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
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-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
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-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
that we are made partakers of their Dignity that they are to be honoured by way of imitation and not adored upon any religious accompt In a word that neither the Blessed Virgin Mother of our Saviour nor any of the Saints of either Sex can pretend to any part of that religious homage Saint Epiphanius one of the most earnest maintainers of Prayer for the Dead hath left to them and the whole Church of these last times these remarkable Precepts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Indeed the Body of Mary was holy but it was not God the Virgin was indeed a Virgin and honoured but she was not given us to be adored on the contrary she adored him who was begotten of her as to the flesh c. If God will not have the Angels to be adored how much rather will he not that she who was born of Ann should be c. God came from Heaven and the Word was clad in flesh taken from the holy Virgin but the Virgin is not adored c. Let Mary be honoured but let the Father Son and Holy Spirit be adored Let no man adore Mary though Mary be excellent and holy and honoured it is not that she should be adored c. Let Mary be honoured but let the Lord be adored But not to press any further this notorious defect which we finde at present in the Service of the Greeks we are to observe that among them the Office of the Dead is full of Prayers whereby is desired as in the Latine Service the mercy of God the remission of the sins of the deceased his absolution his blessed resurrection his introduction into rest into Abraham ' s Bosom into the Mansion of the blessed into refreshment into Paradise into the Tabernacle of God into his Kingdom glory light to the right hand of the great Judge into the Society of the Saints and Angels all which Expressions according to the Hypotheses of Antiquity may be applied to the Spirits already received into glory Which is so much the more evident for that the particular Office which concerns the Obsequies of Children is full of these Prayers that God would number the deceased among the Children to whom he hath promised his Kingdom that he would place him among the just who are acceptable in his sight that he would make him partaker of the good things which are above this World that he would let him enter into the joys of the Saints that in his holy Mountain he would gratifie him with celestial goods that he would write his name in the Book of those who shall be saved that he would make his face to shine upon him that he would lodge him in Abraham ' s Bosom that he would grant him the enjoyment of his Kingdom c. Yet were not these Desires made without a presupposition of his Beatitude as First when it is said to him He who hath taken thee from the Earth and gives thee place among his Saints shew◠that thou O truly blessed Childe art a Citizen of Paradise The Sword of Death falling on thee hath cut thee off as a tender Branch O blessed art thou who hast made no tryal of worldly pleasures but behold Christ opening the Gates of Heaven to thee numbring thee◠out of his great goodness among the Elect◠Secondly When he is brought in making this Discourse Why do you bewail me a Childe translated out of the World for I am not a Subject to be bewailed The joy of all the just is required for those Children who have not done works worthy Tears Thirdly When he acknowledges that Death is a freedom to Children that they are thereby exempted from the miseries of life and that they are gone to rest that they rejoyce in Abraham ' s Bosom in the divine Quires of Blessed Children and assuredly dance because their departure hence was a deliverance from the corruption which loves sin If then the Ritual of the Creeks be full of Prayers for the Children whom they unanimously acknowledge to be among the Blessed what inconvenience can there be to attribute to them that they had the same apprehension for persons of age of whose felicity they no way doubted But though reason should not lead us to think so yet does their formal confession obliges us to believe as much for there is not any deceased person for whom they say not to God Mercifully receive the faithfull person departed who hath holily quitted this life and is O Lord passed towards thee and whose Funeral Solemnities they do not conclude saying to him three several times Our Brother worthy to be ever blessed and always remembred thy memory is eternal To every Monk without any exception they address these words Brother thè way thou art in is that of bliss for that a place of rest is prepared for thee adding to that purpose the sixteenth Verse of the one hundred and sixteenth Psalm Return unto thy rest O my Soul for the Lord hath dealt kindly with thee and a little after He who is taken hence hath passed through the ever-troubled Sea of Life and by Faith is arrived at his Port conduct him O Christ with the Saints into thy tranquillity and ever-living pleasures In like manner to every Priest Thou hast piously signalized thy self in Faith Charity Hope Gentleness Purity of life and in the Sacerdotal dignity and therefore O Brother of eternal memory God who is before all Ages whom thou hast served will himself dispose thy Spirit into a place full of light and pleasure where the just are in rest and will make thee obtain of Christ at the day of Judgment pardon and great mercy And the deceased Person is introduced using these words I am now at rest and have found great favour for that I have been transferred from the corruption of life glory be to thee O Lord c. Thy divine Servant Deified in his Transportation by thy now-enlivening Mystery is come towards thee To every Woman departed Detain not any longer O malicious Hell the Souls of the Elect in the condemnation of the Transgression for all being now made assuredly conformable to Christ instead of Death receive divine life In a word she is made to say the same words as had been attributed to the Priest I am now at rest c. All these Confessions grounded on the Lessons of Scripture which for the most part contain assurances of the Love of God towards those who serve him and promises of their future Beatitude and glorious Resurrection demonstratively prove that the first Compilers of the Greek Office agreeing in what is most substantial with the Protestants believed that whoever dies in the Faith of the Lord does from the moment of his Death enjoy rest and glory in him and with him But for as much as from time to time the purity of belief and worship receiving adulteration among them there rose up a sort of people apt to feign any
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
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
〈◊〉 which is equivocal he supposes the Chronicle of Eusebius and his History were written before his Work of Evangelical Demonstration and as less elaborate were of less Authority For whence does he inferr it Eusebius in the thirteenth Chapter of his sixth Book of his Evangelical Demonstration had used these worrds And if our own enquiry into things that concern our selves is of any account we have seen with our own eyes Sion which was of old so celebrious plowed up with Oxen and subjected to the Romanes And every one knows that Eusebius who lived not far from Sion and was a Native of the Countrey might discourse to that effect with the more certainty by reason of his having had the opportunity to go thousands of times to the Place nay what is more that at this day as in the Time of Adrian who re-edified Jerusalem under the Name of Aelia Sion which in our Saviour's Time was within its Walls and the Fortess thereof is wholly out of the Compass of it and in a manner uninhabited so that the ground thereof is and may be cultivated by the labour of Oxen. But Hentenius imagining that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 could not signifie any thing but his Ecclesiastical History suffered to slip out of his Memory what the Place of the Authour he had in hand should have suggested to him to wit that that very word is there as frequently in other good Writers used to denote an enquiry a survey a visit as when Plutarch in his Book Of the Cessation of Oracles and Theodoret in the second Chapter of the first Book of his Ecclesiastical History make use of it and when Suidas explicates the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nay further though we were apt to understand it otherwise Eusebius himself would not permit it nor yet that we should suppose his Evangelical Demonstration was or was written after or of greater account or more elaborate and correct then his History since that in the third Chapter of the first Book of his History he cites the Demonstration saying Having disposed into Commentaries purposely designed for that end the Extracts of the Prophets concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ and in others demonstratively confirmed the things which have been declared of him and clearly proves that he had written it before and it follows not that if he had writ it afterwards it should be ever the more elaborate for as much as The Life of Constantine whereof contrary to what many at this day think he declares himself the Authour was written after the year 337. long after his Ecclesiastical History yet was never the more elaborate since that what it hath common with the History is alleged in express Terms in several places which shews that Eusebius had not any thing better to entertain us with nor could have expressed himself in better Terms then he had done in his History which he carried on but to the the year 325. The same may be said of his Chronicle which being cited as well in the Evangelical Praeparation as in his Ecclesiastical History must of necessity have been written first For it is so far upon that account from being less correct and elaborate that on the contrary we must necessarily by it correct several Passages which he hath without sufficient recollection thrust into his History which in that regard is the less elaborate Add to this the likelyhood there is that the Chronicle which at present makes mention not onely of the Death of Licinius of the Councel of Nice and the wretched end of Crispus killed in the year 326. was reviewed by him after the setting forth of his History and consequently more elaborate then any other of his Works which Consideration contributes as much or more then any thing hath been said to the conviction of Hentenius of mistake and to the making of his imagination of no account It is therefore manifest by the Testimonies of St. Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus Tertullian Eusebius and St. Hiâ—rome in the places alleged as also by Severus Sulpitius in the second Book of his Sacred History by Paulus Orosius in the tenth Chapter of the seventh Book of his History by Primasius Bishop of Adrumetum in his Commentary upon the Apocalyps by Jornandes in his Book De Regn. success by Isidore of Sevil in his Chronicle and his Book of the Death of the Saints by the Authour of the Preface put before the Treatises of St. Augustine upon St. John by Maximus on Dionysius his tenth Epistle by the Counterfeit Abdias and Prochorus in the Life of St. John by Bede on the Apocalyps and Of the six Ages by Him who wrote Of the Martyrdom of St. Timothy by Ambrose Ansbert upon the Apocalyps by Paul the Deacon in Miscelia by Freculsius of Lizieux Tom. 2. Book 2. Chap. 7 and 8. by the Romane Martyrologies of Bede Usuard Ado Notker c. by Michael Syncellus in Encomio Dionysii by Regino by Arothas Arch-Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia by Simeon Metaphrastes by the Greek Fasti by the Arabian Prolegomena by Hermannus sirnamed Contractus by Lambert of Schaffnabourg by Marianus Scotus by Zonaras by Cedrenus by Nicephorus Callistus in the eleventh Chapter of his first Book and the fourty second Chapter of his second Book by Georgius Paechymerius on â—ionysius his Episiles and by almost all those that have written since the Time of St. John that that great Apostle received the Revelations from God under Domitian near the end of his Reign that he was recalled from Paâ—mos by Nerva and writ his Gospel after his return to Ephesus and ended this Life in the third year of Trajan so that whosoever will have the Obstinacy to maintain the contrary must needs before he pretend to have any credit given himself wholly take away that of all Antiquity Fourty two years after the re-establishment of Saint John at Ephesus and thirty eight years after his Death the Emperour Adrian troubled with a mortal Disease and without Issue did upon the five and twentieth of February in the year 138. adopt Antoninus sirnamed The Debonnaire conditionally that the Adoption should be extended to Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus the Sons of his former adopted Son who died on the first of January in the year 137. and he himself coming to die the 12th of July following immediately thereupon came abroad the Poem attributed to the Sibyls wherein the Authour who towards the end of the 8th Book assigned the utter destruction of Rome to happen in the four hundred ninety eighth year after its Foundation coincident with the year 195. of our Saviour upon this very account that giving two several times a List of the Emperours he reckons after Adrian Antoninus and his two adopted Sons evidently shews that he lived and writ after their Adoption His own words make it manifest After him that is to say Trajan another one with a Silver Head that is to
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
either abolished or so altered that they contain not any thing of what was in them before of greatest consideration And thence it is come to pass that in those who go under the name of St. James St. Peter St. Basil and St. Gregory we meet not with as in the first Prayers to God for the Saints but Prayers to the Saints the fear of making them equal with Jesus Christ being by degrees vanished and experience forcing us to acknowledg that all the imaginations of men as well what are good as what bad pass away but that Jesus Christ alone is and shall be the same eternally as St. Paul to our comfort gives us to observe in the 8th Verse of the 13th Chapter to the Hebrews CHAP. XX. The Motive of Dionysius the pretended Areopagite taken into consideration HE who about the year 490. took upon him the name of St. Denys the Areopagite to gain the greater credit to his Books Of the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies grounds upon one onely consideration the Commemoration of the departed which was made in his time in the Publick Service and declares his sentiment with the ordinary ostentation in these Termes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The recitation of the sacred Rolls which is made after the kissing of the Pax declares the names of those who have lived holily and who are irreturnably gone to the perfection of virtuous life exhorting and leading us to the most blessed and Godlike condition by resemblance of them and pronouncing them as it were living and as Theology expresses it not dead but passed from death to a most divine life But withall observe that they are reposited by sacred Memorials in the Remembrance of the Deity and not according to the manner of men transmitted from the fancy to the memory but to speak suitably to God according to the venerable and irrecoverable knowledg of the God-like deceased which is in God For as the Oracles say he knows those who are his and The death of his Saints is precious in his sight the death of the Saints being named instead of their accomplishment in sanctity Think devoutly upon this viz. that the venerable Signs whereby Christ is signified and participated having been placed upon the divine Altar immediately after follows the Description of the Saints declaring thus much that they are inseparably conjoyned by the supercelestial and sacred union which is between them This Discourse which makes no mention of any thing but the recital of the Names of the Departed denoting the perpetuity of the blessed life they enjoy in consequence of their living conformably to the will of God might stand without the use of any Prayer made on their behalf by the living But in the seventh Chapter he not onely speaks very clearly but expresses his meaning of it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The divine Hierarch or President over things sacred advancing makes the holy Prayer for the Person departed and after the Prayer the same Hierarch kisseth him and afterwards all that are present do the like Now the prayer requires of that Goodness which divinely governs all things that whatsoever sin the departed hath through humane frailty committed might be forgiven him and that he might be placed in Light and in the Region of the Living in the Bosoms of Abraham Isaac and Jacob whence trouble and sorrow and sighing shall flee away Thus does this learned but insincere Authour ground what he says on the sixty of St. Epiphanius's Motives as the most rational of all and hath perswaded thereto all the Modern Greeks And as St. Epiphanius's alledging of several other Considerations argues he writ before the pretended Areopagite ever thought of his Supposition so this latter's copying the words of the Constitutions attributed to St. Clement and above transcribed and not allowing of Prayer for the damned shews that his work is later and of as little authority CHAP. XXI The Motives of Tertullian examined TErtullian before any of these Authours alledged two Motives of praying for the Dead that is to say their refreshment and the hastening or advancement of their Resurrection For this Great man I know not how bewitched by the pretended Sibylline Writing supposed that before the last Judgment the Son of God being descended upon Earth to establish a new Kingdom in Jerusalem and to govern it himself should bring together all his Faithfull and should there fill them with all delights even corporeal for the space of a thousand years And whereas St. John had foretold in his Apocalyps that the Old Serpent being bound for a thousand years there should be a first Resurrection in favour of their Souls who were beheaded for the witness of Jesus he with Justin Martyr Papias St. Irenaeus and all those who have since gone under the name of Millenaries took that Praediction literally and wresting it to a contrary sence imagined that during the thousand years of Christ's Reign which he pretended should be in Jerusalem the most eminent for Sanctity among the Faithfull departed should rise again before the rest of mankind but successively and every one at this appointed time so as that if one took possession of his body in the first of the thousand years another should not have that privilege till a hundred two or three hundred years after and so to the end of that period of ten Ages and that those should have least advantage thereof whose Resurrection should be either delayed till near the end of the thousand years or put off till after it and referred to the last day assigned for the general Resurrection as well of the rest of the Just as the Wicked To induce us to embrace that Opinion St. Irenaeus in the thirty fourth Chapter of his fifth Book making a coherence between the words of St. John in the twentieth Chapter of the Apocalyps and those of the Son of God in the twelfth of St. Luke said Hoc est quod à Domino dictum est c. This is it which is said by our Saviour Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching Verily I say unto you that he shall gird himself and make them to sit down to meat and will still come forth and serve them and if he come in the Evening-Watch and finde them so doing they are blessed because he shall make them sit down and shall serve them nay though it be in the second or the third Watch they are blessed The same thing saith also John in the Apocalyps Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection For comparing the Faithfull departed to the Servants that wait for the return of their Lord he would have those that are raised the first those who next to them and those who after them designed by those who are visited at the first second and third watch And Tertullian having embraced the same Opinion presupposes that the Faithfull might either
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
ballance so many stones and pieces of Timber out of his Churches that the good works of Charles had out-weighed the evil and that notwithstanding he had taken away his Soul from them And lastly towards the declination of the tenth Age to advance the reputation of the Order of Clugni and indeed of all the Religious Orders in general Peter Damiani Cardinal of Ostia and from him Sigebert have left in writing That a Religious man by Country of Rouërgue coming from Jerusalem entertained for some time in Sicily by the kindness of a certain Monk was told by him that in the Neighbour-hood there were certain places casting up flames of fire and called by the Inhabitants the Cauldrons of Vulcan in which the Souls of the departed endured several punishments according to their deserts and that there were in those places certain Devils appointed to see the execution done Of whom he said that he had often heard their voices indignation and terrours as also their lamentations when they complained that the souls were taken out of their hands by the Alms and Prayers of the Faithfull and especially at that time by the devotions of those of Clugni who incessantly prayed for the repose of the deceased That the Abbot Odilo receiving this information from him ordained in the year 998. through all the Monasteries subject to his Order that as the solemnity of All-Saints is observed on the first of November so the next day should be celebrated the memory of all those that rest in Christ which Custom passing to several Churches proved the ground of solemnizing the memory of the faithful departed Hence then came it 1. That Princes and the People moved with compassion for their kindred and friends and conceiving a fear of themselves with Consciences disturbed and racked with amazement multiplied their Donations to Churches and Monasteries even to infinite 2. That in the Instruments of those Donations they began to insert as necessary and essential this President whereof it were hard to produce many Examples more antient pro remedio animae animae parentum c. for the relief of my soul and the souls of my kindred And 3. That whereas Antiquity would hardly have been brought to grant any true and real apparition of souls some endeavoured to perswade people they are so common that they happen every minute To be short they thought they might with some probability introduce into the Church what the Platonick Philosophy had suggested to Virgil who gives us this draught of the state of separated Souls and of what he conceived of Hell Quin supremo cùm lumine vita reliquit Non tamen omne malum miseris nec funditùs omnes Corporeae excedunt pestes penitúsq necesse est Multa diu concreta modis inolescere miris Ergò exercentur poenis veterúmque malorum Supplicia