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
Christ shewing that on the one side these things to be abjent from the body or from the Lord and being in the body or with the Lord are irreconcileably opposite on the other side these to be absent from the body and to be with the Lord and on the contrary to be present in the body and to be absent from the Lord are inseparably conjoined so that the very act of the separation of the body necessarily translates the Faithfull into the presence of the Lord of which their presence in the body deprives them Yet this Supposition though refuted as aforesaid had such a strange influence upon the spirits of many great Church-men in the Second and Third Age that they outvied one another in the maintaining of it Thus Hermas at the same time that the Counterfeit Sibyl made her first attempt upon the sincerity of the Christians became the Patron and Propagatour of it writing of the Apostles and Faithfull departed before The Apostles and Doctours who have preached the Name of the Son of God and are dead by the power of God and by Faith preached to those who were dead before and gave them the Seal of preaching They are descended with them into the water and they ascended again out of it but those who were dead before descended dead and ascended living Which words are so much the more observable in that they have been subscribed by Clemens Alexandrinus Strom. 2 and 6. inferring from them that the Apostles conformably to what had been done by our Saviour preached the Gospel to those who were in Hell and that it was necessary that the best of the Disciples should be imitatours of their Master there as they had been here supposing after Justin Martyr and St. Irenaeus that our Saviour being descended into hell after his Passion had preached the Gospel to those who were detained there in which Opinion he hath been followed by St. Athanasius St. Hilary of Poictiers Hilary Deacon of the Romane Church St. Epiphanius St. Hierome St. Cyril of Alexandria Oecumenius c. And secondly for that they insinuate not onely that the Apostles descended into hell after their death for to preach there but that the Faithfull departed after the Passion of our Saviour had been there taught and converted and consequently that all without any exception were there detained Presently after the publication of Hermas's Writings Pope Pius the First Brother to that pretended Prophet complies with him in his first Epistle to Justus of Vienna saying The Priests who having been nourished by the Apostles have lived to our days with whom we have divided together the word of Faith being called hence by the Lord are detained shut up in eternal Repositories sufficiently discovering by these words which denote a perpetual detention if not absolutely at least in some respect that he had embraced the same Opinion Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew writ some years after the presentation of his Apologie where he makes mention of the Sibyl endeavours all he can to maintain it as well by his Hypothesis of the Souls of the Just being exposed to the rage of evil Spirits as by an Apocryphal Passage he attributes to Jeremy and which Irenaeus sometime after cites one while under the name of Esay another under that of Jeremy and certainly with as little reason one as the other in these Terms The God of Israel hath remembred his dead lying in the slimy earth and descended to them to preach his salvation among them Which St. Irenaeus does five several times apply to the descent of our Saviour into hell after his Passion saying If the Lord that he might become the first-fruits from the dead Col. i. 18. observed the Law of the dead and continued to the third day in the lower parts of the Earth Ephes iv 9. c. since he went to the valley of the shadow of death Psal xxiii 4 where the souls of the dead were c. it is manifest that the souls of his Disciples for whose sake the Lord did those things shall also go to the invisible place designed them by God and remain there expecting the Resurrection till the Resurrection Whence it must needs be that the Latine Interpreter having found in the Original Text the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which properly signifies Invisible and hath been taken by all the Heathens either for Hell or the God which they imagined presided there Literally translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Into an invisible place By which place the lovers of Truth are not as many at this day who to free St. Irenaeus form the Errour first proposed in the Sibylline Writing attribute to him Conceptions he neither ever had nor could have had to understand the State of the souls of the Saints departed which those Gentlemen conceive might be expressed by the Term of invisible place because Eye hath not seen the things which God hath prepared for those that love him wherever they may be laid up for them rather then the place properly so called where they effectually enjoy them For St. Irenaeus his manner of reasoning and the contexture of his Discourse expresly refutes their Glosses in as much as if the Disciples whom the Gospel assures us not to have been above their Master ought both in life and death to imitate him and if the Master according to the sentiment of St. Irenaeus and the Church of Rome at this day passed from the Cross to the lower parts of the earth and to the valley of the shadow of death that is to say to hell properly so called and remained there all the time from his Passion to his Resurrection it must of necessity follow that by the invisible place whither the Disciples go after their Death should according to the said Father be understood hell scituated in the lower parts of the earth and in the Valley of the shadow of Death and that they remain there till the time of their Resurrection It is apparent from the words before transcribed that Clemens Alexandrinus Contemporary with St. Irenaeus was of the same Opinion And Tertullian whom St. Cyprian acknowledges for his Master and whom Saint Hierome affirms to have died about the year 217. being arrived to a very great Age discovers in many places that all the Montanist Party had embraced it For instance in the seventh Chapter of his Book Of the Soul After the divorce saith he or separation of the body the soul is transferred to hell she is there detained she is there reserved â—ill the day of Judgment c. Christ at his Death descended to the souls of the Patriarchs And in the ninth Chapter The souls of Martyrs are understood to be under the Altar And in fifty fifth Chapter Hell is in an hollowness of the earth a vast space as to its depth and there is an undiscovered profundity in its entrails c. Christ descended into the lowest parts of
