contracted thou out of thy goodness and compassion mayst mercifully wash away To the same end are referred also the following Prosopopoeias wherein the Soul of every deceased Person is represented with motions of fear suitable to such as it might have had during the couse of this Life As for instance Libera me Domine c. O Lord deliver me from eternal death in that dreadfull day when the heavens and the earth shall be shaken when thou shalt come to Judge the World by Fire I am become trembling and fear till the discussion and wrath to come shall be over That day is a day of wrath calamity and misery a great day and very bitter when thou shalt come Again this Domine quando veneris c. O Lord where shall I hide my self from the countenance of thy wrath when thou comest to Judge the Earth For I have sinned extremely during my life I am frightened at the things I have committed and blush before thee when thou comest to Judge do not condemn me And this Memento mei Deus c. O God have me in remembrance because my life is but wind let the eye of him that hath seen me see me no more Out of the depths have I cried unto thee O Lord Hear O Lord when I cry with my voice And this Hei mihi c. Wo unto me O Lord for I have sinned overmuch in my life What shall I do Wretch that I am Whither shall I flie if not unto my God Have compassion on me when thou shalt come at the Last day My soul is sore vexed but do thou Lord deliver it be mercifull c. And this Legem pone c. Teach me O Lord the way of thy Commandments and lead me in a plain path because of mine enemies Deliver me not into the will of mine enemies for false Witnesses are risen up against me and iniquity hath belyed it self yet I believe to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living And this Peccantem me quotidie c. Sinnning daily and not repenting the fear of death distracts me in regard There is no redemption in Hell O God be mercifull unto me and save me O God save me for thy Name sake and deliver me in thy Power And this other Domine secundùm actum meum noli me judicare c. O Lord Judge me not according to what I have done I have done nothing in thy presence worthy it I therefore beseech thy Majesty to do away mine iniquity O Lord wash me from my injustice more and more and cleanse me from my sin And this other Sitivit anima mea c. My soul thirsteth for God when shall I come and appear before the Lord Deliver not the soul of thy Turtle-dove unto the multitude forget not the Congregation of thy poor for ever Our Father c. And Lastly this Libera me Domine c. O Lord who hast broken the Gates of Brass and visited Hell and given light that they might see thee to those who were in the Torments of darkness crying and saying Thou arâ— come O our Redeemer deliver me out of the ways of Hell For there is not any Body so weakly instructed as not easily to comprehend that the Authours of these Complaints and Lamentations meant them rather for the advantage and edification of the living by putting them in minde of the fear and trembling wherein they should be in the presence of their Lord then to represent the State of the Dead which they have been forced to express after their Fancy as such as had some resemblance with that of poor Wayfaring-men who yet walk in the Flesh because they had not any manifest knowledg thereof but onely Conjectures and presumptions and those many times not very conformable to the Rule of Faith and the Sentiments of the purest Antiquity Since it is absolutely impossible that he who makes a Prayer for his Soul should be any other thing then that Soul for which he Prays and that the Wish he makes that God would teach him the way of his Statutes which is onely in this Life and the Confession of sinning daily and the Prayer to be delivered out of the ways of Hell should suit with any but Travellers who walk yet in the Flesh struggling as they go with their own imperfections and the Infernal Powers and by continued endeavours tending to their rest whereof the separated Souls of the Faithfull departed who have finished their course in Faith and Hope must necessarily be possessed from the very moment of their separation The same moderation is required to finde out the true sense of the Prayers which seem to presuppose a certain deliverance out of Infernal pains wherein the deceased are ready to be tormented as when we read in the Missal Domine Jesu Christe c. O Lord Jesus Christ King of Glory deliver the Souls of all the Faithfull departed out of the power of Hell and out of the bottomless Lake deliver them out of the mouth of the Lyon Let not Hell swallow them up let them not fall into the obscure places of darkness but let the Standard-bearer St. Michael bring them into that holy light which thou didst sometime promise to Abraham and to his Seed We offer unto thee O Lord â—…oasts and Prayers for them receive the same for those Souls whom we this day commemorate grant them O Lord to pass from Death to an holy life And in the Office of the Dead A portâ inferni erus Domine animas eorum requiescant in pace Amen c. O Lord deliver their Souls from the Gate of Hell may they rest in peace Amen For though upon the first glance these words seem to revive the Hypothesis which Justin Martyr had drawn up out of the Quagmire of the counterfeit Sibyl imagining that the Soul of the greatest Saints were afer their departure out of the body sent to Hell and were subject to the power of evil Spirits yet must they necessarily have another signification and onely induce that God alone preserves those whom he calls so as that they fall not into the power of Hell but are by the Ministery of his holy Angels introduced into celestial light and that they are delivered not as escaping out of some Torment which they had for some time indured but as avoiding the necessity of enduring it And whereas it is said that the Hoasts mentioned in those Prayers are offered to Jesus Christ it necessarily induces that they neither are nor can be Jesus Christ himself as the Church of Rome imagines at this day but Gifts presented to God by his people as an expression of their gratitude And since what is said without any exception viz. That they are offered for the Souls of all the departed whose commemoration is celebrated it demonstratively proves that they are and were according to the intention of the Antients
Christ shewing that on the one side these things to be abjent from the body or from the Lord and being in the body or with the Lord are irreconcileably opposite on the other side these to be absent from the body and to be with the Lord and on the contrary to be present in the body and to be absent from the Lord are inseparably conjoined so that the very act of the separation of the body necessarily translates the Faithfull into the presence of the Lord of which their presence in the body deprives them Yet this Supposition though refuted as aforesaid had such a strange influence upon the spirits of many great Church-men in the Second and Third Age that they outvied one another in the maintaining of it Thus Hermas at the same time that the Counterfeit Sibyl made her first attempt upon the sincerity of the Christians became the Patron and Propagatour of it writing of the Apostles and Faithfull departed before The Apostles and Doctours who have preached the Name of the Son of God and are dead by the power of God and by Faith preached to those who were dead before and gave them the Seal of preaching They are descended with them into the water and they ascended again out of it but those who were dead before descended dead and ascended living Which words are so much the more observable in that they have been subscribed by Clemens Alexandrinus Strom. 2 and 6. inferring from them that the Apostles conformably to what had been done by our Saviour preached the Gospel to those who were in Hell and that it was necessary that the best of the Disciples should be imitatours of their Master there as they had been here supposing after Justin Martyr and St. Irenaeus that our Saviour being descended into hell after his Passion had preached the Gospel to those who were detained there in which Opinion he hath been followed by St. Athanasius St. Hilary of Poictiers Hilary Deacon of the Romane Church St. Epiphanius St. Hierome St. Cyril of Alexandria Oecumenius c. And secondly for that they insinuate not onely that the Apostles descended into hell after their death for to preach there but that the Faithfull departed after the Passion of our Saviour had been there taught and converted and consequently that all without any exception were there detained Presently after the publication of Hermas's Writings Pope Pius the First Brother to that pretended Prophet complies with him in his first Epistle to Justus of Vienna saying The Priests who having been nourished by the Apostles have lived to our days with whom we have divided together the word of Faith being called hence by the Lord are detained shut up in eternal Repositories sufficiently discovering by these words which denote a perpetual detention if not absolutely at least in some respect that he had embraced the same Opinion Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew writ some years after the presentation of his Apologie where he makes mention of the Sibyl endeavours all he can to maintain it as well by his Hypothesis of the Souls of the Just being exposed to the rage of evil Spirits as by an Apocryphal Passage he attributes to Jeremy and which Irenaeus sometime after cites one while under the name of Esay another under that of Jeremy and certainly with as little reason one as the other in these Terms The God of Israel hath remembred his dead lying in the slimy earth and descended to them to preach his salvation among them Which St. Irenaeus does five several times apply to the descent of our Saviour into hell after his Passion saying If the Lord that he might become the first-fruits from the dead Col. i. 18. observed the Law of the dead and continued to the third day in the lower parts of the Earth Ephes iv 9. c. since he went to the valley of the shadow of death Psal xxiii 4 where the souls of the dead were c. it is manifest that the souls of his Disciples for whose sake the Lord did those things shall also go to the invisible place designed them by God and remain there expecting the Resurrection till the Resurrection Whence it must needs be that the Latine Interpreter having found in the Original Text the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which properly signifies Invisible and hath been taken by all the Heathens either for Hell or the God which they imagined presided there Literally translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Into an invisible place By which place the lovers of Truth are not as many at this day who to free St. Irenaeus form the Errour first proposed in the Sibylline Writing attribute to him Conceptions he neither ever had nor could have had to understand the State of the souls of the Saints departed which those Gentlemen conceive might be expressed by the Term of invisible place because Eye hath not seen the things which God hath prepared for those that love him wherever they may be laid up for them rather then the place properly so called where they effectually enjoy them For St. Irenaeus his manner of reasoning and the contexture of his Discourse expresly refutes their Glosses in as much as if the Disciples whom the Gospel assures us not to have been above their Master ought both in life and death to imitate him and if the Master according to the sentiment of St. Irenaeus and the Church of Rome at this day passed from the Cross to the lower parts of the earth and to the valley of the shadow of death that is to say to hell properly so called and remained there all the time from his Passion to his Resurrection it must of necessity follow that by the invisible place whither the Disciples go after their Death should according to the said Father be understood hell scituated in the lower parts of the earth and in the Valley of the shadow of Death and that they remain there till the time of their Resurrection It is apparent from the words before transcribed that Clemens Alexandrinus Contemporary with St. Irenaeus was of the same Opinion And Tertullian whom St. Cyprian acknowledges for his Master and whom Saint Hierome affirms to have died about the year 217. being arrived to a very great Age discovers in many places that all the Montanist Party had embraced it For instance in the seventh Chapter of his Book Of the Soul After the divorce saith he or separation of the body the soul is transferred to hell she is there detained she is there reserved â—ill the day of Judgment c. Christ at his Death descended to the souls of the Patriarchs And in the ninth Chapter The souls of Martyrs are understood to be under the Altar And in fifty fifth Chapter Hell is in an hollowness of the earth a vast space as to its depth and there is an undiscovered profundity in its entrails c. Christ descended into the lowest parts of
we learn that he had a certain persuasion of four things 1. That our Saviour at the time of his Passion for our salvation prayed that his Soul might not fall under the power of the Devils 2. That we are obliged upon our approaches to Death to imitate his Example 3. That the Prophets were after death exposed to the insolencies of Evil Spirits in such manner that the Soul of Samuel could be evocated by the Witch of Endor 4. That the Souls of the Faithfull who dayly depart this world are subject to the same inconveniences and consequently do all stand in extraordinary need of being relieved by the Prayers of the Living In like manner do we see that upon this mold must needs be fashioned those Antient Prayers which the Church of Rome makes at this day for the Faithfull departed saying Domine Jesu Christe Rex gloriae libera animas omnium Fidelium defunctorum de manu Inferni de profundo lacu Libera eas de ore Leonis nè absorbeat eas Tartarus nè cadant in obscura Tenebrarum loca Fac eas Doniâ—… transire te de morte ad vitam San ctam c. Liberatae de principibus Tenebrarum locis paena rum c. Repelle quaesumus Domine ab ea omnes Principe Tenebrarum c. That is to say O Lord Jesus Christ King of Glory deliver out of the hand of Hell and from the deep Lake the souls of all the Faithfull departed Save them from the mouth of the Lyon that Hell do not swallow them up and that they may not fall into the obscure places of Darkeness c. Lord make them to pass from Death to an Holy Life c. may they be delivered from the Princes of Darkness and the places of Torments c. Drive away from them all the Princes of Darkness O Lord we beseech thee Nay the tender Saint Augustine had such a kind of Letany in his Imagination when celebrating in his Confessions the Memory of Saint Monica his Mother who was dead at least six years before he hath this Language Nemo à protectione tua dirumpat eam non se interponat nec vi nec insidiis Leo Draco nec enim respondebit illa nihil se debere nè convincatur obtineatur ab Accusatore callido c. Let no body snatch her out of thy protection let not the Lion or the Dragon interpose themselves either by force or by ambush for she will not answer that she ows nothing lest she be convicted and carried away by the crafty Accuser CHAP. XIV The Motives proposed by Justin Martyr disallowed and those which St. Epiphanius had to pray for the Dead taken into Consideration BUt since the Hypothesis of Justin Martyr was not embraced by all Antiquity Tertullian telling us in general Absit ut animam cujuslibet Sancti nedum Prophetae à Daemonio credamus extractam c. Far be it from us to believe that the Soul of any Saint whatsoever much less of a Prophet hath been extracted by the Devil and Pionius Metaphrastes upon the first of February Methodius in a particular Treatise against Origen St. Basil upon the eighth Chapter of Esay and in an Epistle to Eustathius Saint Gregory of Nyssa in an Epistle to Theodosius Saint Gregory Nazianzene in the second Invective against Julian Saint Hierome upon the sixth Chapter of Saint Matthew St. Cyril of Alexandria in the sixth Book of Adoration in Spirit and Truth Procopius of Gaza upon the eight and twentieth Chapter of the first Book of Kings Georgius Syncellus in his History and others particularly charging with Imposture the pretended Evocation of Samuel and Philastrius numbring it expressly among Heresies we are now to examine upon what reasons Praying for the Dead hath been since grounded and to hear upon this Point St. Epiphanius disputing in the year 376. against Aerius who thinking it not enough to deny that there accrewed any advantage to the deceased from the Prayers made on their behalf by the living had withall upon that account left the Church of Sebaste He engages against him with these Considerations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Those who are here believe that those who are departed this world live and that they are not deprived of being but that they both are and live to the Lord. And to the end that this excellent Doctrine may be explained that there is an hope for those who pray for their Brethren as for persons in their journey the prayer made for them is also profitable although it does not cut all that may be alledged against them but in as much as many times while we are in this world we sin voluntarily and involuntarily to signisie what is accomplished For we make mention of the Just and pray for sinners for sinners directing our Eyes to the mercy of God which they have obtained for the Just for the Fathers Patriarchs Prophets Apostles Evangelists Martyrs Confessours Bishops Anachorets and the whole Battalion to the end that we might make a distinction between the rank of men and the Lord Jesus Christ because of the honour which is due to him and render him convenient Veneration as having this apprehension that our Lord is not to be parallelled with any of mankinde though every one of mankinde were possessed of Justice ten thousand times and more It is evident that the first Consideration of Saint Epiphanius could make nothing against Aërius who denyed the advantage of Prayer for the Faithfull departed the Ratiocination or Argument of this Father being not necessary either absolutely or in respect of his Adversary He is living Therefore he must be prayed for since that if this were allowed Prayers should be made for all the living Creatures that are Angels Men and Beasts without any exception and that for this reason that all these every one of these kindes is possessed of Being and Life in some degree Besides the Consequence of such a way of reasoning would go much beyond as well the intention of its Authour as the practice of the Church of Pontus in vindication whereof he had framed it since that no Community of Christians ever did or thought it self obliged to communicate its Suffrages to the Angels who live and stand in the presence of the Lord as supposing that Office could not be due to them nor be conceived a rational service in regard they neither stand in need thereof nor can receive any advantage thereby The second Consideration which concerns the Hope the Christians of the fourth Age conceived of the effect of their Prayers for their deceased Brethren could not be of greater weight then the former as far as it concerned Aërius who denyed not that the Faithfull of his Time had a certain hope of profiting the Dead by their Prayers for that they had was manifest but that their hope was well grounded and that their Prayers for the Dead were or could be of any advantage But as I
