Age where the 15. Age. Conc. Flor. in decreto Fathers of the Council of Florence both Greeks and Latins with one consent declare the same faith and constant practise of the Church thus handed down to them from Age to Age since Christs and his Apostles time as we have seen viz. that the souls in Purgatory are not only relieved but translated into heaven by the Prayers Sacrifices Almes and other charitable workes which are offered up for them according to the custome of the Catholick Church Nor did their posterity degenerate or vary the least from this received doctrine untill Luthers time when the holy 16. Age. Trid. sess 25 Council of Trent thought fit againe to lay down the sound doctrine of the Church in opposition to all our late Sectaries And I wish all Catholicks were but as forward to lend their helping hands to lift souls out of Purgatory as they are to believe they have the power to do it and that we had not oftner more reason then the Roman Emperour to pronounce the day lost since we let so many dayes pass over our heads and so many faire occasions slip out of our hands without easing or releasing any souls out of Purgatory when we might do it with so much ease The Sixth Survey Of twelve excellent means to prevent Purgatory or to provide so for our selves as not to make any long stay there BEhold the most important point of all others the secret of secrets and the true knack of all state affairâ—s in this world They talke of certain waterâ— which have so strange a power to dull the edge of fire that if one wash his hands with them he can receive no prejudice though he should thrust them afterwards into the fire or into boyling lead The preservatives I am here to treate of are of a higher nature they do not curbe the restless activity of this our sublunary fire which is bent only against dull bodies but they arme us against the raging fire of Purgatory which God has prepared to torment our very souls in the other world §. 1. The first perfect contrition ONe of the surest means to avoide Purgatory is to dye with teares in our eyes and St. Th. supp q. 5. a. 3. true contrition in our heâ—rts For Divines teach that our contrition may be so great â—s to wash away all those spots of sin which Purgatory â—â—re was otherwise to have words off And therefore as I take it to be a grâ—â—t piece of folly to defer the exercise of so precâ—ous â—n aâ—â— unto the houre of our death so I esteem it one of the most solid devotions of all others to accustome our selves to it all our life time that by daily frequenting such acts we may at length get such a habite and facility in them as with Gods grace to have them at our call when we come to dye All must not look for the same priviledge which the good thief had at the last gaspe It was but little that he sayd but he spoke it with so cordial an accent that he deserved to heare those comfortable words of our blessed Saviour This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise and soon found them verified by a present fruition of the beatifical vision Almighty God is pleased sometimes to make so forceable an entry into the heart of man and to set it so desperately on fire with his divine love that there is no remedy but to dye between the armes of love and griefe and thrice happy are those souls that loose their lives in this divine encounter and dye in the amourous flames of ardent charity they are sure never to feel the murthering flames of Purgatory Such was the death of our blessed Lady St. John Evangelist and infinite others who have been straight carried into heaven out of this world upon the wings of love or contrition so that a heart that is well seasoned with contrition or steeped in a bath of salt tears is like the heart of Prince Germanicus which Tacit. Ann. being washed over with a certain precious liqour could not be consumed by the fire which turned all the rest of his body to ashes This is that they call a good Peccavi but it must be a good one indeed for it is not every ordinary and triviall kind of sorrow which can work such wonders Those that have been long used to actuate themselves in those generous acts of contrition may be full of confidence that the mercy of God will not faile them at the houre of their death and that their good Angels will be then ready when it most imports to inspire them with all the best motives of true contrition since they have gone all along with them still furnishing them with such good thoughts and with so much good success that their hearts have been a thousand times broken with a lively amorous and cordial contrition and repentance for their sins And certainly they that dye either in the fire of so ardent a love or in the water of so piercing a grief need not feare the fire of Purgatory for that fire says St. Bonaventure was not made for them So that methinks this charity may be fitly compared to the Seraphin at the gates of Paradise brandishing his flaming sword which Tertulian calls the porâ—er Romphaeâ— janitrix Faradisi of Paradise grief is the edge love the fire wherewith it is inflamed and he that has this flaming sword has heaven gates at coâ—mand and goes strait thither when he leaves the world § 2. The Second to dye in Religion ANother safe way to escape