Annotatio CCLII
”If they descend even unto hell, thence my hand shall bring them out.” — Amos 9:2
Jerome, in book 3 of the commentaries on Amos, among the other things which he heaped up for the exposition of this passage, has these:1 “When the Soul, loosed from the corporeal bonds, shall have the liberty of going whither it wills, or whither it is compelled to go — either it is led to the infernal [places], concerning which it is written, [a] ‘Let the sinners be turned into hell, all the nations that forget God,’2 and, [b] ‘In hell who shall confess to thee?’3 and, ‘Thy glory descends into hell’; or certainly it will be lifted up to the heavenly [places].” Peter, archbishop of Crete, in book 4 of the Sentences, distinction 21, question 1, where he discourses concerning Purgatory, proposes this saying, for the sake of disputing, under the person of those who assert that after this life [there are] only two Places, to which the Souls, loosed from bodies, are borne — namely heaven, and hell. But then, opening the ambiguity of this saying, he says that Jerome does not speak concerning the loosing of the Soul which is made through nature, corporeal death coming on, but concerning the voluntary and spiritual loosing of the soul from the body through speculation and contemplation — in which the Soul is so separated from the body that the body is not separated from the Soul. And this sense the following words of Jerome openly show, when he says: “…or certainly it will be lifted up to the heavenly [places], where are the spiritual wickednesses in the heavenly [places],” etc.