshments, which are now to be hidden from those to whom fear is useful, that, while they dread the punishments, they may cease to sin — [these things] we ought to leave to the knowledge of God alone: whose not only mercies, but also torments, are in weight [measured]; and [who] knows whom, in what manner, or how long, he ought to judge. And let us only say [that] which befits human frailty:1 ‘Lord, rebuke me not in thy fury, nor chastise me in thy wrath.’ And, as of the devil, and of all the deniers, and impious, who said in their heart,2 ‘There is no God,’ we believe eternal torments: so of sinners, and impious, and yet Christians, whose works are to be tried and purged in the fire, we judge a moderate sentence of the judge, and [one] mingled with clemency.” These [things] Jerome [says]. To which the same Pannonius subjoins another testimony of the same, from the first book against the Pelagians, where it is thus written: “IN FINE, Isaiah, from whom thou placest a testimony — ‘The sinners and the wicked shall be burned together,’ he says, [but] did not add, ‘For ever’; and, ‘those who forsake God shall be consumed’ — he speaks this properly of heretics, who, forsaking the right path of faith, shall be consumed, if they will not return to the Lord.” And after many [things] he adds: “IF Origen says that all rational creatures are not to be lost — what is that to us? who say both that the devil and his satellites, and all the impious, perish perpetually; but that Christians, if they have been overtaken in sin, are to be saved after penalties.” These [things] Pannonius [alleges] concerning Jerome: whose imposture and impudent lie Jerome himself, refuting [it] in the Apology against Rufinus, and in very many other writings, most constantly confesses that even damned Christians are never [freed] from the
—to be freed from the punishments of hell; and [that] the opinion of those who think otherwise is to be utterly detested, and cast out from the minds of Christians — he proves by many arguments, out of which, in the commentary on the third chapter of Jonah, he touches upon these summarily.
FIRST, because the divine scripture nowhere teaches this opinion of the ending of the punishments of the damned.
SECONDLY, because in the gospel [the fire] is called eternal fire, and eternal punishment; and in Isaiah, “Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched.”
THIRDLY, because this opinion utterly overturns the fear of God, while men easily slide into vices, thinking that all the wicked are at some time, after penalties, to be saved.
FOURTHLY, [because] if, after a long circuit of ages, a restoration of all things be made, so that there be one dignity of souls, there will be no distance [difference] between a virgin and a brothel-woman; between the mother of the Lord, and the victims of public lusts; Gabriel will be the same [as] the devil; the Apostles [as] the demons; the same [dignity for] the prophets, and the false prophets; the same [for] the martyrs, and the persecutors.
FIFTHLY, [because] if the end of all is alike, imagine infinite ages of torments — all the past is [reckoned] for nothing: because we do not ask what we once were, but what we shall always be.
FROM THESE [things], therefore, it appears that Jerome — an enemy of this dogma — reported [the things] which he wrote in the commentary on the Ephesians, not from his own, but from the opinion of others. But [that] which, at the end of the commentaries on Isaiah, and against the Pelagians, he asserts — that Christians are to be saved after penalties and the torments of fire — is to be referred not to the eternal fire of hell, but to the temporal fire of purgatory; in which, when souls have been purged for a time, they shall be saved. See [the things] regarding this, [in] Annotations 126 and 128 of the fifth book.