cannot without some trouble reflect that a Person so great as Saint Epiphanius should be through I know not what forgetfulness reduced to alledg for a reason to his Adversary the very thing he put in question and which had most need of proof so I think my self obliged to make this Observation That the Christians at that time used their hope concerning the communication of their Suffrages to the Dead with so much indulgence that they extended it even to those whom they thought dead in mortal sin and out of the communion of the Church CHAP. XV. Of the Prayers made and Alms given heretofore by the Christians for the damned NOt to bring upon the Stage the vain imaginations of Origen and his Party who conceived no other Punishments to be inflicted on either men or Devils then such as were Purgatory and for a time nor yet much to urge that some very Great Person as St. Gregory Nyssen in his great Catechistical Oration in his Treatise Of the Soul and in that which he made upon the eight and twentieth Verse of the fifteenth Chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians and St. Hierome in the eighteenth Book upon Isaiah Chap. lxvi 24. seem to have some time countenanced it I shall insist on this that some others no less eminent were of Opinion that there might be obtained some diminution of the Torments of the Damned and that they might be relieved by Prayers and Alms. Hence St. Chrysostome in his third Homily upon the Epistle to the Philippians speaking of those who thought it much to dispose of their wealth to Good Uses cryes out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Let us bewail them let us assist them according to our power let us finde out some little relief for them little indeed yet let us help them that little And how shall we do it By praying our selves and exhorting others to pray for them giving frequently for their sakes to the poor That brings some comfort The same St. Chrysostome affirming that the Catechumens have no part in the publick Prayers made for the Faithfull departed adds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The Catechumens are not honoured with that consolation but are deprived of all assistance of that nature one onely excepted What is that It is in your power to give to the poor for them and that gives them some refreshment And in the sixty second Homily upon the Gospel of St. John 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. If he who is dead were a sinner and had many ways offended God it is requisite we weep for that would be of no advantage to him but do that which may procure him some consolation viz. give Alms and Offerings This also we are to rejoyce at that he is deprived the opportunities of commiting wickedness Prudentius in the fifth of his Hymns upon a Supposition that the Night between Easter-Eve and Easter-Day the Souls of the Damned receive some ease and remission of their pains saith Sunt spiritibus saepe nocentibus Poenarum celebres sub Styge Feriae Illâ nocte sacer quâ rediit Deus Stagnis ad Superos ex Acheronticis c. Marcent suppliciis Tartara mitibus Exultátque sui carceris otio Umbrarum populus liber ab ignibus Nec fervent solito flumina sulphure c. That is Th' Infernal Spirits sometimes gain An intermission of their pain That Night when God from Acheron Ascended to his heav'nly Throne c. A milder torture reigns in Hell The Ghosts in Flames no longer dwell Proud that their bonds were eas'd awhile The streams of Sulphur cease to boil c The same Prudentius at the end of his Hamartigenia numbring himself among the Damned hath this Discourse Esto cavernoso quia sic pro labe necesse est Corporeâ tristis me sorbeat ignis Averno Saltem mitificos incendia lenta vapores Exhalent aestúque calor languente tepescat Lux immensa alios Tempora vincta coronis Glorificent me poena levis clementer adurat c. If since our Stains corporeal so require I shall be swallom'd by Avernal Fire Yet may at least those Flames a gentler heat Exhale and Vapours less intense beget Whilest others glorious Crowns of Light obtain Let me but have a gentler heat and pain And in the Hymn of St. Fructuosus Bishop of Tarragone Fo rs dignabitur meis medelam tormentis dare prosperante Christo c. It may be also he will give ease to my Torments Christ granting the good success For referring the giving of that ease to the Destruction of the World he shews it was not his meaning to speak of Purgatory such as the Church of Rome conceives it at this day but of the final condition of Souls at the last Judgment Paulinus Bishop of Nola applying to himself the Parable of the sixteenth of Luke and imagining himself in the place of the wicked rich man whom the Gospel represents as damned says to Nicetas Bishop of Dacia beyond Danubius which we now call Transsylvania Nos locis quantum meritis dirempti Eminus celsis humiles patronis Te procul sacris socium catervis Suspiciemus Quis die nobis dabit hoc in illa Ut tui stemus lateris sub umbra Et tuae nobis requietis aura Temperet ignem Tunc precor nostri nimium memento Et patris sancti gremio recumbens Roscido nobis digito furentem Discute flammam We who in place from thee as far As in our merits distant are From our Abyss to thee on high Direct our cry Who is 't when that day comes will yield Thy shade may serve us for a shield And some cool air from thy blest seat May fan our heat Ah! then preserve us in thy mind And on thy Father's Breast reclin'd But one drop from thy finger shake Our thirst to slake Saint Augustine in the four and twentieth Chapter of his one and twentieth Book Of the City of God professes that he does not oppose such as applied to the damned those words of the seventy seventh Psalm according to the Greeks Hath God forgotten to be gracious saying Quibus placet istam sententiam usque ad illa impiorum tormenta protendere c. I would have those who are pleased to extend that Sentence even to the Torments of the damned understand it at least in this manner that the Wrath of God which was pronounced against them for their eternal punishment still remaining upon them God shuts not up in anger his tender mercies and causes them not to be tormented with so much rigour as they deserve not so as they should never undergo those pains or that a time should come when they should be determined but to the end they should suffer them more remissly then their deserts might require For by that means both the Wrath of God shall remain and he shall not withhold his compassions even in his wrath which I confirm not though I do
to come and the Son of God clearly shew that he alludeth to those very books which are now extant of them and consequently that his work was hatch'd after that entitled the Sibylline and must needs be later then the year of our Lord 137. 2. That with Justin and Clemens he acknowledges but one Sibyl who manifested one onely God which shews it were to little purpose to look for different Authors for the eight books that are come to our times 3. That the most clear and remarkable descriptions of the Son of God palpably relate to the designation as well of the four vowels and two consonants which make up the Greek name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the number precisely arising thence as also the Acrostick of the eighth book wherein we have consecutively the names of Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour and Cross with the Paraphrase on the greatest part of the history of the Gospel 4. That the more express and historicall these descriptions are the more apparent it is that they are supposititious and written after the event the Spirit of God having never thought it convenient to propose things to come otherwise then aenigmatically and under the veil of severall figures and there being no instance but onely of one person whose proper name it hath express'd in its Oracles that is to say Cyrus twice nam'd by Isaiah 175. years before he was possess'd of the Monarchy of the Universe Clemens might soon have observ'd this if to compass his design he had made it as much his business to exercise his judgement as exhaust his memory but having resolv'd to make use of Heathens and Hereticks against themselves so to undeceive them all without taking heed himself of being surpriz'd he as well as others is fallen into the snare and the cloud of witnesses he had to produce suffer'd him not to see the bad marks which some of them carried in their very faces Accordingly do we find That this vast Wit whom nothing escap'd and who thought to make his advantages of all and take away as sometimes Israel did all the treasures of Aegypt after he had with a miraculous ostentation