rial fire; and that, '_as to
the intensity of the pains of purgatory, though all admit that they are
greater than anything that we suffer in this life, still it is doubtful
how this is to be explained and understood_.' He would have learned too
that, according to Bonaventura, '_the sufferings of purgatory are only
severer than those of this life, inasmuch as the greatest suffering in
purgatory is more severe than the greatest suffering endured in this
life; though there may be a degree of punishment in purgatory less
intense than what may sometimes be undergone in this world_.' And
finally he would have learned--what in this connection would have been
well worth his attention--that the duration of pains in purgatory is
according to Bellarmine, '_so completely uncertain, that it is rash to
pretend to determine anything about it_.'

Here is one instance, that will be as good as many, of the way in which
the private opinions of individual Catholics, or the transitory opinions
of particular epochs, are taken for the unalterable teachings of the
Catholic Church herself; and it is no more logical to condemn the latter
as false because the former are, than it would be to say that all modern
geography is false because geographers may still entertain false
opinions about regions as to which they do not profess certainty.
Mediaeval doctors thought that purgatory might be the middle of the
earth. Modern geographers have thought that there might be an open sea
at the North Pole. But that wrong conjectures have been hazarded in both
cases, can prove in neither that there have been no true discoveries.
The Church, it is undeniable, has for a long time lived and moved
amongst countless false opinions; and to the external eye they have
naturally seemed a part of her. But science moves on, and it is shown
that she can cast them off. She has cast off some already; soon
doubtless she will cast off others; not in any petulant anger, but with
a composed determined gentleness, as some new light gravely dawns upon
her.

Granting all this, however, there remains a yet subtler characteristic
of the Church, which goes to make her a rock of offence to many; and
that is, the temper and the intellectual tone which she seems to develop
in her members. But here, again, we must call to our aid considerations
similar to those we have just been dwelling on. We must remember that
the particular tone and temper that offends us is not necessarily
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