expendunt aliae panduntur inanes Suspensae ad ventos aliis sub gurgite vasto Infectum eluitur scelus aut exuritur igni c. Nor when poor souls they leave this wretched life Do all their evils cease all plagues all strife Contracted in the body many a stain Long time inur'd needs must ev'n then remain For which sharp Torments are to be endur'd That vice invet'rate may at last be cur'd Some empty souls are to the piercing winds Expos'd whilst others in their sev'ral kinds Are plung'd in Icy or sulphureous Lakes c. For according to the Visions of Germanus Bishop of Capua and the Hermite of Sicily it would be insinuated that the Souls might be purged by Baths and subterranean fires and there remained onely to make it absolutely Heathenish Mythologie to feign some exposed to the Winds and hung up in smoak for which the Councel of Florence as it were to excuse Dante and Ariosto hath taken care supplying what the precedent Theologie of the Cloisters to whose advantages all these Relations do ever contribute seemed to have omitted CHAP. XXIX Proofs of the Novelty of the precedent Opinion of Purgatory THe precedent opinion concerning Purgatory came so lately into play that in the year 593. Petrus Diaconus astonished at the novelty of it was in a manner forced to make this question to St. Gregory Quid hoc est quaeso te qùod in his extremis temporibus tam multa de animabus clarescunt quae antè latuerunt ità ut apertis Revelationibus atque ostensionibus venturum saeculum inferre se nobis atque aperire videatur c. What means it I pray thee that in these last times so many things which before were hidden are now become so manifest concerning souls that the world to come seems by clear Revelations and Declarations to bring and discover it self to us And as by what we have heard of Odilo Abbot of Clugny it might be evident that at the expiration of the tenth Age but 400 years after St. Gregory that Religious man by Country of Auvergne extreamly moved at the discourse of I know not what Pilgrim of Rouërgue had the confidence to put the last hand to the draught of Purgatory which the first Antiquity had been ignorant of for five whole Ages so from this very Position that it was not believed from the beginning it follows that it neither is nor can be a Catholick Tenet But this hath appeared also by other means viz. First by the opposition of the Greeks and all the East which was no less constant and earnest then that of Peter De Bruis Henry his Disciple the Waldenses and the Albigenses and at the present all the Protestants in the West Secondly By the falling off of the Latines who have in some measure quitted the Sentiment of St. Gregory and Odilo which was restrained onely to the pain of fire when upon the ninth of June 1439. but some few hours before Joseph Patriarch of the Greeks then dying had signed his last Declaration running in general Terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I confess the Purgatory of Souls they thought good to declare themselves by this indefinite expression 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Souls of a middle condition between the just and sinners are in a place of torments and whether it be fire or darkness or tempest or some other thing we differ not about it Thirdly By the Concordate signed by them on Sunday July the fifth and published the next day under the name of Pope Eugenius in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We decree that if those who have unfeignedly repented them of their sins die in charity towards God before they had by works worthy repentance made satisfaction for their sins as well those of Commission as Omission the Souls of such are after death purged by Purgatory pains Fourthly By the formal disallowance and Protestation of the Greeks immediately after their return against what ever extreme necessity had extorted from those of their Nation at Florence maintained by publick Writings by Mark
〈◊〉 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
does not concern him at all yet he does or endures something he either rejoyceth in Abraham's Bosom or he begs a drop of Water in everlasting Fire Now as according to this Doctrine the two Conditions of eternal misery and Abraham's Bosom and everlasting Fire are immediately opposite so is it necessary that whoever departs this life must immediately enter either into the Joy which is unspeakable and glorious which shall never be taken away from him or into a Misery incapable of Comfort and such as shall never end Secondly It is no less certain from the Testimony of St. Augustine formerly alledged that Abraham's Bosom is the rest of the Blessed where there is no place for Temptation Thirdly It is not possible he should have thought his Mother after her Departure any where but in Abraham's Bosom since he thought it not fit to celebrate her Funeral with Tears that he was of this Opinion that she could not die miserably or rather that she could not die at all that he acknowledged that being quickened and renewed in Christ she had so lived as that the Name of God had been praised both in her Belief and Life that he thought himself obliged to give God Thanks with Joy for her good actions that he numbered her among the Children of God and Inhabitants of the Heavenly Jerusalem who have the privilege to answer the Accuser that their Debts are discharged and who have done works of Mercy and have freely from their hearts forgiven their Debtours All this which cannot any way be contradicted presupposed I ask what Consideration of danger could prevail upon the Spirit of Saint Augustine to make him shed Tears for a Mother whom he thought so dead in Adam as that she rested in the Lord since that if he conceived he ought to say she was dead in Adam in regard of the dissolution of her Body he was withall as much obliged to confess that she was also dead in the Lord in as much as she had ended her Life in the Faith of his Name and that the dissolution of her Body in some manner changing its Nature was become to her an happy passage to the true Life of her Spirit which he acknowledged had been before quickened in Christ and by him discharged of all Sins For what danger can there be for those who dying in the Lord do according to the saying of the Holy Spirit thenceforth rest from their labours Are not the Gifts and Calling of God without repentance And as it is not possible to separate from the love of God those whom he hath loved in Jesus Christ so is it also true that None can pluck them out of his hand nor lay any thing to their charge nor condemn them and consequently that There is no condemnation for tham that They shall not see death and that They are already passed from Death to Life Saint Augustine confesses it and proclaims it saying in the fourty eighth Treatise upon St. John Quid potest Lupus c. What can the Wolf do What can the Thief and Robber do They destroy onely those that are predestinated to Death c. Of those Sheep such as was according to his own description his good Mother St. Monica neither shall they be the prey of the Wolf nor shall the Thief take them away nor the Robber kill any of them he who knows what they cost him is secure as to their Number I most willingly acknowledg that the ensuing Considerations of St. Augustine are most just and well-grounded Non audeo dicere c. I dare not affirm that from the time that thou didst regenerate her by Baptism there issued no word out of her mouth against thy Commandment and it is said by thy Son who is Truth it self that If any one call his Brother Fool he shall be guilty of Hell-fire nay wo be even to those who lead commendable lives if thou examine them without Mercy For since St. John protests of himself and all the Faithfull If we say that we have no sin we deceive our selves and the truth is not in us and we make God a Lyar since the Prophet to whose Oracle St. Augustine expresly refers himself cryes out Enter not into Judgment with thy Servant for in thy sight shall no man living be justified since Job a man according to the judgment of God himself upright and just fearing God and shunning evil since Job I say being come to himself found himself obliged to make this humble Confession I have uttered that I understood not c. wherefore I abhor my self that I spoke in that manner and repent in Dust and Ashes who would be so far out of himself as to deny either of St. Monica or any other of the Blessed Saints that he ever sinned in speaking against the Commandment of God since his Baptism or imagine that his Life in the profession of Christianity hath been so perfect as might stand to the disquisition of a judgment without mercy But allowing all the pious and necessary Considerations made by St. Augustine upon the course of his Mother's Life I am still to seek and cannot finde the reason of the Consequence he would have drawn thence to think himself obliged as one shaken by the fear of some imminent danger to pray for her who by his own confession had obtained a discharge for all her sins and as St. Cyprian said of all the Faithfull delivered out of the Tempests of this world had reached the Haven of eternal safety Nay what sin soever she might be supposed to have committed after her Baptism having seriously repented of it and deplored her condition with a faithfull recourse to the good Ointment of Christ whose Blood as St. John declares cleanseth us from all Sin her Conscience being purged by that precious Blood and fully purified from dead Works is so absolutely discharged in the sight of God as St. Augustine himself expounding the Words of St. John acknowledges saying Magnam securitatem dedit Deus c. God hath given us a great assurance with good reason is it that we celebrate the Pasch since the Blood of our Lord whereby we are cleansed from all sin hath been shed for us let us fear nothing The Devil kept the Writing of Slavery against us but it hath been cancelled by the Blood of Christ c. If through the infirmity of Life sin hath crept unawares upon thee discover it immediately be offended at it immediately condemn it immediately and when thou shalt have condemned it thou wilt come confidently before the Judg there thou hast an Advocate be not afraid to lose the Cause of thy Confession Since then St. Monica expired recommending her Soul to her faithfull Creatour and imploring his Mercy through the eternal Merit of that blessed Blood the pure Oblation whereof had already washed off her Original Sin and consecrated her for ever nothing could