laid down the Depositions of 250. Heathen Authors as well Philosophers as Historians and Poets and given quarter to the most execrable Heretiques such as Basilides Carpacrates Julius Cassianus Epiphanes Heracleon Hermogenes Isidorus Marcion Prodicus Tatian Valentin c. and opened his brest to Apocryphall pieces that is to say the Prophesies of Enoch Cham Abacuc Esdras Parchor and Sophony the book of the Assumption of Moses the Gospels of the Aegyptians and Hebrews the Sermons of St. Peter and St. Paul the Traditions of St. Matthias the Epistle of St. Barnabas the Pastor of Hermas Brother to Pope Pius the first a piece which dazled the eyes of St. Irenaeus and many others hath also given credit to the counterfeit Sibyll whose discourse he thought so much the more authentick the more directly it contributed to his design CHAP. VI. An accompt of severall instances of dis-circumspection in Clemens Alexandrinus SInce therefore it could not well be otherwise but that this great man drawing out of so many severall sources must needs out of divers of them bring up dirt rather then water we shall not fear being thought awanting as to the respect we owe his memory and the merit of his great abilities and knowledge if we presume to affirm that in what we have left of his Works we meet with many instances of dis-circumspection weakness and an excessive credulity To come to particulars what is it else when he says after a very uncouth manner of speaking that the Word is the minister of the paternall will and the second cause which comes nearest the Father That the Angels fell through fornication That it is not lawfull for a man to touch blood nor to swear That Philosophy hath been to the Gentiles a Paedagogue to bring them to Christ fo far that it hath justified them that thereby they have glorify'd God and that it hath been their Testament and the foundation of all Christian Philosophy That Numa who dyed in the second year of the 27. Olympiad 134. years before Pythagoras appear'd and 168. years before he came into Italy was a Pythagorean That Semiramis was Queen of Aegypt That the Devil may repent That it is in our power to be delivered from ignorance and bad choyce That the soul makes the difference in the election of God That man is saved through his own means That in the time of Debora Osius the son of Riezu was high-priest That Solomon was Son-in-law to Hiram That Rehoboam was father to Abiu and Abiu to Athaman and this last to Jehosaphat and that Joram was father to Ozias That Jonathan was son to Ozias that Amos the Prophet was father to Isaiah That Achaz was father to Osea and Osea to Hezechias That from the time of Samuel to that of Josias the Passover was never celebrated That the false Prophet Ananias was son to Josias That Nechao fought Josias neer the river Euphrates That Helchias the high-Priest was father to Jeremy and that he dy'd immediately after he had read the book of the Law That the ten Tribes carried away according to the express certificate of the Scripture in the sixth year of Hezechias were brought into captivity in the fifteenth year of Achas his father That the transportation of the Jews under Sedechias who was later then the birth of Moses by about 1073. years and the raising of David to the Throne by 517. years was after the former 1085. years six months ten dayes and after the latter 492. years six months ten days precisely That Zachary who began not to prophesie to the people till the second year of Darius which was the first of the 65. Olympiad is more ancient then Pythagoras who began to come into reputation in the fourth year of the 60. Olympiad That Moses before his adoption was called Joachim and that now he goes under the name of Melchi That he killed the Aegyptian by his word that he was cast into prison and afterwards got out by miracle That the King having heard the name of God pronounc'd fell dumb and was afterward miraculously restor'd That it was to Philip oâ—… â—…aviour said Let the dead bury their dead That the body is the Sepulchre of the soul That Saint Matthias is Zachaeus the Publican That the Sacerdotall Vestment was bordered with 360 bells That the Son of God and his Apostles did after their death preach in hell that many were there converted that there was so great a necessity of that predication that otherwise God had been unjust That our Saviour did not eat out of any need his body stood in of sustenance but out of a fear of raising any ill opinion of himself in those who saw him That he who is endu'd with knowledge is free from all animal passion and cupidity that he is not overcome
of Israel asking Why is this mad fellow come to thee And Schemaiah the Nehelamite stirring up Zephaniah and the other Priests against Jeremiah writ to them The Lord hath made thee c. that ye should be Officers in the House of the Lord for every man that is mad and maketh himself a Prophet And Saint Ambrose doth in appearance acknowledg it by this Discourse There are certain Madnesses and alienations of spirit which are true and it may be of the Prophets who being transported as to their understanding Prophecied being so filled with the Spirit of God that to some they seemed mad when not minding their own safety many times naked and bare-foot as Esay the Prophet did they ran among the People crying not what they would themselves but what the Lord commanded them But for the beter understanding of all these Passages the Christian Reader is onely to remember that as the Prophets though they did not any action that was irregular or void of reason passed for Mad men in the apprehension of the profane such as might be the Captains at Ramoth-Gilead and Shemaiah the Presecutour of Jeremiah so the Devils egged on their Foretellers of things to come to play the Apes and imitate the Prophets and to brag even when they were at the height of their Extravagance of Inspirations equal with theirs So that if the true Prophets moved by Celestial Grace discovered the operations of it by some action suitable to their condition upon which account Saul being among them stripped himself of his Royal Robe and lay upon the ground humbling himself before God and celebrating the glory of his Infinite Power according as the Spirit gave him to speak on the contrary when he was overpressed with Melancholy and tormented by the evil Spirit which put him into Madness and Ecstasie he spoke also in that condition as if he had Prophecyed And Saint Ambrose minds us of the difference there is between the servile transportation of Possessed Persons which darkens the light of their minds binds up its Faculties makes their Reason unprofitable and forces them to violent motions and that holy Ravishment of the Prophets which filling them with admiration and joy refined their understanding and left them the free use of their ratiocination yet in such manner as to diver them from all humane Considerations and bend their thoughts to an extraordinary submission to God Upon which account he said They cryed not what they would themselves but what he commanded intending to express thereby the violence they did themselves by renouncing their own will that they might the more freely pursue the motions of his Grace and observed further that they minded not their own safety representing that they regarded not the preservation of their Lives nor their own convenience but were always ready to Sacrifice themselves and protest with St. Paul None of these things move me neither count I my life dear unto my self Nor did he absolutely pronounce that the action of the Prophetick Spirit upon the Person who was thereby inspired made him a Fool or so drew him out of himself as that he was without reason and had