of such an origin is to be suspected and dangerous You say the Sequence of the Mass for the dead inculcates the horror of dooms-day to move good people to help the souls out of Purgatory before it come As if you conceiv'd that day would be worse to them were they not help'd before which Position I confess I understand not Since it is the generall Doctrin that the same doom is given in the particular judgement and there is nothing then to be decided but Eternity You bid me consider that these three alone Saint Gregory Zacharias and Saint Chrysostom carry the Greek and Latin Churches on their backs but give me leave to say that the Fathers and Authorities I have cited of which you take no notice are so far more numerous and strong then they that to use your own phrase they carry both their Churches and them and all on their backs You come at last to the Council of Chalcedon and Ischyrions action against Dioscorus for mispending a Ladies monys bestowed at her death for the good of her soul so the text hath it if I remember right and not for the souls of the deceased as you write it though if it were so written it were conformable to the use of the Church and true Doctrine and so I must put this also amongst your other proofs which want a little of that pious affection to stretch them home to the purpose For your argument hence seems to stand thus almes given for the dead are to be distributed faithfully therefore souls are delivered before the day of Judgement After this severe consequence of your own you entertain'd the confidence to censure my explication of the offertory for a sophisme because I think the punishment exprest there signifies that of Hell not Purgatory But certainly it is a spice of great weakness to believe the contrary without a stronger proof then your bare word since the expressions are so horrid that greater or more significant can scarce be found as the jaws of a Lion or Devil the deep dungeon that Tartarus or the deepest sink of Hell should not swallow them up And in the Office of the dead where no order dwels but everlasting horror and other such dreadfull phrases And the Greeks use to call it in their rituals Gehennam But why sedes refrigerii should speak your purgatory I am not capable of the consequence It may be said by Writers that refreshment is given there but sure none before you ever call'd that suffering state the seat of refreshment Notes on the fifth Chapter AS your Chapter is short so shall my Notes You say tradition alone cannot prove faith in all Articles but you prove it not for neither the Council of Trent nor Saint Irenaeus though the one say Catholike Faith is contained in both and the other that both are necessary for the Church say that Tradition alone is not sufficient Rather Saint Irenaeus saith it is as all those Fathers must needs be understood to do who in case of difficulty send us to the Apostolicall Churches But to be short I make you this argument If Scripture teach somewhat that is not in Tradition either Scripture in such passages needs an Interpreter or no If none can any sensible man perswade himself it hath not been the perpetuall doctrin of the Church so it be in a point necessary to be known And if Scripture do need an Interpreter that interpreter binds the Church and is the immediate Revealer and he must have the Authority of such a Proposer to oblige the Church to his interpretation It is therefore a sophism to put the Scripture for a self-sufficient authority to bind the Church in what is not known by tradition But Scripture is necessary for condemnation of Heretiques in such points as they pretend to deduce from it and so the Council of Trent declares it self when it speaks upon what ground it would proceed What consequents follow of this doctrin we must expect your leisure to declare as yet I know none Notes upon the sixth Chapter IN the beginning of the sixth Chapter I find little difference betwixt your doctrin and mine For though you explicate Aristotles Nunc otherwise then I should do yet not being necessary to our purpose it is not fit for me to take notice of it Only I understand not how after you have very learnedly declared that the soul by its aeviternity hath the succession of the parts of pain all together afterwards you put that a soul by twenty years duration in pain hath suffered so long the hard consequents of that duration For if the extension of time as far as concerns the intrinsecal existence of the soul was all resumed in aeviternity and aeviternity was all together by the very initiating of it I cannot apprehend the running of time by it can add any intrinsecall consequent which was not in it by the very making You seem to add yet a greater Paradox telling us notwithstanding the being of aeviternity all together yet there is a priority of nature in it which though I can conceive in causes and effects as being different things yet in a pure indivisible it passes my understanding specially when the priority must be in succession where when one part is the other is not Neither doth Aristotle help you in whose doctrin the decreeing of the will is a successive action as depending on a corporall motion in the body But this being the subtilty of a Scotist I pray do not perswade your self that in our doctrin which makes the duration of the acts of the soul the very duration of