Purgatory is to live and die in a good Religious order and at his death to renew and Ad fratres de monte dei à coella in coelum c. ratifie his Religious vowes To prove this I first call St. Bernard to witness who doubts not to assure us that there is a ready if not an uninterrupted passage into Heaven out of a Religious cell Next I appeal to those learned and holy Doctours who give it for a certain sign of Predestination to die in Religion because Christ has in a manner sworn in his holy Gospel to give a hundred fold and life everlasting Plat. de bonâ— stat Relig. to all those that shall leave Father Mother and other worldly concernments for his sake From whence it is that holy Church permits the superiours of divers Religious orders to make this solemne promise at the profession of their novicies for they have no sooner made their Vowes of Poverty c. But the superiour answers And I Child do promise thee Paradise and eternal life 3. Many Popes have granted a Sixt Greg. 13. Greg. 14. Plenary Indulgence in forme of a Jubily to all Religious persons that either by word of mouth or in their hearts call upon the sacred names of Jesus Maria at the hour of their death And what Religious person is there that does it not
spectacle out of a naturall compassion seconded by an interior impulse of divine grace burst forth into fountaines of tears and became strangely concerned for that poor patient whom they beheld only in Effigie The heart has this property to understand the language of hearts let the expressions of the tongue be never so imperfect and the eyes are of that sympatheticall nature that when eyes speak to them in floods of teares in liew of full periods they instantly melt also into teares and so mingle their griefs with a strange kind of Sympathy and neare alliance What the tongue cannot utter the eye speaks aloud and the heart and the very ayre of the whole countenance of a man who seems to carry his very heart on his brow Seeing therefore my discourses may fall short of what I pretend I am now going about to lay Purgatory open to represent I say unto your view as in a Mapp or Picture that bloody tragedy which is acted there not in sport merriment alas but with horrour and amazement And if you dare not with the eye of faith contemplate this sad and horrid spectacle in it self at least refuse not to look upon this picture which I am going to delineate to give you a rude draught of the just rigour of Almighty God in purging holy soules and as it were distilling them by drops in a fiery limbeck § 1. Of the fire of Purgatory and paine of sense IT was a strange peice of niceness that of the Grecians in the Councel of Florence to boggle at the smoke and fire of Purgatory and yet withall to confess it to be a darke and dreadful dungeon an abysse of mere griâ—f and torments as if they would have been content all other engines of cruelty should have place there to play the executioners so they might but have leave to banish fire from having any thing to do in the purgation of soules The Latin Fathers laboured to Real fire in Purgatory undeceive them in this point of folly and sore gravelled them with that text of the Apostle 1 Cor. 3. He shall be saved yet so as by fire which cannot be meant of hell fire as the Grecians understood it because there is no salvation or redemption to be expected but well of the fire of Purgatory which is designed only for the purifying of saved soules And though they thought fit afterwards to wave that controversie for peace sake and not to press on to a definition yet is it a doctrine very generally received and taught by the holy Fathers and Doctours of the Catholick Church and very consonant to the dictates of the holy Ghost in divine Scriptures that there is a reall and corporeall fire in Purgatory and that the soules which depart this life without first cancelling their many failings and imperfections by satisfactory workes are necessarily plunged into merciless flames which by little and little eate away all that dross and impurity which till expiated obstructs their entrance into heaven Nor is it possible to my thinking to rayse any argument of substance to discredite these purging flames which will not also be levelled at the extinguishing of hell fire which notwithstanding holy Writ assures uâ— to be prepared for the divill and his Angels Matth. 25. St. Augustin de civit 21. 10. I am sure St. Austin finds the same difficulty how the divels and mens souls can be tormented with fire and gives the same solution to both with a Why should we not say that incorporeal spirits may Veris sed miris modis be truly tormented with corporeal fire though after a strange and wonderful manner Must we presently renounce the Oracles of Gods Church because we cannot fathom them with our narrow capacity the very fundamentals of our Faith would be shrewdly shaken should we measure them by this preposterous rule of a seeming demonstration to the contrary Believe it it is one of the first rudiments but main principles of a Christian to captivate his understanding and so reâ—ulate all his dictamens that they be sure to run paralell with the sentiments of the Church And this I take to be the case when the question is started about Purgatory fire