no other motion then what was forced but that inclining him to do not what his own ratiocination suggested to him but what it self advised him to it many times put him upon such extraordinary actions that those who vouchsafed not to consider the signification thereof were by their own corrupt judgment induced to attribute them to Madness and Extravagant Transportation which obliged him to say not that He was but that To some he seemed Mad. Tertullian went yet much further when drunk with the cup of Montanus he esteemed highly of those Ecstasies and Transportations which so ravish a man out of himself that he looses either wholly or in part the freedom of his Ratiocination But in regard Justin Martyr as well as he was of opinion That those Alienations which he pretended to have been in the Cumaean Sibyl might proceed from Divine Inspiration it is of some consequence as well to clear up his sentiment as to consider what judgment Antiquity hath made thereof and that the rather for that we have now some Divines who imagine That God does sometimes send such strong and violent Irradiations of his Love as strike through the Hearts of men like Thunder-bolts force those who receive them to cry out and do so cast them down that they are as it were dead Further That the Persons who are honoured with such an Illumination have motions of Piety so impetuous that they cannot pray unto God and when they attempt it suffer incredible pains their Bodies not being able to bear the vehement motions of so great a Devotion In his Book Of the Soul he hath this Discourse which Pamelius unjustly applies to Prisca or Maximilla dead fifty years before There is at this day among us a Sister on whom are fallen the Gifts of Revelations which she endures in spirit in the Church during the Divine Solemnities by Ecstasie And in another place having supposed that the Ecstasis that is to say the deep sleep that fell upon Adam was the force of the holy Spirit working Prophecy he adds God sent him an alienation of spirit which is a spiritual force wherein Prophecy consists and lower We say That Ecstasie is a sally out of sound sence somewhat like Madness Item This shall be the property of the said alienation of spirit that it comes not through any injury done to health but according to natural reason for it does not exterminate the understanding but force it out of the way It is one thing to shake another to move it one thing to overturn it another to exercise it What therefore proceeds from the Memory argues the sound constitution of the Mind if the soundness of the Soul be stupified the Memory remaining entire it is a kinde of Madness Wherefore we are not said to be Mad but to Dream and so it is then if ever that we are wise for our knowledge though in Umbrage yet is not extinct save that it may then seem to be wanting And elsewhere wresting to a wrong sence the words of the Gospel concerning Saint Peter's not knowing what he said he put this Question How not knowing was it through simple errour or want of reason Wresting also the sence of Saint Paul's Discourse he hath these Expressions Let him take out some Psalm some Vision some Prayer in a spiritual way onely that is in Ecstasie in alienation of spirit And against Praxeas Neither Peter nor John nor James were sensible of the Vision of God without a denial of Reason and alienation of spirit for which we maintain in the cause of new Prophecy that Ecstasie that is alienation of spirit is consistent with Grace For it is necessary that the man ravished in spirit especially when he sees the glory of
the fourty Martyrs are entred in the assurance of their Combats having without suffering passed through the Flame which we also having undaunted passed through may be received into Paradise And thence it comes that in his Funeral Orations upon Pulcheria and Flacilla her Mother he says of the former The Plant hath been removed hence but it hath been replanted in Paradise and of the later By that that is by Faith was she carried hence into the Bosom of the Father of Faith Abraham near the Fountain of Paradise Saint Ambrose upon the twentieth Section of the hundred and eighteenth Psalm according to the Greeks lays it down as hath been already shewed for certain that it is necessary those who desire to return into the Paradise out of which Adam had been driven should pass through the Fire of Judgment Paulinus having forsaken the World to lead a Religious Life afterwards Bishop of Nola in his second Fpistle to Severus his intimate Friend This is acceptable and well-pleasing in the sight of God that our good should be voluntarily that we might receive the things which are ours that is to say the house of Paradise and eternal Life wherein we were created and which if we purged from the possession of this earth whereinto we came through condemnation regain then may we as truly recalled from Banishment into our Country or returned after a long Pilgrimage into the house we were born in say God is our Portion in the land of the living c. Prudentius in the tenth of his Hymns While thou O God recallest and reformest thy body subject to dissolution in what Region wilt thou command the pure Soul to rest it self Hidden in the bosom of the Blessed Old man it shall lodge there where Eleazar is whom the rich man burning sees from afar off encompassed with flowers all about O Redeemer we follow thy Sayings whereby Triumphing over black Death Thou commandest the Thief who was Companion of thy Cross to come after thee Behold already the lightsom way of spacious Paradise opened to the Faithfull and it is lawfull to go into that Grove of which man had been deprived by the Serpent The Authour of the Homily upon the Thief unjustly attributed to Eusebius Emissenus This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise as in thy hereditary and paternal seat which at thy entrance shall be opened though upon the expulsion thence of Adam nay of two to wit Adam and Eve it had been shut up to innumerable people Enter thou therefore the first of all but with a happier entrance then the first into Paradise it being not required thou shouldest with Adam see hell Fear not thou shalt there meet with any mortal Viand any Law any Tree I will be to thee both Food and Life And that thou mayst not have the least apprehension that there may haply be some enemy in that blessed Grove and that the antient Thief may lay Ambushes for thee I will bring thee into it and confirm the possession thereof to thee The Authour of the Questions attributed to Justin Martyr in the seventy fifth Question The souls of the Just are carried into Paradise where they have the conversation and sight of the Angels and Archangels and the Vision of Christ our Saviour And in the seventy sixth Question It was profitable for the Thief at his entrance into Paradise to learn by the effects the advantage of Faith by which he had the honour to be admitted into the Assembly of the Saints where he is kept till the day of the Resurrection and retribution Now he hath that Sentiment of Paradise which is called Cogitative according to which the Souls see themselves the things that are below them and moreover the Angels and Daemons It were no hard matter to add to this number those Authours who have followed the same prejudicate Opinion as the Monk Caesarius in his third Dialogue St. Hierome in his hundred twenty ninth Epistle c. But the fourteen before cited are sufficient to shew that till after the year 450 their Opinion which had its first rise from the pretended Sibylline Books was so common in the Church that it met not with any Contradiction CHAP. XII The fourth Capital Tenet proposed by the Sibylline Writing THe fourth Supposition