Next we are bound, by the same three great Decrees, to hold indeed that “the Masses, Prayers, Alms, and other pious offices of the Faithful Living are profitable towards the relief of these pains,” yet this by mode of “suffrage,” since, as the severely orthodox Jesuit, Father H. Hurter, explains in his standard _Theologiae Dogmaticae Compendium_, “the fruit of this impetration and satisfaction is not infallible, for it depends upon the merciful acceptance of God.”[271] Hence in no case can we, short of superstition, conceive such good works as operating automatically: so that the _a priori_ simplest view concerning the mode of operation of these prayers is declared to be mistaken. We can and ought, then, to choose among the conceptions, not in proportion to their mechanical simplicity, but according to their spiritual richness and to their analogy with our deepest this-life experiences. And we are all bound, by the Decree of Trent and the Condemnation of Baius, 1567 A.D., to hold that Contrition springing from Perfect Love reconciles man with God, even before Confession, and this also outside of cases of necessity or of martyrdom.[272] Indeed, it is the common doctrine that one single act of Pure Love abolishes, not only Hell, but Purgatory, so that, if the soul were to die whilst that act was in operation, it would forthwith be in Heaven. If then, in case of perfect purity, the soul is at once in heaven, the soul cannot be quite pure and yet continue in Purgatory. (2) It is thus plain that, as regards Sin in its relation to the Sinner, there are, in strictness, ever three points to consider: the guilty act, the reflex effect of the act upon the disposition the agent, and the punishment; for all theologians admit that the more or less bad disposition, contracted through the sinful act, remains in the soul, except in the case of Perfect Contrition, after the guilt of the act has been remitted. But whilst the holders of an Extrinsic, Vindictive Purgatory, work for a punishment as independent as possible of these moral effects of sin still present in the pardoned soul, the advocates of an Intrinsic, Ameliorative Purgatory find the punishment centre in the pain and difficulty attendant upon “getting slowly back to fully virtuous dispositions, through retracing the steps we have taken in departing from it.”[273] And the system of Indulgences appears, in this latter view, to find its chief justification in that it keeps up a link with the past Penitential system of the Church; that it vividly recalls and applies the profound truth of the interaction, for good even more than for evil, between all human souls, alive and dead; and that it insists upon the readily forgotten truth of even the forgiven sinner, the man with the good determination, having ordinarily still much to do and to suffer before he is quit of the effects of his sin.