Activity Who is so much liable to the interposition of the Lion and Dragon to endure the open Ravage of his Violences and the secret mischief of his Ambushes as he who like an undischarged Debtour is dragged before the dreadfull Tribunal of God's avenging Justice Can Debts of what nature soever they are be Legally exacted of those who are by the Acquittance of the Creditour absolutely discharged Are they in fine to fear any Unhappiness whose Sins our Lord bore in his own Body upon the Tree and blotted out the Hand-writing that was against them Thirdly That the Church of Rome in whose Communion there is not any one that prays for St. Monica whom the said Church hath taken out of their Rank for whose benefit she designs her Suffrages to raise her into the Sphear of Glorious Spirits whose Intercession she begs however she may make a great stir about the Example of St. Augustine does not onely not satisfy the Intreaty of that Great man any more then the Protestants whom she accuses as desertours of the antient Tradition but conceives it neither just nor rational to satisfy it And as she does not think her self guilty of any breach of Duty in forbearing to pray for St. Monica because she accompts her to be in Bliss and as such not in a capacity to receive the assistance of the Living in their Prayers nor that they should according to the desire of St. Augustine expect inspirations from God such as might incline them to demand things already done and undertake what she conceives neither rational nor feasable so the Protestants who in this particular are the more willing to follow his Sentiment the more consonant they finde it to the Word of God and to Reason cannot whatever the Church of Rome may say to insinuate the contrary be perswaded they err in not-acknowledging any Object of Religious Adoration however it may be conceived other then God alone Father Son and Holy Ghost blessed for ever according as the Church of Rome her self expresses it in the first of her Commandments One onely God shalt thou adore nor any Advocate properly so called other then him who is proposed to all Christians by St. John as a propitiation for the sins of all the World For as they have learn'd of St. Paul that there is one Mediatour between God and men the Man Christ Jesus who gave himself a ransom for all whence Avitus Arch-Bishop of Vienna inferred That if our Saviour was not according to his Humane Nature taken into the Unity of Person Father's Hand-writing against us They religiously stand to the Protestation made by the Primitive Christians concerning their Martyrs viz. We adore him who is the Son of God but we love according as it is required of us the Martyrs as Disciples and Imitatours of our Lord and Saviour and to that of St. Augustine We honour the Martyrs by a Worship of Dilection and Society by which the Holy men of God are in this life also honoured Whence they conclude That according to the common Sentiment of the purest part of Antiquity there cannot be done to the Citizens of the Jerusalem that is on high any Honour but what may be called a civil Honour or of Society Whether they are actually received into that blessed Habitation or are in their way thereto that they have been and ever shall be entertained there immediately upon their departure out of this World and that the honourable Solemnities which accompany their Bodies when they are deposited in the Earth never had any Ceremony which served not to demonstrate the assurance and joy which the surviving had conceived of their happy Condition CHAP. XXXVIII The Sentiment of the Protestants confirmed by the Eloges antiently bestowed on the Faithfull departed THe same thing may be said of the Eloges wherewith the worthy Persons of Antiquity have honoured the Memory of those for whom the Custom would have Prayers made Eusebius speaking of the Death of Helene who died on the eighteenth of August about the year 330. saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. She was called to a better Lot c. So that those who had a right Sentiment justly conceived that that thrice-happy Lady should not die but to say the Truth expect the Exchange and Translation of a Terrestrial life into a Celestial Her Soul therefore returned to the Principle thereof being received into an incorruptible and Angelical Essence near her Saviour And of Constantine who preparing himself for Death protested of himself that he was making haste and that he would no longer delay his departure towards his God he affirms that on Sunday May 22.th 337. being Whit sunday 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. He was gathered to God leaving to Mortals what was of the same Nature with them and as for himself uniting to God whatever his Soul had that was Intellectual and beloved of God Then representing the common Belief of all the Subjects of the Empire concerning his Beatitude he adds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Having framed a figure of Heaven in a draught in colours they painted him above the Celestial Vaults resting in an heavenly Mansion c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. They graved his Effigies upon Medals having on one side the Pourtraiture of the Blessed Emperour with his â—…ead veiled and on the Reverse the same mounted on a Chariot drawn by four Horses as if he drove it raised into the Seat by an hand reached forth to him from heaven on the right side which Description might as well relate to the carrying up of Elias rather then to the Apotheoses of the Heathens which Constantine upon his embracing of Christian Religion had absolutely renounced Saint Athanasius who observes that St. Anthony had seen the Monk Ammonius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 raised from the Earth and the great joy of those that came to meet him affirms that on the seventeenth of January 358. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As having seen friends coming towards him and filled with joy because of them he fainted The same St. Athanasius making a Relation of the wicked attempt of Magnentius upon the Life of Constans who was murthered on the eighteenth of January 350. and numbring that Prince among the Martyrs hath these remarkable Words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That to the Blessed Man proved the occasion of his Martyrdom St. Gregory Nazianzene represents in Celestial Glory Constantius who after he had through misapprehension persecuted the Orthodox died on the third of November 361. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. I know that he is above our Reprehension having obtained a place with God and possession of the Inheritance of the Glory which is there and transported to such a distance from us as the Translation from one Kingdom to another amounts unto The same St. Gregory saies of his Brother Caesarius who died on the 25.th of February about the year
369. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. He receives the Rewards of his new-created Soul which the Spirit had reformed by Water And of his Sister Gorgonia who died not long after viz. on the ninth of December 372. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The things which are now present to thee are much more precious then those which are seen The noise of those which make a Feast the Quires of the Angels the Order of Heaven the contemplation of Glory and more then all this the Irradiation of the Trinity which is above all things and of all things the most pure and most perfect And â—f St. Athanasius who died May the second 371. That thou wouldest he pleased to look on us from on high Of Gregory his Father who died the year following 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Make known unto us in what place of Glory thou art and the light which encompasseth thee Of his dear Friend St. Basil who died January the first 378. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He is now in Heaven St. Gregory Nyssenus of St. Ephraim who died on the 28th of the same Moneth of January 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. He expired in the quiet Haven of the Eternal Kingdom and is kindly received into it But where otherwise may it be conjectured that his Soul hath been deposited if not as indeed it is manifest in the Celestial Tabernacles where are the Batallions of Angels a Populace of Patriarchs Quires of Prophets the Thrones of the Apostles the Joy of the Martyrs the Exultation of Saints the Splendour of the Doctours the Assembly of the First-born the perfect Noise of those that are a Feasting To those good things in which the Angels desire to rest themselves that they may see them into that sacred place the most blessed in all kinds and most holy soul of our Blessed and worthy-to-be-celebrated Father is passed Of the great Meletius Arch-Bishop of Antioch who died on the twelfth of February 381. before he could have enjoyed the Communion of Rome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. No longer as through a Glass and obscurely but face to face he prays to God Of Pulcheria Daughter to the Emperour THEODOSIUS 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 She was transferred from one Kingdom to another Of Flavilla first Wife to the same Prince who died in the year 385. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Her conversation is in the Royal Palaces of Heaven St. Ambrose of his Brother Satyrus who dyed September the seventeenth 383. De istius Beatitudine dubitare nequaquam debemus c. We ought not to doubt of his Beatitude Of the Emperour VALENTINIAN the Second two Moneths after his Assà ssination which happened on Saturday Whitsun-Eve May the fifteenth 382. before that Prince had received Baptism Ille etiam talis ut ei nihil timeatis c. He is now in such a condition that you need not fear what may happen to him as before c. I ask whether there be any Sentiment after death or not If there be he lives or rather because he lives he is already in possession of Eternal Life c. That he was so soon snatched from us we are to grieve that he is passed into a better Estate it should be our comfort c. Thou lookest on us Holy Soul from an high place as casting thy sight on things that are below c. Now borrowing light from the Sun of Righteousness thou enjoyest a clear day c. His going hence was most noble as a Flight into Heaven c. What thou hast sown upon Earth reap it there c. The stain of Sin being done off he whom his Faith washed his Prayer consecrated is gone up cleansed into Heaven c. joyned with his Brother Gratian he enjoyes the pleasures of eternal Life c. Of the Emperour THEODOSIUS who dyed January the seventeenth 395. Regnum non deposuit sed mutavit c. He hath not layd by but exchanged the Royal Dignity being admitted by the Prerogative of Piety into the Tabernacles of Christ into that Jerusalem which is above where being now placed he saith As we have heard so have we seen in the City of the LORD of Hosts c. Having gone through a doubtfull combat Theodosius of famous Memory does now enjoy perpetual Light and a Tranquility of long continuance and hath the self-satisfaction of what he did in his â—…ly in the Fruits of divine remuneration c. He hath deserved admittance into the Society of the Saints c. His abode is in light c. He is over-joyed to be in the Assemblies of the Saints c. There he now embraces Gratian c. Who enjoyes the rest of his Soul c. Being pious he hath passed from the obscurity of this World to eternal Light c. Now does he know that he reigns since that he is in the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus and considers his Temple c. Constantinople thou art evidently happy who receivest a Guest of Paradise and shalt entertain in the narrow Inn of a Sepulchre an Inhabitant of that City which is on high c. And of Ascholius Arch-Bishop of Thessalonica who dyed about the year 385. Est Superorum incola possessor civitatis aeternae illius Hierusalem quae in caelo est videt illis facie ad faciem c. He is an Inhabitant of the places which are above a Possessour of the Eternal City of that Jerusalem which is in Heaven there he sees face to face St. Hierome of Blaesilla who died in the year 382. Postquam sarcinâ carnis abjectâ c. Having layd down its burthen of Flesh the Soul is fled back to her Authour after a long Pilgrimage she is ascended into her antient possession c. Me-thought then when her Coffin was making ready she cryed from Heaven I know not those Garments that Covering is not mine c. Blaesilla now followeth Jesus she is now in the society of the holy Angels c. She is passed from Darkness to Light c. She lives with Christ in the Heavens c. Of Lea who died March the two and twentieth 384. Universorum gaudiis prosequenda c. She is to be attended with the joy of all who having trod Satan under foot hath received the Crown of Security c. For a short trouble she now enjoyes eternal Beatitude she is received into the Quires of Angels she is cherished in the Bosom of Abraham c. she follows Christ and saith All the things which we have heard of the same we have also seen in the City of our God c. Of Nepotianus a Priest of Altinum who died in the year 397. Scimus Nepotianum nostrum esse cum Christo Sanctorum mixtum Choris c. Corpus terra suscepit anima Christo reddita est c. We know that our Friend Nepotianus is with Christ and among the Quires of the Saints c. The Earth received his Body his Soul