advanced by the Authour of that Counterfeit Piece concerning the State of the departed is That Jerusasalem rebuilt and made more glorious then ever the Son of God being descended from heaven shall establish a reign of a thousand years full of sensible enjoyments and a miraculous fertlity and abundance of corporal goods He spreads his Fiction before us in these Terms in the second Book page 14. The fruitfull earth shall again bring forth several Fruits And page 18. The Angels raising the Good out of the midst of the burning River shall convey them into light and bring them to a life free from care There is the immortal way of the great God and three Fountains of Wine Honey and Milk the earth also common to all and being divided by neither walls nor hedges shall then of it self bring forth several Fruits And in the third Book page 32. Then shall God give uno men a very great joy For the earth the Trees and the innumerable flocks of Sheep shall furnish men with the true fruit of Wine sweet Honey white Milk and the best Corn that ever mortals had And page 35. The Wolves upon the Mountains shall eat grass with the Lambs the spotted Lynxes shall feed with the Goats the Bears with the Calves and all Mortals the flesh-devouring Lion shall eat straw in the Manger c. And the Dragons shall rest themselves with the motherless little ones And in the six and fourtieth page of the fifth Book The Land of the Hebrews shall be holy and bring forth all things viz. the River of the Rock that distills Honey and the immortal Milk shall fall down upon the tongues of all the Just And in the fourtieth page All those who live a godly life shall live again upon the earth And in page the nine and fourtieth God hath made the City he delighted in more bright then the Stars the Sun and the Moon So that it is without all question it was the design of this Impostour who in imitation of the second Book of Esdras in the 19th Verse of the second Chapter and the 35th Verse of the fourteenth Chapter would needs entertain us with such extravagant Narrations to abuse the words of Esay and Saint John who in the twentieth and one and twentieth Chapters of his Apocalyps mystically represents the Church under the Name of the holy City the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of Heaven built of Gold and precious Stones having no need of Sun or Moon and in the midst of it and of either side of the River was there the Tree of Life which bare twelve manner of Fruits yielding its fruit every Moneth and the leaves of
to felicity and desire to escape Damnation she I say neither prays nor thinks she ought to pray for either the Saints Glorified nor the Sinners Condemned but onely for the Faithfull whom she presupposes to expect their Glorification and that onely for a certain time Thirdly that if from this antecedent he hath sinned it did of necessity always follow We must Pray for him the Church of Rome would be obliged to Pray First For the Apostatized Angels who having quitted their first station sinned no less then men do but in such manner that their offence condemned by an irrevocable decree is absolutely incapable of remedy Secondly For the Damned who are not in a state capable of amendment Thirdly For those that are Glorified who have not any good to obtain and that as well after as before the last Judgment since that after the Pronuntiation of it this truth that men and Devils have sinned will remain evident and irrefragable as before though that after the retribution which shall be for ever made to every one according to his works it will not be any longer either necessary or convenient or rational to pray for him CHAP. XVII Saint Epiphanius's fift Motive considered FOr a fifth consideration Saint Epiphanius alledges that Prayers for the Dead are made by the surviving out of a design to signifie what is accomplished thereby insinuates that he conceived the state of the Faithfull from the moment of their death to the time of their resurrection to be imperfect and capable of melioration it is possible Aerius might have been of the same Sentiment and upon that account have been forced to acknowledg some necessity of praying for them untill the absolute accomplishment of their Glory But this imagination neither hath nor can have any force against the Protestants who believe that the Faithfull at the very demolition of the earthly Tabernacles of their bodies are received according to the saying of St. Paul into their celestial habitations and that at the very instant of their putting-off of Flesh God cloaths their souls with the glory which they are eternally to enjoy so that what till then was in part and imperfect in them is from thence absolutely abolished and that these Considerations that the Prayer does not cut off all that is layed in charge against the dead and that it is made to signifie what is accomplished cannot be any way seasonable in respect of those who as they are perswaded by the Scripture that to no purpose are alledged either the need which the Faithfull departed stand in of their accomplishment since they are already in actual possession thereof being present with the Lord and absent from the body particularly to that end or the charges which are pretended to remain against them after death since there can be no accusation nor any one to lay ought to their charge who are justified by the Lord who protesteth according to the tenour of his own Covenant that he will be mercifull to their unrighteousness and their sins and iniquities will he remember no more CHAP. XVIII Saint Epiphanius's sixth Motive Considered IN the sixth place St. Epiphanius tells us That some in his Time prayed for Sinners departed having a respect or recourse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the Mercy of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imploring the Mercy of God and it may be said that upon this ground That sinners continued charged with sins and imperfections after their decease Antiquity was induced to demand by Prayers the remission of their sins and consequently their establishment in a place of rest To this purpose is what we read in the one and fourtieth Chapter of the eighth Book of the Constitutions attributed to Saint Clement 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That God the lover of men having received his soul would turn away his face from all his sins voluntary and unvoluntary and out of his Graciousness and Mercy place him in the Region of the godly who enjoy themselves in the Bosom of Abraham c. whence trouble sadness and sighing are departed c. Look upon this thy servant whom thou hast chosen and taken to thy self to receive another lot and pardon him what he hath voluntarily or involuntarily sinned and place about him good Angels and dispose of him into the Bosom of the Patriarchs c. where there is neither sadness nor trouble nor sighing c. In the Liturgie of the Armenians Memento Domine miserere fac gratiam animabus requiescentibus pacifica illumina eas c. Remember O Lord shew Mercy and be Gracious unto the souls which are in rest pacify them and illuminate them c. In the Liturgy of St. Basily 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For the repose and remission of thy Servant In the Anaphora or Liturgie translated out of the Syriack and attributed to St. Basil whereof the Summary is alledged by Cassander That God would conduct the departed through the horrid receptacles and place them in habitations of light That God would deliver them out of the thick darkness of tribulation and grief that he would not enter into judgement with them c. If they have sinned in any manner as men clad in flesh that he would pardon them In the Missal of the Latine Church Animabus famulorum famularumque tuarum remissionem cunctorum tribue peccatorum ut indulgentiam quam semper optaverunt piis supplicationibus consequantur c. Grant O Lord unto the souls of thy Servants of what Sex soever the remission of all their sins that by devout supplications they may obtain that indulgence which they have always desired c. Do away by the pardon of thy most mercifull Piety the sins which he hath committed through the frailty of worldly conversation c. Do thou O God mercifully out of thy wonted Goodness wipe away the stains which the souls have contracted from the contagion of the World Amen Mercifully pardon them c. put them into perpetual oblivion Amen c. O Lord enter not into judgment with thy Servants for no man shall be justifyed in thy sight deliver their souls from the Gates of Hell c. Grant them the remission of all their sins c. free them from all their sins c. We beseech thee that thy judicial sentence fall not heavy upon them c. That what vices soever she hath through the subtlety of the Devil contracted thou wouldest out of thy compassion and mercy indulgently do away c. Free O Lord we beseech thee the soul of thy Servant from all chains of sin Which Prayers are for the most part repeated in the first Book of Sacred Ceremonies Sect. 15. chap. 1. and the ensuing is there added over and above by a late Cardinal Non intres in judicium tuum Domine cum servo tuo c. O Lord enter not into judgment with thy servant for no man shall be justifyed in thy sight if the remission of
some persons having observed that the Heathens called by the Name of Ollas Vulcanias or Kettles of Vulcan the gaping places through which the Mountains of Gibel Vesuvium Lipara Strongoli and other places full of sulphur disburthen themselves of the Flames which either by intervals or a constant burning devour their Entrails and taken either out of astonishment or of set purpose the crakings of those subterranean Fires for the groans and crys of Tormented persons and lastly met with men who had the confidence either out of the excess of their malice against some Persons Departed or a desire to make their advantage of the credulous simplicity of the Living to compose Histories of the Apparitions of Souls separated by Death from the Bodies which they had animated before would needs without any Oracle of Scripture or Tradition of the first Ages of the Church and without the Example of any of the Saints that lived in them suppose that the Souls of those Christians which during their life-time had been defiled with Sin were after their death as it were melted again in a subterranean Fire where they were purified some sooner others later and all before the Last Day And as we finde the Poet Dante by a Liberty truly Poetical confined to the Hell where the Damned were all his enemies advanced into Paradise the best of his Friends and reduced the rest to be content with Purgatory so were there about the midst of the sixth Age a sort of People that had the boldness to affirm upon the Authority of their own pretended Visions the damnation of the Greatest men About that time was it that the Hermit of Lipara had perswaded the Father of the Step-father of Julian one of the Agents of the Romane Church that he had seen Theodoric King of the Ostrogoths who died on the one and thirtieth of August 536. led between Pope John the First and Symmachus without a Girdle without Shoes his hands tyed and at last cast into the next Vulcanian Cauldron whence honest St. Gregory inferred in the year 593. that by the Eructations of Fire which happened many times in Sicily and other adjacent Islands the tormenting Cauldrons were discovered Thus also came it to pass that after the Death of Charles Martel which happened on the two and twentieth of October 741. the Monks of St. Tron having published that Eucherius Bishop of Orleans had seen in a Vision the eternal Torments of that Prince who had dealt very roughly with him and given Ecclesiastical Revenues to those who had assisted him in the War and that thereupon there had been found in his Sepulchre onely a Dragon with the visible marks of his Body's being Divinely consumed by Fire the Story though so much the more evidently false in as much as the Death of Eucherius who died the fifteenth of February 727. preceded by fifteen years eight Moneths and two days that of Charles Martel whom he is ridiculously supposed to have survived was so pleasing to the humour of the Clergie that the Writers of the Legends of Rigobert of Rheims of Eucherius and Peter the Library-keeper and Flodoard undertook the dispersing of it and in the year 858. in November the Prelats of the Provinces of Rheims and Rouēn gave it for certain to Lewis King of Germany whom they knew to be descended of Martel by Pipin his second Son who upon the twenty ninth of July 753. concurrent with the fourth of his Reign gave for his Father's sake Saint Michael's-Mount in Verdunois to the Abbey of Saint Denys and by Lewis the Debonnaire Grand-Son of Pipin who Writ in the year 836. to Hilduin Abbot of Saint Denys that Charles his Great-grandfather had religiously recommended himself and had for that end principally shewn his Devotion and confidence towards that his particular Patron a manifest Argument that the Fable of his Damnation was not yet invented and that those Gentlemen who two and twenty years before bragged they had heard the Relation of it from Lewis imposed upon him and very boldly abused the credulity of Lewis King of Germany and Charles the Bald his children And in the year 1090. In Saxony a Clergy-man Dead as was conceived dragged into Hell and returning thence three days after confirmed by the Prediction of his own Death and the discoveries of other things the Judgment he had before given concerning the Torments of Pope Gregory the Seventh and the Petty Kings Rodolph and Herman the first of whom died the twenty fourth of May 1085. the second the fifteenth of October 1080. and the third in the year 1088. These three Examples whereto a thousand others of equal authority might be added are sufficient to make it appear what a strange power malice hath over those who are once infected with its venome There may be produced also such as shall demonstrate what Impressions Interest can give for to raise an horrour against Schism there was spread up and down Rome this Discourse concerning Paschasius Deacon of the Romane Church who had been to his death engaged in the Party of the Anti-Pope Laurence put by his pretences the 23 of October 501. That notwithstanding the merit of his Person being such that the very touching of the Surplice placed upon his biere had while he was carrying to the ground healed a possessed person yet had his soul been condemned to endure the ardors of the boyling-waters in the Baths surnamed the Angulani whence it was afterwards delivered upon the Prayers of Germanus Bishop of Capua And to encourage men to liberality it was said of Dagobert who died January 19. 644. that the Devils beating him as they were carrying him away in a Boat towards the Isles of Vulcan St. Denys St. Maurice and St. Martin whom he continually called to his relief came with Thunder and Tempest to his rescue and disposed him afterwards into Abraham's Bosom all which passages John the Hermite who lived in a little Isle not far thence saw in a Vision and gave the Relation of it to Anseald then Agent and afterwards Bishop of the Church of Poictiers In like manner the Impostor who took upon him the name of Turpin for that of Tilpin Arch-Bishop of Rheims who died the third of September 789. never considering that Wolfarius Successour to Tilpin did in the year 811. subscribe the Testament of Charle-maigne feigned that that Prince dying on Saturday Jan. 28. 814. and Canonized by Paschal the Third Anti-Pope in the year 1166. had been carried up to the Celestial Kingdom by the assistance of St. James to whom he had built many Churches and that a certain Devil whom he had seen running after the Troops of his Companions and drawing towards Aix la Chapelle whither they were all going in hope to be present at Charles's death and afterwards to carry away his Soul to Hell had told him at his return that the headless Galician had put into the
