PASSAGES FROM THE VIA MEDIA.
[Written while Cardinal Newman was still an Anglican]
Now, as to the punishments and satisfactions for sins, the texts to which the minds of the early Christians seem to have been principally drawn, and from which they ventured to argue in behalf of these vague notions, were these two: 'The fire shall try every man's work,' etc., and 'He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.' These passages, with which many more were found to accord, directed their thoughts one way, as making mention of fire, whatever was meant by the word, as the instrument of trial and purification; and that, at some time between the present time and the Judgment, or at the Judgment. As the doctrine, thus suggested by certain striking texts, grew in popularity and definiteness, and verged towards its present Roman form, it seemed a key to many others. Great portions of the books of Psalms, Job, and the Lamentations, which express the feelings of religious men under suffering, would powerfully recommend it by the forcible and most affecting and awful meaning which they received from it. When this was once suggested, all other meanings would seem tame and inadequate.
To these may be added various passages from the prophets, as that in the beginning of the third chapter of Malachi, which speaks of fire as the instrument of purification, when Christ comes to visit His Church.
Moreover, there were other texts of obscure and indeterminate meaning, which seem on this hypothesis to receive a profitable meaning; such as Our Lord's words in the Sermon on the Mount, "Verily, I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing;" and St. John's expression in the Apocalypse, that, "no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book."—Via Media, pp. 174-177.
Most men, to our apprehensions, are too little formed in religious habits either for heaven or for hell; yet there is no middle state when Christ comes in judgment. In consequence, it is obvious to have recourse to the interval before His coming, as a time during which this incompleteness may be remedied, as a season, not of changing the spiritual bent and character of the soul departed, whatever that be, for probation ends with mortal life, but of developing it in a more determinate form, whether of good or evil. Again, when the mind once allows itself to speculate, it will discern in such a provision a means whereby those who, not without true faith at bottom, yet have committed great crimes, or those who have been carried off in youth while still undecided, or who die after a barren, though not immoral or scandalous life, may receive such chastisement as may prepare them for heaven, and render it consistent with God's justice to admit them thither. Again, the inequality of the sufferings of Christians in this life compared one with another, leads the mind to the same speculations; the intense suffering, for instance, which some men undergo on their death-bed, seeming as if but an anticipation in their case of what comes after death upon others, who, without greater claims on God's forbearance, live without chastisement and die easily. The mind will inevitably dwell upon such thoughts, unless it has been taught to subdue them by education or by the fear of the experience of their dangerousness.— Via Media, pp. 174-177.