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A28402	A treatise of the sibyls so highly celebrated, as well by the antient heathens, as the holy fathers of the church : giving an accompt of the names, and number of the sibyls, of their qualities, the form and matter of their verses : as also of the books now extant under their names, and the errours crept into Christian religion, from the impostures contained therein, particularly, concerning the state of the just, and unjust after death / written originally by David Blondel ; Englished by J.D.	Blondel, David, 1591-1655.; Davies, John, 1625-1693.	1661 (1661)	Wing B3220; ESTC R38842	342,398	310

Arch-Bishop of Ephesus and Nilus And lastly by the Answer which the Greeks of the State of Venice made in the year 1560. to the fourteenth of the Questions proposed by the Cardinal of Guise in these Terms Eorum hominum animae quorum quasi media quaedam conditio est c. The Souls of those men that are as it were in a middle condition between the just and the unjust that is to say those who gave not up their last breath in mortal Sins yet were not absolutely free from guilt nor manifested the Fruits of Repentance the Souls I say of such are thought by ours to be purged in this manner not by any Purgatory Fire or by any determinate Punishment in some certain place but some by pure fear at the very separation from the Body others after the separation it may be also detained in Hell not so as if they were in Fire or Punishment but as if they were kept in Prison and Chains Of which Sentiment though there is as little ground either in Scripture or Reason as there is for the Fire generally believed by most of the Church of Rome yet may it suffice to force her to acknowledge that her Supposition advanced after the year 500. and consequently New and not Catholick nor was nor is avowed neither every where nor by all People whereof the Inference again is that it neither is nor can be Catholick by her own Confession since that in imitation of Vincentius Lirinensis whose words she perpetually abuses against the Protestants it may be said Quod ubique quod semper quod ab omnibus creditum est hoc verè propriéque Catholicum c. What hath been believed in all places at all times and by all people that is truly and properly Catholick Besides that it is impossible that the indefinite and doubtfull Proposition of the Councel of Florence declaring that they admit for Purgatory either fire or darkness or tempest or any thing else as if they would have said expressly that they were content with any thing provided it had some appearance of conformity with their Opinion should serve to any other end then to shew that they knew not what to fasten on and found in their consciences that their Purgatory which they neither durst nor could determine could not any way be an Article of Faith Nor hath the Councel of Trent been more fortunate in the business then the other for though the Prelates there began their Decree on the fourth of December 1563. in very magnificent Terms saying Cùm Catholica Ecclesia Spiritu Sancto edocta sacris literis antiqua Patrum Traditione in sacris Conciliis novissimè in hâc Oecumenic â Synodo docuerit Purgatorium esse animasque ibi detentas fidelium suffragiis potissimùm verò acceptabili Altaris sacrificio juvari praecipit sancta Synodus Episcopis ut sanam de Purgatorio Doctrinam à Sanctis Patribus sacris Conciliis traditam à Christi fidelibus credi teneri doceri ubique praedicari diligenter studeant c. Whereas the Catholick Church taught by the Holy Spirit the divine Scriptures and the antient Tradition of the Fathers in Sacred Councels and lately in this Oecumenical Synod hath taught that there is a Purgatory and that the souls there detained are by the Suffrages of the Faithfull but especially by the acceptable sacrifice of the Altar relieved the holy Synod enjoyns the Bishops that they endeavour that the sound Doctrine of Purgatory delivered by the holy Fathers and sacred Councels may be believed by the faithfull maintained taught and preached in all places Yet all this well considered comes to nothing since the Scripture does not any where teach there is either any subterranean Fire that purges the separated souls or any place where they are purged since that not any one of the Fathers before St. Gregory either durst define that there was any place of Torment appointed for the purgation of Souls after this life or positively affirmed that they pass through any subterraneous Purgatory fire since that no Councel no not even that of Lateran under Innocent the Third whereto nevertheless Cardinal Bellarmine either deceived himself by others or not caring much how he deceives us is pleased to referr us no Councel I say before that of Florence affirmatively assigned any Purgative place after any manner whatsoever for the Souls of the