souls undergo various kinds of sufferings, that there are innumerable degrees of expiation in Purgatory, and that some are incomparably more severe than others. However, speaking in general, the doctors agree in saying that the pains are most excruciating. The same fire, says St. Gregory, torments the damned and purifies the elect. [1] " Almost all theologians," says Bellarmine, " teach that the reprobate and the souls in Purgatory suffer the action of the same fire." [2]
It must be held as certain, writes the same Bellarmine, [3] that there is no proportion between the sufferings of this life and those of Purgatory. St. Augustine declares precisely the same in his commentary on Psalm xxxvii.: Lord he says, chastise me not in Thy wrath, and reject me not with those to whom Thou hast said, Go into eternal fire; but chastise me not in Thine anger: purify me rather in such manner in this life that I need not to be purified by fire in the next. Yes, I fear that fire which has been enkindled for those who will be saved, it is true, but yet so as by fire. [4] ' They will be saved, no doubt, after the trial of fire, but that trial will be terrible, that torment will be more intolerable than all the most excruciating sufferings in this world. Behold what St. Augustine says, and what St. Gregory, Venerable Bede, St. Anselm, and St. Bernard have said after him. St. Thomas goes even further; he maintains that the least pain of Purgatory surpasses all the sufferings of this life, whatsoever they may be. Pain, says B. Peter Lefevre, is deeper and more acute when it directly attacks the soul and the mind than when it reaches them only through the medium of the body. The mortal body, and the senses themselves, absorb and intercept a part of the physical, and even of moral pain [5] .
