Purge

“ They have great faith in the healing properties of a purge, but do not consider it has had any effect unless it acts at least twenty times. The way is prepared by administering every day for a week a large bowl of laxative mixture ”

“ Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach. ”

“ Notwithstanding our Cautions on this important Head, whenever an urgent Necessity commands it, Purging must be recurred to at all Times and Seasons: but when the Season may be safely selected, it were right to decline Purging in the Extremities of either Heat or Cold; and to take the Purge early in the Morning, that the Medicines may find less Obstruction or Embarrassment from the Contents of the Stomach. Every other Consideration, with Relation to the Stars and the Moon, is ridiculous, and void of any Foundation. The People are particularly averse to purging in the Dog-days ”

“ Purging.—An opinion has long prevailed, that mad people are particularly constipated, and likewise extremely difficult to be purged. From all the observations I have been able to make, insane patients, on the contrary, are of very delicate and irritable bowels, and are well and copiously purged by a common cathartic draught. That which is commonly employed in the hospital is prepared agreeably to the following formula. ”

“ Intensely wicked actions, in the same manner, are punished by a term of suffering tortures in Purgatory, at the expiration of which the purged souls may go straight to heaven, if good Prārabdha Karma succeeds their expiatory sufferings, or be reborn again on earth. The tendency of the pleasure-seeking, materialistic, modern mind is to disbelieve the existence of any such place of torture as Purgatory. They think that Heaven and Purgatory exist only on earth within man's mind. ”

“ One with a strong stomach and a hard head may be able to tolerate much of the unconscious and undeliberate cruelty and torture of the world that is perpetrated in hot blood and stupidity. I have such a stomach and head. But what turns my head and makes my gorge rise, is the cold-blooded, conscious, deliberate cruelty and torment that is manifest behind ninety- nine of every hundred trained-animal turns. Cruelty, as a fine art, has attained its perfect flower in the trained-animal world. ”

“ Parker, and break up the dead, or for preference the living body with the scalpel, you always find the footmarks—the little trail of ruin or disorder left by madness or disease or drink or any other similar pest. But the difficulty is to trace them back, merely by observing the surface symptoms—the hysteria, crime, religion, fear, shyness, conscience, or whatever it may be; just as you observe a theft or a murder and look for the footsteps of the criminal, so I observe a fit of hysterics or an outburst of piety and hunt for the little mechanical irritation which has produced it. ”

“ A river of fire and brimstone, broader than the earth, was prepared for them; [507] in that, they were to be immersed; their bones, their lungs, and their liver, were to boil, but never be consumed. [508] At the same time, worms were to prey upon them; and while these were gnawing at their bodies, they were to be surrounded by devils, mocking and making pastime of their pains. [509] Such were the first stages of suffering, and they were only the first. For the torture, besides being unceasing, was to become gradually worse. So refined was the cruelty, that one hell was succeeded by another ”

“ One day, when suffering so intensely as to need the assistance of her sisters in religion, she thought of the souls in Purgatory, and, to temper the heat of their flames, she offered to God the burning heat of her fever. At that moment, being rapt in ecstasy, she was conducted in spirit into the place of expiation, where she saw the flames and braziers in which the souls are purified in great torture. ”

“ Only to learn when the damage was already done that the actions of men, for good or evil, made a difference. They mattered! The bile rose in his throat, nearly choking him. For now the mindless cruelty of life. . .was slowly turning back upon him. That same unyielding blade, the heartless razor that he had served and become, was proving to be double-edged.
But fear and a momentary helplessness were not to be confused with impotent despair. The Lord Purceville was far from defeated. ”

“ The fire of Purgatory, as the doctors of the Church declare, is as intense as that of the abode of hell; with this difference, that it has an end. Yea! it may be that to-day a soul in Purgatory is undergoing more agony, more excruciating suffering than a damned soul, which is tormented in hell for a few mortal sins; while the poor soul in Purgatory must satisfy for millions of venial sins.
All the pains which afflict the sick upon earth, added to all that the martyrs have ever suffered, cannot be compared with those in Purgatory, so great is the punishment of those poor souls. ”

“ Terror seized him, an icy coldness ran through his veins and riveted him to the spot like a lifeless statue. Then one of the dead brothers addressed him with terrible reproaches. " Unfortunate creature," said he, "why didst thou not distribute the alms which were destined to give relief to the souls of thy departed brethren? Why hast thou deprived us of that assistance amid the torments of Purgatory? Receive, from this moment, the punishment of thy avarice; another and more terrible chastisement is reserved for thee, when, after three days, thou shall appear before thy God." ”

“ A sick man weeps on his bed and his friend consoles him; a baby cries in his cradle and his mother at once caresses him; a beggar knocks at the door for an alms and receives it; a malefactor laments in his prison, and comfort is given him; even a dog that whines at the door is taken in; but these poor, helpless souls cry day and night from the depths of the fire in Purgatory: "Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you, my friends, because the hand of the Lord hath smitten me;" ”

“ Our Divine Master desires that we should fear, and that we should fear not only Hell, but also Purgatory, which is a sort of mitigated Hell. It is to inspire us with this holy fear that He shows us the dungeons of the Supreme Judge, whence we shall not depart until we have paid the last farthing. [1] We may say of the fire of Purgatory that which is said of Hell fire: Fear ye not them that kill the body and are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him that can cast both soul and body into Hell. ”

“ Still, there is this difference—oh! blessed be God, there is this difference, and it is all we could ask: in hell, the damned blaspheme their Master with the demons that torment them; in Purgatory, the holy souls love their God with the angelic choirs who await their entrance to the land of bliss. If the souls of the damned could love, hell would cease to be hell; if the souls of the blessed ones in prison could cease to love, Purgatory would be worse to them than a thousand such hells. ”