Faithfull departed and consequently that the Councel of Trent which had though it boasted as much neither Scripture nor Fathers of the first five Ages nor Councel before that of Florence from which it might derive ought in the Question of Purgatory a thing unknown to Antiquity hath taught us not what it had learned from antient Tradition but what it pleased it self and purely upon its own Authority As to what the Councel adds concerning what it had it self taught before as if it had taken it either out of the antient Tradition of the Fathers or their Councels 't is a pure Illusion for before the twenty fifth Session we have not in all its Decrees and Anathematisms but two words whence any supposition of Purgatory may be deduced and those without any proof of Declaration of what it is the Former in the thirtieth Anathematism fulminated on the seventeenth of January 1547. in the sixth Session where it pronounces Anathema Si quis it à reatum Poenae aeternae deleri dixerit ut nullus remaneat reatus poenae Temporalis exsolvendo vel in hoc saeculo vel in futuro Purgatorio c If any one shall affirm that the guilt of eternal Punishment is so forgiven as that there remains no guilt of Temporal Punishment to be paid either in this life or hereafter in Purgatory c. The later in the twenty second Chapter of the Decree of the Mass drawn up on the seventeenth of September 1562. in the two and twentieth Session where it says again that the Sacrifice of the Mass is offered pro defunctis in Christo nondum ad plenum purgatis c. for the departed in Christ not yet fully purged Having therefore heard the Councel referring at its last Session to the precedent if you pretend to finde therein any allegation either of Scripture or Tradition for Purgatory or any Reason insinuating it or any Declaration expressing the nature of it with any satisfaction you will make no great advantage of the Allegations they containing in effect but a simple and naked description and no more And whereas the Councel thinks it enough by its Decree to say that it is without declaring in what manner and whether it does or does not consist in Fire such as Saint Gregory and Odilo conceived it and the common Opinion seems to insinuate it is thence apparent that it knew no more of it then other Councels and that its Exhortation to the Bishops to observe and cause to be observed the sound Doctrine thereof is and shall ever be a sound without signification

there was great favour laid up for those that died godly it was an holy and good thought whereupon he made a Reconciliation for the dead that they might be delivered from sin supposing of his own head First what could not justly be inferred from any part of the precedent Relation viz. that Judas had prayed and given order for the offering of Sacrifices at Jerusalem not for himself and his Army as the History teaches but for those who had been slain before because of their prophane covetousness And secondly that Judas and his Army conceived those Wretches to have died godly and in a capacity to receive the Favours reserved for those who die godly since that it is evident from the Historian's own words that they were destroyed in the midst of their wickedness and not departed in godliness that every one had known it and from that knowledg taken occasion to bless the Lord who had by a just Judgment discovered their secret Impiety beseeching him not to impute it to the Army whereof they had been a part and lastly that Judas had exhorted every one to be carefull of himself learning Prudence at their cost who had so justly received the punishment due to their sin All which premised it naturally follows that whether we stick to the Consideration of Judas such as it hath been related to us by the Abridger of Jason or represent to our selves the accompt which the Father 's made of his Abridgment thrust out by them among Apocryphal Writings and consequently of too weak Authority to serve for the foundation of a Religious Custom or lastly keep to the Declaration of the same Fathers deriving their Custom purely from Tradition there is no ground at all to alledge the History of the Maccabees for a reason of what the Antient Christians practised and much of what the Modern practise at this day as well in the East where Prayers are made not simply for the Resurrection of the dead as the Authour of the second of the Maccabees would have it presupposing with the Jews at present that the Wicked rise not again and that Judas had prayed for the remission of the Sin committed by those sacrilegious Persons to the end they might be raised again as those who die godly but for the dayly consolation of those who are supposed in some manner to languish in expectation of their Happiness as in the West where men propose to themselves onely the obtaining their deliverance out of the Pains of Purgatory But it