Creation shall be shaken with fear and then shall the light be changed O Word spare him who is translated hence Again I beseech you all who were of my acquaintance and who love me be mindful of me at the Day of Judgment that I may finde mercy before the Dreadful Tribunal Again Let us cry to the Immortal King when thou shalt come to make inquisition into the secret things of men spare thy Servant whom thou hast taken to thy self O Mankind-loving God Again I am dead after that I have passed away my life with security and I lye without voice in the Grave and now I expect the last Trumpet to awake me cries he who is dead but my Friends pray unto Christ that he would number me among the Sheep on his right hand c. I have consumed my life in great negligence and being translated from it I expect the dreadfull Tribunal before which O Jesu preserve me free from condemnation cries thy Servant Again O Lord who art the onely King entertain into the Celestial Kingdom thy Faithfull Servant whom thou hast now transferred hence and we beseech thee preserve him free from condemnation at the hour when all mortal men being to be judged shall make their appearance before the Judge c. Disacknowledged by my Brethren and sequestred from my Friends I cry in spirit from the noisomness of the Grave Examine not my failings at the day of Judgment despise not my Tears thou who art the joy of Angels but grant me rest O Lord even me whom out of thy great mercy thou hast taken to thy self c. Stuck fast in the Myriness of sin and devested of good actions I who am a prey to Worms cry to thee in Spirit cast me not behind thee wretch that I am place me not at thy left hand thou who hast framed me with thy Hands but out of thy great mercy grant him rest whom thou hast taken to thy self by thy Ordinance Having now quitted my Kinred and Countrey I am come into a strange way and am as stinking rottenness in the Grave Alass none shall afford me any assistance in that hour but O Lord because of thy great mercy grant him rest whom thou hast taken to thy self by thy Ordinance Again O what an inquisition and judgment are we to expect what fear and trembling in which Brethren the Elements themselves shall be moved and the creation shake come now and let us cast our selves at the feet of Christ that he may save the Soul he hath transferred An intolerable sire and external obscurity and the Worm which never dies is prepared for us sinners in the day of inevitable necessity then spare thy Servant whom thou hast transferred For as much then as the Prayers for the remission of sins made by the Greeks under the names as well of the Surviving praying for the Dead as of the Dead putting up their Requests for themselves are for the most part restrained to the day of Judgement we are so far from having any thing that might oblige us to take them in such a sence as that they should insinuate that the Faithfull between the moment of their death and that of the Last Judgment were reduced to the suffering of any pains that the Hypotheses of Antiquity seem clearly to exact the contrary And the result thence is that the Modern Greeks though great opposers of the Purgatory maintained by the Church of Rome have not kept within the Terms prescribed them by their Fore-fathers but have changed their Sentiments by the Introduction of Novelties which none of them would ever have imagined It will be demanded whence they derived the perswasion that there were Souls of a middle condition which being properly neither good nor bad could not after their separation from the Body enter into the possession of Paradise without having for a certain time lain drooping in I know not what place of Sequestration where they were to endure grief terrour and the incommodity of darkness which as is pretended covered them when nothing of all this either hath or could have any ground in Scripture which does every where make as immediate an opposition between Paradise and Hell the good and the bad the Faithfull and the Reprobate the Children of God redeemed and consecrated for ever by one onely Oblation and that once made with the blood of the Covenant and the children of the Devil who have held as prophane that precious blood as between life and death light and darkness the right hand and the left of the great Judge teaching us expresly that all the faithfull dying in the Lord are blessed rest from thenceforth come not into condemnation are passed from death to life are at their departure out of the body with the Lord and that all the rest without any exception dying in Adam and having not believed are already condemned 2. That Antiquity having happily shaken of the strange imagination which the Fathers of the Second Age had swallowed out of the pretended Sibylline Writing insinuating to them that the Spirits of all men as well good as bad necessarily descended into Hell and were to be there detained under the power of Devils till the Resurrection of the Bodies they had animated it thereupon formally maintained that immediately upon the Death of the Faithfull are the Nuptials of the Spouse that it remains onely for the surviving to give thanks to God that he hath crowned him who is departed from them and having delivered him out of all fear receives him to himself that to all the good Death is an assured Port a deliverance from the combat and bonds a Transporation to better things and that as soon as it happens the Cabinets are sealed and the time accomplished and the combat at an end and the race run and the Crowns bestowed and all is manifestly brought to perfection 3. That the Ritual it self as it were endeavouring to bring into discredit as well the distinction of the middle-conditioned Souls as their pretended banishment for a time into a dark place indifferently affirms of all those who die in the Faith of Christ men and women Ecclesiasticks those of Religious Professions and Laicks that they are gone to the Lord that they rest that Hell detains them not that they exchange Death for the divine life and are made the Children of immortality absolutely denying all that the vulgar Opinion temerariously and without any reason shewn affirms of some and wholly destroying it by so formal a contradiction But we are not to imagine our selves reduced to a necessity of being over-Critical in discovering the Origine of this errour since the falsificatour as well of the Ritual as of the Sentiment of those of his Nation hath done it so palpably to our hands that he hath not made any scruple to publish his own ignorance even in things evident and such as the word of God the best
neer Alexandria upon the Lake Maria Eusebius himself who had acknowledg'd as much in his eighth Book of Evangelicall preparation Chap. 11. does in his Ecclesiasticall History retract what he had deliver'd before and by his example hath so prepossess'd those that came after him that St. Epiphanius was perswaded that Philo spoke not of the Esseni whom he names in express terms but of the Tesseni of whom he said not any thing either good or evil supposing them to be some of the first Christians and to have derived their denomination either from Jesse the father of David whence St. Paul takes occasion after Isaiah to call out Saviour the root of Jesse or from Jesus himself But all without any ground for the description of Philo cannot any way be attributed to Christian Monks since he says of his contemplative Esseni 1. That they went away so as never to return again forsaking brethren children wives kindred c. directly contrary to the command of Saint Paul 1 Cor. 7. 12. c. 2. That they spent the whole day as well in reading the sacred books and the Commentaries of the Ancients to Allegorize upon them as in the composing of certain Hymnes which shews their conversation to have been onely with the Old Testament and their study therein wholly after the manner of the Jews 3. That they met together every seventh day that is to say every Saturday 4. That the most austere among them did not break their fast but onely on the sixth day consequently Friday contrary to the custom of the Christians 5. That they celebrated the Pentecost as their principall Feast and that in honour of the number of seven seven times reiterated a conceit not deriv'd from the Gospel but the Discipline of Pythagoras 6. That in their common Festivities the Males were seated on the right hand and the Females on the left a custom which never was of any account in the Church 7. That there was no flesh eaten among them but onely leavened bread salt and Hyssop 8. That they drunk nothing but Water Wine being accounted poyson with them an evident testimony that their entertaiment had nothing common either with the Eucharist where there is such a necessity the Chalice should be fill'd with Wine that those who endeavour'd to reduce it to Water have been branded as Heretiques under the name of Aquarii and Hydroparastati nor with the Love-feasts of the Primitive Christians who used Wine freely and in abundance and condemned the Tatianites and Encratites who abstain'd from it as what might not lawfully be drunk and call'd it in imitation of the Esseni The poyson of the Dragon 9. That having ended their Feast they spent the night in dancing and singing first in two Quires afterwards in one in imitation of Moses and his sister Miriam after the passage through the Red-Sea a ceremony which hath not onely never been observ'd in the Church but hath been expresly condemn'd by her in the Councel of Laodicea forbidding dancing even at the marriages of Christians 10. That seeing the day break turning towards the East they pray'd which done every one return'd to his Cell Which last ceremony is all that might seem contrary to the common practice of the Jews and to have some relation to that of the Christians who in their Prayers turn to the East whereas the Jews look'd towards Jerusalem in what part soever of the world they made their supplications But as to what he observes that this Sect of people were not serv'd by slaves as esteeming that the possession of servants was absolutely contrary to nature it speaks somewhat dissonant from the generall belief and practice as well of the Ancient Jews who permitted slavery as the Primitive Christians who disallow'd it not as appears by the words both of St. Paul 1 Cor. 7. 21. Philemon 16 and St. Peter 1 Epist Chap. 3. 18. but it was indeed common to all the Esseni of whom Philo said There is not so much as a slave among them but all are free yet mutually serving one another and they condemn Masters not onely as unjust defiling holiness but also as impious With the same design of making some advantage of Josephus hath some bold hand or other inserted into his Antiquities Lib. 18. cap. 4. certain words which are so much the less likely to come from him for that they contain an honourable testimony as well of the person of our Saviour as of the holiness and truth of Christian Religion from the profession whereof that Author ever stood at a great distance besides it is notoriously remarkable that they are hedg'd in so as not to have any coherence with the rest of his Discourse either going before or coming after and put into the place which they take up rather out of affection to some certain party then any reason there was to do it Of the same thread is also if I am not deceiv'd in my conjecture that Encomium of St. John inserted in the sixth Chapter for besides that he describes him as a very good person one whose advice it was to those Jews who exercised vertue and were observers of justice one towards another and piety towards God to become as it were one by Baptisme and that this Discourse can speak no less of him who made it then that he was a Disciple of St. John's the contexture of the whole Story formerly concludes and evidently shews that it was thrust in it may be out of some zeal but certainly with much want of sincerity Tiberius says Josephus being extremely incensed at the attempt of Aretas writes to T. Vitellius that he should declare war against him and if he took him alive to send him â—…und in chains to him if he were kill'd that he would send him his head Tiberius sent Orders to the Generall of his Army in Syria that he should do these things and Vitellius as it were for the war against Aretas prepar'd two Legions c. And it is to be noted that the defeat of Herod by Aretas happening seven years after the suffering of St. John seeing Vitellius being upon his way to take his revenge of that affront receiv'd four days before his arrivall at Jerusalem the news of Tiberius's death there is very little likelihood that the Jews who had delivered our Saviour to Pilate though they had follow'd and admir'd him after the martyrdom of St. John which had not wrought any alteration in them should have had for so long time so lively a remembrance both of the unworthiness of his death and the sanctity of his life It was also conceiv'd in the time of Origen that Josephus desirous to find out the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple had said that those things were happened to the Jews in revenge of James the Just who was the brother of Jesus called Christ since they had kill'd him though a just person and no
on any Oracle which might set his fancy on work In the year of Rome 713. which was the third of the Triumvirate and the one and fourtieth before our Saviour under the Consulship of L. Antonius and P. Servilius Augustus victorious over Cassius and Brutus whom he had defeated the Summer before to recompence his old Soldiers bestow'd on them the Lands beyond the Po so that the Inhabitants of Cremona and Mantua were cruelly treated and Virgil then in the twenty ninth year of his age had been put to great extremities his estate being fallen to the share of Claudius a Veterane or Arius a Centurion who coming to take possession thereof had put him into some danger of his life had it not been for the support of Asinius Pollio Alfenus Varus and Cornelius Gallus who procur'd his indemnity And as to represent the misery of the poor Mantuans he had introduc'd Melibaeus crying out Shall ever I again my old aboad c. Shall th'impious Soldier have these new-plow'd Fields And Moeris complaining that the new-comers said to the antient Inhabitants Depart and that Mantua had been too neer to sad Cremona and said elsewhere That unhappy Mantua had lost her fields which Martial in imitation of him alluding to writes that Tityrus had lost his Lands neer wretched Cremona So to express his gratitude he call'd Augustus the god who had been the Author of his quiet and speaking of himself sayes that he had seen at Rome That gallant youth for whom Twice six dayes annually his altars fume And that he answering first his suit said Shepherds feed your cattel as before and let your Oxen plow and celebrated Pollio by his third and fourth Eclogues Varus by the sixth and ninth and Gallus by the tenth besides that he had fill'd the fourth of his Georgicks with the praises of the last But to comply with the humour of Augustus who forc'd him fourteen years after to kill himselfe as guilty of some attempt against his life he transform'd all into the Fable of Aristeus In the year of Rome 714. which was the fourth of the reign of Augustus the first of Herod's and the fourtieth before our Saviours coming Pollio being raised to the Consulship with Domitius Calvinus and his wife brought to bed of a son Virgil thought himself obliged to take occasion upon these two honourable and pleasing accidents to break forth into praises I am loth to say flatteries and vows for Augustus for Pollio and for his child Thence is it that he says in his fourth Eclogue that there was then coming on a new age and a golden race of mankind beginning with the Consulship of Pollio and the Nativity of Saloninus his son that in Pollio's happy reign all nations should be freed from fear of the Iron age if any Track of it remain Apollo that is Augustus already reigning who shall live the life of the gods and be mixt with them that is converse familiarly with them and the Heroes and shall rule the World by his mighty Father's power Julius Caesar That the little Saloninus shall be surrounded with such happiness that the earth shall no longer bear any pernitious plant nor Serpents but produce Assyrian Roses and play-games for his Infancy That during his youth Harvests and Vintages shall come without trouble and honey from the Oak distill though as yet there must be setting out of Ships fortifying of Cities War and Tillage But when he shall have attain'd the age of a perfect man there shall be no longer any commerce by Sea or Land no Agriculture or Mechanicks forasmuch as all places shall bring forth all things And thereupon desiring Augustus burthen'd with the weight of the Worlds government to accept the honours due to him he wishes himself a long life to describe his atchievements Now what is there in all this not suitable to a Heathen Or what is there that makes the least discovery of any Divine revelation Nay indeed what is more remarkable all along then that there is not any thing which speaks not the person wholly Idolatrous as one whose imagination cannot raise it self to ought more excellent then the fabulous state of the world under Saturne but withall promising himself according to the Platonick principle the restauration of it in the revolution of the great Months of the long year which that Philosopher imagin'd to himself should come and mingling the frivolous hope of that feign'd prosperity with the invocations of the fals Deities so far as to cry out O chast Lucina aid the blessed birth c. The Fates conspiring with eternall doome Said to their Spindles Let such ages come Accordingly could not the good Emperour Constantine give any Christian interpretation to his Verses without making them speak otherwise then they do in themselves For whereas Virgil had said Tu modo nascenti puero quo ferrea primum Desinet ac toto surget gens aurea mundo Casta fave Lucina tuus jam regnat Apollo Téque adeo decus hoc aevi te consule inibit Pollio incipient magni procedere menses Te duce siqua manent sceleris vestigia nostri Irrita perpetuâ solvent formidine terras O chast Lucina aid the blessed birth Who shall from Ir'n extract a golden Age And to thy Phoebus all the world engage Thou child being Consul Pollio shall that year Be most renown'd then glorious dayes appear If any print of antient crimes remain Thou shalt efface them in thy happy reign And from perpetuall fear all nations free He makes him say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Who would ever imagine without notice given him aforehand that those four Greek Verses were brought to express the seven Latine ones of Virgil or that any one should thence take occasion to discourse of the Adoration due to Christ and the reconciliation of the World to God through his blood Since they attribute that to the child newly born which the Poet had expresly said of the Consul Pollio they turn the prayer he made to Lucina to be favourable to the little Saloninus into a command directed to the Moon to adore the Saviour of the World and referr to the spiritual tranquillity of mens Consciences effected by the remission of sins what he had hinted at concerning the establishment of temporal peace by a restauration of the government of Saturn succeeding under Augustus the crimes of the Iron-Age which was according to his supposition to give place to the Golden-Age coming in under the Consulship of Apollo Nor that onely but they must also omit the clauses which made mention both of that Consulship and the reign of Apollo by which name the Poet had meant Augustus and the more probably not onely for that the Heathens as Macrobius observe referr'd all the gods whom they thought below the heaven to the Sun or Apollo but also by reason
