our redemption was near Therefore St. Paul calls the good Christians Those who love his coming Therefore in the Apocalyps Christ shews himself as coming and adds My Reward is with me Therefore in the end of the Apocalyps we read that importunate calling on him Come and let him that hears say Come and this was the primitive devotion to desire to be with Christ Now to conclude he that by his Prayers effects the coming of the day of Judgment as far as he doth that so far he procures to his Friend the eternal Reward the main good the compleat satisfaction of the desires of Nature elevated by Grace The next consideration reaches to the particular good that accrews to the party pray'd for For the understanding whereof you are to remember the Doctrin of the Saints that for our selves we are heard as often as we ask in due manner what is good for us for our friends not so but according as is suitable to the rest of Gods providence Yet it is agreed that many times such Prayers bring some advantage even to the special party for whom they are made but when and how Gods providence doth carry such graces we know not unless the effect prove visible Now we pray for the change of the soul of our friend from misery to bliss If he be in capacity to be help'd without doubt our prayers are heard but when and in what degree onely he knows who grants it unless he hath reveal'd it And as when we pray for a living sinner the effect of our prayers if it be fit they should be heard is that circumstances are so cast in respect of this prayer that he lights into convenient dispositions to bring on his conversion so our prayers for the dead work that in the Resurrection such grace is increas'd to the party pray'd for as is fitting to be retributed to the prayers and affections devoutly powr'd out for him The third Consideration reaches even to the rendring less and more tolerable to them those pains they suffer before the day of Judgment in Purgatory which is to relieve them there To understand which we are to consider that the State of Purgatory differs from that of Hell mainly in this that this of Hell is ever accompany'd with the horrour of Despair that of Purgatory with the comfort of Hope to see God's divine face Now all Hope of a future good if it be rational is grounded in knowing the strength and efficacy of the causes which are to effect and bring it and the stronger causes appear to be layd in order to such an effect the livelier and firmer is our Hope and by consequence more vigorous and sweet the Comfort which springs from that hope thus erected wherefore the suffering souls by knowing that the releasment of all in generall and each in particular is procur'd by the prayers of the Church the more and the more fervent prayers they see powr'd out for them the stronger hope and comfort they conceive To apply then this to particulars as the aym and hope and present comfort of each Soul is its future eternal Happiness as best improovable to it by the order of Causes laid by Gods Wisdom and Goodness so the fore-knowledg that the prayers of Friends will bring to each with proportionable advantage their due reward as I exprest it in my second Consideration gives each soul anticipatedly present sentiments even in Purgatory of Hope Joy and Comforts for those advantages their Friends Prayers shall procure them in the day of Judgment which surely none that understand it can deny to be a very great relief The fourth consideration extends this advantage of prayers for a particular Soul even to the state of Heaven it self which to explicate we may remember the pious opinion commonly receiv'd that S. Francis S. Benedict and other Saints in Heaven have new accidental Joyes there for any good effect perform'd by the Order they founded that is for the arrivement of any good towards which they as Causes had any influence in this World now of all Goods imaginable none is or can be comparable to the bringing of the Kingdom of Heaven or universal Bliss this being the But and End of all our wishes and of all both natural and supernatural motion nay the onely aym of his Providence who is Goodness it self most certainly then they who in this World layd means of many efficacious prayers for the dead and for themselves in particular will in my Doctrin see themselves and rejoyce in Heaven to have been particularly influential towards that happiest and noblest effect of bringing that day Add that this will be gratefully acknowledg'd by the whole Court of Heaven and they respected accordingly which will cause almost infinit multiplications of the best accidental Joyes which they who in this World neglected to use and procure this devotion will deservedly want Reflecting then this thought back upon a Soul in Purgatory who has deserv'd by her carriage in this World and taken order to be efficaciously pray'd for that is to have a particular share in bringing Christ's coming in Glory she has antecedently even in Purgatory by foreknowledg of those accidental Joyes she shall futurely reap thereby a sence of them at present by meanes of the certain Hope to attain them and thence in due measure a proportionable comfort ease and relief even in Purgatory So that you see according to my Doctrin both Essential Bliss and best accidental Joyes in Heaven and from the foreknown efficacy of prayers to accomplish these a present comfort accrues to the Souls in that State through our suffrages for them You will say these motives will not be efficacious enough to stir up the hearts of your penitents I can answer nothing but that I doubt they are not well instructed and exhorted And that it is the Preachers duty to endeavour to stir up their hearts with solid Christian truths not by incertainties guilded over with a shew of piety For indeed what is not true cannot be pious When such Inventions have taken a good effect I bless God that shews his goodness as wel by weakness as by strength But to advise any man to teach or preach that out of which he and the Church thorough him may be upbraided to cozen the credulous faithfull into false and prejudiciall confidences and make them rely upon such Doctrins and Practises as have no reality in them I am not a fit Counsellour I leave that to you who like it In your thirty sixth Section you over-reach'd me again for by your beginning I perswaded my self I was come to a period of my pains and that the rest had been but personal quarrels which I could easily have swallow'd how bitterly soever prepar'd by your rash and angry hand But looking a little farther I perceiv'd I must tug again And first as for that question whether you had intention to wrong me in printing your Bull I beleive you had not because you