may with very great probability or rather evident necessity be believed that the first Custom of praying for the Dead was a consequence drawn by the Fathers from the Suppositions contained in the Writing by them pretended to be Sibylline For the first minute of its coming abroad they not onely entertained it without contradiction but as a divine Piece the most antient of all the Prophecies that of Enoch onely excepted the Contriver of that Imposture having cunningly put it out under the Name of one of the Daughter-in-law's of Noe the most ample since it gives an accompt of the principal Heads of the Evangelical History and extends its Predictions to the end of the World the most clear since it presents us with the Acrostick of the Names and Titles of the Son of God and the most advantageous against the Errour of the Heathens since that those among the Christians who first cited it imagined they had it from them and were come to the knowledg of it through their means Which very Considerations might haply have moved Clemens Alexandrinus when he promised them the allegation of the Prophecies to place that which he conceived to be the Sibyl's before all and afterwards speak of Esaiah Jeremy c. as less antient and many times less clear And thence also it seems to have come to pass that those who quitted if not absolutely at least in some measure the Hypotheses of the pretended Sibyl either dissembled the Imperfections of the Prophetess and forbore to charge her with Imposture treating her in that particular with more regard then they did some of the Books divinely-inspired or openly payed her the accustomed respect●… continuing a reverence to her Work notwithstanding it betrayed it self a thousand ways unworthy their esteem CHAP. XXVI That divers of the Fathers have expressed more respect towards the Book attributed to the Sibyl then to the Apocalyps TO make this the more clear I shall onely make a short recapitulation of the heads of Imposture I have already observed in which any one might have seen that the counterfeit Sibyl taking carnally whatever she had read in the Prophecies and particularly in the Revelation of St. John concerning the glory and happiness of the mystical Jerusalem had imagined and perswaded Papias and St. Irenaeus and all the Millenaries that our Saviour before the last Judgment should establish a Kingdom abounding with corporeal delights in the earthly Jerusalem laid desolate by Titus This fond Imagination met with about the beginning of the third Age such as stiffly opposed it but who can forbear deploring the miscarriages of humane Infirmity The first that took this task upon them engaged in it with a Judgment so prepossessed that proposing to themselves to confute a palpable Errour they ran themselves for want of circumspection into a kind of Treason against God and so unworthily treated the Apocalyps wherewith he had honoured his beloved Apostle that they presumed to cry it down as a counterfeit Piece composed and published by the Heretick Cerinthus under the name of St. John while they suffered to spread up and down unquestioned uncensured the Romance attributed to the Sibyl with the strangest impudence that ever was heard of Thus Caius an Ecclesiastical Person whom Eusebius and St. Hierome observe to have been contemporary with Pope Zephyrinus and consequently to have written his Disputation against the Montanist Proculus between Sunday August the seventh 197. on which day Zephyrinus succeeded Victor and August the twenty sixth 217. on which God took the said Zephyrinus to himself this Caius I say made no difficulty to disburthen his stomach of this injurious Discourse against the Apocalyps 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Cerinthus also by Revelations pretended to be written by a great Apostle endeavours to introduce monstrous Discourses feigning that they were shewn him by the Angels and saying that after the Resurrection the Royal Palace of Christ shall be Terrestrial and that the flesh conversing in Jerusalem shall be again subject to sensual appetites and pleasures being also in opposition to the Divine Writings and out of a desire to deceive he saith that the term of a thousand years shall be spent in Nuptial Entertainments Indeed some thirty years after Denys of Alexandria passed a more sound Judgment condemning the Imaginations of Cerinhhus after whose Example the coun●…feit Sibyl had wrested to an ill sence the Predictions of St. John and acknowledging

