te is cancelled for these two classes.
There remains, therefore, only one class which is supposed to enter the
Intermediate State, those namely, who have died in venial sin. And since
it is part of the Romish doctrine to regard Paradise as the same thing as
Heaven, and to hold that the souls which alone enter Purgatory, after
suffering due torments, pass direct out of Purgatory into Paradise or
Heaven, it follows that in the Intermediate State are only those who are
actually undergoing, for the time appointed, the pains of Purgatory. For
all, therefore, eventually the Intermediate State is terminated at some
time on this side of the Day of Judgment. Hence it came about that those
who rejected the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory rejected along with
it the doctrine of the Intermediate State, since, virtually, Purgatory
and the Intermediate State had been regarded as practically one and the
same thing, as indeed they were in duration conterminous. In rejecting
the one therefore, men unhappily but almost naturally rejected the other
also.

2. Further, the pains which are felt in the process of purification, as
has been shown, spring from within the soul itself, and are not
necessarily or for all inflicted as a torment or punishment from without.
Rather they arise from the soul's own action upon itself, from its own
pangs of shame and self-abasement, all deepened and made more poignant by
the ever increasing sense of the love of Jesus Christ, then as never
before apprehended, and by the holy vision of His perfections. Thereby,
as they gaze on Him, they are changed by the influence of the sight of
Him, into greater likeness to Him. On the other hand, contrast with
these the nature of the pains which the Romish Doctrine assigns to the
souls in Purgatory. They are held in all cases to be penal, that is to
say, inflicted by GOD as punishment. The souls are said to suffer
torments! {84} Moreover these torments, as is taught in Roman Catholic
treatises on the subject, are caused by literal and material flames, by
actual fires which would feed on and consume corporeal substances such as
the human body. But what enters the Intermediate State is the soul only,
not the body: and, in the nature of things, the sufferings of the
incorporeal part of our being can only be themselves incorporeal. The
pains of the spirit can only be spiritual pains.

3. Again, the "Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory" is closely bound up