which I shall ever reckon in the classe of those truths which cannot be contradicted without manifest temerity as being the doctrine generally preached and taught all over Christendome You must then conceive Purgatory Purgatory described to be a vast darksome and hideous Chaos full of fire and flames in which the soules are kept close prisoners untill they have fully satisfied for all their misdemeanours according to the estimate of divine justice For God has made choice of this Element of fire wherewith to punish soules because it is the most active piercing sensible and insupportable of all others But that which quickens it indeed and gives it more life is this that it acts as the instrument of Gods justice who by his omnipotent power elevates and reinforces its activity as he pleases and so makes it capable to act upon pure spirits Do not then look only upon this fire though in good earnest it be dreadfull enough of it self but consider the arme that is reached out and the hand that strikes and the rigour of Gods infinite justice who through this element of fire vents his wrath and powers out whole tempests of his most severe and yet most just vengeance So that the fire workes as much mischief as I may say to the soules as God commands and he commands as much as is due and as much is due as the sentence bears a sentence irrevocably pronounced at the high Tribunal of the severe and rigorous justice of an angry God and whose anger is so prevalent that the holy Scripture stiles it a day of fury Now you will easily believe that Job 20. 28. Esa 13. 13. Thr. 1. 12. this fire is a most horrible punishment in its own nature but you may doe well to reflect also on that which I have now suggested that the fury of Almighty God is as it were the fire of this fire and the heat of its heat and that he serves himself of it as he pleases by doubling â—nd redoubling its sharpe pointed forces for this is that which makes it the more grievous and insupportable to the soules that are thus miserably confined and imprisoned They were not much out of It is a kind of hell the way that stiled Purgatory a transitory kind of hell for that the principal paines of the damned are to be found there with this only difference that in hell they are eternal and in Purgatory they are only transitory and fleeting for otherwise it is probably Suar. d. 45. Sect. 2. n 14. S. Th. in 4. d. 21. q. 1. the very same fire which burns both the holy soules the damned spirits the pain of loss is in both places the chief torment as I shall declare hereafter Now does not your hair stand an
all For say they how can you require more of them then to be two years miserably tormented in a burning furnace That which here might have been redeemed with a tear of true contrition or with a sigh of ardent charity can it not be purged with flames of fire in two whole years in the other world The most barbarous cruelty in this life is scarce ever seen to reach beyond a few houres and what shall we then say of two years in Purgatory which are as it were two ages or two little eternities so great are the torments shall it not be enough to purifie the most unclean soul in the world so she be in the state of Grace But yet this opinion is not received in the Church and it is a great madnesse to attempt any thing contrary to the common judgment of the Church and her Learned Doctors Sotus held a singular opinion of his own that no soule Sect. in 4. d. 17. q. 3. remains in Purgatory above ten years For said he we must set some bounds to the rigour of Gods justice who doth all things in number weight and measure and is said to dispose all things sweetly And is not ten years of most bitter pains a great number a grievous weight and an everflowing measure to say nothing of so many prayers so many masses so many tears so many priviledged altars and Plenary indulgences so many almes and other good deeds of the living and then the most powerful intercession of the whole court of Heaven but especially of our blessed Lady and her beloved son who is the Atturney general of the whole Church and who pleads for her with a most perswasive and divine Rhetorique Yet for all this I must tell you many divines lay heavy censures upon this opinion sticking not to call it not only temerarious but also erroneous and the common sense of the church is quite contrary as appears by the immemorial custome of perpetual foundations of set Masses to be yearly said for such particular persons and to continue to the worlds end all which would be needless if almighty God put a period to their punishments after ten years for to what purpose are those Masses after the ten years are expired And though the most learned of this age will not take upon them to condemne this opinion of errour yet they all accuse it of much temerity No certain time beyond which a soule may not be tormented because in truth this whole business is very uncertain as being a secret lockt up in the cabinet of God himself and letters sealed up which our Saviour would not hitherto open to his Spouse the church so that whilst it remains in the nature of a secret we must not presume to define any thing precisely Only this we know that many soules do but touch Purgatory as it were with their