who have been favoured with so many Blessings of God who have had an Holy and Vertuous Education and have a thousand Obligations to your Illustrious Lady Mother whose days are likely now to be shortned with anguish and sorrow God hath given to Your Grace in this City * Sedan a Faithful People heartily devoted to your Service which have built your Town and fortified it with their hard Labour and have not been sparing of their Lives and means to defend this State when it was in danger They are a People whom God hath gathered from many places and sheltered under your shadow committing them to your keeping The Subsistence of this little State of yours compassed about with Mighty States depends next to God upon the Fidelity of the Inhabitants and their Love to their Sovereign Think you what Heart-breaking Sorrow it will be to that poor People when they see Your Grace going to Mass What Dissipation what Desolation shall you see ere long in your City when the Holy Scripture shall be banish'd from your House when instead of the pure Service of God the Service of Images shall be established Beads Agnus Dei's and sprinklings of Holy Water When instead of a Few Pastors you shall have Herds of Fryars sowing Discord continually among your Subjects When Ecclesiastical Goods shall be no more in your disposing and the Roman Clergy must have again that which your Predecessors had justly taken from them whereby your Revenues shall suffer a great Diminution When all the Ecclesiastical and Matrimonial Causes shall be no more under the Jurisdiction of your Officers but must be tried at Chalons or Rheims so that you shall be no more Master at home When instead of Subjects altogether depending upon your Authority you shall have Jesuits and Capucins about you having a strict Intelligence with those of Bruxels whence Jealousies and Fears will arise greatly noisome to your State I could represent to Your Grace many Considerations to make you apprehend that by this Action you will ruin your Affairs even in this World and lose the Love of those that have been your principal Honour and Support that hereby you will pull up the roots of your Reputation Honour and Greatness fill with Grief and Confusion your dearest Relations and draw upon you the Contempt of Persons of both Religions For even the greatest men of the Roman Church in France that govern themselves by Humane Prudence say that you take your Measures amiss and cannot believe that ever you will take that Resolution But the worst consequence of it is that thereby you will lose your Soul For you have a great Account to give unto God who knoweth the Hearts who is just and terrible and will not dally with those that dally with him I have poured forth and pour still for your Grace Prayers before God Sighs without number neither am I without hope that God will be merciful unto you One thing at least My Lord let me crave at your hands that if you have any Scruples Doubts about your Religion you will be pleased to defer your final Resolution till being come to this Town you may hear the two Parties and till we may speak to some Doctors of the Roman Church in your Presence And I may be bold to promise to Your Grace to make you acknowledge that you have been possess'd with Calumnies against us that both the Tenets of the Roman Church and Ours have been mis-represented to Your Grace and that Gaultiers Passages are false and forged This if I cannot obtain of Your Grace by my most humble Request yet so much comfort at least I shall have that I â—ave discharged my Conscience But if I be so unfortunate as to lose your Grace's Favour for speaking the truth to you it will be well for me that I have but few days to live in this World which I will pass away in sorrow tho' in hope to have them ended by Death when it shall please God to receive me into his rest And what Sorrow soever may exercise me in my Life I will never leave praying for your Prosperity and Salvation as resolved to be as long as I live My Lord Your Grace's most humble c. A SECOND LETTER OF Dr. DV MOVLIN TO THE DUKE of BOVILLON In Answer to a Letter of the Duke 's to his Sister Mademoiselle de Bouillon MY LORD MAdemoiselle de Bouillon your Sister hath done me the Honour to impart unto me Your Grace's Letters to her about the Causes that disquiet your Conscience Upon which I hope that your Goodness will not take it ill that I make some Reflections and try whether God will make Use of me to contribute something towards the Quiet of your Soul and to turn you from the way which I see you take contrary to the Doctrine of the Gospel You begin by expressing your Design not to separate your self from my Lady Dutchess your Wife neither in this World