very human being, besides
suffering the other woes flowing from sin, was helplessly doomed
to the under world after death. In addition to this penalty, each
one must also answer for his own personal sins. Christ died to
"deliver mankind from sin," "discharge the punishment due them,"
and "rescue them from the tyranny of the devil." He "descended
into the under world," "subdued the devil," "despoiled the
depths," "rescued the Fathers and just souls," and "opened
heaven."19 "Until he rose, heaven was shut against every child of
Adam, as it still is to those who die indebted." "The price paid
by the Son of God far exceeded our debts." The surplus balance of
merits, together with the merits accruing from the supererogatory
good works of the saints and from the Divine sacrifice continually
offered anew by the sacrament of the mass, constituted a reserved
treasure upon which the Church was authorized to draw in behalf of
any one she chose to favor. The localities of the future life were
these:20 Limbus Patrum, or Abraham's Bosom, a place of peace and
waiting, where the good went who died before Christ; Limbus
Infantum, a mild, palliated hell, where the children go who, since
Christ, have died unbaptized; Purgatory, where all sinners suffer
until they are purified, or are redeemed by the Church, or until
the last day; Hell, or Gehenna, whither the hopelessly wicked have
always been condemned; and Heaven, whither the spotlessly good
have been admitted since the ascension of Jesus. At the day of
judgment the few human souls who have reached Paradise, together
with the multitudes that crowd the regions of Gehenna, Purgatory,
and Limbo, will reassume their bodies: the intermediate states
will then be destroyed, and when their final sentence is
pronounced all will depart forever, the acquitted into heaven,
the condemned into hell. In the mean time, the poor victims of
purgatory, by the prayers of the living for them, by the transfer
of good works to their account, above all, by the celebration of
masses in their behalf, may be relieved, rescued, translated to
paradise. The words breathed by the spirit of the murdered King of
Denmark in the ears of the horror stricken Hamlet paint the
popular belief of that age in regard to the grisly realm where
guilty souls were plied with horrors whereof, but that they were
forbidden:

"To tell the secrets of their prison house, They could a tale
unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy