Victorinus

“ Hades, p. 351. “A region withdrawn from punishment and fires,” says our author. He identifies it with paradise, and shows that in his day the Latin churches knew of no purgatorial fires. He knows of nothing but a place for those “who die in the Lord,” and a place for the wicked. It is perpetually overlooked, that, in the fiction of “purgatory,” it is only the righteous who are entitled to it: none but those dying in full communion with the Church having any portion in it, or any title to Masses for their repose. Of all this our author had no conception. ”

“ The whole subject of the Apocalypse is so treated, [1] in the Speaker's Commentary, as to elucidate many questions suggested by the primitive commentators of this series, and to furnish the latest judgments of critics on the subject. It is so immense a matter, however, as to render annotations on patristic specialties impossible in a work like this. Every reader must feel how apposite is the sententious saying of Augustine: “Apocalypsis Joannis tot sacramenta quot verba.” ”

“ That is, the one Spirit in His seven-fold gifts. He now fulfills the promise of Christ, “He shall show you things to come.” Without this complement the Church would lack assurance that her great Head upon the throne has ordered and limited the whole course of this world for her conflicts and her final triumph by the Spirit's power. St. John’s rapture was the Spirit’s work: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” [2] The whole Apocalypse is an Easter sermon (on the text, i. 18) and an Easter song (vers. 9-14, and passim) . ”