nor in the other Whereby you declare that you had resolved to be of your Ladies Religion before you knew whether it was good or evil and that your Enquiries about Matters of Religion were made after you had formed that Design and taken that Resolution Concerning which I could say many things but Respect stops me being unwilling to be offensive to Your Grace You say next that you have not sought the Grounds of the Religion of My Lady Dutchess any where but in the Holy Scripture And yet in your whole Letter you allegde not any one Text of it You say next that it is a point in controversie which are the Holy Scriptures in which Question we have great Advantages For the Books of Tobit Judith Maccabees c. are Books not extant in the Hebrew which is the Original Tongue of the Scriptures of the Old Testament Jesus Christ and his Apostles cite the Books of Moses the Psalms the Prophets c. but never cite any of those Apocryphal Books The Jewish Church before Christs coming never did acknowledge those Books * As we learn of Josephus and Philo. And those Books are stuffed with Fables as I have fully shewed in my Book against Cardinal du Perron Book 1. chap. 61. And whereas you appeal for the grounds of your Religion to the Fathers we have for us the Councel of Laodicea Melito Origen Eusebius Athanasius Cyril of Jerusalem Gregory Nazianzen Amphilochius Epiphanius Tertullian Hierom Ruffin Hilary Philastrius Gregory I. Bishop of Rome and many more all which to alledge might be tedious to your Grace Yet if you shall command it I will send you a full List of them St. Austin in this Point doth contradict himself and the Third Council of Carthage which is objected to us is otherwise in the Greek Copies than in the Latin Of the Interpretation of Scripture You add that there is a Controversie about the Interpretation of Scripture The Pope and the Roman Church boast themselves to be the infallible Interpreters
alledged to your Grace the Pride of the Bishop of Rome who began then to lift up himself is censured And though you had proved that the Western have always acknowledged the Pope as Head of the Church it availeth nothing unless it be proved also that his Primacy then consisted in doing those things which he doth now Did he then boast that he could not err Did he vaunt himself as Sovereign Judge of the Sense and Interpretation of Scripture Did he give Indulgences Did he draw Souls out of Purgatory Did he give and take away Kingdom Did he call himself God Did he boast that he hath Power to add unto the Creed For in vain do we dispute about Titles when the things are different I would also beseech you Grace to see whether you be not abused for indeed many Passages in the Fathers are found which say that the Bishop of Rome is Successor to St. Peter But they speak of the Succession in the Charge of Bishop of the City of Rome not in the Apostleship or in the Primacy over the Universal Church And it is very remarkable that all the Examples of the Popes Authority brought out of Antiquity are within the Limits of the Roman Empire And that it cannot be found for above a thousand years after our Saviours time that the Bishops of Rome did intermeddle with the Affairs of Churches without the Roman Empire as of the Persian Armenian and Indian Churches In all that time he never gave them any Laws he never received any Appeal from them And that you may see what was the Face of the ancient Church in that Point I will lay down before your Grace some Examples according to the Order of the Ages For the first Age we find that St. Peter writ his last Epistle being near his Death as he saith himself in the first Chapter and then or never it was time for him to say now my Death is at Hand but I leave you for my Successor the Bishop of Rome to whom I will have the Universal Church be subject but of that he saith nothing nor takes any of those Titles upon him which the Pope now attributes unto himself St. Peter being dead if there had been any Question about choosing a Head for the Universal Church in his Room no Doubt but that some Apostle as St. James or St. John must have succeeded him for St. John outlived St. Peter about thirty years but no such thing was done In the same Age lived Dionysius Areopagite to whom are ascribed by them of the Roman Church the Books of Ecclesiastical Hierarchy Reason required that he should speak of the Sovereign Hierarch who now is called the Pope Yet he speaks never a word of him he describeth all the Ecclesiastical Offices and Degrees making no Mention of the Head of the Church for he did not acknowledge any We find by the Ecclesiastical History that in that Age and long after the Bishop of Rome was elected by the Suffrages of