say Grey-haired shall reign who shall derive his Name Adrian from the Adriatick Sea There shall be another Person absolutely good who shall know all things that is to say Antoninus the Affable and under thee O most Excellent and best of men who art Brown-haired and under thy Branches to wit Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus will come the time of the accomplishment of all things Three shall reign and the third shall have the government after all the rest And elsewhere speaking to Rome he says After that three times five Kings that is to say Julius Augustus Tiberius Caligula Claudius Nero Galba Piso Otho Vitellius Vespasian Titus Domitian Nerva and Trajan shall have reigned in Thee and subdued the World from East to West there shall be a King with an Hoary head taking his Name to wit Adrian from the Sea Adriatick c. Besides him there shall reign to wit Antoninus Marcus Aurelius and Verus under whom shall be the last of Times and by the Name they all shall have of Antoninus fill the Name of the celestical God to wit Adonai whose Power is now and will be for ever CHAP. V. A Refutation of Possevinus concerning the Time when the Sibylline Writing came first abroad IT must therefore of necessity follow that the Impostour who to draw up Catalogues of the Emperours had borrowed the Name of the Sibyl put that Cheat upon the World since the year 138. let us now see how long after Possevin in his Apparatus Sacer upon an imagination that he speaks of the second Conflagration of the Temple of Vesta makes him live after that Accident and thereupon is mistaken in four several respects For First he makes an ill concurrence between the year 199. with the Empire of Commodus Assassinated the 31th of December 192. Secondly he no less unjustly assigns the Conflagration of Vesta's Temple in the year 199. since that according to Dion in his seventy second Book Herodian in his first Book and Orosius in the sixteenth Chapter of his seventh Book it happened toward the end of Commodus's Reign who left this world seven years before To which may be added that Eusebius whose Authority he notoriously abuses determines the time of that ruinous Accident affirming it to have happened in the third year of the 242. Olympiad and the twelfth of Commodus which concurr onely with the 191. year of our Saviour Thirdly When he designs the three Successours of Adrian omitting Verus taken into Partnership of the Empire by Marcus Aurelius he reckons in his stead Commodus on whom the pretended Sibyl neither thought nor could have thought since she writ her Poem above fifteen years before the Birth of that Prince which was on the thirty first of August 161. and above thirty years before his association in the Empire happening on the twenty seventh of November 176. Fourthly Though the Authour of that Romance might have spoken somewhat of the Conflagration of Vesta's Temple since that upon the very account of his having supposed that Rome should be burned in the year after its Foundation 948. concurrent with the year 195. of Christ and the third of Severus he would insinuate that all the Temples of that City that of Vesta among the rest should be consumed by Fire and could not as being dead before either see the Conflagration of it or according to his own Hypotheses say that he had seen it yet how after he had measured the duration of Rome by the Lives of Antoninus and his two Adopted Sons Marcus Aurelius and Verus shewing thereby he writ in their Times and consequently before the year of Christ 160. could he have been in a capacity to speak of commodus who was born the last of August 161. five Moneths and twenty four days after the Death of Antoninus and affirm he had seen the second Conflagration of Vesta's Temple which came not to pass till the year 191. and the twelfth year after the Death of Marcus with whom he seemed to imagine that Rome and the whole World should perish For instance in the third Book page 27. he had written that Rome should become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say a Village which he had done in imitation of the Apocalyps Chap. xvii Verse 16. and Chap. xviii Verse 8. and Chap. xix Verse 3. openly threatening it with a final destruction by Fire saying in the second Book page 14. Rome's seven-hill'd People God shall shake And Fire of much Wealth shall destruction make Snatch'd up by Vulcan's ravenous Flames And page 20. By a sad Fate There shall be three will lay Rome desolate All men shall in their Houses be destroy'd By Cataracts of Fire from Heav'n And in the fifth Book page 40. Surrounded with a burning Fire go dwell In the dreadfull aboad of lowest Hell And in the eighth Book page 58. To Naphta thou Bitumen Sulphur Fire reduc'd shalt be But Ashes to be burnt t'eternity Nay that there should not be the least difficulty as to what concerns the Time of that Catastrophe he had declared himself in these Terms page 59. Thou shalt compleat Three times three hundred years and fourty eight Of thy Name then the Number being past Thy wretched Fate shall Thee surprize in haste That is to say the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whereof the Letters produce the Number 948. thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 100. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 800. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 40. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 8. But could he without being ridiculous and passing for a Fool brag that he had survived those under whom Rome and the World should come to its Period but also that he had been Spectatour of an Accident which but four years preceeded the day he had assigned for that utter desolation Or could he with any countenance have acknowledged that he had out-lived the Time which he had assigned for the determination of the Empire and the Universe But he hath not shewed himself so much a Fool as a confident Impostour and his words which Possevin thought might be applied to the second Conflagration of Vesta's Temple relate onely to the final Destruction of that of Jerusalem which he calls the Amiable House the Guardian-Temple of the Divinity an Elogie which could not be given the Temple of Vesta by him who undertook to dispute against the Idolatry of the Heathen for the worship of one God Besides the Remark which Possevin makes of the Authour of the second Conflagration of that Temple which the Counterfeit Sibyl meant saying That he had with an impious hand attempted clearly discovers that he reflected on the Hand of that Infidel Souldier who had fired the Temple of Jerusalem and was declared impious by the Judgment of Titus General of the Romane Army For the Counterfeit Prophetess might well brag of the sight of that horrid Accident since it had happened in the year of our Lord 76. sixty eight years full before the reign of the Antonini under whom she writ though
it was no less then the height of impertinence in her to call her self as she did Noah's Daughter-in-law and to boast that she had seen a ruin 2068. later then the death of Noah and 2427. years after the Deluge as if according to the Fable advanced by Ovid in the thirteenth Book of his Metamorphoses that pretended Prophetess having obtained the Privilege of living as many years as there were Grains in the heap of Sand shewed by the Cumaean Sibyl to Apollo she had at the time of her Writing already passed not 700. years as that Prophetess of Ovid but above 2400. and expected to continue till the end of the World whereas the Cumaean Sibyl as is reported of her thought she was to become at the end of a thousand so wasted as not to have any Body at all having after the dissolution of her precedent Form onely her voice left her to foretell what was to come Her words taken out of the fifth Book page 49. are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Nor longer shall in Thee the Virgin quire The Fuel finde of their perpetual Fire The Amiable House long since by thee Hath been destroy'd The second I did see The guardian-Temple o' th' Divinity That ever flourishing house in 'ts Ashes lie Fir'd by an impious hand c. Which Discourse cannot clearly relate to any thing but the Conflagration of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Romane Army as a Punishment for which act the Authour of the Sibylline Oracles pretends that Rome should be lai'd desolate in such manner as that the Vestals should not any longer keep in the Fire which they called Sacred and Divine CHAP. VI. Of the Time when the Sibylline Books were written FRom what hath been said is manifest that the Opinion of Possevin concerning the Time wherein the Person who counterfeited the Sibyl lived is ill grounded and our Method now calls upon us to make enquiry how many years we must ascend assuredly to finde it out That he Writ under Antoninus his own words were sufficient to convince any man that should well consider them but his credit sequestered from the things which may otherwise keep it up being with good reason of no account his sincerity is greatly to be suspected and his discourse requiring much caution it is necessary we finde other helps to confirm what is advanced and preferr the Testimonies of those whom his Imposture hath circumvented before any thing he could have represented of himself Theophilus of Antioch who died on the thirteenth of October in the year 180. in regard he hath inserted into his Books To Autolycus divers things taken out of the Sibylline Writings does irrefragably prove that they were before him in Time and that contrary to the conjecture of Possevin the Authour who first writ them reached not the Reign of Commodus who when Theophilus died onely began the eighth Moneth of his Reign Athenagoras who in his Embassy to the Emperours Marcus Aurelius and Verus on the behalf of the Christians copied six Verses out of the second Book shews that this counterfeit Prophecy was in Vogue some time before the year 170. in which Verus died Hermas whom Tertullian affirms to have been Brother to Pope Pius the First who took the Chair on Sunday the seventh of March 146. under the Consulship of Clarus and Severus and died on the eleventh of July 150. under the Consulship of Gallicanus and Vetus discovers that he had a particular knowledg of the said Writings since that in his Work entituled The Pastour he hath not onely shuffled many fantastick Imaginations suitable to those of the pretended Sibyl but designed the Authour by the very Name he would go under For as much as in the second Vision of the first Book having imagined that an Aged Woman had while he was in Ecstasie given him a little Book to transcribe containing Exhortations to Penance he expressed what he seemed to believe of it in these Terms Brethren it hath been revealed to me in my Sleep by a Young man of a goodly appearance and saying to me Who do you think this Aged Woman is of whom you received the Book and I said The Sibyl Whence it follows That before the year 150. this Opinion had gained Footing at Rome among the Christians That a Sibyl much unlike that of the Heathens gave Sinners wholesom Instructions in order to the Exercises of Penance and true Piety And whereas Pope Pius in his second Epistle to Justus of Vienna makes mention of the Death of his Brother saying The Priest called The Pastour hath founded a Title and is worthily departed in the Lord it justifies that between the year 146. and 150. Hermas had maintained the Suppostion of the Sibyl and that the Authour of the Books attributed to her must be yet more antient St. Justin a Christian Philosopher a Native of Neapolis in Palaestina sometime called Sichem and who afterwards suffered Martyrdom at Rome on the first of June 163. does in his First Apologie presented to the Emperour Antoninus his Adopted Sons and the People before Marcus Aurelius had been received into Partnership of the Empire and consequently about the year 141 or 142. complain of the Prohibition had been made that none upon pain of Death should read the Books of Hystaspes and the Sibyl which he presented to the Princes and Senate as things deserving to be highly esteemed and it is not to be doubted but that Holy Person spoke of those which are come to our hands since that in his Exhortation to the Greeks he copied three Verses out of his Preface three out of the third Book and Seaven out of the Fourth a manifest Argument that they were already published since they had passed through his Hands and that he objected them as Pieces generally known to the Heathen themselves whose Errours he opposed CHAP. VII A Conjecture concerning the Authour of the Sibylline Writings IT were at this Day impossible for any man to be so happy in the discovery of the Authour of that Imposture as that he might without any fear of Mistake make his Name publike to be covered with the shame and enormity of his sacrilegious attempt against the sincerity of the Church But methinks there is some ground to charge if not as the principal advancer of the Cheat at least as a complice of his crime Hermas who as hath been observed spoke of the Sibyl in the year 148 or 149. and who was grown infamous for another kind of Supposititious dealing whereby he presumed to feign Apparitions of Women and Angels disguised like Shepherds who furnished him with Instructions of Penance pestered with fantastick Imaginations which he hath expressed in as wretched Greek as that of the Sibylline Writings and such as equally with the other deserves perpetual dishonour Though he were a Native of Aquileia yet was his residence with his Brother Pope Pius at Rome that is in the Heart of that place which for the space of
to felicity and desire to escape Damnation she I say neither prays nor thinks she ought to pray for either the Saints Glorified nor the Sinners Condemned but onely for the Faithfull whom she presupposes to expect their Glorification and that onely for a certain time Thirdly that if from this antecedent he hath sinned it did of necessity always follow We must Pray for him the Church of Rome would be obliged to Pray First For the Apostatized Angels who having quitted their first station sinned no less then men do but in such manner that their offence condemned by an irrevocable decree is absolutely incapable of remedy Secondly For the Damned who are not in a state capable of amendment Thirdly For those that are Glorified who have not any good to obtain and that as well after as before the last Judgment since that after the Pronuntiation of it this truth that men and Devils have sinned will remain evident and irrefragable as before though that after the retribution which shall be for ever made to every one according to his works it will not be any longer either necessary or convenient or rational to pray for him CHAP. XVII Saint Epiphanius's fift Motive considered FOr a fifth consideration Saint Epiphanius alledges that Prayers for the Dead are made by the surviving out of a design to signifie what is accomplished thereby insinuates that he conceived the state of the Faithfull from the moment of their death to the time of their resurrection to be imperfect and capable of melioration it is possible Aerius might have been of the same Sentiment and upon that account have been forced to acknowledg some necessity of praying for them untill the absolute accomplishment of their Glory But this imagination neither hath nor can have any force against the Protestants who believe that the Faithfull at the very demolition of the earthly Tabernacles of their bodies are received according to the saying of St. Paul into their celestial habitations and that at the very instant of their putting-off of Flesh God cloaths their souls with the glory which they are eternally to enjoy so that what till then was in part and imperfect in them is from thence absolutely abolished and that these Considerations that the Prayer does not cut off all that is layed in charge against the dead and that it is made to signifie what is accomplished cannot be any way seasonable in respect of those who as they are perswaded by the Scripture that to no purpose are alledged either the need which the Faithfull departed stand in of their accomplishment since they are already in actual possession thereof being present with the Lord and absent from the body particularly to that end or the charges which are pretended to remain against them after death since there can be no accusation nor any one to lay ought to their charge who are justified by the Lord who protesteth according to the tenour of his own Covenant that he will be mercifull to their unrighteousness and their sins and iniquities will he remember no more CHAP. XVIII Saint Epiphanius's sixth Motive Considered IN the sixth place St. Epiphanius tells us That some in his Time prayed for Sinners departed having a respect or recourse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the Mercy of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imploring the Mercy of God and it may be said that upon this ground That sinners continued charged with sins and imperfections after their decease Antiquity was induced to demand by Prayers the remission of their sins and consequently their establishment in a place of rest To this purpose is what we read in the one and fourtieth Chapter of the eighth Book of the Constitutions attributed to Saint Clement 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That God the lover of men having received his soul would turn away his face from all his sins voluntary and unvoluntary and out of his Graciousness and Mercy place him in the Region of the godly who enjoy themselves in the Bosom of Abraham c. whence trouble sadness and sighing are departed c. Look upon this thy servant whom thou hast chosen and taken to thy self to receive another lot and pardon him what he hath voluntarily or involuntarily sinned and place about him good Angels and dispose of him into the Bosom of the Patriarchs c. where there is neither sadness nor trouble nor sighing c. In the Liturgie of the Armenians Memento Domine miserere fac gratiam animabus requiescentibus pacifica illumina eas c. Remember O Lord shew Mercy and be Gracious unto the souls which are in rest pacify them and illuminate them c. In the Liturgy of St. Basily 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For the repose and remission of thy Servant In the Anaphora or Liturgie translated out of the Syriack and attributed to St. Basil whereof the Summary is alledged by Cassander That God would conduct the departed through the horrid receptacles and place them in habitations of light That God would deliver them out of the thick darkness of tribulation and grief that he would not enter into judgement with them c. If they have sinned in any manner as men clad in flesh that he would pardon them In the Missal of the Latine Church Animabus famulorum famularumque tuarum remissionem cunctorum tribue peccatorum ut indulgentiam quam semper optaverunt piis supplicationibus consequantur c. Grant O Lord unto the souls of thy Servants of what Sex soever the remission of all their sins that by devout supplications they may obtain that indulgence which they have always desired c. Do away by the pardon of thy most mercifull Piety the sins which he hath committed through the frailty of worldly conversation c. Do thou O God mercifully out of thy wonted Goodness wipe away the stains which the souls have contracted from the contagion of the World Amen Mercifully pardon them c. put them into perpetual oblivion Amen c. O Lord enter not into judgment with thy Servants for no man shall be justifyed in thy sight deliver their souls from the Gates of Hell c. Grant them the remission of all their sins c. free them from all their sins c. We beseech thee that thy judicial sentence fall not heavy upon them c. That what vices soever she hath through the subtlety of the Devil contracted thou wouldest out of thy compassion and mercy indulgently do away c. Free O Lord we beseech thee the soul of thy Servant from all chains of sin Which Prayers are for the most part repeated in the first Book of Sacred Ceremonies Sect. 15. chap. 1. and the ensuing is there added over and above by a late Cardinal Non intres in judicium tuum Domine cum servo tuo c. O Lord enter not into judgment with thy servant for no man shall be justifyed in thy sight if the remission of
by their own Devotions or those of their surviving Friends have the honour of rising if not the first at least before the expiration of the thousand years And thence takes occasion to exhort the Husband that hath lost his Wife not to propose to himself any change of condition but affectionatly to preserve the remembrance of his deceased Consort and to do upon her account all possible Offices saying e Pro anima ejus orat refrigerium interim adpostulat ei in prima Resurrectione consortium c. He prays for her Soul and in the mean time wishes her by his Prayers refreshment and a society with her in the first Resurrection as if he had said Let him wish that she be of the num ber of those who shall rise again during the thousand years of the Saints in Jerusalem and that in expectation of that Resurrection hastened by his Prayers she might receive those consolations from God which should refresh her Soul languishing in expectation of her Happiness CHAP. XXII The Sentiment of St. Ambrose brought to the Test ACcording to this Pattern was drawn the Antient Gothick Liturgie containing these words Quiescentium animas in sinu Abrahae collocare dignetur in partem primae Resurrectionis admittat per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum c. That the Lord would vouchsafe to dispose the Souls of those that rest into the Bosom of Abraham and admit them to a participation of the first Resurrection through Jesus Christ our Lord. It might seem and there want not Great men who have thought so that St. Ambrose was of the same Sentiment when closing up his Funeral Oration upon the Death of Valentinian the Second he writ in the year 392. Te quaeso c. I beseech thee Sovereign God that by an hastened Resurrection thou wouldest awake and raise up these most dear young men Gratian and Valentinian so as that thou recompense by an advanced Resurrection the course of this life which they have terminated before it was come to its perfection as if by the hastened or advanced Resurrection which he desired he had meant the first Resurrection which the Millenaries imagined to themselves and had begged it as well for Gratian who was born on the eighteenth of April 359. and had been murthered twenty four years four Moneths and seven days after that is to say on the twenty fifth day of August 383. as for Valentinian whose birth happening on the eighteenth of January 370. had not preceeded his death falling on Whitsun-Eve May the fifteenth 392 but twenty two years three Moneths and twenty seven days upon which account he called them both Young men and bemoaned them that the course of their Life had been cut off before its maturity and just perfection But neither the Expression of Resurrectio matura c. Hastened Resurrection upon which this Imagination was grounded does necessarily imply any thing whence such a Conceit might be induced nor can the Explication which St. Ambrose made of his Faith nine years before permit it For in his Treatise concerning the Faith of the Resurrection writ immediately upon the Death of his Brother Satyrus which happened on the seventeenth of September 383. supposing that the sound of many Trumpets shall awake the dead at the Last day he hath this Discourse absolutely incompatible with the Opinion of the Millenaries Adverte juxta Typum Legis ordinem Gratiae c. Consider according to the Type of the Law the order of Grace When the first Trumpet shall have sounded it gathers together those towards the East as the Principal and Elect. When the second those who are nearest in point of Merit such as being scituated towards Libanus have forsaken the vanities of the Nations When the third those who tossed as it were in the Sea by the Wind of this World have been overwhelmed with the Waves of the present Time When the fourth those who could not sufficiently soften the hardness of their understandings by the Precept of the spiritual Word and are for that reason called Those towards the North for Boreas according to Salomon is an hard Wind. Although therefore all shall be raised again in a moment and the twinkling of an Eye yet are all raised according to the order of their Merits and thereupon those shall be raised first who by an early Advancement of Devotion and a certain dawning of Faith have entertained the Raies of the eternal Sun rising upon them as I may justly instance according to the Tenour of the Old Testament in the Patriarchs or according to the Gospel in the Apostles But the second are those who quitting the Custom of the Nations are passed from the sacrilegious Errour to the Discipline of the Church and for that reason those first are of the Fathers those next from among the Gentiles This Discourse of St. Ambrose is an allusion to the Ordinance contained in the tenth of Numbers concerning the Assembling of the people of Israel and he applies to the Resurrection of the Dead what is said of the calling of those who possessed the Quarter towards the East Secondly Of those who were Quartered towards the South and as it was in his Translation towards Libs which he mistaking confounded with Libanus making for want of reflection a Mountain of a Wind and changing the South-Quarter whence Libs blows into that of the North on which side Libanus is in respect of the Desart Thirdly Of those who were disposed towards the Sea Fourthly Of those who were towards the Quarter of the North or of Boreas And as he applied the calling together of these several Quarters to the last Resurrection so he acknowledged withall it should be general and that all should rise not onely the same day but in the same moment Which Assertion of his was grounded on the express Declaration of Saint Paul in his first Epistle to the Corinthians and absolutely destroyed the Hypothesis of the Millenaries who believed there would be two Resurrections one preceding the other by above a thousand years but he supposed that in that moment of the general Resurrection there would be several divisions and a certain precedence of order among those Divisions according to the dispositions of each of them Next he pretended that the first Class of those that were raised should be that of the Patriarchs and Apostles who had never been infected with the Sacrilegious Errour of the Gentiles but were come by an early advancement and as it were at a start into the light and in that he also opposed the Errour of the Millenaries who imagined that the Patriarchs were risen with our Saviour that the Apostles and others of the most Eminent among the Saints should rise when according to their Opinion he should come to establish a yearsâ—t â—t Jerusalem and the rest of the Dead after the determination of the thousand years at the last Day When therefore he desires for Gratian and Valentinian
some persons having observed that the Heathens called by the Name of Ollas Vulcanias or Kettles of Vulcan the gaping places through which the Mountains of Gibel Vesuvium Lipara Strongoli and other places full of sulphur disburthen themselves of the Flames which either by intervals or a constant burning devour their Entrails and taken either out of astonishment or of set purpose the crakings of those subterranean Fires for the groans and crys of Tormented persons and lastly met with men who had the confidence either out of the excess of their malice against some Persons Departed or a desire to make their advantage of the credulous simplicity of the Living to compose Histories of the Apparitions of Souls separated by Death from the Bodies which they had animated before would needs without any Oracle of Scripture or Tradition of the first Ages of the Church and without the Example of any of the Saints that lived in them suppose that the Souls of those Christians which during their life-time had been defiled with Sin were after their death as it were melted again in a subterranean Fire where they were purified some sooner others later and all before the Last Day And as we finde the Poet Dante by a Liberty truly Poetical confined to the Hell where the Damned were all his enemies advanced into Paradise the best of his Friends and reduced the rest to be content with Purgatory so were there about the midst of the sixth Age a sort of People that had the boldness to affirm upon the Authority of their own pretended Visions the damnation of the Greatest men About that time was it that the Hermit of Lipara had perswaded the Father of the Step-father of Julian one of the Agents of the Romane Church that he had seen Theodoric King of the Ostrogoths who died on the one and thirtieth of August 536. led between Pope John the First and Symmachus without a Girdle without Shoes his hands tyed and at last cast into the next Vulcanian Cauldron whence honest St. Gregory inferred in the year 593. that by the Eructations of Fire which happened many times in Sicily and other adjacent Islands the tormenting Cauldrons were discovered Thus also came it to pass that after the Death of Charles Martel which happened on the two and twentieth of October 741. the Monks of St. Tron having published that Eucherius Bishop of Orleans had seen in a Vision the eternal Torments of that Prince who had dealt very roughly with him and given Ecclesiastical Revenues to those who had assisted him in the War and that thereupon there had been found in his Sepulchre onely a Dragon with the visible marks of his Body's being Divinely consumed by Fire the Story though so much the more evidently false in as much as the Death of Eucherius who died the fifteenth of February 727. preceded by fifteen years eight Moneths and two days that of Charles Martel whom he is ridiculously supposed to have survived was so pleasing to the humour of the Clergie that the Writers of the Legends of Rigobert of Rheims of Eucherius and Peter the Library-keeper and Flodoard undertook the dispersing of it and in the year 858. in November the Prelats of the Provinces of Rheims and Rouēn gave it for certain to Lewis King of Germany whom they knew to be descended of Martel by Pipin his second Son who upon the twenty ninth of July 753. concurrent with the fourth of his Reign gave for his Father's sake Saint Michael's-Mount in Verdunois to the Abbey of Saint Denys and by Lewis the Debonnaire Grand-Son of Pipin who Writ in the year 836. to Hilduin Abbot of Saint Denys that Charles his Great-grandfather had religiously recommended himself and had for that end principally shewn his Devotion and confidence towards that his particular Patron a manifest Argument that the Fable of his Damnation was not yet invented and that those Gentlemen who two and twenty years before bragged they had heard the Relation of it from Lewis imposed upon him and very boldly abused the credulity of Lewis King of Germany and Charles the Bald his children And in the year 1090. In Saxony a Clergy-man Dead as was conceived dragged into Hell and returning thence three days after confirmed by the Prediction of his own Death and the discoveries of other things the Judgment he had before given concerning the Torments of Pope Gregory the Seventh and the Petty Kings Rodolph and Herman the first of whom died the twenty fourth of May 1085. the second the fifteenth of October 1080. and the third in the year 1088. These three Examples whereto a thousand others of equal authority might be added are sufficient to make it appear what a strange power malice hath over those who are once infected with its venome There may be produced also such as shall demonstrate what Impressions Interest can give for to raise an horrour against Schism there was spread up and down Rome this Discourse concerning Paschasius Deacon of the Romane Church who had been to his death engaged in the Party of the Anti-Pope Laurence put by his pretences the 23 of October 501. That notwithstanding the merit of his Person being such that the very touching of the Surplice placed upon his biere had while he was carrying to the ground healed a possessed person yet had his soul been condemned to endure the ardors of the boyling-waters in the Baths surnamed the Angulani whence it was afterwards delivered upon the Prayers of Germanus Bishop of Capua And to encourage men to liberality it was said of Dagobert who died January 19. 644. that the Devils beating him as they were carrying him away in a Boat towards the Isles of Vulcan St. Denys St. Maurice and St. Martin whom he continually called to his relief came with Thunder and Tempest to his rescue and disposed him afterwards into Abraham's Bosom all which passages John the Hermite who lived in a little Isle not far thence saw in a Vision and gave the Relation of it to Anseald then Agent and afterwards Bishop of the Church of Poictiers In like manner the Impostor who took upon him the name of Turpin for that of Tilpin Arch-Bishop of Rheims who died the third of September 789. never considering that Wolfarius Successour to Tilpin did in the year 811. subscribe the Testament of Charle-maigne feigned that that Prince dying on Saturday Jan. 28. 814. and Canonized by Paschal the Third Anti-Pope in the year 1166. had been carried up to the Celestial Kingdom by the assistance of St. James to whom he had built many Churches and that a certain Devil whom he had seen running after the Troops of his Companions and drawing towards Aix la Chapelle whither they were all going in hope to be present at Charles's death and afterwards to carry away his Soul to Hell had told him at his return that the headless Galician had put into the
while there shall onely be an Ostentation to name it and men shall wave to express the Nature of it to give the Eastern Greeks and the Protestants who absolutely deny it some proof of the Tradition which they pretend to produce for the Confirmation thereof CHAP. XXX Shewing that the first Hypothesis proposed by the Sibylline Writing so called is generally disclaimed AS to the first Hypothesis which concerns The detention of all souls whatsoever in Hell from their separation from the Bodies which they had animated to their Resurrection though it were in such high esteem that it induced the Christians of the second and third Ages to compose the ibera and the other Prayers in which the departed Person is introduced desiring to be delivered from eternal Death and the Living require that he be delivered from the Gates of Hell and preserved from the places of Torment Tartarus the deep Lake from the pains of Darkness from the mouth of the Lion yet was it at the very beginning moderated by those who seemed to have embraced it with greatest resolution For Tertullian perswaded by the Relation had been made to him of the Visions of St. Perpetua was of Opinion as we have already observed that the Souls of Martyrs were by way of preference placed in the Terrestrial Paradise and the rest confined in Hell And since it hath by little and little been abandoned yet so as that those who quitted it would not be obliged either to the rejection of the Sibylline Writing which had occasioned the production of it or to a change of the Prayers introduced into the Publick Service which presupposed it For many making no mention of Hell contented themselves to assign at least in words the souls of the Faithfull a certain sequestred place as under the Altars and Holy Tables appointed for the conservation and distribution of the Eucharist and upon that accompt if we may rely on the Judgment of the late Bishop of Orleans Gabriel de l'Aubespine the Councel Assembled about the year 305. from all Parts of Spain at Elvira near Granada had drawn up its thirty fourth Canon in these Terms Cereos per diem placuit in Coemeterio non incendi inquietandi enim spiritus Sanctorum non sunt c. It is thought good that in the day-time no Wax-candles should be lighted in the Church-yard for the spirits of the Saints are not to be disturbed In effect it might seem that the Christians at that time meeting in Coemeteries or Church-yards the Altars being upon that occasion placed there and many believing that the Angels and separated souls were disposed into some subtile Bodies capable as ours of resenting strong Perfumes Prohibition was made by the Spanish Prelates That Wax-candles should be lighted in the day-time lest the smoak of them might prove offensive to the spirits of the Faithfull whose Bodies had been there interred It might also be thought that Vigilantius by Birth indeed of Aquitain but a Priest of Barcelona who had with all Spain received the Decree of Elvira Disputing in the year 406. viz. an hundred years precisely after the said Decree against the Maintainers of the Worship done according to the Custom of that Time to the Reliques of the Saints whom he justly conceived illuminated by the Majesty of the Lamb sitting in the midst of the Throne of God crushed them with the Inconvenience which he found in their Opinion saying Ergò cineres suos amant animae Martyrum circumvolant eos sempérque praesentes sunt nè fortè si aliquis Precator advenerit absentes audire non possint c. The Souls therefore of the Martyrs are in love with their own dust and fly about it and are ever at hand lest if any one comes to pray they should not being absent hear him For this Argument makes onely against those who assigned at least in appearance the Souls of the Faithfull departed for their habitation the Place under the Altars that were near their Sepulchres There is also some Ground to number among the Followers of this strange Opinion those who had been so confident as to give it for certain to the good St. Augustine that St. John having caused himself to be buried alive at Ephesus the Earth continually sprung up and boyled as it were over the place of his Interment For if they thought it no Inconvenience to say of our Saviour's Beloved Apostle that he was confined to his Sepulchre there to expect in Body and Soul the Day of Judgment how much less would they have thought it to reduce the Souls of other Saints departed to the same condition St. Augustine thought it better to comply with the Opinion which he conceived could not be refuted by certain Proofs But it is so vanished of it self that being at this day generally declined we need not trouble our selves with the Confutation thereof no more then of that of Justine Martyr who from the Hypothesis of the pretended Sibylline Writing and the Story of the Witch of Endor inferred that all Souls without any exception either of Saints or Patriarchs or Prophets are in Hell under the power of the Devils For though the Prayers whereby it is even to this day required in the Church of Rome that God would deliver the Souls of the Faithfull departed from the power of Hell from the Mouth of the Lion from the Pains of Darkness and that he would put away far from them the Princes of darkness do notoriously discover they drew their Original from such a presupposition yet hath it nevertheless so absolutely lost all Credit that even in the year 380. Philastrius Bishop of Brescia charged it with Heresie saying Alia est Haeresis de Pythonissa c. There is another kind of Heresie concerning the Witch whereby some covering a Woman with Cloaths hoped they might obtain certain Answers from her whence it is said that that Witch raised out of Hell the Soul of the blessed Samuel and for that reason is it principally that many men even to this Day suspect that she might be believed especially for that it is known that she as it were a second time gave in that excitation true Answers of those things which the blessed Prophet had said to King Saul and because many are content to acquiesce in a Ly they descend into perpetual death since the Prophet saith The Souls of the Just are in the hand of the Lord and Death toucheth them not How then could an impious Soul raise out of Hell a pious and holy one especially that of a Prophet But what a strange astonishment must we necessarily conceive at this that the Opinion of Justine Martyr concerning the State of Souls should displease the whole Church which yet in her Service presupposed some such thing For if it be Heresie to think that the Souls of the â—aithfull after their retirement out of this World should be in danger of being exposed to the Rage of
