St. Thomas, voicing and leading Scholastic opinion, teaches that the fire of Purgatory is the same as that of Hell; and Cardinal Bellarmine, who died in 1621, tells us: “The common opinion of theologians is that the fire of Purgatory is a real and true fire, of the same kind as an earthly fire. This opinion, it is true, is not of faith, but it is very probable,”--because of the “consent of the scholastics, who cannot be despised without temerity,” and also because of “the eruptions of Mount Etna.”[227] Yet the Council of Florence had, in 1439, restricted itself to the quite general proposition that “if men die truly penitent, in the love of God, before they have satisfied … for their sins … their souls are purified by purgatorial pains after death”; thus very deliberately avoiding all commitment as to the nature of these pains.[228] Cardinal Gousset, who died in 1866, tells us: “The more common opinion amongst theologians makes the sufferings of Purgatory to consist in the pain of fire, or at least in a pain analogous to that of fire.”[229] This latter position is practically identical with Catherine’s. As to the fire of Hell, although here especially the Scholastics, old and new, are unanimous, it is certain that there is no definition or solemn judgment of the Church declaring it to be material. On this point again we find St. Thomas and those who follow him involved in practically endless difficulties and in, for us now, increasingly intolerable subtleties, where they try to show how a material fire can affect an immaterial spirit. Bossuet, so severely orthodox in all such matters, preaching, before the Court, about sin becoming in Hell the chastisement of the sinner, does not hesitate to finish thus: “We bear within our hearts the instrument of our punishment. ‘I shall produce fire from thy midst, which shall devour thee’ (Ezek. xxviii, 18). I shall not send it against thee from afar, it will ignite in thy conscience, its flames will arise from thy midst, and it will be thy sins which will produce it.”[230]--And the Abbé F. Dubois, in a careful article in the Ecclesiastical _Revue du Clergé Français_ of Paris, has recently expressed the conviction that “the best minds of our time, which are above being suspected of yielding to mere passing fashions, feel the necessity of abandoning the literal interpretation, judged to be insufficient, of the ancient symbols; and of returning to a freer exegesis, of which some of the Ancients have given us the example.”[231] Among these helpful “Ancients” we cannot but count Catherine, with her One God Who is the Fire of Pain and the Light of Joy to souls, according as they resist Him or will Him, either here or hereafter. III. CATHERINE AND ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. _Introductory: four doctrines and difficulties to be considered._