the Clegy of that Diocesan Church with the Consent of their People An evident Proof that they believed not in those days that the Bishop of Rome was Head of the Universal Church For had he been so the Universal Church must have contributed to his Election the People of Rome having no right to give a Head to the Church of all the World That Age did swarm with Heresies which the Bishop of Rome did not condemn nor had any Cognisance of them None that we read of were condemned by any Council for not obeying the Bishop of Rome and refusing to be judged by him Our Adversaries themselves do not alledge any thing from the Roman Church of that Age but only some false decretal Epistles of the Popes which Baronius and Bellarmine and Binnius and many others acknowledge to be forged In the second Century our Adversaries find nothing for the Popes Primacy Only towards the end of that Age upon the Question about the Day of the Celebration of Easter Victor Bishop of Rome separated himself from the Communion of diverse of the Oriental Churches because they precisely observed the 14th day of the Moon of March for the day of Easter For which Action Victor was sharply taken up by other Bishops and particularly by Irenaeus as Eusebius witnesseth in the V Book and 25 Chapter of his History The third Age affords us many Examples to the contrary In the year of our Lord 217 Agrippinus Bishop of Carthage assembled a Council in Africa in which it was resolved and defined that the Baptism of Hereticks was no Baptism This was against the Doctrine of the Church of Rome and whether of the two was in the Right it is not material It is enough that thereby it appeareth that the Church of Africa was not then subject to that of Rome In the year of our Lord 256 Cyprian Successor of Agrippinus began to defend his Predecessors Doctrine There being then a Discord between Cornelius Bishop of Rome and one Novatianus whereby the Church of Rome was in Trouble Cyprian sent two Legats to Rome to compose the Difference thereby taking as much Authority over the Church of Rome as the Church of Rome use to exercise in the like Cases In all his Epistles to Cornelius he giveth him no other Title but that of Brother and acknowledgeth him not for his Superiour The Contention about rebaptizing of Hereticks grew hot between him and Stephen Bishop of Rome even to down-right ill Words In the Epistle to Pompeius which is the 74 Cyprian calls Stephen the Champion of Hereticks proud ignorant imprudent an Enemy to Christians preferring Falshood before Truth and Anti-Christ before Christ Moreover he assembled a Council of 87 African Bishops who condemned Stephen Bishop of Rome and his Doctrine and that in Terms worse than Cyprian had given him About the same time St. Firmilianus Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia a man of great Authority also bitterly reviled Stephen From these things it sufficiently appears that these Bishops were far from thinking themselves subject to the Bishop of Rome In that Age our Adversaries find nothing for the Pope's Primacy no Appeals to him from Churches either far or near no Laws given to the Universal Church onely some forged Decretal Epistles of the Bishops of Rome of those times are produced whose falshood is acknowledged by the most Learned of the Roman Writers In those Epistles the Pope is made to speak as a Master having power over all the Emperours and Bishops of the World Whereas the Bishops of Rome then confined the exercise of their Power to their own Diocess not presuming to give Laws to any other Churches much less to their Temporal Governours Of those three first Ages Pope Pius the Second in his Epistle to Martin Mayer which is the 188. speaks thus Every one then lived for himself and little Reverence was deferred to the Roman Church In the year of our Lord 312. the Emperour Constantine being converted to the
Agobio whether at Constantinople or Regio they have the same Dignity and Authority Power and Wealth or Meanness and Poverty do not make one greater or lower than another By their Place they are all Successors of the Apostles And because some alledged the Example of the Roman Church for preferring the Deacon before the Priest he answereth Why doest thou alledge to me the Custom of one City shewing that that was not to be a Rule to the Universal Church His Custom is to call Rome Babylon and the Harlot and to exhort devout Persons to come out of her And in his Preface upon the Book of Didymus of the Holy Ghost he speaks thus When I was in Babylon and was an Inhabitant of the Harlot clad in Purple and lived after the Laws of the Roman Citizens I would prate somewhat about the Holy Ghost and dedicate my Work to the