And that among the Liturgies of the Greeks Armenians c. there are onely two viz. those of St. Basil and St. Chryâ—ostome drawn up one by the other which have onely this word of it by the way 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Resting in hope of Resurrection and eternal life Where it is evident to any one that hath but common sense that he who pronounces the Prayer desires not for the Dead either Resurrection or Life but onely declares that both of them have ever been the Object of their hope To be absolutely silent in it as the Canon of the Latine Mass is or to speak uncertainly of it without making any request is that proposing to one's self the pretended Example of Judas Maccabaeus and the Tradition of the antient Synagogue Or can it either enter into any man's Imagination to say they imitate who neither in their Discourses nor in their Actions express any thing of what is contained in the Original If it be said that the Latins in the Office of the Dead added to the Canon demand the Resurrection of the departed Person whom they recommend to God in their Prayers it will be easie to reply that of three and fourty Prayers whereof that Office consists one onely viz. the fifth proposes in one word that kinde of supplication saying Partem Resurrectionis accipiat Anima famuli tui c. That the soul of thy servant may participate of the blessed Resurrection three others which spake of the Resurrection presuppose it without making any demand and amount to no more then to require onely the effect of it as for instance the second layd down in these Terms Inter Sanctos Electos tuos resuscitati gloriâ manifestae contemplationis perpetuò satientur c. That thy servants being raised again may be perpetually silled among the Saints and Elect with the glory of a manifest contemplation the fourth which hath Ad propria corpora quandoque reversuras Sanctorum tuorum caetibus aggregari praecipias c. That thou wouldest command that the souls of all the Faithfull which are one day to return to their bodies may meet together in the Assemblies of thy Saints and the nine and thirtieth which contains these words In Resurrectionis gloria inter Sanctos Electos tuos resuscitati respirent c. That thy servants of both Sexes being raised up may live among thy Saints and Elect in the glory of the Resurrection From all which Forms it necessary follows that the Latine Church never thought of framing her Service according to the Example of Judas Maccabaeus and that it is vainly and without any shadow of Proof that any Venture at this day to maintain it never considering that if the first Authours of Praying for the Dead among Christians had had any design to build their Form of Service upon the pretended Pattern of the Maccabees they could not without prevarication from their own Intentions fo far have missed the Lineaments thereof as to have omitted in their Canon what they had proposed to themselves to put in Practice or not to insist on it but obliquely and perfunctorily not making it as they should have done their Principal business CHAP. XXXII That the Primitive Sence of the Prayers whereby the Remission of Sins is demanded for the Dead is not embraced by any THe Prayers which the antient Church made for Remission of Sins on the behalf of the Faithfull departed did not onely proceed from the Hypothesis of the Sibylline Writing concerning the consinement of all Souls in Hell and of Justine Martyr concerning the power of the Devils even over those of the greatest Saints but is also an effect of their Opinion who imagined that our Saviour and his Apostles after his Example being after their departure descended into Hell had preached there and in effect converted many of those who were gone thither in the state of Sin For looking upon as reduced to the Trial of some punishment those whose Beatitude was during their restraint in the common prison of the Dead deferred and conceiving that their Condition was capable of being changed into better they inferred very suitably to these Opinions that it was necessary to implore the mercy of God and to demand on their behalf the forgiveness of their Sins which for a time kept the Gates of glory shut against them and exposed them in some manner to the violences of Evil spirits till such time as that by their own supplications and the suffrages of their surviving Friends they might better their Condition We have already produced Examples of those Prayers and there is not any Expression so strong or efficacious which we finde not employed to make us comprehend that heretofore the surviving Faithfull were of a Belief that their departed Brethren were treated as Malefactours and in a manner covered with the wrath of God But from the beginning of the Third Age and afterwards those among the Fathers who had more attentively considered the Oracles of God affirming That There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus That No man is able to pluck them out of his hand That They are at the hour of death taken away from the evil to come That They depart out of the Body to be with the Lord That Their iniquity shall be sought for and there shall be none because God hath pardoned them That as soon as they are dead in the Lord they rest from their labours and according to what we finde in express Terms in the Canon of the Mass sleep a sleep of Peace as being actually in Peace and freed from Sin which deprives a man of it and makes a separation between the Lord and him that commits it the Fathers I say not discontinuing out of the respect they had for their Ancestours the Prayers inserted by them upon prejudications both ill-grounded and extremely mistaken into the Service of the Church do by the formal Confession of the insufficiency of those Principles make a certain disclaim of the Prayers enough to justifie that according to them being taken literally they are absolutely unprofitable as being destitute of Truth and a maintainable Foundation Hence is it that in the year 252. St. Cyprian tells us of the advantage which accrews to the Faithfull at their death Lucrum maximum jam nullis peccatis vitiis carnis obnoxium fieri c. It is a very great gain not to be any longer subject to sins and the lusts of the flesh St. Cyril of Jerusalem about the year 350. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Remission having its Ordinance onely in this life St. Epiphamus in the year 375. in the nine and fiftieth Haeresie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is not any progress either of Piety or Repentance after death St. Ambrose about the year 378. Qui hic non acceperit remissionem illic non erit c. He who shall not have received remission here shall not
be there that is in glory St. Hierome in the year 386. Ubicunque tibi locum praeparaveris futurámque sedem sive ad Austrum sive ad Boream ibi cùm mortuus fueris permanebis c. Mortis tempestate subversus ubicunque cecideris ibi jugiter permanebis sive te rigidum trucem sive clementem misericordem ultimum invenerit tempus c. Lignum quod in hac vita corruerit concisione mortalitatis fuerit incisum aut peccavit dum staret in Boreae parte posteà ponetur aut si dignos Austro fructus attulit in plaga jacebit Australi c. Whereever thou shalt have provided a place for thy self and the seat thou shalt come into whether it be towards the South or towards the North there shalt thou remain after thy death c. Being once overwhelmed by the tempest of death in what place soever thou shalt fall there shalt thou perpetually remain whether thy last hour have found thee there harsh and cruel or mild and mercifull c. The Tree which shall be faln in this life and hath been cut down by the stroak of Mortality or hath sinned while it stood shall afterwards be placed on the North side or if it hath brought forth Fruits worthy the South he shall be disposed into the South Quarter St. Chrysostome in the year 396. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After we are departed it is no longer in our power to repent and to cleanse our selves of the sins which we have committed St. Augustine in the year 420. Qualis in die isto quisque moritur talis in die illo judicabitur c. Such as every one dyes in this day as such shall he be judged in that day Again Qualis exîeris ex hac vita talis redderis illi vitae c. Such as thou shalt depart this life such shalt thou be delivered up to the other Olympiodorus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In what place soever a man at his departure hath been seized whether it were of light or of darkness as also in what work whether of iniquity or of virtue he shall remain in the same degree and rank either in Light with the just and Christ the King of all or in Darkness with the unjust and the Prince of this World For if from the very hour of their departure the Faithfull are no longer subject to any sin if repentance and remission of sin have place onely in this life and if such as men die such they shall rise again and be judged at the last-Last-day there neither is nor can be any pardon either to be asked or to be obtained for them after their death Whereof the Consequence is that the Prayers which are made for them are by their very Confession who have most recommended them unreasonable in that they suppose what according to their own Principles neither is nor can be viz. that the Faithfull departed in Jesus Christ are subject to sin besides they are fruitless in that they demand according to the same Principles an effect which is already fully accomplished and is to be unchangeably such to all Eternity CHAP. XXXIII The Censures pronounced by the Doctours of the Church of Rome against the Fathers taken into Examination BY those Prayers it was and still is demanded that God would place the Departed in the Bosom of the Patriarchs in the Society of the Saints in the Region of the Godly the Saints and the Living in the Pleasures of Paradise in a place of Refreshment Light and Peace granting them the passage from Death to Life the participation of the redemption of God the rest of Beatitude the opening of the Gates of glory the Happiness and Joy of an everlasting Light the fulness of Glory c. All these things I say are prayed for on the behalf of the departed as if they were not in the enjoyment of any of them or as if it being granted they were it were convenient to demand for them what they are already in possession of as if they were absolutely deprived thereof This kinde of Office is very consonant to the first Hypothesis as well of the pretended Sibylline Writing as of those who were of a perswasion that all Souls were sent to Hell and there confined till the Resurrection of their Bodies Nor is it unsuitable to what is told us by several of the Fathers of later Times who continuing the Forms of their Ancestours endeavoured to avoid the inconvenience of the Imagination which their Predecessours had as it were from hand to hand transmitted to them Thence comes it that Stapleton measuring the more and the less Antient by the same measure never considering whether the later any way moderated what had been in high esteem among the former makes no difficulty to entertain us with this disadvantageous Language which equally charges them all Tot illi tam celebres antiqui Patres Tertullianus Irenaeus c. So many antient and so eminent Fathers as Tertullian Irenaeus Origen Chrysostome Theodoret Oecumenius Theophylact Ambrose Clemens Romanus Bernard were not of that Sentiment which at last after so great Disquisition was defined to be an Article of Faith in the Councel of Florence viz. That the Souls of the Just enjoy the Beatifical Vision before the day of Judgment but delivered the contrary Opinion Sixtus Senensis had put also into the same Predicament Justine Martyr Lactantius Victorinus of Poictiers Aretas and Pope John the Two and Twentieth Nor do I deny but that very ill Consequences may be drawn First From what St. Ambrose hath written in the second Chapter of his second Book Of Cain and Abel Anima post finem vitae hujus adhuc tamen futuri Judicii ambiguò suspenditur c. After this life ended the soul is yet in suspense through the uncertainty of the future Judgment c. And elswhere Videntur usque ad diem Judicii per plurimum scilicet temporibus debitâ sibi remuneratione fraudari c. Satis fuerat dixisse illis quod liberatae animae de corporibus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 peterent id est locum qui non videtur quem Latinè Infernum dicimus c. Expectant remunerationem debitam c. Mens souls till the day of Judgment that is to say for a very long space of time seem to be defrauded of the remuneration due to them c. It had been sufficient to tell them viz. the Heathens that the souls freed from their bodies go to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say to a place not to be seen which in Latine we call Infernum Hell c. They expect the reward due to them Secondly From what St. Chrysostome says in several places making use of a Figurative and ambiguous manner of Expression when he conceives it enough to call the place where the souls of the Just are disposed Abraham's Bosom and in some other Places seems to deny their
〈◊〉 c. I am perswaded by the Discourses of Wise men that every Soul which is good and loved of God after that being disengaged from the Body to which she was conjoyned she is retired hence that which clouded her being as it were purged or layed down or I know not how to express it immediately having a resentment of and in the contemplation of the happiness she is to be advanced to is in the possession of an admirable Pleasure and rejoyceth and joyfully passeth towards her Lord shunning as a loathsom Prison this present Life St. Epiphanius the most zealous Maintainer of Prayer for the Dead speaking about the year 375. of the closure of this Life and the consequences of it in relation to the Faithfull 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The time is accomplished the Combat is at an end the Lists are cleared and the Crowns are bestowed Again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All is manifestly accomplished after the departure hence St. Chrysostome between the years 390. and 404. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Those who have carefully spent their Lives in the exercises of Virtue after they shall have been transported out of the present life shall truly be as if they had obtained a dismission after the Combats and as delivered out of Bonds for there is for those who live virtuously a certain transportation from worse things to better and from a temporal to a perpetual and immortal life and such as shall have no end Again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Faithful depart to go with Christ and are with the King face to face Again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After Death is once come then is the Wedding then is the Spouse Again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Be of good courage when thou art cut off by death for it exempts thee not onely from corruption and trouble but it also sends thee immediately to the Lord. And elsewhere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Consider towards whom the departed Person is gone and take comfort thence there Paul is there Peter is there is the whole Quire of the Saints Again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We give thanks unto God that he hath moreover crowned him who is departed hence that he hath exempted him from all troubles that delivering him out of all fear he keeps him near himself St. Augustine giving an account of the common Sentiment of the Churches of Africk about the year 400. Moritur aliquis Dicimus Bonus homo fidelis homo in pace est cum Domino c. Does any one dy We say The Good man The Faithfull man is in Peace with the Lord. Which shews that the Christians of that Time were fully perswaded of what Pope Pelagius the First about one hundred and fifty years after caused to be inserted into the Canon of the Mass viz. that Those who die in Christ sleep in Peace The Questions unjustly attributed to Justine Martyr since the Authour was contemporary with St. Augustine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Souls of the Saints are conveyed to Paradise there is the conversation there the sight of the Angels St. Cyril of Alexandria about the year 420. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. I conceive it ought and that very probably to be held for certain that the Souls of the Saints leaving their earthly Bodies are for the most part committed to the indulgence and Philanthropie of God as resigned into the hands of a most loving Father and not as some Unbelievers suspect that they love to walk among dead men's Graves expecting Sepulchral Libations much less that they go as those of such as have loved sin to a place of unmeasurable Torment that is to Hell They rather run to be received into the hands of the Father of all and our Saviour Jesus Christ who hath also consecrated this way for us for he commended his Soul into the hands of his Father that we also taking Example thence as in it and by it may entertain noble hopes as being in that firm disposition and belief that having undergone the death of the Flesh we may be in the hands of God and in a better condition then when we were in the Flesh Whence it also comes that the wise Paul writes unto us that it is far better to be dissolved and to be with Christ Prosper about the year 450. Post hanc vitam succedit pugnae secura victoria ut Milites Christi laboriosâ jam peregrinatione transactâ regnent felices in patria c. After this life ended certain Victory is consequent to the Combat that the Souldiers of Christ their laborious Pilgrimage being over might reign happily in their Countrey c. Gennadius about the year 490. Exeuntes de corpore ad Christum vadunt c. The Faithful dislodging out of the Body go to Christ Andrew of Caesarea about the year 800. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The voice from Heaven does not beatifie all the Dead but those who die in the Lord those who are mortified to the World and bear in their Bodies the mortification of the Lord Jesus and who suffer with Christ for to those the departure out of the body is truly a releasment from labours To conclude of the same Sentiment was Aretas about the year 930. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Upon the vanishing away of Labours shall be introduced the reward of Works CHAP. XXXV The Sentiment of the Protestants further proved by the Description which the Father 's made of Abraham's Bosom FRom the Harmony of all the precedent Testimonies it may justly be inferred that according to the constant Doctrine of the Christian Church from the year 250. those who die in the Lord are with him and that to them the time which follows this life is a time of joy and marriage which from the moment of their Death brings them into the company of the Saints and Angels in the Paradise of God where they live and are in peace and are crowned and reign with him The same thing may be also deduced from the Description which the Fathers unanimously make of Abraham's Bosom the place assigned by all Christian Antiquity for the entertainment of the Souls of the Faithful after this Life For St. Gregory Nazianzene places it in Heaven saying to his Brother Caesarius who had dyed not long before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Mayst thou go to Heaven c. and rest in the Bosom of Abraham In like manner St. Chrysostome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He named Bosom of Abraham for the Kingdom St. Ambrose tells us that Sinus Patriarcharum recessus quidam est requietis aeternae c. The Bosom of the Patriarchs is a certain retirement of Eternal Rest St. Augustine Sinus Abrahae requies est Beatorum c. The Bosom of Abraham is the rest of the Blessed Again Non utique sinus ille Abrahae id est secreta cujusdam quietis