the soul a change of act can be connaturally admitted You insinuate something of a Metaphysicall charity and that our doctrin is suspected to account voluntarily assumed penance to be superfluous if not superstitious Sir I desire you by the freedom you see in my writing to speak meaning loud not to mince any sinister conceits fram'd of my Tenets Truth loves light and in this particular point I will openly declare you my sentiment All austerities or extern actions which either conduce to the breeding of charity in our selves and neighbours or to the conserving and increasing it in those that have it and to the extending of it by diffusion into divers subjects all this though there be no obligation for the actions in common which is meant by their being voluntary I esteem holy and sanctified But if any one should think God takes pleasure that we should weaken or afflict our bodies without intending profit to our souls but meerly because it pleases God by and for it self I am of opinion that he makes God a tyrant and that his action is both superfluous and superstitious After this point I find no disagreement between us in any thing that concerns our question some words at the very â—nd of the souls being exercised in a passive compliance seem improper in our naturall and vulgar apprehensions but not false and therefore not
fail in that charge you with deceiving me Is not this case a little too near that unhappy scandal on which Luther took so fast hold that he pull'd down the Churches of whole Provinces by it What shall I say of the averting men from cultivating the inward affections of their hearts in which the Kingdom of God resides to the too much relying on works done by others what of the laying even to Gods own charge as it were a kind of Simony such practises being easily interpretable to a bad sence as if he dispensed his spirituall goods with a respect to the quantity of what is given and that the poor Widows mite cannot have so great an effect as a Dives's talent And though much of what I now am discoursing be chiefly applyable to Priviledg'd Altars and Scapulars and such like abus'd devotions yet is it in a degree true of those who to invite Customers boldly assure them if they shall procure so many Masses of a very delivery quick though not determinately known But suppose the Affirmative of intermedial Release be in it self true yet how does it appear to us the effects concern not any living person but are altogether invisible and out of our reach which till they are sufficiently evidenced to us must needs be uncertain to us and so continually disputable if not improbable whose settlement must depend on the determination of this Question before which final decision 't is not improper that Scholars try their utmost endeavours to examin and prepare both sides for discovery of the truth Nor is it in the least my intention to charge the Church with any of these irregularities but onely to refute the errours and reprove the abuses of particular persons wherein I have the sure warrant of the Council of Trent which while it forbids such incertain Doctrins commands to oppose them that preach'em These and many other such observations of which no subject that I know more plentifull well consider'd permit the Ingenious Gentleman to think the rescuing Ladies devotions from slight and hazardous practises to solid and assured pieties judiciously preferrable to the small and short dissentions that possibly may spring out of the more generall divulging such discourses Nor did he this till the loud and many clamours of some busy heads against the Opinion while it lay close wrapt up in its native dark Latin render'd the Translation in his judgment absolutely necessary For the Latin Book I am to answer for the English they who talk so much in English against it and were the People such as they should be those kind of Controversies might easily be managed without any breach of charity at all or the least diminution of their mutuall correspondence it being our duty as in matters of Faith to be zealous and exactly uniform so in other debates to be temperate and prudently condescending Let every one but seriously read the 13 Page of your Result and I doubt not they will proceed in this point as calmly and warily as you do There you tell us that some things have been deliver'd to posterity in the Church which could never obtain more authority then Opinion as is made evident in your System even in grave Subjects but how to distinguish such from Doctrins of a higher nature in case Holy Church did not convey clearly their qualification with them as in some cases evidently It did and in some cases It did not as there you give Instances then the onely way is to return to General Councils that they according to their Office may Conquisitione facta after the Example of the Apostles juridically appoint to each their Seats where all must acquiesce Thus you and excellently well and to this Tryall I freely submit all my Opinions how evident soever they may appear to my self You cite not the particular place and I happend to light on one which treated such businesses and finding it very proper I contented my self and 't is System c. 32. p. 335. c. where as indeed all over that Book it being a Magazine of curious Questions and Antiquities I met with some instances which as they