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
while there shall onely be an Ostentation to name it and men shall wave to express the Nature of it to give the Eastern Greeks and the Protestants who absolutely deny it some proof of the Tradition which they pretend to produce for the Confirmation thereof CHAP. XXX Shewing that the first Hypothesis proposed by the Sibylline Writing so called is generally disclaimed AS to the first Hypothesis which concerns The detention of all souls whatsoever in Hell from their separation from the Bodies which they had animated to their Resurrection though it were in such high esteem that it induced the Christians of the second and third Ages to compose the ibera and the other Prayers in which the departed Person is introduced desiring to be delivered from eternal Death and the Living require that he be delivered from the Gates of Hell and preserved from the places of Torment Tartarus the deep Lake from the pains of Darkness from the mouth of the Lion yet was it at the very beginning moderated by those who seemed to have embraced it with greatest resolution For Tertullian perswaded by the Relation had been made to him of the Visions of St. Perpetua was of Opinion as we have already observed that the Souls of Martyrs were by way of preference placed in the Terrestrial Paradise and the rest confined in Hell And since it hath by little and little been abandoned yet so as that those who quitted it would not be obliged either to the rejection of the Sibylline Writing which had occasioned the production of it or to a change of the Prayers introduced into the Publick Service which presupposed it For many making no mention of Hell contented themselves to assign at least in words the souls of the Faithfull a certain sequestred place as under the Altars and Holy Tables appointed for the conservation and distribution of the Eucharist and upon that accompt if we may rely on the Judgment of the late Bishop of Orleans Gabriel de l'Aubespine the Councel Assembled about the year 305. from all Parts of Spain at Elvira near Granada had drawn up its thirty fourth Canon in these Terms Cereos per diem placuit in Coemeterio non incendi inquietandi enim spiritus Sanctorum non sunt c. It is thought good that in the day-time no Wax-candles should be lighted in the Church-yard for the spirits of the Saints are not to be disturbed In effect it might seem that the Christians at that time meeting in Coemeteries or Church-yards the Altars being upon that occasion placed there and many believing that the Angels and separated souls were disposed into some subtile Bodies capable as ours of resenting strong Perfumes Prohibition was made by the Spanish Prelates That Wax-candles should be lighted in the day-time lest the smoak of them might prove offensive to the spirits of the Faithfull whose Bodies had been there interred It might also be thought that Vigilantius by Birth indeed of Aquitain but a Priest of Barcelona who had with all Spain received the Decree of Elvira Disputing in the year 406. viz. an hundred years precisely after the said Decree against the Maintainers of the Worship done according to the Custom of that Time to the Reliques of the Saints whom he justly conceived illuminated by the Majesty of the Lamb sitting in the midst of the Throne of God crushed them with the Inconvenience which he found in their Opinion saying Ergò cineres suos amant animae Martyrum circumvolant eos sempérque praesentes sunt nè fortè si aliquis Precator advenerit absentes audire non possint c. The Souls therefore of the Martyrs are in love with their own dust and fly about it and are ever at hand lest if any one comes to pray they should not being absent hear him For this Argument makes onely against those who assigned at least in appearance the Souls of the Faithfull departed for their habitation the Place under the Altars that were near their Sepulchres There is also some Ground to number among the Followers of this strange Opinion those who had been so confident as to give it for certain to the good St. Augustine that St. John having caused himself to be buried alive at Ephesus the Earth continually sprung up and boyled as it were over the place of his Interment For if they thought it no Inconvenience to say of our Saviour's Beloved Apostle that he was confined to his Sepulchre there to expect in Body and Soul the Day of Judgment how much less would they have thought it to reduce the Souls of other Saints departed to the same condition St. Augustine thought it better to comply with the Opinion which he conceived could not be refuted by certain Proofs But it is so vanished of it self that being at this day generally declined we need not trouble our selves with the Confutation thereof no more then of that of Justine Martyr who from the Hypothesis of the pretended Sibylline Writing and the Story of the Witch of Endor inferred that all Souls without any exception either of Saints or Patriarchs or Prophets are in Hell under the power of the Devils For though the Prayers whereby it is even to this day required in the Church of Rome that God would deliver the Souls of the Faithfull departed from the power of Hell from the Mouth of the Lion from the Pains of Darkness and that he would put away far from them the Princes of darkness do notoriously discover they drew their Original from such a presupposition yet hath it nevertheless so absolutely lost all Credit that even in the year 380. Philastrius Bishop of Brescia charged it with Heresie saying Alia est Haeresis de Pythonissa c. There is another kind of Heresie concerning the Witch whereby some covering a Woman with Cloaths hoped they might obtain certain Answers from her whence it is said that that Witch raised out of Hell the Soul of the blessed Samuel and for that reason is it principally that many men even to this Day suspect that she might be believed especially for that it is known that she as it were a second time gave in that excitation true Answers of those things which the blessed Prophet had said to King Saul and because many are content to acquiesce in a Ly they descend into perpetual death since the Prophet saith The Souls of the Just are in the hand of the Lord and Death toucheth them not How then could an impious Soul raise out of Hell a pious and holy one especially that of a Prophet But what a strange astonishment must we necessarily conceive at this that the Opinion of Justine Martyr concerning the State of Souls should displease the whole Church which yet in her Service presupposed some such thing For if it be Heresie to think that the Souls of the â—aithfull after their retirement out of this World should be in danger of being exposed to the Rage of