enquiry into the Motives which might have induced the Authours of those Epitaphs to insert into them Prayers for their departed Friends and to place their Tombs near those of the Martyrs who had sealed with their Blood the Truth of Christianity The most antient Epitaph we finde containing a mixture of Wishes and Prayers is that which St. Gregory Nazianzene writ in Honour of St. Basil deceased the twelfth of January in the year 378. where we read these Words concerning that Great Prelate gathered to his Fathers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God give him Happiness as if he had not been in the actual possession thereof and as if St. Gregory had not expresly required of him before that he would appear for the World and offer gifts to God and that in consequence of his being in Heaven as he had desired Again That he had quitted his Episcopal See as Christ would have it that he might become one among the Inhabitants of Heaven It seems then he believed him in Heaven and possessed of the Glory and Happiness of Heaven as soon as he had at his departure out of this World quitted his Episcopal See and yet he desires that God would give him Happiness meaning that he would confirm and improve the gift he had already made him which hath nothing common with the Hypotheses maintained at this day by the Church of Rome In the year 395. deceased the Prefect PROBUS and his Epitaph which loudly published that he was in the Plains of Heaven seated among the Saints possessed of perpetual Rest that he lived crowned with bliss in the Everlasting Mansions of Paradise concludes with this Prayer Hunc tu Christe Choris jungas Coelestibus oro Te canat placidum jugiter aspiciat Quique tuo semper dilectus pendet ab ore Auxilium soboli conjugióque ferat Joyn'd with Celestial Quires O Christ may he Thy praises sing thy constant favour see Whō ever-lov'd did ev'r on thee depend May he to 's Race and Widow some help lend Shall we say he was in Heaven and yet not joyned with the Celestical Quires That he was in any danger to see his Saviour incensed and that he could be possessed of Paradise without Happiness If not it must needs be that the Authour of his Epitaph prayed that he might enjoy it without any diminution and be eternally in the Favour and Peace of his Saviour in the Society of the rest of the Blessed Saints which hath nothing common with what is now desired by the Church of Rome We have such another Desire made in the Epitaph of Pope BENEDICT Hic Benedictus adest meritò sub rupe Sepulchri Quem tenet Angelicus Chorus in arce Poli Aurea saec'la cui pateant sine fine per aevum Sorte beatificâ scandat ut aetheria c. Here Benedict justly beneath this Stone Is plac'd whom Angels in the Heav'ns enthrone To whom be golden Ages without end That he the Skies may ever-bless'd ascend For who sees not that he who is enthroned by Angels in Heaven must of necessity be there and stood not in need of ascending thither nor that any golden Ages should be desired for him But in as much as he was to ascend thither in his Body after the general Resurrection the Authour of the Epitaph makes a Wish to that purpose and requires that the Happiness which he was then possessed of as to his Spirit might be ever continued to him that he might be eternally filled with Joy as well in body as soul thereby discovering that he reflected not in the least on the Purgatery held by the Church of Rome which none of her Followers ever yet placed in Heaven or any way thought on the delay of Benedict's Felicity whom he esteemed already received into the Society of the Angels The same accompt is to be given of the Epitaph of Marinian Arch-Bishop of Ravenna deceased in the year 601. where we finde these words Ipsius in locis sit tibi certa quies c. Mayst thou with God assured rest obtain As also of that of Venerable Bede deceased in the year 735. Dona Christe animam in Coelis gaudere per aevum c. Dáque illum Sophiae inebriari fonte Christ grant his soul in heav'n eternal joy c. And him inebriate with Wisdom's spring For it does not thence follow either that he was at the hour of his death deprived of the Joy of Heaven or that Wisdom had not filled him with the Effects of her Virtue or lastly that those who are once entred into the Joy of Heaven could ever forfeit it or be deprived of the communication of eternal Wisdom but that the Surviving thought they might rationally demand for their deceased Friends the perpetuity of their Happiness though they certainly knew it could never be taken from them That of Pope ADRIAN the First writ either by Charle-maign or in his Name by Alcuin notwithstanding he had presupposed that his Death was the entrance of a better Life yet forbore not to make these Wishes for him Cum Christo teneas regna beata Poli c. Quique legis Versus devoto pectore supplex Amborum mitis dic miserere Deus Haec tua nunc requies teneat charissime membra Cum sanctis Anima gaudeat alma Dei Ultima quippe tuas donec Tuba clamet in aures Principe cum Petro Surge videre Deum Auditurus eris vocem scio Judicis almam Intra nunc Domini gaudia magna tui Tum memor esto tui Nati c. Mayst thou with Christ a blessed Seat obtain c. Who humbly readst this Verse with pious heart May God his mercy say to both impart May here the precious body finde it's Rest May the fair soul rejoyce among the blest Since when the latest Trump shall summon thee God and the great Saint Peter for to see I know thou 'lt hear the Judge's gentle voyce Of thy Lord enter into the great Joys Remember then thy Son Now as the demand he made for Adrian that he might obtain a blessed seat with Christ in Heaven did not signify that he was not yet admitted into the Possession of that better Life whereof his death was the entrance so the Invitation to implore for him the Mercy of God was no argument that he had not obtained it since that even then he exhorted his Soul to rejoyce with the Saints of God and shewed that he thought it not tormented in a Fire such as were likely to deprive it of all Joy but that it was in Bliss reigning in the Company of the Saints of the Apostle St. Peter and our Saviour a felicity whereto nothing could be added by desire but the perpetuity of it which yet is so much the more certain in as much as it is grounded on the unchangeable counsel of God whose Gifts and Calling are without repentance That of Charle-maign of whom the Authour viz. Agobard Arch-Bishop of Lions said That he
most Antient and the Exercise of the same Prayers as they had made use of For though they make mention of the Last day's Fire and are absolutely silent concerning Purgatory yet do not those in the Western-Church who pray for the Dead hardly fasten their thought on any thing but their deliverance out of the pretended place of Pain and their disposal into rest and I am to learn whether there be any who think of the Resurrection to which alone relate even to this day both the Texts and Prayers usually read in the Office of the Dead Besides it be thought shamefull to pray as in the Times of St. Chrysostome Prudentius and St. Augustine for the Damned not out of any hope to attain their absolute deliverance but onely some alleviation of the Paiâ—s they suffer in Hell And the Legends of Faâ—tonilla and Trajan rescued out of eternal Damnation by the Prayers of St. Thecla and Gregory the Great are somewhat offensive to the Learned even of the Roman Communion who are not a little troubled to excuse John Damascene as to that particular To be short not one of the Doctours before the year 590. proposed to himself any such thing as either the confinement of the Dead in Purgatory or Prayer for their deliverance out of it CHAP. XLIII The Obscurity and Uncertainty of the Opinion of Purgatory GREGORY the Great the first of all those of whom we have remaining among us any Monuments to this purpose having in the year 593. begun to fasten together in his Dialogues and Sermons the Discourses he had heard and which he recommends to us with this notable Observation that they were Novelties not heard of before since he brings in Peter his Deacon putting this Question to him Quid hoc est quaeso te quod in his extremis temporibus tammulta de animabus clarescunt quae antè latuerunt c. What means it I beseech you that in these Last Times there are discovered concerning souls so many things which were hidden before The Leaven so spread it self since that in the Time of Beda viz. one hundred and twenty years after St. Gregory some numbred cold and temperate Purgatories as well as hot ones which was further heightned by Visions and Prodigious Relations as if the confidence of Feigning should as it grew Elder grow also stronger But though there were no other reason to quarrel at this Opinion then the Novelty of it as such as had not appeared in the West before the end of the sixth Age and could never obtain Naturalization in the East and South where it is yet unknown to the Vulgar and discarded by the Learned and the irresolution wherewith its Principal and first Promoter Pope Gregory spoke whether of the place of Hell or the activity of Infernal Fire upon the Spirits which according to his Imagination are tormented therein yet they clearly justifie that he Treated not the Question of the State of the dead but as it were by conjecture and upon the Imaginations of Persons so apt to be mis-informed as that there needed onely some common Report and the affirmation of a confident Dreamer to perswade them to any thing I know well enough that Cardinal Bellarmine to derive the Business somewhat higher cites St. Augustine who being in some difficulty about the Explication of those Words of Saint Paul He shall be saved yet so as by Fire had about the year 410. made use of these Words which manifestly discover how far he was unresolved in the Case Sive in hac vita tantùm ista homines patiuntur sive etiam post hanc vitam talia quaedam Judicia subsequuntur non abhorret quantum arbitror à ratione veritatis iste intellectus hujus Sententiae veruntamen etiamsi est alius qui mihi non occurrit eligendus non cogimur dicere injustis c. Salvi eritis c. Whether it be in this Life onely that men suffer such things that is to say dolefull Regrets for the things of this World which they have carnally loved or that after this Life some such Judgments follow this way of understanding the place of the Apostle is not in my Judgment repugnant to the reason of Truth yet if we must pitch upon another sense which is not obvious to me we are not forced to say to the unjust c. You shall be saved Continuing still in the same posture about the year 419. he writ to his Friend Laurence Tale aliquid c. That some such thing may happen even after this Life is not incredible and whether it be really so may be questioned and it may be either found true or remain concealed to wit whether some of the Faithfull according as they have more or less loved perishable Goods may be sooner or later saved through a Purgatory Fire And note that having not any thing more certain to answer he kept to the same Terms in resolving the first Question proposed to him by Dulcitius Nay in the