satisfy'd me will I hope if diligently perus'd content my Reader too there he should see collected together not onely universall Catholick Perswasions but some Conciliary Definitions unallow'd by Divines to be Points of Faith But you say this Point is not among 'em and I say as tender Points as this are among 'em What think you of the Assumption of our Lady What of the Spirituality of Angels this embrac'd by all Scholars that by all People Besides do you not there your self acknowledge that very many Orthodox Divines hold though all the Fathers admit this or that Point it does not follow we should presently pronounce it of faith and this even when the matter is of weight and consequence To conclude this introduction I shall take leave to transcribe out of the same Place onely these few sayings recommending them to the serious Consideration of the passionate and byassed Reader The first shall be that of Bellarmin In Consiliis maxima pars Actorum ad Fidem non pertinet sed tantum ipsa nuda Decreta ea non omnia sed tantum quae proponuntur tanquam de fide Another of Innocent the third Judicium Ecclesiae nonnunquam opinionem sequitur quam fallere saepe continget falli The third of Saint Aug. Sentiat quisque quod libet tantum contra Apostolicam manifestissimam Fidem non sentiat And now Sir me thinks the Question betwixt you and me is reduced to so narrow a compass that we may see it all with one prospect and hope by that means to see it well whereas they that spread their view wildly at too much at once have many things before their eyes but nothing in their sight Notes on the first Chapter YOur first Chapter did somewhat surprise me for being used to expect in your writings Authorities express and driven home I was amazed to find the main question of your work past slightly over with a generall assertion that the Fathers say what you intend without directly producing Testimonies of sufficient either weight or number to evince your position The Council of Florence I have taken notice of sufficiently in my answer to the Vindicator which I shall endeavour to get presented to you The Result of my discourse there in short is that I acknowledg all the Council and Pope assert and shew they do not affirm what you pretend Your onely Testimony out of Saint John Damascen perplexed me for I know your goodness so great that you would not wittingly impose upon your Auditory and esteemed your Criticism in Fathers so exact that you would not permit such a notable mistake to gain credit upon you How then happens it that you so confidently cite an Oration of Saint John Damascen which Catholicks either doubt not to be his or make a shamefull excuse for writing it saying he was
too credulous to fabulous narrations In it are recorded the famous tales of Trajan and Falconilla saved from Hell by the prayers of Saint Gregory and Saint Thecla There is the monstrous story which you are pleased to recount to your Readers of an Heathens scull that told a good Eremite they received some comfort when they were pray'd for Which story is taken either out of Palladius his Historia Lausiaca or else Evagrius his Vitae Patrum of which Saint Hierom testifies onely the first life to be true and even in it is that notorious Romance of Macarius Romanus And of the former the same Saint Hierom testifies he was an Origenist wherefore the Authour of this Oration attributed to St. John Damascen is justly fear'd to have himself also been one seeing his fine stories aym at the comfort of the damned Besides our Criticks tell us this story is imposed on the great Saint Macarius being originally written of another of the same name and the Oratour adding that the answer was from God whereas the Original attributes it to the scull of a dead heathen Priest and so far likelier came from the Devil All the rest you say in this Chapter is just the Doctrin of your Epistolar Antagonist as far as you let us understand his mind and mine too to wit that to deny prayers profit the dead cometh from the Devil The general resistence you plead against this Doctrin of Souls continuance in Purgatory finds a parallel in all popular perswasions how weakly grounded soever which none but discreet persons can endure to hear opposed And for the answer I intreat your pardon if I remit you to my late Reply to the Vindicator For the rest you seem to press us that we must take your sence of the Fathers and Councils telling us it is the onely ingenious one and others are but extorted meanings Truly I believe you speak what you think but I desire you think what you speak that is examin it well for I believe your thinking is bred ex consuetudine videndi your education hath been amongst them who dayly practis'd it you hear the Bells ever ringing to such devotions you see the custom spread over all the Western Church and do not lift up your eyes to the beginning of it and therefore you think it was ever so and that it is the sence of those great Authorities But I cannot omit a by-word of yours that it is easie to elude the Fathers by the voluntary glosses of blasted Authors Is this spoken like a Controvertist like a victorious and crowned Champion over Heretiques and that by weapons out of the Fathers as you are esteemed and worthily too When you bring Fathers against any of them do you profess they may be easily answer'd by blasted Authors Whence