Bishop of the City But behold that Pot which is seen in Jeremiah after the Staff on the North-side begins to boyl and the Senate of the Pharisees begins to cry out meaning by the Senate of the Pharisees the Ecclesiastical Roman Senate And in the Epistle to Marcella under the name of Paula and Eustochium exhorting Marcella to come out of Rome and to retire to Bethlehem I esteem saith he that this place of Bethlehem is holier than the Tarpeian Rock meaning the Roman Capitol which having so often been struck with Lightning from Heaven sheweth that it is displeasing unto God Read St. Johns Revelation and see what is foretold of the Hatlot clad with Purple and of the Blasphemy written on her forehead and of the seven Mountains and of the many Waters fly from her my People and be not Partaker of her Sins least you receive of her Plagues It is fallen it is fallen c. But being gone from Rome into Syria and living there in perpetual Quarrels with the Clergy of that Country he was constrained to have Recourse unto his old Master Damasus for he had been his Secretary and to write to him those kind Letters which you alledge After Hierom you bring St. Austin in these words Shall we doubt whether we must rest in the Churches Lap which by Succession hath always had Sovereign Authority in the Apostolick Chair That Passage is found in the Book de utilitate credendi in the 17 Chapter but otherwise set down than Your Grace alledgeth Disputing against the Manicheans with whom Scripture had no Authority he useth humane and probable Proofs to exhort men to embrace the Christian Religion He saith then We seeing such a great Assistance of God and so great Proficiency Improvement advance shall we doubt to enter into the Lap of that Church not the Roman but Catholick Church which even to the Confession of Mankind from the Apostolick See by the Successions of Bishops while the Hereticks in vain barked about her c. hath arrived at the height of Authority that is to be the establisht Religion In this Passage St. Austin neither mentioneth nor appears to have thought of the Roman Church And although the Chair of Rome had been named in it yet this would avail nothing for the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome over the Universal Church For the Primacy of the Apostolick Chairs is attributed by the Ancients no less to the Church of Alexandria of Antioch of Jerusalem c. than to the Church of Rome Sozomen speaks thus of the Council of Nice Soz. hist lib. 1. c. 16. There met among the Bishops that held Apostolick Sees Macarius Bishop of Jerusalem Eustathius Bishop of Antioch upon the River Orontes and Alexander near the Mareotid Marshes And again idem 4.24 of the Ephesine Council Cyrillus Prelate of the Apostolick See meaning Jerusalem Ruffinus in the second Book chap. 21. In Alexandria Timothy in Jerusalem John restored the Apostolick Sees Theodoret in the fifth Book of his History chap. 9. calls Antioch the most ancient Church and wholly Apostolick St. Austin in his 162 Epistle speaks of the Apostolick Sees in the plural saying that Cecilian might have reserved his Cause to the Judgment of the Apostolick Sees We have alledged Basil before saying that St. Ambrose Bishop of Milan had the Apostolick Preheminence and Hierom saying that all Bishops are Successors of the Apostles Sidonius in the first Epistle of the 6. Book saith that Lupus Bishop of Troyes had already set nine times five years in the Apostolick See They do then abuse your Grace that make you believe that Austin speaks only of the Apostolick See of the Roman Bishop seeing that the Primacy of the Apostolick See belonged to so many other Bishops And though in that place St. Austin had spoken of the Bishop of Rome only he had not thereby excluded the other Bishops from the same Dignity He that saith the King of France enjoyeth the Royal Preeminence doth not thereby deny to the Kings of England and Spain their Authority in their own Countries Here it is observable that St. Austin was never subject to the Bishop of Rome that he never took an Oath of Fidelity to him that when he was admitted Bishop he took no Letters of Investiture from him and paid him no Annates for his Entry He was one of those that made the Canons of the Milevitan Council which forbad the Appeals from Africa to Rome and one of those that made that Remonstrance to Celestin Bishop of Rome that he should for the time to come abstain from sending Legats into Africa and medling with their Businesses and using Supposititious Canons to advance his Authority The Bishops of Africa were of the same Faith with the Bishop of Rome and spake to him in respectful Terms because of the Dignity of the Imperial City and because