hinder her from going with a joyfull Heart and certainty of Faith towards the Holy Places into which that truly-divine blood had purchased her the Privilege to enter Nor indeed could St. Augustine who had not when she dislodged out of the Body to be with Christ any just cause of fear conceive nine years after her admittance to the fruition of her happiness any necessity of requiring on her Behalf that God would forgive her Sins that he would not enter into Judgment with her that he would glorify his Mercy above his Judgment and in a word do what was already done And indeed he immediately acknowledges as much ingenuously saying Et credo jam feceris quod te rogo sed voluntaria oris mei approba Domine c. And I believe thou hast already done what I intreat thee to do but yet approve O Lord this Prayer which so willingly I make Thus we see by his own Confession what Office St. Augustine undertook to render his Mother amounting to no more then a demand purely arbitrary of what had been accomplished before and which for that reason was not to be demanded But what moved him after so long time to make such earnest and particular requests for his Mother who had always from her Infancy been an Example of a rare and constant Virtue and who had been enflamed with so great Zeal for Piety that she had gained to the Lord her whole House not to say ought of his Father who had been a man of a turbulent Humour and so little inclined to Godliness that he could not be won to embrace Christianity till towards his last days Not to make any mention of him I say but onely occasionally and by the way with this little Expression which shews that he thought him in Happiness May she be in peace with her Husband was Patricius more assured in the Possession of Peace and did he stand less in need of the Suffrages of his Son then Monica who had ever excelled him in good Endowments and had been the Instrument of his Conversion to God I answer that St. Augustine who hath given such a particular accompt of the different Dispositions of his Parents could not have fallen into so great an Errour as to imagine his Prayers more necessary for his Mother then for his Father who having been less recommendable should seem to stand in greatest need thereof and that he was induced to make particular Addresses for his Mother was not as might be imagined out of any compliance with the general Custom of the Church of his Time which being of equal Obligation towards all would as well have obliged him to speak of his Father as to make mention of his Mother but in obedience to the command which his Mother had expiring lay'd upon him and the desire he had to submit to her last Will whereof he would rather be an Executour then a Censour This desire I say prevailing with him above all other Considerations he not onely thought it a kinde of pleasure to weep for her the night after her Departure but nine years after engaging himself to Write the History thereof and to give an accompt of her last Words Which the more fully to satisfy he gave way to a tenderness so great as if he represented her to himself in some danger that he might accordingly address to God the same Supplications as might be made for those who were still engaged in the Combats of this Life though he confessed withall they had already been accomplished Then calling to minde the last Command he had received from her that was long before dead not questioning whether it were then seasonable to do what he did he conformed himself thereto as before and at last required his Readers to undertake in what time or place soever the execution thereof With a design therefore to give an accompt of his Prayer viz. that the Lord would vouchsafe to accept the voluntary Words or Offerings of his mouth he adds Namque illa imminente die c. For she whom the day of her Death drew near desired not that her Body might be sumptuously adorned or enbalmed with Spices and Odours nor desired she any curious or choice Monument or cared she to be conveyed into her Native Countrey These things she recommended not to us but onely desired to be remembred at thy Altar c. Let nothing separate her from thy Protection Let not the Lion and Dragon either by force or fraud interpose himself between thee and her For she will not answer that she hath no Sin lest she be convinced and overcome by that crafty Accuser but she will answer that her sins are forgiven by him to whom no Creature can repay what he lai'd out for us whilest himself owed nothing Let her therefore rest in peâ—cewith her Husband c. And inspire O Lord my God inspire thy servants my Brethren thy Children my Lords whom with Heart and Tongue and Pen I serve that whosoever reads these Confessions may at thy Altar remember thy servant Monica with Patricius her Husband through whom thou broughtest me into the world though in what sort I know not Let them with a Pious Affection remember those who were my Parents in this transitory life and who were my Brethren in respect of thee who art our common Father in the Catholick Church our Mother and who are to be my Fellow-Citizens in the eternal Jerusalem for which the Pilgrimage of thy People doth groan from their Birth unto her Death that what she made her last desire to me may be more abundantly performed to her through the Prayers of many as well by means of these my Confessions as particular Prayers I have hitherto alledged the Words of St. Augustine which justify in the first Place That the onely Motive which had in the year 398. prevailed with him to make Prayers for his Mother Dead nine years before and from that time according to his own Presuppositions in Happiness was onely the Injunction she had at her Death lai'd upon him to remember her Secondly That these Prayers by his own Confession neither were nor could be of any necessity or benefit to her for whom they were or might be made since she had reason to answer the Accuser That her Debts were discharged and accordingly she had nothing to fear as to the Consequences thereof For who can be separated from the Protection of God but by Sin which alone according to the Saying of the Prophet Esay does properly make a separation between man and his God causing him to hide his face and not to hear that he might protect But can Sin which hath no longer being assoon as it is once expiated and discharged any way prejudice him who hath been once delivered from it Or is any man able to conceive that what is not is or may be cause of any thing since that to be Cause does not onely imply Being but in some manner both Being and
was restored to Christ c. And of Paulina the Wife of Pammachius departed this life in the year 393. Illa Blaesilla cum sorore Paulina dulci somno fruitur tu duarum medius leviùs ad Christum subvolabis c. Blaesilla with her Sister Paulina rests in a quiet sleep thou being between both shalt have a more easie flight to Christ c. Of Paula the Mother of Blaesilla and Paulina departed in Beth-lehem on the twenty eighth of January 404. Fides opera tua Christo te sociant praesens quod postulas facilius impetrabis c. Thy Faith and Works associate thee to Christ being present O Paula thou shalt more easily obtain what thou desirest c. Aspices angustum praecisâ rupe Sepulchrum Hospitium Paulae coelestia regna tenentis c. Seest thou a Rock t' a narrow Coffin hewn 'T is Paula's Mansion who to Heav'n is flown Of Lucinus departed about the year 410. Obsecro te c. I beseech thee Theodorus that thou wouldest bewail thy Lucinius as a Brother yet so as to rejoyce withall that he reigns with Christ c. Confident and Conquerour he looks from on high c. Of Fabiola departed in the year 401. Depositâ tandem sarcinâ levior volavit ad Caelum c. Having lay'd down her burthen she is fled with more ease towards heaven Saint Chrysostome of Berenice and Prosdoce who were drowned during the Persecution 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Moreover these were with the Souldiers of Christ the heavenly Angels Of Pelagia who had cast her self down Headlong 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. She ran not towards the top of a mountain but towards the highest heaven c. The threatning of the Judg c. pressed her to flie with greater haste towards heaven c. She went out of her Chamber out of the Woman's Closet into another Chamber that is to say heaven c. Which is as much as he could have said and what he had said in substance of the greatest Martyrs St. Ignatius of Antioch St. Romanus St. Julian St. Juventinus St. Maximus and others whose Elogies he writ The same St. Chrysostome says also of Philogonius Arch-Bishop of Antioch deceased the twentieth of December about the year 322. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Ascending into heaven he hath no need of the Praises of men since he is gone to a greater and more happy portion c. He is transferred to the Society of Angels c. Of Eustathius who had held the same See and died about the year 359. upon the sixteenth of July 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Transferred to heaven he is gone towards Jesus whom he had desired and almost in the same Terms of Meletius his Ordinary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He is gone towards Jesus whom he had desired St. Augustine of Verecundus who had entertained him and all his Company at his Countrey-House Retribues illi Domine in resurrectione Justorum quia jam ipsam sortem retribuisti ei c. O Lord thou shalt reward him in the Resurrection of the Just because thou hast already cast that Lot upon him And of Nebridius who was come out of Africk into Italy to live with him Nunc ille vivit in sinu Abrahae c. Now he lives in Abraham ' s Bosom whatsoever it be that is understood by that Bosom There my Nobridius lives that dear Friend of mine and thy adopted Son O Lord who had once been a Bond-slave but was after freed There he liveth for what other place can be fit for such a Soul In that place he liveth whereof he was wont to ask me miserable and unexperienced man so many Questions Now he no longer laies his Ear to my Mouth but applies his spiritual mouth to thy Spring and drinks Wisdom after the rate of his greedy Thirst happy to all Eternity Paulinus of Rusina the Wife of Alethius Habes jam in Christo magnum tui pignus c. Thou hast already in Christ a great pledge of thy self an earnest Suffr age thy Wife who prepares as much favour for thee in the Heavenly Places as thou furnishest her with abundance from those upon Earth c. She abounds by the supplies of thy Wealth being clad in a Golden Vesture and cloathed all over with variety viz. precious light c. Paulinus the African of St. Ambrose Ubi corpus Domini accepit c. After be had received the Body of our Lord he gave up the Ghost taking along with him a good provision that his Soul being more refreshed by the strength of that Viand should be now rejoycing in the Society of Angels and Elias whose Life he lived here Sulpicius Severus of St. Martin who died on Sunday November the eleventh 400. Spiritum coelo reddidit c. He resigned his Spirit to Heaven c. There was an holy rejoycing at his Glory c. The Heavenly Company singing Hymns accompanies the Body of the Blessed man to the place of his Enterment c. Martin hath the Acclamations of divine Psalms Martin is honoured with Ecclesiastical Hymns c. Martin is entertained with joy in Abraham ' s Bosom Martin who had been here poor and beggarly enters Rich into Heaven c. And it is to be noted by the way that that Great Man a little before he gave up the Ghost had answered those who would have had him to lie on his side Sinite me Fratres coelum potius respicere quà m terram ut suo jam itinere iturus ad Dominum Spiritus dirigatur Suffer me Brethren rather to look up towards Heaven then down upon the ground that my Spirit which is now taking its journey to God may be directed in its way Palladius writes of St. Chrysostome who dyed November the seventh 407. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Passing hence to Christ c. Ennodius Bishop of Pavia of Epiphanius his Praedecessour deceased January the twenty first 496. Cùm beatissimus cerneret Pontifex c. The blessed Prelate seeing c. that he was ready to fly to the pure brightness of Heaven c. assured of his perfection he added My heart is confirmed in the Lord c. So as that heavenly Soul resounding with Hymns and Songs even at the point of Death returned to her Lord c. He whose departure we bewail upon Earth is in possession of the high places with God c. And of Anthony the Hermit of Valtelina afterwards a Monk in the Monastery of Lerina deceased December the twenty eighth 488. Mundi istius sarcinam deponens c. Laying down the burthen of this World and having overcome the Ambushes laid by the craft of the old Serpent he hath exchanged our day and the light of this present World for that which is perpetual If the Harmony of all these Testimonies which have been produced suffice not to satisfie and perswade the most-prepossessed Spirits that the most eminent and best-informed Antiquity reforming the
refreshing and of the restitution of all things on the contrary I say the Person so wishing considered his Frienâ— as aspiring to the plenary enjoyment of that happy State whereof he expected the absolute accomplishment on the day of the general Resurrection at the end of the World though he were already by way of advance possessed of the Earnest thereof according to the Saying of the Authour of the Book of Wisdom who affirms that Though the righteous be prevented with death yet shall he be in rest where the Latine Version hath it in refrigerio c. in a place of refreshment Which shews that the Interpreter had found in his Copy not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Text hath it but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so that in the Discourses of the Antients the begging of refreshments for their departed Friends could not signifie any other thing then what is expressed in the Liturgy attributed to Saint James in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Do thou cause them to rest there in the Land of the living in thy Kingdom in the Delights of Paradise in the Bosoms of Abraham Isaac and Jacob our Holy Fathers where trouble and sorrow and Lamentation have no place Which indeed is no more then is required in the Liturgy which goes under the name of Saint Mark and more at large in that which is attributed to Saint Clement and those of Saint Basil and Saint Chrysostome all which concur in the demand of the Celestial Beatitude which they design by the several Expressions used in the Scripture to represent it and suppose that God hath communicated it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 even there where the departed Person whose Memory is celebrated hath been already placed And in this sence is it confirmed by Tertullian the most antient of the Latines who speaking of Prayer for the dead does in the fourth Chapter De testimonio animae call eternal Beatitude a refreshment and saith Affirmamus expectare diem judicii proque meritis aut cruciaâ—ui destinari aut refrigerio utrique sempiterno c. We affirm that the Soul expects the day of Judgement and that according to her Works she is destined either to Torment or to Refreshment both which are eternal Which had made so deep an Impression upon some mens spirits that about the year 960. Hildegarius Bishop of Limoges Founder of the Abbey of St. Peter protested that the Motive of his Founding it was Ut pius clementissimus Deus in Die Judicii refrigerium praestare dignetur c. That God out of his compassion and clemency would be pleased to give to his own Soul and those of his Friends refreshment at the day of Judgment Some conceive that the Epitaphs which run thus In pace c. Quiescit in pace c. Depositus in pace c. Dormit in pace c. do not signifie that the Departed Person is in absolute possession of that sovereign Peace which is that of God but simply that he departed in the Peace of the Church For my part I am willing to believe that those who gave order for such Inscriptions intended thereby to comprehend the Peace of the Church remembring that as to be grafted into the Body of the visible Church is naturally an external mark of the Believer's admission into the society of the Saints whose Names are written in Heaven so the participation of her Peace is many times a Pledge of the Peace of God But it is impossible it should be the intention of the Authours of those anâ—ient Epitaphs to speak of the Peace of the Church and to insinuate that the Faithfull departed were not when God called them out of this world excommunicated And that for these reasons First These very Forms are indifferently used upon the Tombs of Martyrs little Children and Persons newly-baptized who every one knows could not have deserved the Censures of the Church but were without dispute passed from the troubles of this life into the rest of Heaven which onely may be denoted by the name of Peace inscribed upon their Monuments Secondly It may be said that neither being possessed of the Peace of the Church is an infallible assurance of the participation of that of God out of which are excluded Hypocrites whom the Church must of necessity entertain in her Communion as not knowing their interiour nor does the privation of the Church's peace necessarily infer the denyal of that of God it being possible that many good people through Errour in matter of Fact may be treated in the society of the Faithfull otherwise then they should as for Example a Meletius whom the Church of Rome never honoured with her Communion though now she acknowledges by the Celebration she annually makes of his Memory that he was most worthy of it and a Person precious in the sight of God Whence it follows that the Faithfull departed should not carry hence with them a truly perswasive Testimony of the Piety in which they ended their dayes if the surviving saying onely They died in Peace thought it enough to attribute to them an advantage many times common to those who have through their own fault been deprived of the Grace of God to their Dying-day Thirdly Because the Antients have by several Forms expressed their Sentiment and declared that when they assigned Peace to their deceased Brethren they specifically limited themselves to the peace of God which onely is able to make them happy Thus not to mention the Inscription of the Tombs of Severus of Badajox and the Inhabitant of Elvas which hath expresly Pacem Domini The peace of the Lord the Epitaph of Junius Bassus cited by Cardinal Baronius says that Neophytus îit ad Deum VIII Calend. Septemb. Eusebio Hypatio Coss c. Being newly-converted to the Faith he went to God on the eighth of the Calends of September Eusebius and Hypatius being Consuls that is to say August the twenty fifth 359. That of Eusebia Copied by Father Sirmond in his Notes upon Sidonius runs thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Here lieth Eusebia who is in peace c. under the eighth Consulship of Honorius and the first of Constantine in the year 409. That of Gaudentia thus Gabina Gaudentia c. perpetuâ quiescit in pace c. Gabina Gaudentia resteth in perpetual peace That of Timothea thus Timothea in pace D. Kal. Nov. Cons D. N. Aviti c. Timothea hath been deposited in the peace of the Lord Nov. 1. Avitus our Lord being Consul in the year 456. That of Marius thus Satis vixit dum vitam pro Christo cum signo consumpsit in pace tandem quievit c. He hath lived long enough since he hath spent his life for Christ with the Sign of Faith and is at length deposed in peace That of Placidus thus Tandem in Caelo quiescit He is at length rested in