“ To touch a dead body, to enter a tent where a corpse lay, rendered a person “unclean for seven days;” to come in contact with a forbidden animal, a bone, a grave; to be next to any one struck with sudden death; to be afflicted with certain kinds of bodily disease and infirmity; unwittingly to lay a finger on a person unclean, occasioned defilement, and necessitated a purification or an atonement. ”

“ Many were employed day and night in destroying them, but the work so multiplied under their hands, that not only his clothes, baths, basins, but his very meat was polluted with that flux and contagion, they came swarming out in such numbers. He went frequently by day into the bath to scour and cleanse his body, but all in vain; the evil generated too rapidly and too abundantly for any ablutions to overcome it. ”

“ If I have not incurred eternal damnation, it was because a special grace of God's mercy touched my heart with sincere repentance. I made a good confession, and thus I have been delivered from Hell, yet only to see myself precipitated into the most horrible torments of Purgatory." We have remarked already that what is said of the tortured members must not be taken literally, because the soul is separated from the body; but God, supplying the want of corporal organs, makes the soul experience such sensations as have been just described. ”

“ If any one who eats flesh could be taken to the shambles, to watch the agonized struggles of the terrified victims as they are dragged to the spot where knife or mallet slays them; if he could be made to stand with the odours of the blood reeking in his nostrils ”

“ This venerable servant of God had the most intimate communication with the souls in Purgatory, so that they came in great numbers and filled her cell, humbly awaiting each one in turn to be assisted by her prayers. Frequently, the more easily to excite her compassion, they appeared with the instruments of their sins, now become the instruments of their torture. One day she saw a Religious surrounded by costly pieces of furniture, such as pictures, arm-chairs, &c, all in flames. ”

“ For as in hell pain serveth only for punishment without any manner of purging, because all possibility of purging is past; and as in purgatory punishment serveth only for purging, because the place of deserving is past; so while we are yet in this world in which is our place and our time of merit and well-deserving, the tribulation that is sent us for our sin here shall, if we faithfully so desire, beside the cleansing and purging of our pain, serve us also for increase of reward. ”

“ She saw there souls which suffered cruelly, but angels visited and assisted them in their sufferings.
Purgatory, she said, is divided into three distinct parts, which are as the three large provinces of that kingdom of suffering. They are situated the one beneath the other, and occupied by souls of different orders. These souls are buried more deeply in proportion as they are more defiled and farther removed from the time of their deliverance.
The lowest region is filled with a fierce fire, but which is not dark like that of Hell; it is a vast burning sea, throwing forth immense flames. ”

“ We may probably discover the nature of the instinct underlying much of the cathartic custom-law by taking as our typical example the savage feeling about blood. Evidence from almost every society in the world yields proof that the stain of blood is the primary impurity that needs a purifying ritual: hence arose a body of rules that were a burden upon domestic life, hence the elaborate purifications of warriors after battle or of the individual homicide. ”

“ They defile the flesh. The flesh or body is the immediate seat, and often the irritating occasion, of many horrid pollutions; yet these, though done in and against the body, do greatly defile and grievously maim and wound the soul. Fleshly lusts do war against the soul, 1 Pet. ii. 11; and in 2 Cor. vii. 1 we read of filthiness of flesh and spirit, each of which, though of different kinds, defiles the whole man.
2. They despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities, are of a disturbed mind and a seditious spirit, forgetting that the powers that be are ordained of God, Rom. ”

“ In hell thou shalt see more sorrow than man may devise. In purgatory more torment than man may endure. In paradise more joy than man may desire. Hell will teach thee how God shall venge deadly sin. Purgatory will show thee how God shall venge venial sin. ”

“ A criminal whose guilt had been established by the hot iron, hot ploughshare, boiling kettle, or other logical proof, was stripped and bound to the stake:—he was then flayed, from the neck to the navel, while swarms of bees were let loose to fasten upon his bleeding flesh and torture him to a death of exquisite agony. ”

“ But some persons turn in anger from the thought of Purgatory, as if it were not to be endured, that after trying all our lives long to serve God, we should accomplish the tremendous feat of a good death, only to pass from the agonies of the death-bed into fire—long, keen, searching, triumphant, incomparable fire. ”

“ For the one is made for punishing, the other for purging: hence both are made for sin, sin which itself is so horrible and which requires that its punishment and purgation should be conformable to its own horribleness.” For in Purgatory too there still exist certain remains of imperfect, sinful habits in the will. “The souls in Purgatory think much more of the opposition which they discover in themselves to the will of God,” than they do of their pain. ”

“ That which is the most remarkable in this example, and which should most attract our attention, is that a soul from Purgatory, after having experienced the most excruciating torments, prefers that state of suffering to the life of this world; and the reason which he gives for this preference is, that in this mortal life we are exposed to the danger of being lost and incurring eternal damnation. ”

“ Awful and terrible we know they are. But there is one suffering which we wish to speak of, because we cannot but hope, if people reflected upon it seriously, that they would learn to think of Purgatory less as a necessary evil, and more as a most tender mercy, and be more inclined to enter into a hearty co-operation with those who are anxious to help the poor souls in this awful prison. ”

“ For some of them have been cut and chopped all to pieces, some have had their eyes bored through, some have been sodden, some roasted, some flayed alive, some buried quick, stoned, crucified, grinded betwixt millstones, drawn and hailed hither and thither unto execution, drowned in waters, strangled and hanged, torn in pieces, vexed with rebukes before their death, pined in prisons, and afflicted in bands. ”

“ The soul has created its own torment, but in Purgatory the fires die out because they deal with the anima separata, never with the senses. In each case the nature of the fire, which may not be material and is exercised on spirits, must remain mysterious to us. ”