they believed that St. Peter died at Rome and had founded that Chair among many others But if the Bishops of Rome had taken upon them the Title of God and boasted that they could not err if they had taken upon them to canonize Saints to give Indulgences to draw Souls out of Purgatory to alter the Commandments of God and to add unto the Creed those African Bishops would have bestowed their Censures upon him as freely as they did upon any other who fell into Heresie Of the Sacrifice of the Mass For the Sacrifice of the Mass Your Grace alledgeth two Passages out of St. Austin The one saith That the Catholick Faith suffers not that the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of the Lord be offered for those that are not baptized In the other speaking of his dead Mother he saith that the Sacrifice of our Ransom was offered for her when her Body was upon the Brink of the Grave There is nothing more easie than to deceive one that will be deceived and hath no Knowledge in the Fathers St. Austin declareth his Mind upon this point very often and tells us that the Eucharist is called the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ because it
what Sacraments Many have tryed these ways and are fallen to the Desire of curious Visions and have deserved to be deceived Tertullian in the thirtieth Chapter of his Apologetick speaks thus I cannot ask these things of any but him of whom I know that I shall obtain them For it is he only that grants them and I am he that have a Right to obtain them being his Servant that call upon him alone Likewise Origen against Celsus the eighth Book saith Above all things we must pray to none but God and his only Son Ignatius who lived near the time of the Apostles saith in the Epistle to the Philadelphians You Virgins have none but Jesus Christ and the Father of Jesus Christ in your Prayers Clemens Alexandrinus speaks thus Cl. Alexand l. 11. Strom. There being none but one only that is truly good which is God both we and the Angels pray to him alone And so Athanasius It is manifest saith he that the Patriarch Jacob in his Prayer joyned none with God but him that is his Word Athan. Orat. 4. cont Arian because it is he only that manifesteth the Father unto us By a notorious Falshood among the Works of this Father was foisted a Book of the Mother of God where she is called the Queen of Heaven and Christians are commanded to adore her But Bellarmine in his Book of Ecclesiastical Writers and Banonius in the year 48. § 19 20. acknowledges the Book to be supposititious By the like Forgery in St. Austin's Book of the Spirit and the Soul there is a Prayer to the Saints inserted but in the same Book Boetius is quoted who was not born when Augustine dyed an evident Proof that the book is falsely attributed to him There is a Book of the same Father Of the Care that must be had of the Dead which is truly his but corrupted and falsified in many places For he is made to speak of Prayers to Saints departed as good and laudable yet he saith there that the departed Saints know nothing of all that the Living do and that if it were otherwise his good and holy Mother would not have forsaken him Then he addeth The Spirits of the deceased are in a place where they see nothing of all that is done or that happeneth to men in this Life And a little after It must be acknowledged that the dead know not that which is done here while it is a doing but they know it afterwards by them that dye and come to them Was St. Austin so much overseen as to teach that those must be called upon by us who understand us not nor know what is done here below unless some dye and perhaps afterwards bring them News of it This Advantage we have in this point that our Adversaries acknowledge that there is no Commandment of God for the Invocation of Saints and that the Holy Scripture saith nothing of it And that under the Old Testament that is for the space of four thousand years the Church used no Invocation of them All the Prayers in Scripture are addressed unto God alone and therefore we have no Assurance or Encouragement to call upon the Saints which we can ground upon the Word of God Is it not enough for us to have the Son of God for our Intercessor who tells us None comes to the Father but by me John 14. For how can we pray with Faith and Assurance to those who discern not the Prayers of the Heart For Scripture tells us that God alone knoweth the Hearts of men 2 Chron. 