lines out of Institutiones Sacrae where having concluded that those who dy'd in veniall affections towards corporall objects were not worthy the sight of God presently add per consequens cum illum Deum pro ultimo fine habeant ex desiderio Ejus paenitentia negligentiae suae gravissimas paenas sustinere Tomi 2. lib. 3. Lect. 10. which is exactly your full sence and not very different from your words wherefore I hope since I have prov'd an obedient Scholar to my power you will inform those your friends who intend to write against me that we are agreed in this point and that it is a wrong to report I say of Purgatory that the Souls are tormented with the desires of corporall pleasures much less that I place the whole misery of Purgatory in the deprivement of those And likewise that a farther design was cause that this would not content me for you see I put no other but in Hell You charge me farther to say that all external torments in Purgatory would be pure pleasures because they were suffered out of an extreme desire to come to Heaven by a courage that yeelded nothing to the force of the torments which the sufferers see to be their onely way to felicity I do not see any great difficulty in this to a sober Interpreter that what an external Agent inflicts is not the grief but breeds it nor will it reach so far as to breed grief if prevented still with a strong apprehension of an over-ballancing advantage to be gain'd by it which yet does not hinder but that such outward punishments are in their nature properly torments and 't is the extraordinary considerations of the benefits they bring that can sweeten them into pleasures and however the want of Heaven must needs be cause of an excessive grief You go on to object that this Doctrin changes all your pious Meditations on our SAVIOVRS Passion Be of good courage man and let no other pretence divert you but proceed constantly and faithfully every day in those holy Exercises and I fear not God will assist you to satisfy all those scruples and difficulty's which seldom become unanswerable till we grow cold and negligent in performing our Meditations Thus then you argue Christ sufferd with invincible courage therefore all pains were pleasures to Him I think you know there was in Christ two parts of his Soul the Rational and the Animal I do not know so much of the Souls of Purgatory When you say then he sufferd with an invincible courage do you mean of both parts or onely of the rational If you ask him he will tell you Spiritus promptus est Caro autem infirma If you reflect on his prayer in the Garden you shall see when he speaks out of the motion of his inferiour part how earnest he is against his passion you shall see he did pavere and taedere I pray put these points into your Meditations and you will find room enough for pains though the rational part was still fixt upon a fiat Voluntas tua And this our Saviour sufferd because he would For the strength of his Soul was so great that he could have had pure pleasures but would not that He might give us example how to fix our upper Souls when we are not strong enough to confirm the lower part THIRD DIVISION Containing an Answer from Section thirtieth to Section thirty fifth The Duration of pure Spirits free'd from the mistakes of Fancy The Identification of the Soul and Body maintaind by reason and Authority and that this is requisit to the Souls change The Vindicatours rude conceits of Angels Vnalterableness of pure Spirits prov'd from the Indivisibility of their actions His false pretence that the Author injur'd St. Thomas IN the thirtieth Section you examin the Duration of separated Souls And you readily advance a Conclusion that as it lyes I shal not deny but onely beg leave to offer a distinction For there being three parts Angels Souls and their Operations of which you pronounce I distinguish upon your third or last branch of Operations which Schollars divide into external and internal ones in the external ones I agree with you that they are measur'd by succession and by succession of time as being corporal motions But for their internall acts of understanding and will I hold of them as of the substances Your Propositions so jumble them together that I know not what you say separately of them and what in complexion but because I defend the same both singly and in complexion it doth not much concern me But to proceed you say it is incomparably false that to coexist to a greater or lesser part of time adds or diminishes nothing to them I ask whether that a greater or lesser time coexists to an Angel makes any intrinsecal change in the Angel I think you must be a little besides your Philosophy if you say it doth since common sence teaches the pure passing of time doth nothing even to us much less to spirits My next question is whether if there be no intrinsecal change there can be any addition intrinsecally made I think this also will appear a plain truth unless the fear of the sequel force you to contradict evidence For the inference will manifestly follow that purely to coexist to more or less time which is the same as that more or less time coexists to the Angel for the variety and quantity of coexistency holds it self on the part of time adds nothing to an Angel Now let us see your Arguments Your first is drawn from God in whose Closet you have been and can perfectly tell what he can do what not and so you press what if on a sodain God should make a new Angel would his duration be as long as that of the former Angels or separated spirits But Sir I would advertise you that when the speech is of an Action done it is not enough to examin his Omnipotence for that onely reaches to a possibility of the creature but you must also consult with his Wisdom as well as with his Omnipotency For example if you first ask whether it was in Gods power to make or not make the World and finding it was presently you would suppose then let him have made it and not made it the permission would not be granted you So likewise your assumption that if there were no time at all God could at his pleasure create and destroy a soul would be deny'd you or rather that God could have the pleasure to create and destroy a soul in that case And to shew your own consent in this point mark your discourse God could not do it in the same moment therefore in two moments Do you not see as soon as you have deny'd time you immediately put two moments which cannot be without time I pray remember St. Austin St. Thomas and others answering the Heathens question Why God made not the World sooner say because sooner