opposite So that I cannot conceive any thing but an over-earnestness of Dispute should force St. Hierome to make such ostentation of the Sibyls and maintain against Jovinian That They had for their Livery Virginity and that Divination had been the reward of their Virginity for it is an horrid Reward to be made the Instrument of the Devil to publish his Lies and to contribute to his Deceits Nor can I see how the greatest of Ills can be ranked among Goods nor at hazard to say something to the advantage of the Sibyls that any Advantage can be made of this improbable shift that they made any other Predictions then these which induced the Pagans into Errour and that upon the account of them and their Virginity they have been thought worthy recommendation Not that I would deny but it had been as possible for God to declare by those women the Secrets to come as to make Balaam's Ass to speak or move Balaam himself to Prophecy the coming of the Messias one thousand four hundred ninety and two years before it happened especially seeing St. Augustine expounding these words of Saint Paul Whom he had before promised by his Prophets took from the Prejudice he had conceived thereof occasion to write That there have been Prophets who were not of him in whom also we finde some things which they have sang as having heard them of Christ as it is said of the Sibyl But I hope he and the other Fathers will pardon me if I presume to answer That they have grounded their Opinion on a broken Reed to wit the Authority of the eight Books of the pretended Daughter-in-law of Noah For First They have taken for very antient a Piece that was very new and adulterate Secondly Though it were as antient as they thought yet could it not be Divine for this very reason that it contains as hath been already observed abundance of Errours which no man unless lost to his Senses will ever impute to Celestial Revelation Thirdly Though it were granted that those Pieces are as free from Errours as they are full of them and that their Original is to be taken much higher then the Birth of our Saviour yet would Hilary the Deacon deny that it necessarily followed thence that they came from God The spirit of the world saith he is that which possesses persons subject to Enthusiasms who are without God for it is the chiefest among the worldly Spirits Whence it comes that he is wont by conjecture to fore-tell the things which are of this World and it is he who is called Python or the Prophecying Spirit it is he who is deceived and deceives by things that have a probability of Truth it is he who spoke by the Sibyl imitating ours and desirous to be numbred among the Celestial For my part I freely confess it were a very hard matter to maintain that the eight Books of the Sibyls which copy out the best part of the History of the Gospel had been written before our Saviour's coming into the Flesh and ●…at they were the Productions of some Python or Prophecying Spirit but it is evident that Hilary reflecting on the fond Imaginations wherewith they are pestered chose rather to think them the Work a Fanatick then a Divine Person and in that though contrary to the Opinion of many of the Fathers he is much in the right For though we should lay the Spunge on all the marks of their Supposititiousness before alleged yet could we not any way wipe out that Character which the said Rhapsody hath with its own hands imprinted so deep in its forehead that it is remarkable in the chiefest of those great men who would acknowledg its authority and oppose it to the Heathens CHAP. XXII The Sentiment of Aristotle concerning Enthusiasts taken into Consideration ARistotle had been of Opinion That the heat of Melancholy being near the place of Intelligence many were taken with Frantick and Enthusiastical Diseases That thence came all the Sibyls Bacchides and inspired Persons that is when they became such not through disease but the temperament of nature and thereupon alleges that Maracus of Syracuse was a better Poet when he was besides himself discovering thereby That according to his Sentiment to say of a woman that she was a Sibyl was to put her into the qualification of Hypochondriacks and such as are subject to black Choler But the common Opinion of the Heathens was that the Sibyls were seized by a supernatural power and not warmed by a simple Ebullition of black Choler and that their being so seised made while it lasted so strong an impression upon their minds that it deprived them of all Intelligence and Memory Thus Heraclitus in Plutarch affirms that the Sibyl had with her frantick mouth said things which are neither ridiculous nor gaudy nor adulterate Virgil introduces Helenus speaking to Aeneas of the Cumaean Sibyl Thou the enraged Prophetess shalt see And elswhere making a Description of her Transports he uses these express terms This said her colour straight did change her face And flowing Tresses lost their former grace A growing passion swels her troubled breast And fury her distracted soul possest And a little after When she not able to endure the load Of such a pow'r strives to shake off the God The more she chaf'd the more he curbs her in Tames her wilde breast and calms her swelling spleen And again Then Phoebus