EARLY CHURCH.
The Clementina Homilies: "For there is every necessity, that he who says that God who is by His nature righteous, should believe also that the souls of men are immortal; for where would be His justice, when some having lived piously, have been evil treated, and sometimes violently cut off, while others who have been impious, and have in dulged in luxurious living, have died the com mon death of men? Since therefore, without all contradiction, God who is good is also just, He shall not otherwise be known to be just, unless the soul after the separation from the body be immortal, so that the wicked man, being in hell, as having here received of his good things, may there be punished for his sins; and the good man, who has been punished here for his sins, may there, as in the bosom of the righteous, be constituted as heir of good things. Since therefore God is righteous, it is fully evident to us that there is a judgment, and that souls are immortal.*
Gregory of Nyssa (394 A.D.): Is it a misfortune to pass from infancy to youth? Still less can it be a misfortune to go from this miserable life to that true life into which we are introduced by death. Our first changes are connected with the progressive development of life. The new life which death effects is only the passage to a more desirable perfection. To complain of the necessity of dying is to accuse Nature of not having con demned us to perpetual infancy.' Council of Florence (1439 A.D.): "The souls of those who, after baptism, did not incur any spot of sin, and of those who, after committing sin, were purified in life and by purgatorial pains, are immediately received in heaven, and there they clearly behold God, as He is one and triune with a perfection proportionate to each one's merits.*