year 424. which was the seventh before his death publishing his Books Of the City of God he harped on the same Doctrine saying Post istius sanè corporis mortem c. But as for the time between the bodily death and Last Judgment if any one say that the Spirits of the Dead are all that while tried in such a Fire as they do not any way feel who were not subject to the same Inclinations and Affections in this Life that their Wood Straw and Stubble might be consumed but that others who carry hence such Buildings do onely here or both here and there or here so as not there pass through the purging Fire of a Transitory Tribulation which burns the things of this World though Venial in respect of Damnation I reprove him not for that it is possible he is in the right But the Proceeding of the present Church of Rome who triumphs so much upon these Passages whereby she pretends to draw St. Augustine to her side is so much the more unjust towards him the more she presumes on the Testimony of a Witness who does not onely not say any thing as to what she would have him but absolutely destroys it in as much as he speaks of a Fire which some feel even in this Life and others after it Whence it follows that his Imagination reached no further then a Metaphorical and Intentional Fire which may be felt even during the Life of this Body whereas the Romane Church supposes a real and material one which burns not the living but torments the spirits of the Departed Secondly That he is not confident of his having found out the true sense of St. Paul's Words but ingenuously confesses that they may be understood in some other to him absolutely unknown Thirdly That treading as it were upon Thorns he is not over-ready to give us any thing for certain but entertains us with a simple Conjecture which might be brought to Question
a good Conscience which in the Business of Religion cannot advance any thing either false or superfluous much less ought that is repugnant to what it hath undertaken to prove CHAP. XLVI Of the Reasons which might have moved the Antients to Interr their departed Friends in the Churches consecrated to the Memory of the Saints ALl this thus presupposed as it may well be in as much as the necessary result from it is that that Part of Antiquity which prayed for the dead had not any thought of either the Purgatory where the Church of Rome teaches that they burn or their deliverance out of that grievous Pain but intended onely to desire of God that he would be pleased to pardon their Sins at the day of his Son 's Last coming deliver them from the general Conflagration of the World and give their Bodies a glorious Resurrection it remains to discover what may have been their intention who have ordered their Friends to be Buried near the Martyrs or at least in the places and Edifices dedicated since the peace of the Church to their Memory To proceed in a more certain order and take things at their proper Sources I observe First That the Christians no more then the Jews had not at the beginning any common Cemiteries or Church-yards but that every one made choice of such place for his Sepulchre as he thought fit and that it was thus the most antient Monuments yet remaining among us give sufficient Testimony Secondly That according to the Politicks of the Jews and Romans Sepulchres were not within Cities but onely near and about them Thirdly That as among the Jews and Heathens there were certain particular Places of Sepulture for those of the same Family so the resentments of Christian Fraternity whereby all the Saints make up the Family of God and are Members one of another prevailed so far upon the Spirits of the Faithfull that they begat in them as far as the Extremities of those Times permitted a desire that their Bodies might be deposited near those of their Brethren who had before fought the good Fight of Faith and held fast the confidence and the rejoycing of the hope firm unto the end Fourthly That the Church during the rigour of the Persecutions having been forced to Assemble to serve God before day and to seek the safety of her Children in the silence of the Night and the Solitudes of Cemiteries Places not onely of no great shew but such as were if the Scituation permitted it for the most part under Ground as the Catatumbs about Rome and could not upon that accompt give any Jealousie to the Pagans the Faithfull who were there daily animated to Constancy by the Instruction of their Pastours and the sight of the Tombs which they considered as so many Trophies of their Brethren seeing the Mystical Table purposely placed towards that part where their bodies rested as it were to make unto them a literal Application of the Words of St. John who affirms that he saw under the Altar the Souls of them that were slain for the Word of God and for the Testimony which they held derived from all these Considerations that noble desire of remaining conjoyned with the Saints of God in Life and Death and when the time should come depose their own Bodies as it were into the Bosom of those Friends whose Examples they had followed in all the course of their Lives Fifthy That after the Conquest of Paganism under the Reign of Constantine the Great Constantius his Son who at the time he was most violent against the Orthodox bethought him of making the first Transportations of Saints bodies in as much as upon the first of June 356. he transferred to Constantinople the body of St. Timothy which he had taken out of Ephesus and the third of March following caused to be brought from Patras the bodies of St. Andrew and St. Luke Constantius I say raised in all those that came after him such a desire to attempt the like Translations that there can hardly be named any one of the antient Martyrs and Confessours whose body hath not been digged out of the Earth and torn in Pieces to be distributed into many several places In imitation of Princes private Persons began to exercise that Piece of Will-worship those who wanted Authority to countenance their Actions taking the liberty to make use of Violence and commit Robberies not to speak of the Adulterations and Impostures which in less then thirty years were come to that Excess that on the six and twentieth of February 386. it was thought necessary to repress it by an Express Law to this Effect Humanum corpus nemo ad alterum locum transferat nemo Martyrem distrahat nemo mercetur c. Let no man translate any man's body from one place to another let no man sell no man set to a Price any Martyr But since that time the Disease growing too violent for the Remedy what had been accompted an Execrable attempt became an Act of Religion and there wanted not an Emulation among those that practised it who should be most criminal and whereas at the beginning People thought it enough to consider the Monuments of Martyrs and Confessours onely as the glorious marks of their Christian Profession with such a respect as admitted not the violation of their bodies they came in time to exercise that rudeness upon them as is done on a Prey exposed to the covetousness of the first that lays hands on it every one endeavoured to keep his share their very bones were cut to Pieces and instead of honouring their Memory and celebrating their Virtues by a pious imitation thereof they turned their Veneration towards the Repositories into which they were disposed If on the one side Antiquity reduced to those Extremities as to keep its Assemblies in Cemeteries thought it a glory to place the Eucharistical Table under their Tombs to teach every one of her children that they belonged both living and dead to that Great Saviour who hath commanded us to shew forth his death till his coming again Posterity on the other which had the opportunity to build as many Temples as they pleased and where they pleased hath suffered their Liberty to degenerate into Superstition imagining that no Altar was to be erected but it must be made a Repository of Reliques and the disorder as it were by an universal Deluge spread it self so suddenly over all that the General Councel of all Africa Assembled at Carthage on the thirteenth of September 401. was forced to make Provision against it by this remarkable Decree Placuit ut Altaria quae passim c. It hath been thought fit that the Altars which are erected up and down the Fields and High-ways as Memorials of the Martyrs wherein there are not any Body or Reliques of the Martyrs interred be if possible demolished by the Bishops under whose Jurisdictions those Places are But if by reason
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
and afford them our assistance to deliver them out of the pretended Purgatory And yet these are in a mâ—â—ner all the materials which have been shuffled into the composure of all that piece of Worship which goes under the name of The Office of the Dead though they have not any relation to their state and do no more induce a necessity of praying for them or believing a Purgatory that should purifie them as is pretended then they do that of making boast of our own praises a vanity even though we were tempted thereto Christian moderation would not suffer us to be guilty of Nor can it be said with any more reason that the words of the Psalms which are recited in the said Office are to be considered as Prosopopoeias whereby the Faithfull deceased are represented speaking of their condition after death I. In as much as the whole Contexture of every Psalm requires that the words of it be applyed to those who live in the flesh so as that it were a manifest abuse to wrest them to any other sence II. For that it was never allowed any one to cast into the divine Worship Fictions whereby men of quick Imaginations might presume to become the mouths of their Brethren departed not having to that end either order from them or calling from God And lastly for that though it were left to any man's discretion to make after his own fancy representations of those whom God hath called to himself yet should not any one take the liberty to do it e're he were well informed and satisfied whether they might pass for true and certain especially seeing that when they should be urged out of a design to infer thence the necessity of praying for them they would prove so much the more unmaintainable for as much as in the same Office where it is pretended they are employed to that end there are those Texts alledged which absolutely destroy the use thereof For instance that of the 14th Chapter of the Apocalyps Verse 13. where the holy Spirit declares Blessed are those that die in the Lord for what rational inducement is there either to desire bliss absolutely for those who are already possessed thereof or the cessation of torments for those who do not onely not suffer any but are not subject to suffer any in as much as from henceforth they are blessed and in rest That of the sixth Chapter of St. John and the thirty seventh Verse where the Son of God attests that he will in no wise cast out him that cometh to him and that of the eleventh Chapter and the five and twentieth and six and twentieth Verses where calling himself the Resurrection and the Life he promises life and exemption from eternal death to whosoever believes in him For if he does not cast out any of the Faithfull if on the contrary he saves them all from death and puts them into possession of life the surviving believers who to express their belief of his words insert them into their publick Form of Service do thereby confess that they are obliged to give him thanks for them and not to make Requests which presuppose that they enjoy not the effect of his promise Thus is there not any Lesson in the Service of the