Quotes About Purgatory

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Then, again, should you be disposed to apply the term "adversary" [from the parable in Matthew 5:25-26] to the devil, you are advised by the (Lord's) injunction, "While you are in the way with him," to make even with him such a compact [agreement/contract] as may be deemed compatible with the requirements of your true faith. Now the compact you have made respecting him is to renounce him, his pomp, and his angels. [Renouncing the devil, his pomp, and his angels was done at baptism in Tertullian's time.] Such is your agreement in this matter. Now the friendly understanding you will have to carry out must arise from your observance of the compact. You must never think of getting back any of the things which you have abjured [renounced] and have restored to him, lest he should summon you as a fraudulent man and a transgressor of your agreement before God the Judge (for in this light do we read of [the devil], in another passage, as "the accuser of the brethren," ...); and lest this Judge deliver you over to the angel who is to execute the sentence, and he commit you to the prison of Hades, out of which there will be no dismissal until the smallest even of your delinquencies be paid off in the period before the resurrection. What can be a more fitting sense than this? What a truer interpretation? (A Treatise on the Soul, ch. 35)