slakes His curbing reins and from her bosom takes His cruel Spurs granting a little rest Soon as her Fit and high Distraction ceas'd Lucan's Description is much to the same purpose and Claudian in imitation of them calls the Place of the Cumaean Sibyl The Porch of the enraged Sibyl But this Description which naturally expresses the violent possession of an evil Spirit tormenting the person it seises in stead of raising an horrour in the Writer of the eight Books attributed to the Sibyls enflames him with an emulation insomuch that that impertinent person hath not been ashamed to attribute to the God of glory extravagant sallies like those of the Devils and to say of himself what the prophane Poets had writ of their Prophetesses Corpore tota stupens trahor huc ignara quid ipsa Eloquar ipse sed haec mandat Deus omnia fari And elswhere Sed quid cor iterùm quatitur mihi ménsque flagello Icta foràs vocem prorumpere cogitur omnes Ut moneam And again Ut mihi divino requieta à carmine mens est Orabam magnum genitorem vis ut abesset Sed mihi suggessit vocem sub pectora rursum Pérque omnes terras praecepit vaticinari And that she came from Babylon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 furious or fanatick All which affords us a manifest Argument that the unhappy Impostour who took upon him to play the Sibyl was besotted with such an extravagant conceit that he would upon any terms be taken

〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and his intention had been to tell us that Saint Irenaeus declared the Apocalyps rather then to give us to understand that according to the Declaration of that great Martyr St. John saw his Apocalyps not onely under Domitian but the fourteenth year of that Prince or to express it in his own Terms towards the end of his Reign But with this little distortion of the words of Eusebius St. Hierome in his Catalogue expresses their true sence saying Domitian in his fourteenth year raising after Nero the second Persecution John banished to the Isle of Patmos writ the Apocalyps which Justin Martyr interprets and Irenaeus So that we must not with Cardinal Baronius give that Interpretation to his Discourse as if Domitian had began his Reign fourteeen years after Nero. For though it be indeed true since Nero died the tenth of June 68. and Domitian came into his Brother's place on the eighteenth of September 81. thirteen years three moneths and eight days after the unfortunate End of Nero and consequently about the beginning of the fourteenth year yet was it not the intention of St. Hierome to acquaint us what number of years had passed between the Reign of Domitian and that of Nero but that Domitian in the fourteenth year of his Reign which was the twenty seventh after Nero's Death raised the second Persecution against the Church So that it was inconsiderately done of him who Translated the Greek Version of Sophronius the antient Interpreter of St. Hierome's Catalogue into Latine to make him say as he fancied The fourteenth year after the Death of Nero instead of turning it according to the proper expressions as well of St. Hierome as Sophronius The fourteenth year Domitian raising after Nero the second Persecution nor indeed could it have been without contradiction to St. Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus and Eusebius nay to himself and that so much the more notorious by how much the more he pretended to follow the last whose Discourse he hath Translated in a manner word for word The Arabian Prolegomena upon the Gospels published by Peter de Kirstein have these words in them John made his aboad at Ephesus seven and twenty years that is to say six under Nero ten under Vespasian two under Titus and nine under Domitian then was he Banished by Domitian into the Isle of Patmos where he stayed seven years till such time as he was called back by Nero the younger that is to say Nerva By this account the Apostle of God should have retired out of Palaestine into the Proconsulary Asia not as the Greek Fasti very probably suppose in the 68. of our Saviour because of the Revolt of the Jews from the Empire and the Eruption of the War brought into the Heart of their Country by Vespasian immediately upon the retreat of the Church of Jerusalem to Pella but in the year sixty three concurrent with the ninth of Nero and the time of St. John's Abode both at Ephesus and Patmos should have been thirty four years comprehending six years of Nero and the whole Reigns of Vespasian Titus and Domitian For Nero killed himself as hath been already observed the tenth of June 68. Vespasian having news brought him in Palaestina of the Murthering of Galba which happened on the sixteenth of January 69. as also of the Tragical End of Otho on the twentieth of April following and of the Rising of his Friends in Rome assumed the Empire and kept it till the twenty