Church of Rome which effectually induces or hath so much as the appearance of inducing any thing of what those of her Communion at this day pretend to CHAP. LII Of the Prayers contained in the Missal and Breviary used by the Church of Rome and that Purgatory cannot be necessarily inferred from any one of them FOr as much as in the Book intituled Ordo Romanus there is not any mention made of the Dead that in the Canon of the Mass which is inserted into it the Memento is not to be found and that in the other Ritual Books of the Latines there is not any Lesson obliging to the belief of Purgatory screwed up since the year 1439. by the Councels of Florence and Trent into an Article of Faith the Church of Rome who hath at this day in favour of Prayer for the Dead but one onely Lesson to wit that of the second of Maccabees a Book held by her self to be Apocryphal till after the year 590. the Church of Rome I say is forced to confess that it must have been inserted so much the later into her Missals and Breviaries though upon no other accompt then this that the Greeks use it not in their Office even to this day and that from her whole service it necessarily results that she met not in the holy Scriptures with any foundation of the opinion either of Purgatory which she maintains or of the custom which she practises in praying for the Dead upon Motives unknown to Primitive Antiquity It remains therefore that we see what can be gathered of any consequence from the Prayers which we read in the publick Forms of Service of her prescription We have in the first place such as desire of God that the sins of the deceased Person may be pardoned as for instance this Fidelium Deus omnium conditor Redemptor animabus famulorum famularúmque tuarum remissionem cunctorum tribue peccatorum ut indulgentiam quam semper optaverunt piis supplicationibus consequantur c. O God Creatour and Redeemer of all the Faithfull grant unto the Souls of thy Servants of the one and the other Sex the remission of all their sins that by pious Supplications they may obtain the indulgence they have ever desired And this We beseech thee O Lord that this Supplication of ours may be beneficial to the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes intreating thee that thou wouldest cleanse them of all their sins and make them partakers of thy Redemption And this We beseech thee O Almighty God that the Soul of thy Servant purged by these Sacrifices may obtain admission to indulgence and eternal remedy And this Vouchsafe O Lord we beseech thee that the Soul of thy Servant and the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes the Anniversarie-day of whose Interment we now commemorate being purged by these Sacrifices may be received as well into indulgence as eternal rest And this O God who hast commanded that we should honour our Father and Mother be pleased out of thy mercy to have compassion on the Souls of my Father and Mother and pardon their sins and make me to live with them in the joy of eternal light And this We beseech thee O Lord be mercifull unto the Soul of thy Servant and being freed from the contagion of Mortality restore her to the portion of eternal salvation And this We beseech thee O Lord that by these Sacrifices without which no man is guiltless the Soul of thy Servant may be cleansed from all sins that by these offices of pious placation she may obtain eternal mercy And this O God in whose mercy the Souls of the faithfull are at rest be graciously pleased to pardon the sins of thy Servants
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
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
place in the bosoms of thy Patriarchs her for whose sake thou mercifully didst descend upon Earth In the later it is said Be mindfull of him O Lord in the glory of thy brightness let the Heavens be open to him let the Angels rejoyce with him Lord receive thy Servant into thy Kingdom Let St. Michael the Arch-angel of God and General of the Celestial Militia entertain him let the holy Angels of God meet him and carry him into the Heavenly Jerusalem c. Loosed from the Chains of flesh may he be received into the glory of the celestial Kingdom c. If after all these Prayers the Agony continue there are at several times read the one hundred and sixth and one hundred and eighteenth Psalms according to the Greeks and Latines that is the one hundred and seventh and one hundred and nineteenth according to the Hebrews who are therein followed by the Protestants and when the Soul is departed they say Afford your assistance O ye Saints of God meet him O ye Angels of the Lord receiving his Soul and presenting it to the most high May Christ who hath called thee entertain thee and may the Angels conduct thee into the Bosom of Abraham c. O Lord give him eternal rest and let everlasting light shine upon him Lord deliver his Soul from the Gate of Hell let him rest in peace In the Mass for the sick who are in Agony besides two Lessons out of the Scripture whereof the former comprehends from the sixth Verse of the five and fiftieth Chapter of Isaiah to the twelfth with these words fastened in the beginning by I know not whom In diebus illis locutus est Esaias Propheta dicens and at the end Ait Dominus omnipotens and the later consists of the twentieth twenty first and twenty second Verses of the sixteenth Chapter of St. John with these words added at the beginning In illo tempore dixit Jesus Discipulis suis We have several Texts alledged containing Thanksgiving to God for his deliverances as the second sixth and seventh Verses of the eighteenth Psalm according to the Hebrews the fourth of the fifty seventh with Confessions of sins and Implorations of his mercy and assistance as the second Verse of the fifty seventh Psalm the first and second of the one hundred and thirtieth the eighth and ninth of the seventy ninth the first of the fifty first and the two and twentieth of the five and twentieth and in conclusion three Prayers in the first whereof we read these words Grant him O Lord thy grace that his Soul at the hour of its departure out of the body may be represented without the blemish of any sin by the hands of the holy Angels to thee who art the proper bestower thereof through our Lord c. The second is closed with this conclusion not much unlike the former That received by the Angels he may arrive at the Kingdom of thy glory through our Lord. And the third is laid down in these Terms O Lord we give thee thanks for thy manifold kindnesses wherewith thou art wont to satisfie the Souls of those who put their trust in thee we now confident of thy compassion do humbly beseech thee that thou wouldest vouchsafe to shew mercy on thy Servant lest at the hour of his departure out of the body the enemy prevail against him but that he may be thought worthy to pass to life through our Lord. If the Latine Church had from the beginning been imbued with this Sentiment that the Souls of the Faithfull are for the most part at their departure out of the Body confined to a place of Torment where they perfect the expiation of their sins through what misfortune is it come to pass that she so far forgot her self as not to have expressed any such thing in all their Service and that her Encouragements and Remonstrances to those that lie at the point of death who are as it is at this day presupposed in so great a necessity to prepare themselves for it and the Wishes and Prayers which she makes and appoints to be made as well for them as for the Dead whom a Superstitious perswasion imagines already set upon and invaded by Infernal flames in Purgatory do not onely not contain any remark thereof but formally teach the contrary And that they do so we are onely to instance out of what hath been newly alledged what they say of all without exception viz. that after death they have their place in Holy Sion that the Angels come to meet them that they convey them into the Kingdom of Glory into the bosom of a blessed Rest into the bosom of Abraham into the pleasant Verdures of Paradise that they might with the Quires of the Blessed contemplate Truth with their blessed eyes and enjoy the sweetness of divine contemplation eternally that the Lord places them in the Portion of the Elect in the place where they hoped for salvation opens the heavens to them gives them an eternal Rest and makes them pass into life which Expressions are such as that the Protestants could not according to the Hypotheses of their Belief either say or think any thing beyond them Shall we imagine her unfortunately seised by a Vertigo so extraordinary as that she would be guilty of such an Extravagance in favour of the Adversaries of her Sentiment so far as to furnish them with all the Expressions capable to ruine it and that she should be so unnatural and cruel towards those of her children whom death snatched away daily from her as not to vouchsafe to let them know by the last word that she had a Resentment of their Trouble or that it was her desire to procure their Deliverance out of it by her Prayers and to fortifie others whom she saw to fall into the like by communicating to them her Advertisements and Remonstrances and representing to them on the one side the necessity which the Justice of God imposed on them as is pretended to pass through the Fire and on the other the Hope which his Promise gave them to be preserved therein by his care till such time as his Goodness should grant them a glorious deliverance out of it Nay though we should be inclined to excuse in her so shamefull a want of compassion and memory could we free her from Prevarication charging her that instead of stirring up in her children the care of preparing themselves for Death and the temporal Pains which according to the Opinion of Purgatory were to follow upon it she hath treacherously permitted that to be rid of it with more ease they should run into erroneous perswasions and presume to promise themselves upon the very start out of this Life a passage into Abraham's Bosom and the Paradise of God or rather that she was resolved to lay them asleep her self by deceitfull Expressions in the Bosom of a prejudicial Security which smothers the apprehension they should have conceived of the Severity of that