finger and away others lie there whole houres dayes months and years and as we are not easily to credit those visions which threaten the soules in Purgatory with a continuance of their torments untill the last day so are we to believe that God can well punish some of them so long that the space of ten years in comparison should seem little or nothing to it Hence it is a very laudable and pious custome to found Masses to perpetuity because alas who knows whether he may not be of the number of those unfortunate souls who are to be kept there so long How few know truly the state of their own soules and the debts they are to pay to the severity of our most just judge who is indeed ful of clemency but such as is ever accompanied with an impartial justice worthy of God I may adde here that the piety of the founders looks not only upon the releasing of their own soules out of torments which they are assured will have an end sooner or later but they open their hearts and bowels of charity and extend it to others who from time to time shall be in Purgatory and very possibly have no body to remember them in their devotions This certainly is a worke of charity well becoming a good Catholick and a well disposed soule to provide so as to co-operate even after his death to the help and salvation of other soules and to be ever and anon sending some into Heaven by antedating the time of their deliverance and encreasing the number of the glorious Saints Mean time what an inconsolable grief is it to the poor soules to see themselves plunged over head and eareâ— in flames of fire and condemned to remain there ten twenty a hundred years and perhaps to the worlds end if their friends upon earth do not afford them their best assistance middle State of Souls lately censured by his Holiness There are some few of late are faln so far into the contrary extream that they cannot afford a soule once in Purgatory should ever get out before the day of judgment But as this strange Paradox took its rise chiefly from a false conceipt of the nature of a spiritual substance and other wilde principles of a new minted Philosophy so is it generally cryed down and not only contradicted by many known apparitions revelations which the Reader will meet with in this Treatise attested by such grave Authours and Fathers of the Church that he has little reason to suspect them for old wives tales or melancholly dreams as these men would have them but seems to have been blasted long In Bullar Rom. Conc. Flor. in lit vnionis act 4. agoe and condemned in a particular Bull of Pope Benedict the eleaventh and in the holy Council of Florence where it was expresly defined that those soules which after they have contracted the blemish of sin are Purged either in their bodies or being uncloathed of their bodies are presently received into heaven And since the Author of this extravagance will have Tradition to be the sole rule of our Faith of which Tradition we can have no clearer proof then from the testimony of the Church let him but look into the general doctrine and practice of the church both now at this present and time out of minde and he shall discover as cleare a Tradition for this common perswasion of the soules being released out of Purgatory some sooner some later according to their own deserts and the relief of our suffrages as for any other thing in the world Do not good people generally ground themselves upon this when they offer up their prayers give almes procure Masses and Diriges apply Indulgences for the present relief of their deceased friends Is not the whole practise of Christians for as much as concernes their piety to the faithfull departed built so wholly upon this that were it not true we must conclude that the whole Catholick church has been all along fooled by her Pastors and Doctors Who has ever hitherto so much as fancied it in a dreame that his suffrages
for the dead were to be of no greater advantage to them then as far forth as they had power to advance the time appointed for the day of judgement which for my part I apprehend so coldly that did I not relie upon better motives I should soon lay a side all devotion for the soules departed But I mean not here to dispute the question since this Treatise is not intended so much in a polemical as in an affectuous and moving way And therefore I leave it for others who have already entered the lists and are engaged in the quarrel And so I take no notice how it can stand with Gods impartial justice that whereas many soules may leave this world in the same condition as to Purgatory that is in this Authors opinion with the same burâ—hen of depraved affections some of them shall lye 1000 years in Purgatory to wit those that die 1000 years before the day of judgement anâ— others but a day or an houre or a moment to wit those that die immediately before that general accompting day For since he owns no other paine in Purgatory but that which flowes from the said crooked inclinations and affections bent against reason which I suppose to be the same in all why should some of them as it must necessarily follow in these principles shake them off so soon and others groan so long under them Again I say nothing how harshly it sounds in a christians