not clothe the naked. I did not assist the poor with the charity, respect, and liberality which became my dignity of king and my title of Christian. This is why you see me clothed like the poor and covered with a garment of confusion." The biography adds that St. Corpreus with his Chapter united in prayer, and at the end of six months obtained a mitigation of the suffering, and somewhat later the entire deliverance of King Malachy.
CHAPTER XXII.
Duration of Purgatory — Opinions of the Doctors — Bellarmine — Calculations of Father Mumford.
Faith does not teach us the precise duration of the pains of Purgatory. We know in general that they are measured by Divine Justice, and that for each one they are proportioned to the number and gravity of the faults which he has not yet expiated. God may, however, without prejudice to His Justice, abridge these sufferings by augmenting their intensity; the Church Militant also may obtain their remission by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and other suffrages offered for the departed.
According to the common opinion of the doctors, the expiatory pains are of long duration. "There is no doubt," says Bellarmine,[1] " that the pains of Purgatory are not limited to ten or twenty years, and that they last in some cases entire centuries. But allowing it to be true that their duration did not exceed ten or twenty years, can we account it as nothing to have to endure for ten or twenty years the most excruciating sufferings without the least alleviation? If a man was assured that he should suffer some violent
- ↑ De Gemitu, lib. ii. c. 9.