thing and to affirm for true all they had feigned and that from that source are derived abundance of things inconvenient and contradictory which are at this day as so many Black-Patches in the face of their Service reason calls upon us to direct our hand to the most remarkable and discover the Scars and Imperfections which lie under them For as much then as the Greek Fathers taught by St. Paul even in that very place which is copied in the Ritual advertised the Christian People committed to their charge not to be sad for their Brethren departed after the manner of the Heathens who are without hope and St. Chrysostome threatned to excommunicate as impious those who took a glory in grieving upon such occasions it is impossible those should have been well informed in their duty and the Sentiments of their fore-Fathers who making a Virtue of a Vice and stuffing the publick Forms of Service with their Deplorations have had the boldness to introduce the Faithfull deceased pressing those whom they left behind them to lamentations at their misfortune that is to say at what according to the Scriptures neither is nor can be As for instance when they inserted at the end of the common Formulary this extravagant half-Heathenish Discourse absolutely contradictory to the Exhortation of St. Paul to the Thessalonians Brethren and Friends Kinred and Acquaintance now that you see me laid without Voice and without Breath lament all over me for yesterday I spoke with you and suddenly the dreadfull hour of Death surprized me But come ye all who are desirous of my Company and kiss me with the last kiss for I shall have no further conversation with you nor ever speak to you again I am going to the Judg with whom there is no respect of persons since the Servant and the Master the King and the common Souldier the rich man and the begger are to appear before him in an equal condition and every one shall be either glorified or made ashamed by his works But I intreat and conjure you all without ceasing to pray for me to Christ God c. And in the Office of the Priest My Brethren Children and Friends I remember you before the Lord forget me not when you pray learn I conjure beseech and require you these things that they may serve you for a memorial and bewail me night and day Again In great compassion weep for me O ye Lovers of Christ and earnestly petition the God of all that he would grant me to rest with the Saints And in that of the Woman Come Fathers and behold how Beauty fades come Mothers and see how the Flesh moulders away and cry with Tears Lord grant that by thy Command she may rest whom thou hast taken hence But as those carnal sallies of Spirit are palpably contrary to the advice of the Apostle and upon that accompt not to be endured so the absurdity thereof is so evident that the Authour of the Ritual could not forbear expressing the dislike it might occasion saying in the Office of the Priest O men why do you so earnestly bewail me Why do you give your selves this vain trouble He who is transferred from Life saith to all Death is become a Rest to all Nor do I think it strange the Formulary should swell with the descriptions of the Miseries and Vanity of this Life for since the Prophet hath vouchsafed to give us a Draught thereof to the end that Learning to number our days we might apply our hearts to Wisdom we cannot be too often touched with the sting of so necessary an Advertisement yet is it not expected from us that to shew our selves smitten and humbled before God we should presume to act the Disconsolate contrary to the Instruction of St. Paul and make such Discourses as these notoriously false in respect of any one of the Faithfull Alass What a combat is the Soul separated from the Body engaged in Alass How does she then lament and there is not any Body hath pity on her Turning her eyes to the Angels she beseeches to no purpose and reaching forth her hands to men no body relieves her For if there be any Combat in the Soul before its separation as soon as that is over she is passed from the Combat to the Triumph since that according to the Instruction of the Spirit her being with the Lord is upon this accompt that she absent from the body Secondly There is not from thence forward any Tears to be shed for her in as much as she is in fulness of joy and pleasures and that his Goodness promises to wipe away all Tears from the eyes of those who stand before his Throne Thirdly There is no further necessity she should call upon either Angels or Men in regard she is in the blessed Society of Millions of Angels and in the Congregation and Assembly of the First-born who are written in Heaven And should she stand in any need of Relief she would remember that her Help was even during this Life in the Name of the Lord who made Heaven and Earth that he alone is our Refuge Glory and the Rock of our Srength that we are at all times to put our Trust in him and that if all the men in the World should be put together into a balance they would be found lighter then Vanity it self But to excuse the frequent Prosopopoeias which in these Forms of Service represent separated Souls as seised with horrour and reduced to deplorations and desires of Relief it may be pretended that these Descriptions made at discretion are Instructions to the Living as to what lies upon them to do To answer that and whatever else may be alledged to extenuate their Offence who have shuffled those things into the Greek Service it need onely be said that we are to take for Lessons of our Duty not Imaginations of what never either was or will be but the pure Will of God our onely Rule in Life and Death and if it were lawfull for us to use Fiction it were but requisite we had the Judgment not to advance any thing absurd and contrary to our Principles shewing our selves in that more Prudent then the Modern Greeks who transported by I know not what Stupidity do almost every where run against their own Hypotheses But to make it clear by certain Examples Their common Principle is That good Souls pass at the very Instant of their separation into the possession of their Rest the bad are immediately confined to Hell of those in a middle Condition onely the Salvation is deferred Let us now hear what pretty Discourses they attribute to them I beseech you all and conjure you that without ceasing you pray for me unto Christ God to the end that I may not according to my sins be confined to place of Torment but that he would place me where is light of Life The middle-conditioned Souls are they ever
according to them at such a point as immediately after their departure out of the Body to be at the self-same time exempted from the Pains of Restraint Obscurity or Grief through which it is affirmed they are to pass and deprived of the Rest which after the Pains they are to obtain so as that they are for the least space of time imaginable in a Neutral State which admits not the qualification of either Good or Bad of either Light or Darkness Rest or Torment and consequently of either Joy or Grief if not by accident And in Case that by the Place of Torment where it is feigned they fear being confined some may understand the Hell of the Damned is it possible they should ever be exposed thereto since it is presupposed they are of a middle Conditition and upon that very accompt as being chargeable onely with Venial Sins neither do nor can deserve Eternal damnation Be this therefore one unmaintainable and unimaginable Absurdity which must needs press hard upon our Forgers of Descriptions according to the Dictates of their own Fancies They make the deceased Priest further say Why O man dost thou trouble thy self thus unseasonably There is one onely hour and all passes away for in Hell there is no Repentance There is no Releasment in that place there is the Worm which never sleeps there is the darksom land and the obscure matter to which I am to be condemned c. Is this Discourse attributible to a Faithfull Person that had had here in this World the least taste of the Promise made by the Son of God assuring us that whoever believes in him is in such manner passed from death to life as that though he be dead yet shall he live through him that he shall not come into Condemnation and that there is not indeed any for those that are in him Are the Souls imagined to be in a middle Condition subject to the stingings of the Worm which never dies and liable to Damnation Which if it be supposed they neither are nor can why should they be feigned to say so and necessarily Lie in saying so This must then be a second Impertinence and a new Piece of Forgery committed by the Corrupters of the Ritual not onely against the Word of God but also against their Sentiment who in the same Ritual inserted this Confession which is both most true and Diametrically contrary to the Discourse before confuted Lament not all you who are departed in the Faith for as much as Christ hath suffered the Cross and was buried for us in the Flesh and hath made all those who call upon him children of Immortality For this once lay'd down does it signifie less then a total Eclipse of understanding and circumspection to make the children of Immortality for whom the Saviour of the World died and who consequently cannot perish say that they shall be Damned Nay the Prayers of the Living for their departed Brethren would be still chargeable with inconvenience even though they were taken literally For instance this O Lord as thou saidst unto Martha I am the Resurrection by the Effect accomplishing thy Word and calling Lazarus out of Hell so also mercifully raise this thy servant out of Hell For besides that it is a little too freely supposed that our Lord's Friend was confined in Hell from the moment of the Death of his Body to that of his Resurrection it is also false that our Saviour raises out of Hell whence the Ritual confesses that none is delivered any of his Servants Whoever once enters there never comes out again nor is there any raising up to be expected by him But these words may be maintained if they meet with a favourable Interpretation which might admit Hell to signifie not the place of the Damned in which sence it is ordinarily taken but the Grave whence our Saviour who called forth Lazarus will at the Last day raise up the Bodies of all his Servants With the help of the same favourable way of Interpreting it were possible to finde a sence conformable to the apprehension of Antiquity in those Prayers whereby the Greeks do at this day Beg the Remission of Sins for their Dead taking care to make them to relate to the Absolution which shall be solemnly pronounced by the Great Judg at the last day as may be deduced from this that most of them expresly mention it among others this Vouchsafe O Redeemer that when thou shalt come with ineffable glory in the Clouds after a dreadfull manner to Judge the whole World that thy Faithfull Servant whom thou hast taken from the Earth may joyfully meet thee which words are Grounded on 1 Thess Chap. iv Verse 17. In like manner this Vouchsafe O God to be mindfull of our Father who is now at rest and be pleased to deliver him from the corruption of sin at the day of Judgment through the good odour of thy goodness mercy and love towards men Again O Lord from whom the Spirits of those who serve thee do come and to whom they return we beseech thee to cause to rest in a place of light in the Region of the Just the Spirit of N. thy Servant now lying in his Grave and raise him up at thy second and dreadfull coming not to be condemned after the Resurrection but to be Absolved for no man living shall be justified in thy sight Again Let not thy Servant O Lord be confounded at thy coming When thou shalt discover all things that are hidden and shalt O Christ reprove our sins spare him whom thou hast taken hence being mindfull of his Preaching Again Forgive O Saviour the sins of him who hath been translated hence in Faith and vouchsafe to admit him to thy Kingdom there shall not any escape the dreadfull Tribunal of thy judgment Kings and Potentates and the Hireling all shall appear together and the dreadfull Voice of the Judge shall call the People that have sinned to the condemnation of Hell from which O Christ deliver thy servant Again Out of thy mercy O Christ exempt from the Fire of Hell and the dreadfull Sentence thy Servant whom thou hast now taken hence in Faith and let thy Domestick praise thee as God the mercifull Redeemer c. Brethren how dreadfull is the hour which sinners are to expect O what fear is there Then the Fire of Hell devours and the ravenous Serpent swallows wherefore mercifull Lord Christ deliver him from the day of dreadfull Gehenna O how great shall be the Joy of the Just which they shall be possessed of when the Judge comes for the Nuptial room is prepared and Paradise and the whole Kingdom of Christ into which O Christ receive thy Domesticks to rejoyce with thy Saints eternally Who O Christ shall bear the dreadfull threatning of thy coming Then shall Heaven be rolled up together as a Book after a dreadfull manner and the Stars will fall the whole