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The prophet Malachi or Malachias, who is also called Angel, and is
by some (for Jerome tells us that this is the opinion of the
Hebrews) identified with Ezra the priest, others of whose writings
have been received into the canon, predicts the last judgment,
saying, "Behold, He cometh, saith the Lord Almighty; and who
shall abide the day of His entrance? ... for I am the Lord your
God, and I change not." From these words it more evidently appears
that some shall in the last judgment suffer some kind of purgatorial
punishments; for what else can be understood by the word, "Who shall
abide the day of His entrance, or who shall be able to look upon
Him? for He enters as a moulder's fire, and as the herb of
fullers: and He shall sit fusing and purifying as if over gold and
silver: and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and pour them out like
gold and silver?" Similarly Isaiah says, "The Lord shall wash
the filthiness of the sons and daughters of Zion, and shall cleanse
away the blood from their midst, by the spirit of judgment and by the
spirit of burning." Unless perhaps we should say that they are
cleansed from filthiness and in a manner clarified, when the wicked are
separated from them by penal judgment, so that the elimination and
damnation of the one party is the purgation of the others, because they
shall henceforth live free from the contamination of such men. But
when he says, "And he shall purify the sons of Levi, and pour them
out like gold and silver, and they shall offer to the Lord sacrifices
in righteousness; and the sacrifices of Judah and Jerusalem shall be
pleasing to the Lord," he declares that those who shall be purified
shall then please the Lord with sacrifices of righteousness, and
consequently they themselves shall be purified from their own
unrighteousness which made them displeasing to God. Now they
themselves, when they have been purified, shall be sacrifices of
complete and perfect righteousness; for what more acceptable offering
can such persons make to God than themselves? But this question of
purgatorial punishments we must defer to another time, to give it a
more adequate treatment. By the sons of Levi and Judah and
Jerusalem we ought to understand the Church herself, gathered not
from the Hebrews only, but from other nations as well; nor such a
Church as she now is, when "if we say that we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," but as she shall then
be, purged by the last judgment as a threshing-floor by a winnowing
wind, and those of her members who need it being cleansed by fire, so
that there remains absolutely not one who offers sacrifice for his
sins. For all who make such offerings are assuredly in their sins,
for the remission of which they make offerings, that having made to
God an acceptable offering, they may then be absolved.
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