fault is that I say the opinion of Souls being deliver'd before the day of Judgment proceeded from the not following a Doctrin of St. Thomas That in abstracted Spirits there is no discourse or any manner of composition of knowledg Whence I infer there can be no falsity in them This is my position of which you tell us that it importeth not to consider whether the knowledg of Angels be by true discourse or onely by virtuall to which say you suffices a priority of causality But if a man should tell you that the causality you imagin cannot be without true time then peradventure it would be necessary to dispute whether there be a true discourse in Angels and this is the very case For take away succession and all corporeall causes which depend on time are taken away There remain then nothing but the spirituall qualities of the Angels to be causes which neither are distinguished from one the other nor from their subject and so all notion of Cause and Effect as they are proper to the Efficient are quite taken away and so there will not remain any discourse at all but a pure cleer sight fram'd on them by their Creatour in which I beleeve you will not say there is any Errour or can be So that the whole question resteth upon this whether there be true discourse or no Now how do you prove what you say is to the purpose to wit that it doth not follow out of this Doctrin of St. Thomas that there is no Errour in Angels Your proof is because St. Thomas notwitstanding this Doctrin acknowledges Errours in Devils Good Sir as long as you have been a Divine did you ever hear that it was a gross injury to St. Thomas to say some opinion of his was not true or not consequent to another Truly I desire not to do an injury to any much less to my Reverenc'd Master to whom after God I acknowledg it if I know any thing either in Philosophy or Divinity Yet I have no fear not to follow all his opinions much less not to make good all his consequences And so Sir I hope I am rid of your objections out of St. Thomas Onely because you often repeat that to say every thing hath a cause to make it before it be is an Epicurean Lucretian Pagan principle c. I must intreat you again to look to the sence of your words and not to beat so carelesly the Ayre If at anytime you happen to dispute of Liberty I will endeavour to shew you your Ignorance but for vapouring words let others judge how far they become you You go on in the same strain to except against the comparison of an Embryoes designing the Child to be born and mans life framing the Soul deliver'd into the next World But what you dislike I cannot tell you say it has no connexion with the immutability of the future state The answer is it was not brought to that purpose but to open the Readers understanding to aym at of what disposition the Soul is at her going out But if the Antecedent reach home you say 't is a position destructive of all Christianity But you say not to what it should reach but fain something as if you imagin'd I would have the body of a Child never grow in strength or good parts When I shall know what you aym at I may know what to answer So we may leave you to conclude your Chapter with a high conceit of the Victories you have obtain'd FOURTH DIVISION Containing an Answer from Section the thirty fifth to Section the fortieth The Vindicators forgetfulness that Eternall Happiness was any Good at all That Prayers for the dead in the Authours Doctrin manifoldly profit the Souls in Purgatory and relieve them even there Charity asserted to be the immediate Disposition to Bliss The Authours Doctrin consonant to the Council of Trent in the points of Remission and Satisfaction Diverse Squibs and Insincerities of the Vindicatour toucht at THere followâ—â—our five and thirtieth Section in â—â—ich you have after so long a digression remember'd again the question of Purgatory And intend to shew that prayers for the dead are of no profit if Souls go not to Heaven before the day of Judgment An objection of every Gentlewoman but I hope seeing you have come into the lifts as their Champion you will set it high And so you do for scorning the lower waies of others who press this difficulty That the day of Judgment will come of it self at the time appointed and Then every one shal receive according to his deserts whether any prayers have been said for them or no you fly so high as to tell us that though the prayers made for the dead impetrate eternal bliss for those in Purgatory yet they are of no profit Is not this a gallant attempt What may be your Arms fit for so great an Atchievment Why say you the duration of separated Souls is according to me above time and comprehensive of it therefore it is but a moment whether bliss ever come or never therefore there is no profit in the prayers though they bring bliss and this is the full import of your discourse Could a man have expected such an Argument from 〈◊〉 Logick Master not to distinguish betwixt substance and an Accident yet undoubtedly according to his ordinary phrase All Christianity is ruin'd unless this consequence be good You were assuredly in a great Metaphysicall rapture when in the same short discourse you took two such hyper-Metaphysicall propositions as that it was indifferent to have or not to have the greatest good God hath created for a Person and that there could actually be an infinite Quantity or Time I must confess they are both very fit for your sort of Learning to bolt out words without looking into what they signify But because this is onely your private errour and the World is to be contented too which doth not apprehend any great benefit in hastning of Christ's coming I must a little shew the good that the prayers of the faithfull do for the dead Let us then consider that our chief Good is Heaven and the perfect sight of God at which we aym in all our actions and progresses from the first basis of our inclination to the End of nature even to the highest step of Charity from whence we immediately reach it This depends on two created causes The perfection of the World and The perfection of the private Person which is to attain it For God hath made the work of the World in so exact a method that it shall happen to be wound up all in a day St. Paul hath told us he would not have the foregoers be perfected before the rest the Apocalyps expresses the same Therfore Christ taught us in his own Prayer to say to his and our Father Thy Kingdom come Therefore he bad us when we saw signs of the approaching Judgment to lift up our Heads with hope because