art fled That of Pope Boniface the Fifth deceased the 25 th of October 625. Ad magni culmen honoris abit c. He 's gone of honour to th' accomplishment That of Pope Honorius deceased the twelfth of October 638. Aeternae luis Christo dignante perennes Cum Patribus sanctis posside jámque domos Thou who to ' th' holy Sires hast ta'ne thy flight Enjoy through Christ th' eternal Seats of Light That of Pope Benedict II. deceased the seventh of May 685. Percipe salvati praemia celsa gregis c. The high rewards of those are sav'd receive That of Ceadwalla King of the West-Saxons deceased the twentieth of April 689. Indict 2. Mente superna tenet Commutâsse magis sceptrorum Insignia credas Quem regnum Chrsti promeruisse vides c. His spirit in heaven soars Who to Christ's Throne is raised may be said But an exchange of Scepters to have made That of Theodore of Canterbury deceased the 19 th of September 690. Alma novae scandens felix consortia vitae Civibus Angelicis junctus in arce Poli c Advanc'd to a society of Bliss With Angel-Citizens h'in heaven is That of Wilfrid Arch-Bishop of York deceased October the 12 th 709. Gaudens coelestia regna petivit c. Rejoycing he to heav'n's gone That of Bede rsinamed Venerable deceased May 26th being ascension-Ascension-Day which argues his death to have happened in the year 735. Juni septenis viduatus carne Kalendis Angligena Angelicam commeruit Patriam c. May's twenty sixth of flesh uncloathed Bede Mongst Angels went to have a heav'nly meed That of Richard King of England deceased February the 7 th 750. Regnum tenet ipse Polorum c. Of heav'n's Kingdom he 's possess'd That of Fulrad Abbot of St. Denys deceased in the year 784. Credimus idcirco Coelo societur ut illis c. In heav'n we Believe him blest with their society That of Meginarius his Successour Post mortem meliùs vivit in arce Poli c. Death past he lives in heav'n a better life That of Arichis Duke of Beneventum deceased the six and twentieth of August 787. Te pro meritis nunc Paradisus habet c. For thy good Works heaven is thy reward That of Tilpin Arch-Bishop of Rheims deceased the second of September 789. Mortua quando fuit mors sibi vita maner c. When Death is dead Life his Portion is That of Pope Adrian the First deceased the 26th of December 795. Mors janua vitae Sed melioris erat Death was the entrance of a better Life That of Peter Bishop of Pavia deceased about the same time Admistus gaudet caetibus Angelicis c. Retinent te gaudia Coeli c. Rejoycing among Angels he Heav'n's joys thy entertainment are That of Hildegard first Wife of Charle-maign deceased in the year 783. April the thirtieth Pro dignis factis sacra regna tenes Thy worthy acts the sacred Kingdom gain'd That of Fastrada second Wife of the same Prince deceased in the year 794. Modò Coelesti nobilior Thalamo c. A heav'nly bed makes her more Noble That of Count Gerald deceased in the year 799. Sideribus animam dedit He rendred his Soul to heaven That of Hildegard Daughter by his first Wife Tu nimium felix gaudia longa petis c. Thou ever-happy to long Joys dost go That of Charle-maign himself deceased on Saturday the eighth of January 814. Meruit fervida saec'li Aetherei c. Aequora transire placidum conscendere portum c. That of Adelbard Abbot of St. Peter of Corbie deceased the second of January 822. Paradisi jure colonis c. Inhabitant of Pardise That of Ermengard Wife to the Emperour Lotharius deceased the twentieth of March being Good-Friday in the year 852. Linquens regna soli penetravit regna Polorum Cum Christo sanctis gaudia vera tenens c. Leaving Earth's Crowns to those of Heav'n she 's gone With Christ and 's Saints in exultation That of Lewis the Debonnaire who died on Sunday the twentieth of June 840. In pacis metas colligit hunc pietas c. Him Piety brings into the land of Peace That of Dreux Bishop of Mets deceased the eighth of November 857. Spiritus in requie laetus ovat Abrahae c. The joyfull spirit exults in Abra'm's Rest That of the Emperour Lewis the Second deceased the thirteenth of August 875. Gaudet Spiritus in Coelis Corporis extat honos c. The Body's honour is Apparent but the spirit 's in heave'nly bliss That of the Emperour Carolus Calvus deceased the sixth of October 877. Spiritum reddidit ille Deo c. He to God his Spirit return'd That of Ansegisus Arch-Bishop of Sens deceased the twenty fifth of November 883. Spiritus Astra tenet c. Of heav'n his Spirit 's possest That of John Scotus dead the same year Christi conscendere regnum Quo meruit sancti regnat per saecula cuncti c. He to ascend Christ's Kingdom did obtain Where all the Saints eternally do reign That of Pope John the Eighth deceased the fifteenth of December the year before Et nunc coelicolas cernit super Astra Phalanges c. Above the Skies Now he the heav'nly Batallions spyes That of Ermengard Daughter of Lewis King of Germany deceased the three and twentieth of December about the same time Bis denos octo vitae compleverat annos Migrans ad sponsum Virgo beata suum c. Twice eighteen years this Maid had liv'd compleat When happy she went hence her Spouse to meet That of Bruno Arch-Bishop of Cullen deceased the eleventh of October 969. Iam frueris Domino Thou now enjoy'st the Lord. That of Notger Abbot of St. Gal deceased the sixth of April 981. Idibus octonis hic carne solutus Aprilis Coelis invehitur c. Having laid down his fleshy burthen on The sixth of April he to heav'n is gone That of Gonzales cited by Prudentio de Sandoval Bishop of Pampeluna to the year of the Julian Period 1030. or of Christ 992. A qui reposa y en la gloria goza c. Here rests and glorious happiness enjoys That of Donna Sancia Dio fin glorioso a esta vida Par a gozar de la aeterna c. That she might gain eternal life in Bliss She gave a glorious Period unto this That of Sancia Countess of Castile Bis vinctum Comitem è carcere adduxit Coelicas sedes beata quae possidet c. She out of Prison twice her Count reliev'd To heav'nly Seats who happy now 's receiv'd That of Count Fernand of Gonzalva Belliger invictus ductus ad Astra fuit c. To heav'n th' undaunted Souldier was convey'd And Sebastian of Salamanca speaking of Ordonio the First places him in Heaven saying Felix stat in Coelo c. Laetatur cum sanctis Angelis in Coelestibus regnis c. He is happy in heaven
Resurrection the Presupposition whereof does not in â—…e either that the Faithfull depart this Life to go into a place of Torments or that there is any necessity of Bewailing them or Praying for them after their Death the consequence being not good He shall rise up in Glory therefore He is in a place of Pains and must be delivered thence by Prayers Thirdly There is read the thirteenth Verse of the fourteenth Chapter of the Apocalyps where the Spirit of God advertising St. John by a voyce from Heaven that from henceforth those who die in the Lord are blessed and rest from their Labours demolishes the very Foundation as well of Prayer for the Faithfull departed as of Purgatory where it is pretended they suffer the temporal Punishment due to their Sins For if they are Blessed and upon that accompt in possession of what might be desired on their behalf they stand in no further need that any thing should be desired for them And again if they are Blessed and rest from their Labours from henceforth they are from henceforth exempted from Pain it being impossible that to be Blessed and to rest should signifie to be Tormented and on the contrary that to endure the burning of an infernal Fire should be to rest from one's labour and enjoy the Bliss consequent thereto Fourthly There is read from the one and fiftieth Verse of the fifteenth Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians to the fifty seventh inclusively expressing the Assurance which the Apostle gives the Church of her Blessed Resurrection whereby Death shall be swallowed up in Victory and every Believer cloathed with Immortality and every one knows that from this Proposition he shall rise again in Incorruption the Law of Ratiocination will never suffer this Inference to be drawn Therefore he is tormented and stands in need of being prayed for before he rises again Fifthly There is read the fourth Verse of the three and twentieth Psalm and the second third and fourth of the Two and fourtieth which onely represent the State of the Faithfull Person during the course of this Life and not that which is to follow upon his departure hence Sixthly There is read out of the eleventh Chapter of St. John from the one and twentieth Verse to the seven twentieth inclusively where the Son of God calling himself the Resurrection and the Life testifies that he who believes in him shall live and shall never die which to a Person that hath but the least use of Reason will never give any ground to Inferr that he who shall live and shall never die shall for a certain time after the dissolution of his Body be confined to a place of Torment where he shall stand extremely in need of the Prayers of the surviving Seventhly There is read out of the 6th Chapter of St. John the three and fiftieth and four and fiftieth Verses where the Son of God recommending the Eating of his Flesh and the Drinking of his Blood promises him who shall eat and drink thereof that he shall have eternal Life and shall be raised up again at the Last day Eighthly Immediately after there are read the second time as well the same Words as the precedent beginning from the one and fiftieth Verse which hath I know not how made shift to gather this Preface In illo tempore dixit Jesus Discipulis suis turbis Judaeorum c. Then Jesus said to his Disoiples and to the multitude of the Jews upon which I have further to observe that there is not the least necessity of concluding from the Promise made by the Son of God that those who participate of his Flesh and of his Blood should after Death be destined to endure the Punishment of a Subterranean Fire and therein tormented expect to be relieved by the Prayers of their surviving Brethren Ninethly There are read with the same Preface which yet is not to be found in any Part of the Chapter the 21 22 23 and 24th Verses of the fifth Chapter of St. John where our Saviour in as much as he affirms by Virtue of the power of Judging which he received of his Father that he who believes in him hath eternal life and shall not come into Judgment but shall pass or rather as the Greek the Syriaok and the Latine Version recommended by the Councel of Trent have it is passed from Death to Life in as much I say as our Saviour obliges the Believer to be certainly perswaded that he shall not after this Life be liable to any Pains whatsoever for his Sins since they are things absolutely incompatible that being passed from Death he should have eternal Life as the inviolable Promise of his Saviour expresses and that he should be to endure for ever so short a space of time the Torments of Death and Hell as the present Church of Rome supposes that he shall not come into Judgment as the Gospel expresly declares and that he shall come to Judgment to be therein condemned for a time according to what the Church of Rome teaches those of her Communion Tenthly and Lastly With a Preface taken up I know not whence there are read the thirty seventh the thirty eighth the thirty ninth and the fourtieth Verses of the sixth Chapter of St. John where our Saviour promising to raise up at the Last day those who believe in him gives them such comfort by the assurance of their final felicity as might raise them out of all fear that between the Moment of their Death and the day of Judgment they should suffer any Punishment and be sensible of any need they should stand in of the Suffrages of the Living In fine there are read as on the second of November and with the same Preface the twenty fifth the twenty sixth the twenty seventh the twenty eighth and the twenty ninth Verses of the fifth Chapter of Saint John which we have already observed to make nothing to the Business either of Purgatory or Prayer for the Dead On the Contrary from all these Lessons it is necessarily manifest First That the Church of Rome who at the present make use of them as inducements to the Living to take care of the Dead hath not haply any thing more Answerable to her Intentions and makes a silent Confession that her Service for the Departed and the Belief of her Purgatory have not any Foundation in the Word of God are the voluntary Devotions of men intruding into those things which they have not seen and for that Reason branded with the Censure of the Holy Spirit speaking by the mouth of St. Paul 2 Coloss xviii 22 23. Secondly That the Primitive Church who had introduced into her Liturgie the Commemoration of the Faithfull Departed many Ages before any of her children had conceived the least thought of Purgatory which is at this day maintained by Superstition and Interest had no other Design in it then by all these Lessons which Treat of the general
â—ejurrection of the Saints to comfort the Faithfull cast down at the death of their Brethren setting before their eyes so many Certificates of the future Resurrection of him whose Memory they celebrated and inclining every one of them by the Meditation of so many celestial Documents to the expectation of that last deliverance wherein their Lord making them to triumph over Death shall cloath them with incorruption and crown their heads with eternal Glory If then the set Form of the Mass for the Dead cannot afford us any Text of Holy Scripture which may serve either for the confirmation of the Doctrine of Purgatory or the insinuation of the Custom of praving for the dead we are not to promise our selves that the Office of the Dead contained in the Breviary should furnish us with any thing more express In this later we meet with several Lessons out of the Book of â—ob the First taken out of the seventh Chapter from the sixteenth Verse to the end the Second out of the tenth Chapter from the first Verse to the seventh inclusively the Third out of the same Chapter from the eighth Verse to the twelfth the Fourth out of the thirteenth Chapter from the twenty second Verse to the twenty eighth the Fifth out of the fourteenth Chapter from the first Verse to the sixth the Sixth Lesson out of the same Chapter from the thirteenth Verse to the eighteenth the Seventh out of the seventeenth Chapter from the first Verse to the third and from the eleventh to the fifteenth Verse the Eighth out of the nineteenth Chapter from the twentieth Verse to the twenty seventh and the Ninth out of the tenth Chapter from the eighteenth Verse to the two and twentieth We finde there also the seventh and eighth Verses of the seventh Chapter and every where we have certain bewailings of that great Example of Patience groaning under the Scourge of God and forced to Lamentations under the greatness of his Chastisements but who from the cries and complaints of a man alive forcing their way from the Bottom of his Heart through the violence of his Anguish and the Dread he was in of the Judgment of God will conclude either that there is Purgatory or any necessity of Prayer for the dead Must the Expressions used by afflicted Persons reduced to bemoan themselves in this Life serve for a Precedent to the separated Souls which are supposed not simply to pass through but to be melted again after a certain manner in the Fire appointed to purge them Were it granted that some Blessed Soul crushed after its departure out of the Body under the Hand of the great Judge might make to her self some certain Application of the grievances of Job shall the Church of Rome take upon her without falling into the inconvenience of making her self ridiculous to attribute unto it the Lessons she hath extracted out of his Discourses which cannot suit but with the Condition of a man languishing in this World For example what he says in the First My days are vanity c. How long wilt thou not let me alone till I swallow down my spittle c. Now shall I sleep in the dust c. In the Second My Soul is weary of my life c. In the Third Thou hast made me as Clay and wilt thou bring me into dust again Thou hast cloathed me with skin and flesh c. In the Fourth I am to be consumed as a thing that is rotten and as a Garment that is Moth-eaten In the Fifth Man that is born of a woman is of few days In the Sixth If a man die shall he live again In the Seventh My days are extinct the Graves are ready for me In the Eighth My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh hardly am I escaped with the skin of my Teeth And in the Ninth Are not my days few cease then c. These complaints proceed not from a Spirit destitute of Body but may well fall from a diseased Person suffering as well in Body as Spirit who makes accompt to die without any respite and who considers with horrour that his languishing life is as it were swallowed up in a Gulf of misery It is to be considered also that there are some Passages which discover so much disorder that Job being come to himself after he had been reproved not onely by Elihu but by God himself condemned them acknowledging that he spoke what he knew not abhorred himself and repented in dust and ashes For who could endure in the second Lesson the bitter reproaches against God Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress me that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands and shine upon the counsel of the wicked And in the Seventh I have not sinned and my eye is fastened on bitterness To speak sincerely could the Church of Rome who holds as a thing decided by the Scripture and the Fathers that the Souls of the Faithfull are Impeccable from the moment of their departure out of the Bodies they animated without extravagance mold her Devotions on those slips of Discourse which God himself hath charged with Sin She hath therefore made an Extract of these Nine Lessons taken out of the Book of Job not to serve for a Draught of the dolefull state of the Souls which she pretends condemned into her Purgatory but to instruct every one of those whom she exhorts to relieve them with their Suffrages that to be well disposed to render them that office he should view himself in the example of Job religiously imitate his Virtues and Faith and be always carefull to avoid his miscarriages Upon the same accompt hath she inserted into the Office of the Dead abundance of Psalms containing not onely Lessons of Penance as the 6. 32 38 51 102 130 and 143. called upon that occasion the seven Penitential Psalms but also of Prayer as the 5 7 25 42 67 120 123. of Praise as the 65 121 126 127 128 131 132 133 134 135 146 148 149 150. of Thanksgiving as the 23 27 40 63 116 124 129 136. the Canticles of Ezechias and Zacharies of Blessing and Exhortations as the 41 122 125 131. the first verse of the 95th Psalm and the 8th Verse of the 113th For who could ever be perswaded that the Protestations which we make in the presence of God of our mortification and the Prayers whereby we beg his Protection and Favour towards our selves and the Praises whereby we celebrate the glory of his sacred Majesty and the Thanks we give him for the benefits which he daily communicates to us and the Benedictions which we pour out with joy being to publish the welfare as well of the whole State of his Church as of the Members whereof it consists and the Exhortations whereby we encourage them to well doing should rationally be looked on as Suffrages whereby we relieve our departed Brethren