fourth of June 79. and Domitian who had succeeded his Brother Titus dying the 13th of September in the year 81. was violently forced out of the world on the 18th of September in the year 96. leaving the Empire vacant to Nerva who nulled all his Acts and by that means gave St. John the Liberty to return to Ephesus But if this Calculation be receivable in as much as it maintains the common Sentiment of the Fathers concerning the time of St. John's return yet can it not agree with the Relation of St. Irenaeus affirming that almost in his time Domitian began the Persecution towards the end of his Reign and leaving it to be inferred that the Persecution was of no long continuance which could not be said if according to the account of the Arabians we must assign it seven years that is to say a full half of Domitian's Reign and not onely the End whereto St. Irenaeus Eusébius and all the Fathers strictly limit themselves among whom Tertullian Contemporary with St. Irenaeus expresly observing the Violence of that Persecution to have made no great Havock says Domitian an Imp of Nero as to cruelty had designed a Persecution but being also himself a man he easily smothered what he had begun having re-established those whom he had Banished So that according to his Opinion the mischief was stayed by his very Order who had occasioned it But whereas by attributing to him the Re-establishment of the Banished he derogates from the Authority of the Tradition of the Antients which according to Eusebius delayed it till the Reign of Nerva whom the Prolegomena I know not why call Nero the younger I shall by no means presume so much upon his particular Opinion as to oppose it to the common belief of all the Fathers Which having forced us to reduce onely to one the seven years assigned by the Prolegomena for the Banishment of St. John imposes upon us yet a greater necessity to quit the Opinion of the Greek Fasti which place the return of St. John under the twelfth year of Domitian coincident with the ninety third of our Saviour and commit therein an Errour so much the more unmaintainable in that they make the Persecution cease as also the effect it had by the confession of all caused two years before it began and ridiculously presuppose that St. John was by the Decree for his Release restored to his former Liberty before he had been in a capacity to lose it by the unjust Decree for his Banishment He who hath busied himself in writing a Synopsis of the Lives of the Prophets and Apostles under the Name of Dorotheus having by mixture of his own Conceptions corrupted the words of the Synopsis of St. Athanasius imagines that St. John was Banished by Trajan that he lived one hundred and twenty years and returned from Patmos to Ephesus after Trajan's Death But all yet followed as it should seem by Suidas is contrary both to Tradition and the Truth since First Trajan came not to the Empire till the twenty eighth of July in the year 98. the very next to that wherein St. John was restored by Nerva Secondly St. John was according to the Opinion of St. Hierome honoured with the Apostleship in his Youth and while he was yet a Boy so that the hundredth year of our Saviour wherein he was Translated to Celestial glory could not have been much beyond the ninetieth of his Age to

And then shall all pass through the burning River and the unextinguishable Flame all the just shall be saved but the wicked shall perish to all ages c. The Angels carrying them through the burning River shall bring them into Light c. He will give men the power to save themselves from the burning fire and eternal gnashings of Teeth c. And then shall God send from heaven the King and shall judge every man by blood and the splendour of Fire This Imagination considered by the most antient of the Fathers as taken out of a Book of divine Authority made so strong an Impression upon them that they took it for an infallible Lesson Hence Saint Irenaeus in the ninth Chapter of his Book having applied to the end of the world those words of Malachy The day of the Lord shall burn as an Oven adds John the Baptist tells us who that Lord is at whose coming there shall be such a day saying of Christ He shall baptise you with the holy Ghost and with Fire having his Fan in his hand to cleanse his Floor and he will put up the Corn into his Garner but shall burn the Chaff in unquenchable Fire He therefore who made the corn is no other then he who made the chaff but one and the same judging those things and separating them Origen in his third Homily upon the thirty sixth Psalm If in this life we slight the words of the Scripture admonishing us and will not be either healed or amended by the reprehensions thereof it is certain we must come to the Fire which is prepared for sinners even to that Fire 1 Cor. iii. 13. which shall try every mans work of what sort it is And