then comes it that in this Controversie you flie to an evasion so unprofitable to your self injurious to the Fathers and advantageous to the common Enemy but that you esteem the Fathers you bring come not home to the point and that they must be inched out by a pious affection whereof to tell you my mind I believe all speciousness of piety which prevents the understanding from being indifferent to judge of the truth is in very deed a piece of impiety and temerity And in our present Controversie if the words of the Fathers by which they attribute purging of souls to the fire of Judgment be not beyond contest I will yeeld the whole cause Some I have cited in my Treatise and more I can cite if necessity requires but if they be why is it not lawfull for me to alledge them though Heretiques make use of them for an evil end charge either the Fathers for writing so or the Heretiques for abusing them however I I am free Notes on the second and third Chapters THese 2 Chapters go without Proofs being as it were but inferences from the pretended Ones of the First and consequently their fate depends on the fortune of their Leaders which I hope I have already sufficiently disabled Yet give me leave here to add one Caution that may accompany you in your journey to ask all the Catholick world whether they believe a Release of Souls out of Purgatory ordinarily obtainable before the day of Judgment as an Article of their faith or onely assent to it as a current truth which they never doubted nor ever examin'd Should you proceed thus warily I believe your number would strangely diminish how many think you would fall off as not conceiving themselves able to examin so hard a Question how many of the learned would confess the more they impartially consider it the more they discover reasons not to be too confident of its being a point of Faith especially if they have the fortune to compare it with other common perswasions which themselves acknowledg Universal and ancient yet not of Faith as that of material fire now in Hell and Purgatory c. how few then will the number of your Voters be set but aside all those who think there 's literal fire there which you are bound to do because they believe it cerraintly yet is it not of Faith and presently your multitude in Spain Italy Turky and Soria whither you went for witnesses will shrink into a slender and inconsiderable number Whereas you add we never read in Scriptures Fathers or Councils that all those that go to Purgatory must necessarily be detaind there without any relief till the day of Judgment I answer first 't is but a negative Argument Secondly It plainly agrees with my Opinion who hold them relieved there as well as you though I explicate my Tenet another way Which here I intend in brief to shew you Wherein that we may proceed more safely let us first see how far we agree and where we begin to differ We agree that there is a Purgatory and that souls there detain'd are helpt or reliev'd by the prayers of the faithfull We begin to differ in explicating what we conceive by relief and we wholy disagree in the time of ordinary deliverableness Your conception of Relief I imagin is that when prayers are said for the departed their souls are really changed from the state of pains they were in before to one of a milder affliction where they must expect till some new cause raise them a step higher and so by degrees having past over all those steps are at last admitted into heaven your self will agree these words are metaphoricall and translated from our manner of speaking and I gather and conceive the sense too of these words is translated from our thinking and indeed if we mind our selves well we shall still find our words of the same piece with our notions now we being conversant onely with our bodies frame all our notions after their measure and speak and think too generally of spirits and even of God himself as of things we daily commerce with Do we not still fancy such motions changes and other operations
of as great mutability as time hath mutation is in potentia another thing to the proportion of the changes of time as because a man who walks can stop and the flame of a candle go out in an instant therefore the consistency of a material subject as to our minds consideration is but moment-strong and we can affirm nothing of it in force of contradiction more durable then the unchangeableness or identity of time which is purely a thought or an abstraction Out of this it follows that if we put in spirituall substances a more then momentanean constancy we must also put the force of contradiction in them proportionable to that constancy or identity of it self to it self Now your self seeming to admit this constancy under the name of aeviternity in spirits for a future eternity it seems to me you should admit nothing in spirits that is not compossible together in the subject and by evident consequence that not to have an act and to have one in the same aeviternity is as impossible as not to have and to have in the same instant of time You will peradventure tell me this position ruins some common opinions in Divinity and my brittle Vindicator would tell me it moulder'd away his faith Sir if you be of the opinion that Theology is arriv'd to its non plus ultra I am not I think many now common and probable opinions will in after ages