Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/502

 and revealed knowledge; also perhaps they may be indoctrinated concerning faith, and justification, as those spirits long since to whom Christ preached the Gospel in prison. For as it is certain that none can be saved without the faith of Christ, so it is probable that this faith is preached to many Pagans and Saracens after this life, in those receptacles of souls unto salvation, and that they are kept in those receptacles, as in a common prison, untill the time comes when the great Judge shall examine our actions. To which opinion Lactantius, Ireneus, Clemens, Tertullian, Austin, Ambrose, and many more Christian writers do assent. But those souls which are impure, incontinent, depart wicked, do not enjoy such happy dreams, but wander full of most hideous Phantasmes, and in worser places, enjoying no free knowledge but what is obtained by concession, or manifestation, and with a continuall fleshy desire are subjected by reason of their corporeall corruption to the sense of pain, and fear swords, and knives. These without doubt Homer seemed to be sensible of, when in the eleventh book of his Odyssey he brings in the mother of Ulysses being dead, standing near to him offering sacrifice, but neither knowing him or speaking to him, whilst he with his sword drawn did keep off ghosts from the blood of the sacrifice. But after that Tyresia the prophetess advising of her, she had tasted of the sacrifice, and had drunk the blood, she presently knew her son, and crying spake to him. But the soul of Tyresia the prophetesse, notwithstanding the drawn sword, even before she tasted the bloud, knew Ulysses, and spake to him, and shewed him the ghost of his mother standing near to him. Whatsoever vices therefore souls have committed in the bodies unexpiated in this life, they are constrained, carrying the habits of them along with them, to purge themselves of them in hell, and to undergo punishment for them; which the Poet explains in these verses;

-- When they die, Then