D. D., Rector-
General of the Pious Society of Missions of the Church of San Salvatore
in Onde, Ponte Sisto, Rome, and St. Peter's Italian Church in London.
American Edition, edited by Father Lambert, author of Notes on
Ingersoll, &c.]
As works of penance have no value in themselves except through the
merits of Jesus Christ, so the pains of Purgatory have no power in
themselves to purify the soul from sin, but only in virtue of Christ's
Redemption, or, to speak more exactly, the souls in Purgatory are able
to discharge the debt of temporal punishment demanded by God's justice,
and to have their venial sins remitted only through the merits of Jesus
Christ, "yet so as by fire."
The Catholic belief in Purgatory rests on the authority of the Church
and her apostolic traditions recorded in ancient Liturgies, and in the
writings of the ancient Fathers: Tertullian, St. Cyprian, Origen,
Eusebius of Caesarea, Arnobius, St. Basil, St. Ephrem of Edessa, St.
Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ambrose, St. Epiphanius,
St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Augustine. It rests also on the
Fourth Council of Carthage, and on many other authorities of antiquity.
That this tradition is derived from the Apostles, St. John Chrysostom
plainly testified in a passage quoted at the end of this chapter, in
which he speaks of suffrages or help for the departed.
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