be demonstrated against and prove erroneous and therefore the pure authority of Divines who build upon pure reason hath no farther force with me then their reason And I think I have learned this lesson out of Saint Augustin as I am sure your self also have how ever in practice apparences may seduce you from the exercise of it as if you believe it consonant to Scriptures Fathers Councils c. without a legitimate examination of them which when you go about you find them to be easily eluded by the glosses of blasted Authors many of which kind of Authors nevertheless Saint Hierom in his Comments upon the Scriptures was used to cite that men of understanding might see in the variety of divers conceits what truths might be picked out even of blasted Authors as Aristotle out of the verities mingled among false opinions drew his own demonstrations The rest of these Chapters is but an explication indifferent to both sides in which as you admit in Purgatory a disposition to charity so me thinks you should to the change of affections by it And whereas you say that the soul is extra viam the common Tenet of Divines should admonish you that she is not in state to have new revelations and changes which are the propriety of Via Notes on the tenth Chapter WHich is for its Positions entirely true and holy but you seem to suppose as true some misinformations or misapprehensions concerning your Adversary as that he questions generall traditions and calls them novelties which how you can do who know Saint Austin testifies in his time as yet the question was not agitated and that each part might prove either true or false and that the Authour of the celebrated Dialogues expresly teaches they were unknown till his dayes and from thence till Saint Odilo's time very little esteemed or noysed How such an opinion can chuse but be a Novelty in respect of the Church of God I cannot understand or that six hundred years ago with a known beginning can enroll it into the practices or doctrins delivered by the Apostles passes my reach As for the universall sense of the Church I hope the Council of Florence's act will demonstrate the contrary as you may see in my answer to the Vindicator whither I beg leave to remit you The Text you cite out of Saint Austin is excellently true Quae universa tenet Ecclesia ab Apostolis praecepta bene creduntur quanquam scripta non reperiantur but with these cautions That the Church that is the community of Believers as such not as a multitude of men hold them as of faith not opine them only to be current truths else every common perswasion grounded on any probable Reason or Authority would become an unchangeable Article of Christian Religion and in this I think I have your consent if I mistake not the the 32. Chapter of your Systema which I formerly cited and desire my Reader to peruse the whole Chapter being excellently pertinent to this purpose As also Verons general Rule of Catholike faith which I hear is newly translated into English There you shall see how warily that experienced Controvertist proceeds in separating faith from opinions No doctrin says he begun since the Apostles though confirm'd by miracles and those miracles reported by Saints or approved by generall Councils or attested in the Bulls of canonization can ever be an Article of faith Nor is the practice says the same Auhor even of the universall Church a ground firm enough to build a point of Catholike faith upon because the object of faith is truth and the Church often guides her practices by probable opinions which upon occasion she may change And for Decrees of Councils the same Doctor maintains and cites Bellarmin for his opinion that unless the Council proceed conciliarly that is by due examination c. and define properly not barely affirm a thing by simple assertion and occasionally as it were en passant it does not oblige our belief and which is highest of all though the Council decree expresly and professedly a Doctrin debated yet unless it be defined as a truth to be believed with Catholike faith they are not properly heretiques that hold the contrary What you deliver that one mans satispassion may by way of impetration satisfie for another and profit him is very acceptable and none but they who mistake the words can dislike the sense for we see humiliations accompany solemn prayers both in the Law of Moses and Grace and nature it self teaches us it is a convenient habit for him that intreats mercy Notes on the eleventh Chapter WHere I see very little for me particularly to except against but that you term our Tenet an Innovation which name better becomes your own But this is an Indulgence to be granted to the conceit every one has of his own arguments For the opinion that the sensitive or corporeall part of man is capable of venial sin in it self and so of goodness I neither have nor will have any thing to do with it You say 't is taught by the most speculative Divines as Scotus's Scool and Cajetan c. I dare not meddle with such great men As for your Opiniators you speak of I cannot point you to a fairer example then the Vindicators Creed which he hath declared to be his faith in his Discourse against me To the touch you give about probable opinions the question is too great to engage in on so slight an occasion The place you quote out of Saint Austin seems not to concern the