of both Sexes whereever resting in Christ that being freed from all their sins they may rejoyce with thee world without end And this O mercifull God receive this Hoast offered for the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes whereever resting in Christ that delivered by this super-excellent Sacrifice out of the Chains of dreadfull death they may obtain eternal life And this O God whose property it is ever to have mercy and to forgive be favourable unto the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes and pardon all their sins that being loosed from the Chains of Death they may obtain passage into life And this Free O Lord we beseech thee the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes from all the bands of sin that being raised up among thy Saints and Elect they may live again in the glory of the Resurrection And this O Almighty and everlasting God who rulest as well over the living as the dead and shewest mercy unto all those whom thy fore-knowledge seeth will be thine in faith and good works we humbly beseech thee that those for whom we have appointed to pour out our Prayers and whom either this world does still detain in the flesh or the next hath already received uncloathed of the body may through the greatness of thy clemency be made worthy to obtain the forgiveness of all their sins and joy everlasting And this O Almighty and most mercifull God we humbly beseech thee that the Sacraments which we have received may purifie us and grant that this thy Sacrament be not unto us an obligation to punishment but a comfortable intercession for pardon that it be the cleansing of crimes that it be the strength of the fainting that it be a Bulwark against the dangers of the World that it be the remission of all the sins of the faithfull living and dead through Jesus Christ It might seem at the first sight that all these Prayers in general and every one in particular upon this very accompt that they speak of the forgiveness of sins for those who are departed this life do presuppose if not a Purgatory such as the Church of Rome hath imagined and described it some Ages since at least a certain necessity incumbent on the deceased to make satisfaction to the justice of God after their death But we must necessarily infer the contrary For not to take notice that to punish an evil doer is not to purge him if according to the tenour of the Prayers contained in the Mass of the Dead God forgives the sin of the deceased he does not require he should be punished for it if he loose the Chains he suffers him not to be still bound thereby if he exercises towards him his mercy through Jesus Christ he does not execute against him the rigour of his Justice such as it is conceived is felt by the Souls which they pretend are to pass through the fire of Purgatory Whence it follows that the design of those prayers which desire of God the effect of his mercy in the remission of their sins whom he hath called hence never was nor could be to procure their deliverance out of the torment which they are imagined at this day to suffer and whoever would finde the true meaning thereof is to reflect on the perswasions of those who were the first Authours thereof for they held that all those of whom they made a Commemoration were in as much as they were dead in the Lord gathered by him into Abraham's Bosom where they rested in a sleep of peace as it is expresly set down in the Memento So that no man well-informed prayed for them as for wretched Criminals and such as are deprived of the felicity which God hath prepared for his Saints but as for Champions already triumphant and glorious And yet out of a consideration that the perpetuity of the bliss into which every one presupposed them introduced proceeded from the continuation of the mercy according to which God had at first bestowed it and that it comprehended in it self the ratification of the pardon once granted to the deceased in pursuance whereof they were entred into and continued in the possession of celestial peace and joy the surviving thought fit to desire on their behalf mercy and remission of sins not absolutely as if they were still under the weight of God's wrath but upon a certain accompt to wit in as much as it is necessary that even in Heaven the mercy of God should be perpetually communicated to those whom it had already visited incessantly assuring them of the free gift he had made them first of his grace and afterwards of his glory as believing that those who enjoy so great a happiness are nevertheless to expect a more solemn sentence of Remission and Absolution in that great Day whereof we are all obliged both for our selves and on the behalf of our Brethren living upon Earth and reigning in Heaven to desire the blessed coming In this sence indeed the Antients never made any difficulty to desire on the behalf of the Blessed in Heaven the Pardon they had already obtained in as much as they were to obtain it again after a more glorious manner at the Day of Judgment whereto are particularly referred many of their Prayers As for instance that which we have already cited wherein they desire that their Souls freed from all the Bands of sin may be raised up again among the Saints in the Glory of the Resurrection And again thus Non intres c. Enter not into Judgment with tthy servant O Lord for in thy sight shal no man be justified unless thou grantest him the remission of all his sins We beseech therefore that the Sentence of thy Judgment may not lie heavy on him whom the sincere supplication of Christian Faith recommends but grant that he who while he lived was signed with the Sign of the blessed Trinity may by the assistance of thy Grace avoid the Judgment of Vengeance Again Oremus Fratres charissimi c. Let us pray dear Brethren for the spirit of our Brother whom the Lord God hath been pleased to deliver out of the snares of this world whose body is this day put into the Ground that the Lord would out of his goodness vouchsafe to place him in the Bosom of Abraham Isaac and Jacob that when the day of Judgment comes he may be placed among the Saints and Elect raised up again on the right hand And this taken out of the Ceremonial Deus cui omnia vivunt c. O God to whom all things live and to whom our bodies though they die perish not but are changed for the better we humbly beseech thee that thou command that the soul of thy servant N. be carried into the bosom of the Patriarch Abraham by the hands of thy holy Angels to be raised up again the last day of the great Judgment that what imperfections soever it hath through the deceit of the Devil
secretly fearing he should be torn in Pieces by the People and proceeded with so much the more confidence in all this change in as much as the Sicilian Vespers advised by his Father and sung by the tumultuous People on Easter-Day the twenty ninth of March 1282. had set Sicily and Arragon against the Pope and France Besides Philip de Courtenay and Baldwin his Father being come near the End of their unfortunate Lives had no further thoughts of revenge against him that Charles the First King of Sicily dying of Grief the seventh of January 1285. left Charles the Second his Son a Prisoner to the Sicilians and Arragonois who kept him from the two and twentieth of June 1284. to the twenty ninth of October 1288. So as that he had not during that time any means either to help himself or prejudice others and that none that had Relation to the Latines was in any capacity to disturb the East Michael thought to have done much for himself by his submission to and taking from the Church of Rome the Model of his Belief and by his Compliance with her disarming the Princes combined against his Dignity but from that Counsel suggested by the Prudence of this World he reaped onely shame and misfortune as well during his Life as after his Death For both his Ecclesiastical and Secular Subjects conspired together to put the affront upon him frustrate his Intentions and confidently to subvert the Design of his Treaty by a formal Opposition and so unanimous a Rejection of the Expedient which he had taken to settle his Peace that his Cruelty against the most resolute and the setting up of a new Patriarch who took the Catechism of his Belief from the Court prevailed nothing upon spirits so much the more exasperated the more sensible they were of the violence done them Pope Martin the Fourth taking it heinously that he was fallen off in as much as he bore with some of his Subjects who were contrary to his Opinion in the first year of his sitting in the Chair upon the day of the Dedication of Saint Peter's Church falling on the eighteenth of November 1281. pronounced him in Orvieto Excommunicated as a favourer of the Antient Schism and Heresie of the Greeks And after his Death which happened at the beginning of the fourteenth Indiction 1285. near Selybria the publick Aversion was so violent against his Memory that his own Son was forced to leave it exposed to a kinde of Infamy Nicephorus Gregoras having left us his remarkable Accompt of him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The Emperour Andronicus his Son who was present not onely honoured not his Father with the Sepulture ordinarily bestowed on Kings but vouchsafed him not that which was fit for Smiths and Pioners He onely ordered that a small number of men having carried him away in the Night some distance from the Camp should cast a quantity of Earth upon him out of a fear lest the Royal Body might be torn in pieces by the wilde Beasts Thus have we a great Prince for having forced the Consciences of his People reduced to the burial of a Dog and finde the Church of Rome who would have made her advantage of his Despair to spread her Authority into the East become through this kinde of proceeding so odious that the Ostentation of her Power did onely stir up the contradiction of those minds which she was in hope to enslave and animated them in a resolution not to receed in the least from their former Sentiment About 150. years after the Empire of the East falling under the Power of the Turks who had taken away from it on the one side all Natolia except Trebisonda where there was kept up a little Empire apart and on the other such a part of Thrace that Constantinople was as it were blocked up between both Johannes Palaeologus descended from Michael was though much against his Humour forced to call to minde the Advertisement of his Father Manuel who had not left him any other Hope of recovery in the Land then what was to be procured by the Assistances of the Latines Which to obtain contrary to the Advice of Sultan Amurath who knew that in the Concord of the Christians consisted the onely means to oppose his Tyranny he took a resolution in the year 1430. to make his Addresses to the West and after the Example of his Father who had in Person sollicited Italy France England and other Kingdoms sent several Embassies to Martin and Eugenius the Fourth to desire the calling of a Councel to consist of the Prelates of both the Greek and Latine Churches and by means of the Councel to engage the Latine Church in the defence of the Greek We do not finde how far Martin bestirred himself to do any thing in that Cause but God having taken him out of this World the one and twentieth of February 1431. and Eugenius the Fourth being chosen in his stead on the third of March following the Jealousie he took at the Councel which had been appointed to meet at Basil by that of Sienna in the year 1424. and began on Thursday the nineteenth of July 1431. and the high and violent Procedures of it towards the Greeks in Florence ruined the success of what ever he had undertaken He had ever since the twelfth of March appointed Julian Cardinal of St. Angelo to preside at the Councel of Basil eight Moneths after seised with an apprehension that that Assembly would offer to diminish his Power he repealed the Commission of his Legat and under pretence of gratifying the Greeks appointed the eighteenth of December for the Prelates to separate and summoned another Councel at Boulogne la Grass for the year 1433. Now that of Basil thinking the affront indigestible and to be revenged resolving to question him put him into such a fright that he thought himself obliged to grant what it would have to issue out his Bull of the fifteenth of December 1433. to repeal three others contrary thereto given the twenty seventh of July and the thirteenth of September before and to joyn with the Cardinal of St. Angelo four other Legats to wit Nicholas Cardinal of Saint Croix John Arch-Bishop of Tarentum Peter Bishop of Padua and Lewis Abbot of Saint Justina of Padua who were admitted the six and twentieth of April 1434. From the fifteenth of October and the eleventh of November 1433. the Greeks answering to the Summons of the Councel who had Deputed to them Anthony Bishop of Tuy in Galicia and B. Albert de Crespes Master in Theologie had sent on their behalf Demetrius Palaeologus Proto-vestiary Isidore Abbot of St. Demetrius and Johannes Lascaris sirnamed Disypatus to Treat of the Conditions of the Interview of both Parties and the Pope for his Part had towards the end of the same year offered by Christopher Garathon one of his Secretaries to send his Legats into the East to prosecute the affair of the Re-union But when
Antiquity and Reason assisted by both teach so clearly that there can be onely those who are unwilling to learn of them that are not informed thereof Take the draught he gives us of it with his own hand introducing the Priest whose Funeral Obsequies are celebrated making at his death this Discourse strange indeed and more suitable with the Principles of a Pagan without hope then to those of a Christian illuminated by Faith Brethren I am banished from my Brethren I leave all my Friends and go my ways yet I know not whither I am going and am ignorant what condition I shall be in there God onely who calls me knows but make a commemoration of me with the Antients Hallelujah Whither do Souls now go And after what manner do they now converse together in that place I would gladly understand that Secret but there is no body able to declare it to me c. None of those that are there ever returned to life again to give us an accompt in what manner they behave themselves who were sometime our Brethren and Nephews who are gone before us to the Lord c. It is a bad way that I go in and I never went it before and that Region where no body knows me I have not any account or knowledge of It is a horrour to see those who are carried away and he who calls me is worthy to be dreaded he who is Lord of Life and Death and who calls us away when he pleases Hallelujah Removing out of one Region into another we stand in need of some Guids what shall we do where we go in a Region in which we have no acquaintance Of the same strain are the Discourses in the Office of the Soul in Agony for she is made to speak as one in the depth of despair begging assistance of the Blessed Virgin of Angels and of Men and complaining that she is forsaken of all that estranged from the Glory of God she served unclean Devils who holding the Schedules of her sins and crying with vehemence would impudently have her that she is alienated from God and her Brethren that a Cloud of Devils come pouring upon her and that the darkness of her own unclean actions cover her commands her Body to be cast into a Common-Sewer that as she is dragged into the places of dreadful punishments the Dogs may eat her heart declares that she is delivered up to the Devils who carry her away by violence to the bottom of Hell that she knows all have forgotten her that she shall remember God no more since that in Hell there is no memory of the Lord that overwhelmed with darkness she expects the Resurrection that examined by all men she shall be cast into the fire that neither God nor his Angels nor his Saints shall think of her for which reason she calls upon the Virgin Angels and Men Earth nay Hell it self to which she is delivered to be bitterly punished to bewail her Misery What greater Impurity could the rage of a despairing Judas disgorge shall we say there could be any thing of Christianity in the apprehensions of a sinner who without any recourse to the Mercy of God and the Merit and Intercession of his Saviour numbers himself among the damned not vouchsafing to consider the assurances which the Scripture gives all men testifying unto them that Christ is our peace and redemption that his blood cleanseth us from all sin that if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness Further that he is still living to make intercession for us and since he vouchsafes to receive us among his Sheep no man shall pluck us out of his hand and the wicked one shall not touch us When the same Divinely-inspired Scripture hath loudly published that all the righteous that is to say those who walk before God are taken away from the evil to come that being absent from the body they are present with him that even here upon Earth they are of the Houshold of God and fellow-Citizens with the Saints that they ought to go boldly to the Throne of Grace where he himself gives them access by the Spirit of his Son and that the Angels are now ministring Spirits to minister to their Salvation should we ever imagine so brutish a stupidity and so prophane an excoecation in any of those who have any way contributed to the Greek Ritual affirming according to the Scripture that the Christian who dies does by death arrive at the Port goes to the Lord rests is translated from the corruption of life exchanges death for divine life and is at his death in the way to bliss as that he should presume to say that way is bad and that he knows not whether he is going knows no body there nor is known to any Can the way to bliss be a bad way Is he who knows he is going to God in a condition to complain truly that he knows not whether he goes Since he is retiring to his Father and those of the same Houshold with him hath he any cause to say that he knows not any of those to whom he is retiring and that they know not him Being called how can he imagine that he who calls him should be so far mistaken as to take his Childe for a Stranger And since he gives him access to himself by his own Spirit is there any reason it should be supposed not onely that he stands in need of a Guid but that he neither hath nor can finde any What occasion have either the living or the dying to bemoan themselves that not any one returns from the Dead to inform them of the state of the World to come since the Son of God himself gave us this advertisement that it is of greater advantage to us to have Moses and the Prophets that is to say the holy Scriptures then if one rose from the Dead to give us an accompt of their condition It were not haply much besides our Purpose to desire those who entertain us with Stories of dark Prisons for those Souls which they pretend to be of a Middle-condition to tell us whether they hope to revive that ruined Party among the Antients who believing that Angels and separated Souls were clad with a body subject as ours to be incommodated by Darkness discovered that they apprehended not any distinction between immortal Substances and corporeal As also whether allowing them separated from all matter and assigning them for Torment Obscurity and Darkness taken in their Proper and Primitive Signification they think themselves better grounded in Reason then those who are perswaded that material Fire whose activity can onely exercise it self on Bodies is and eternally shall be the Instrument of Torment as well for Devils as impious Souls Turn which side they will they shall not free themselves