as I conceive it is necessary that we all come to that fire though one be a Paul or a Peter he will nevertheless come to that fire But those who are such shall hear Though thou walkest through the Fire the Flame shall not kindle upon thee Isa xliii 2. But if any one be a sinner as my self he shall indeed come to that Fire as well as Peter and Paul And as the Hebrews came to the Red Sea so did also the Egyptians but the Isralites passed through the Red Sea and the Egyptians were overwhelmed therein In like manner we if we are Egyptians and follow Pharao who is the Devil obeying his commandments shall be overwhelmed in that fiery Lake or River when we shall be guilty of the sins which we are addicted to no doubt through the commandment of Pharao But if we are Israelites and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb without spot if we carry not about us the leaven of malice and wickedness we also must enter into the fiery River but as the Waters were to the Israelites a wall on the right hand and on the left so shall the Fire be as a Wall if we do as it is reported of them that is to say that they believed the Lord and his servant Moses that is to say his Law and Commandments and by that means follow the Pillar of Fire and the Pillar of the Cloud And in his fourteenth Homily upon Saint Luke I think that even after the Resurrection of the dead we shall stand in need of the Sacrament to cleanse and purge us for none will be able to rise again without Filth Lactantius in the twenty first Chapter of his seventh Book When he shall judge the just he shall also try them by Fire then shall those whose sins have prevailed either as to their weight or number be smitten by the Fire and burnt but those whom a fulness of Justice and maturity of Virtue shall have hardned shall not be sensible of that Fire Saint Hilary who in the second of his Canons upon Saint Matthew had observed in general that it lies even upon those who are baptised with the Holy Spirit to be consummated or accomplished by the Fire of the last Judgment in his third Sermon upon the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm according to the Greeks applies it particularly to the blessed Virgin to shew that in his judgment it cannot admit any exception saying Since we are to give an account Matthew xii 36. for every idle word do we desire to come to the day of Judgment wherein we are to pass through that indefatigable Fire wherein we are to suffer those grievous Torments which tend to the expiation of the soul from its sins If a sword did pierce through the soul of the Blessed Mary that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed if that Virgin who was capable of receiving God was to come to the severity of Judgment who will presume to desire to be judged of God Saint Gregory Nazianzene Orat. 26. The day of the revelation will declare manifestly whether it be through a sound Ratiocination that I please not as also the last Fire by which all our works shall be judged and purged And in the thirty ninth speaking of those who think themselves so pure that they think they have reason to bid their Brethren Stand at a distance from them It may be that there to wit at the end of the world they shall be baptized by Fire with the final Baptism which is the most grievous and most long which feeds on the matter as on grass and consumes the vanity of all wickedness And in the fourtieth where he bewails his own imperfection Who will secure me that I shall be saved at the end and that the judicial seat will not look upon me still as a debtour and one that stands in need of the Cons●agration which shall be then Saint Basil upon the 4th of Esay Verse 4th where the Prophet treats of the cleansing of Jerusalem hath this consideration Are there not three Notions of Baptism The Purgation of the Filth the Regeneration by the Spirit and the Examination by the fire of Judgment And upon these words of the Tenth Howl for the day of the Lord is at hand by the day of the Lord he means that of the last Judgment Then adds If none be pure in respect of the works that are forbidden let every one fear that day for saith he to wit Saint Paul 1 Cor. iii. 15. If any man's work shall be burnt he shall suffer loss but he himself shall be saved yet so as by Fire And in the fifteenth Chapter of his Book Of the holy Ghost Saint John calleth Baptism of Fire the Trial which shall be made at the day of Judgment according to what the Apostle saith The Fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is And in the nine and twentieth speaking of Athenogenes a Man famous among the Antient Christians he says That he strove to arrive at the consummation or accomplishment which shall be made by Fire Saint Gregory of Nyssa Brother to St. Basil in his Oration upon the eight and twentieth Verse of the fifteenth Chapter of the first Epistle