6.30 I might say that in the Roman Church many Saints are prayed to that never were in the World and others whose Holiness is very dubious and whose Lives were very bad Three hundred and seventy years past in the Christian Church without any Invocation of Saints The first that used it was Gregory Nazianzen who yet invocating the Souls of Constantius who was an Arian of Athanasius and of Basil added this Clause If thou understand me and If the Dead have any Sense But the Invocation of Saints was not received till a long time after in the Publick Service All these things considered My Lord I cannot wonder enough that Your Grace chooseth rather to be ruled by one Passage of St. Ambrose which perhaps is forged than by the Word of God and the Church of the first Ages after Christ For would you subscribe to all that St. Ambrose saith In the first book of Virgins he saith that the Angels fell by lying with Women In his Speech upon Gratian and Valentinian and upon the first Psalm he saith that some rise again sooner than others And in his Oration of the Faith of Resurrection he makes three sorts of Resurrection the first of the Patriarchs and Apostles the second of the Gentiles converted to the Faith the third of those that come from the South and the North. In his first Book of Offices chap. 50. he condemneth second Marriages In the first Book of the Holy Ghost he teacheth that the Baptism in the name of the Holy Ghost alone without naming the Father and the Son is valid In the tenth Sermon upon the 118 Psalm he saith that the Damned which are in Hell shall in the end be saved when the time of their Punishment is fulfilled The Roman Church believeth not with Ambrose that all Saints shall be burnt with the material Fire of the day of Judgment as we shall see hereafter Neither doth the Roman Church believe with Ambrose that Melchisedeck was Jesus Christ himself Many Pages might be filled with the like Errours of this Father whose Authority you value more than that of God speaking in the Holy Scriptures Of Prayer for the Dead and of Purgatory Your Grace endeth your Allegations of Fathers with Theodoret and Austin The first of which is alledged to say We believe that there is a Fire of Purgatory in which Souls are purged like Gold in the Furnace The other saith He that will not till his Field shall be chastised in this World and after his Death shall be punisht in the Fire of Hell or in that of Purgatory And addeth that he hath made a whole Book of the Prayers for the Dead and that the whole Antiquity hath so practiced it They that have helped you with these Passages have miserably abused your Grace It is true that all the ancient Church prayed for the Dead but in a manner which the Roman Church condemneth and holds to be ridiculous and erroneous Not one Passage can be found in the genuine Works of any Father by which it can appear that he prayed for the Dead to draw them out of Purgatory Could Your Grace have the Patience to read St. Austins Book of the Care to be taken of the Dead you would find that there is not one Word of Purgatory in the whole Book The Christian Church in the III and IV Ages after Christ prayed for the Saints for the Apostles and Martyrs
The publick Form of those Prayers is found in the eighth Book of the Apostolick Constitutions of Clement in the eighteenth Chapter We offer unto thee for all the Faithful which have been pleasing unto thee from the Beginning of the World Patriarchs Prophets Righteous Apostles Martyrs Confessors The same is to be found in the Book of Ecclesiastick Hierarchy that goes under the name of Dionysius and in Epiphanius where he treateth of the Heresie of Arius All consent that none can imagine that these Prayers for the Saints were to draw them out of Purgatory St. Austin who writ in the Beginning of the fifth Century was the first that said it was doing Injury to a Martyr to pray for him It further appears that the ancient Church had not belief of this Doctrine in that they prayed for the Souls that slept peaceably which Prayer to this day remains in the Roman Mass in which the Priest prayeth for the dead in these Words Remember Lord thy Servants and Handmaids which are gone before us with the Sign of Faith and which are sleeping in a quiet Sleep It is evident That this Prayer was made in a time when the Belief of Purgatory was not yet received for those that are burning perhaps for many Ages in a Fire seven times hotter than Hell do not sleep with a quiet Sleep If you ask me why they pray'd for the dead whom they held not to be in any Torment it will be no hard Matter to give you Satisfaction First they asked that the Dead Person for whom they pray'd might rise again to Salvation in the last day Such was the Prayer of Judas Maccabaeus 2 Mac. 12. v. 43 44. Doing therein saith the Author very well and honestly in that he was mindful of the Resurrection For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should have risen again it had been