Now then, who were scorching in those fires that had been burning from the beginning of the world?
Its very ancient existence is proved by Christian philosophy, which teaches that God has created nothing new since he rested." "But it could have existed _in potentia_ and not _in actu_," [54] observed Don Filipo.
"Very well! But yet I must answer that some knew of it and as existing _in actu_.

One of these was Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, who wrote part of the Zend-Avesta and founded a religion which in some points resembles ours, and Zarathustra, according to the scholars, flourished at least eight hundred years before Christ.

I say 'at least,' since Gaffarel, after examining the testimony of Plato, Xanthus of Lydia, Pliny, Hermippus, and Eudoxus, believes it to have been two thousand five hundred years before our era.

However that may be, it is certain that Zarathustra talked of a kind of purgatory and showed ways of getting free from it.

The living could redeem the souls of those who died in sin by reciting passages from the Avesta and by doing good works, but under the condition that the person offering the petitions should be a relative, up to the fourth generation.