eare that a holy soule in the other world should not only still pursue the same wickeâ— inclinations for example to drunkenness gluttony and carnality which she had in this life but that this should be her only punishment I say as little how in this opinion great sinners that die immediately Trid. sess 14. c. 2. Flor. act 4. cit after baptisme who certainly go directly into heaven must needs carry their Purgatory with them into heaven For since it is evident that baptisme does not blot out their perverse inclinations they cannot be dispossessed of them but must of necessity carry them into the other world as well as others and consequently must have their Purgatory in Heaven Purgatory being nothing else with him but the inhering strife and fury of such irrational affections I let slip a world of other absurdities because my ayme as I told you in publishing this Treatise is not to canvase curious and impertinent questions of Purgatory but to move the Reader to a solid devotion for the poore soules which I feare is not a little cooled since these fond opinions came to light But now me thinkes I heare my Reader very inquisitive to know §. 5. Whether their pains-grow less and less IT is pitty to see sometimes how your greatest divines are entangled and lost in their over subtile speculations As for the pain of loss which the soules endure by being deprived of the sight of God they agree that it is daily much lessened for seeing the time draw nearer in which they are to be made happy with the sight of God whom they love so ardently it exceedingly rejoyces them and certainly they cannot chuse but much sweeten and consequently lessen their pains by the frequent repetitions of that devout aspiration which St. Teresia was wont to use when she heard the clock strike O lovely houre how dost thou rejoyce me by bringing me the welcome newes that I am now a whole houre nearer to the sight of God For a heart that loves cannot but be overjoyed to know that he approaches to the faire object of his love though it be but a moment But as for the paine of sence your Doctors are divided some hold that as for the continuance that is certainly shortned every day by the day that is past which is evident and in particular that the prayers of the faithfull obtain of God an abridgement of the length of the time which he taxed for their punishment so that the more one prayes for the souls the more is cut off of the time of their suffering which by that means becomes the more tolerable But as for the sharpeness and intenseness of the paine and the action or activity of the fire as they speak in schools that is as grievous in the last moment as at the first and as painful in the end as at the beginning of their Purgatory And they flatter the soules as if this were best for them because the greater the pains are which they endure the sooner are they purged and made worthy to enjoy the presence of God Others teach that as well the paine as the time are continually lessened according to the proportion of the relief which they receive from the suffrages of the Church And why not since Gods goodness is so great such is the desire of the Church that begs it the tears of the faithful pretend to no less and we must not consider the fire as an Element working naturally and equally at all times but rather as an instrument of Gods justice who gives it more or less force and power to worke upon the soules as he pleases Why should Almighty God who is so loving a Father refuse to give this relief at the earnest suite of children in behalf of their Parents Brothers Sisters and dearest friends I say at their instance who are so sensible of their torments and so much concerned for their ease and relief I willingly embrace this opinion as more worthy of the bowels of mercy more sympathizing with the heart of Christ Jesus and better suiting with the prayers of the Church and the sighs of Christians And certainly none can better clear this difficulty then the soules themselves who feel the pains we speak of and these have often by Gods permission appeared to their friends and devout persons and born witnesse for this truth that their pains were still lessened as they received new succour from the pious endeavours of their friends upon earth untill they came at length to cease and determine And we must not here be too nice and hard of belief for as it is an argument of too much rashnesse and folly to give credite to all pretended visions of what nature soever so it argues too much brutishnesse and profaness to believe none especially when they are authorized by the Church and by persons of authority and credit beyond exception that we must either believe them or believe nothing in this World § 6. A notable example in confirmation of all the precedent Doctrine BEfore I leave off finishing this Picture or put a period to the representation of the pains of Purgatory I cannot but relate a very remarkable History which will be as a living Picture before your eyes But be sure you take it not to be of the number of those idle stories which passe for old wives tales or meere imaginations of crackt brains and simple souls No I will tell you nothing but what venerable Bede so grave Beda hist Angl. lib. 5. cap. 13. an