superfluous and vain to pray for the Dead By the Judgment of that Author the Prayer made for the dead in the Roman Church is superfluous and vain since it is not made for their Resurrection That this was in old time the intent of the Roman Church when they pray'd for the Dead it appeareth by the Prayers which are used still in the Mass for the Dead of which these are the Words We beseech thee Lord to absolve the Souls of thy Servants from all Bonds of Sin that in the Glory of the Resurrection being risen again they may breath among the elected Saints Thus Ambrose prayeth for the Soul of Theodosius and yet he saith that he is received into Christ's Tabernacles in the heavenly Jerusalem And St. Austin prayeth for the Soul of his Mother Monica which is among the Saints and whom St. Austin believes to be enjoying heavenly Blessedness Another Opinion was rife among the Antients That some Souls should rise sooner than other Souls and that many Sins were to be expiated by the Delay of the Resurrection Tertullian towards the end of his Book of the Soul makes the Suffering of Souls after Death even for the least Sins to consist in that Delay In the Book of Monogamy chap. 10. he will have a Widow to pray for her deceased Husband and that she may keep him Company in the first Resurrection The like Prayer Ambrose maketh for Gratian and Valentinian I beseech thee O Supreme God that thou wilt raise up again more early these most beloved young men Here is then a second end for which the Ancients prayed for the dead They had one end more It was an Opinion generally held by the Fathers that in the day of Judgment after men are risen again they shall not enter into Paradise before they have been sindged and purged by the Fire of the day of Judgment some more some less as they have more or less sinned This is the Purgatory Fire of the Antients of which their Books are full Through that fire they make all the Saints to pass even the Virgin Mary Lactantius lib. 7. cap. 21. declares thus his Opinion which was then the general When God hath judged the Just he will try them by fire and those whose Sins are very considerable either in Weight or number shall be sindged and lightly burnt by the Fire Thus Hillary upon St. Matthew Hilar. in Mat. Canon 2. To them that are baptized with Holy Ghost it remains yet to be perfected by the fire of Judgment And in the part Gimel upon the 119 Psalm This Purification is reserved for us after the Baptism of Water which must sanctifie us by the coming of the Holy Ghost and refine us by the Fire of Judgment Again Do we wish for the day of Judgment in which we must pass through that unwearied Fire and undergo those grievous Pains to expiate the Soul of her Sins And he makes the Virgin Mary go through that Fire If saith he even that Virgin which hath conceived God must undergo the Severity of that Judgment who will dare to desire to be judged by God St. Ambrose also saith that all the Prophets and Apostles must in that day be purged by that Fire In the 20 Sermon upon the 118 Psal All must pass through the Flames even John the Evangelist whom the Lord loved even Peter And upon the 36 Psal The Sons of Levi shall be purged by Fire Ezekiel Daniel c. Observe that he saith they shall be whence it appears that he speaks of a Fire which is not yet St. Austin is express for it in the 16 Book of the City of God chap. 24. By this Fire is understood the day of Judgment which shall separate the Carnal some to be saved by the Fire some to be condemned to the Fire And in the 25 Chap. of the 20 Book By that which was said it seems to be evident that in that Judgment there will be some Purgatory Pains And the Title of the chapter saith expresly that he speaks of the Fire of the last Judgment After the Purgation by that Fire he holds that the Sentence of the last Judgment shall be pronounced in the 21 Book chap. 16. Of that Purgation by Fire speak Irenaeus Basil Gregory Nazianzen Gregory Nyssen and Hierom. It is of that Fire My Lord that Theodoret and Austin speak in the places which you alledge And it is one of the grounds why the Ancients prayed for the dead For that St. Austin believed that Souls going out of the Body went streight either into Paradise or into Hell and that there is no middle or third place called Purgatory it is clear by these Passages in the 18 Sermon of the words of the Apostle There are two Habitations the one of the eternal Kingdom the other of the eternal Fire And in the 232 Sermon which is against Drunkenness Let none deceive himself my Brethren for there are two places and no third He that hath not merited with Christ shall perish without doubt with the Devil And in the first Book of the merit of Sins and