Beatitude writing in the nine and twentieth Homily upon the first Epistle to the Corinthians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Without the flesh the soul shall not receive those unspeakable goods in like manner shall she not also be punished c. If the body be not raised again the soul remains uncrowned deprived of that Beatitude which is in the Heavens c. And again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. You also think what and how great a thing it is that Abraham and the Apostle Paul should sit down till such time as thou shalt be accomplished to the end that then they might receive their reward for if we also are not arrived the Saviour hath foretold that he would not give it c. What shall Abel do who overcame first of all and is sate down without being Crowned Thirdly From what is said by Prudentius who speaking of the Martyrs of Saragossa seems to deny their Souls admission into Heaven saying Sub Altari sita sempiterno turba c. The company seated under the Eternal Altar To which may be added that St. Augustine not content to have said That after this life ended we shall not be there where the Saints shall be as if he could not have designed by its proper Name the place of the Soul's habitation is forced in several places to make use of the most general Term of all viz. that of Receptacles And to that that of Paulinus who in his Epitaph upon Clarus as if he knew not where to assign him Entertainment makes this Discourse to him Sive Patrum sinibus recubas Dominive sub ara Conderis aut sacro pasceris in nemore Qualibet in regione Poli situs aut Paradisi Clare sub aeternâ pace quietus agis c. Whether in th' Patriarch's Bosom thou remain Or under the Lord's Altar art detain d Or an Aboad i' th' sacred Grove hast gain'd What part or place of Paradise thou hast got Clarus eternal Peace and Rest's thy Lot But all this is not enough to induce me to subscribe to the disadvantageous Censure given by Stapleton who not making any distinction of either Times or Persons or Expressions durst attribute to all Antiquity what the Authour of the pretended Sibylline Writing had perswaded those who had first consulted it Nor do I see that from the places above cited it may rigorously be inferred that the Fathers out of whose Writings they are extracted delayed the Beatitude of the Saints till after the Day of Judgment For though the words of Sain◠Ambrose seem to bear that they expect their Happiness with uncertainty and doubtfully yet he neither understood nor could have understood it so since that in the second of the places objected to him he writes that the Soul of the Faithfull Person departed Non busto tenetur sed quiete piâ fungitur c. is not detained upon the Funeral Pile where the Body had been consumed but enjoys a pious Rest His design then as it was also St. Chrysostom's who means by the Bosom of the Fathers the Kingdom of Heaven was to have it understood that the supreme Happiness and absolute accomplishment of the glory of the Saints departed was to be a Consequence of the Resurrection and Last Judgment at which time the souls already in Glory shall receive their true Crowns in the remuneration promised to compleat Persons whereof they before made the principal part and that in expectation of the Judgment which shall fully consummate their Glory they remain in suspense not as uncertain of the effect it shall produce but as ignorant of the time when it shall please God that so admirable an Event shall come to pass So that his particular Judgment reaches no further then that the souls freed from their bodies are transmitted to Hell but simply supposes that as to the Heathen it was enough to say so much As for Prudentius and Paulinus their conception of the Eternal Altar is not after a gross but after a refined and mystical manner Prudentius saying of the blessed souls that they shall rest in the Bosom of the blessed Old man where Lazarus is and in Paradise And Paulinus expressly declaring of Clarus Libera corporeo mens carcere gaudet in Astris Pura probatorum sedem sortita piorum c. Spiritus aethere gaudet Discipulúmque pari sociat super astra Magistro c. Among the Just his Habitation is Of Body freed possess'd of Heav'nly Bliss c. His soul to Heav'n is gone The Scholar to the Master 's equal grown So that according to these two Authours to rest under the Eternal Altar in the Bosom of Abraham in Paradise in Heaven above the Stars is one and the same thing as to the effect and design though by divers expressions the Beatitude and Glory of the children of God as well in general as in particular CHAP. XXXIV The Uniformity of the Sentiment of the Fathers and of the Protestants I Add that most of the Fathers who lived after Tertullian what Expressions soever they may make use of were of a Sentiment consonant to what is at the present held by the Protestants and firmly maintained that all the Souls of those of whose Names there was a Commemoration made in the Service of the Church were at the very hour of their death conveyed to the enjoyment of their Rest and Glory Hence was it that St. Cyprian even in the year 252. resolutely pronounces De istis mundi turbinibus extracti c. Having escaped the Tempests of this World we make towards the secure Haven of an eternal Mansion c. We are not to put on Mourning-Garments here when they there have already put on their White Robes c. It is not a departure but a passage and the Temporal journey being at an end a transportation towards the things That are Eternal c. Let us embrace the day which assigns to every one his own Mansion which restores us taken away hence and disingaged from the snares of this World to Paradise and the celestial Kingdom c. Again Lucrum maximum c. exemptum pressuris-urgentibus venenatis Diaboli faucibus liberatum ad laetitiam salutis aeternae Christo vocante prosicisci c. It is an exceeding great advantage c. to go Christ calling us to the Joys of Eternal Salvation after we are freed from those pressures which lie heavy upon us and delivered from the poisonous jaws of the Devil To the same effect Origene about fifteen years before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. We hope to be above the Heavens after the Combats and Troubles which we have run through here St. Basil in the following Age about the year 370. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An eternal Rest is proposed to those who shall have lawfully maintained the Combat of the Life which is here St. Gregory Nazianzene in his tenth Oration pronounced about the year 369. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
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
was restored to Christ c. And of Paulina the Wife of Pammachius departed this life in the year 393. Illa Blaesilla cum sorore Paulina dulci somno fruitur tu duarum medius leviùs ad Christum subvolabis c. Blaesilla with her Sister Paulina rests in a quiet sleep thou being between both shalt have a more easie flight to Christ c. Of Paula the Mother of Blaesilla and Paulina departed in Beth-lehem on the twenty eighth of January 404. Fides opera tua Christo te sociant praesens quod postulas facilius impetrabis c. Thy Faith and Works associate thee to Christ being present O Paula thou shalt more easily obtain what thou desirest c. Aspices angustum praecisâ rupe Sepulchrum Hospitium Paulae coelestia regna tenentis c. Seest thou a Rock t' a narrow Coffin hewn 'T is Paula's Mansion who to Heav'n is flown Of Lucinus departed about the year 410. Obsecro te c. I beseech thee Theodorus that thou wouldest bewail thy Lucinius as a Brother yet so as to rejoyce withall that he reigns with Christ c. Confident and Conquerour he looks from on high c. Of Fabiola departed in the year 401. Depositâ tandem sarcinâ levior volavit ad Caelum c. Having lay'd down her burthen she is fled with more ease towards heaven Saint Chrysostome of Berenice and Prosdoce who were drowned during the Persecution 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Moreover these were with the Souldiers of Christ the heavenly Angels Of Pelagia who had cast her self down Headlong 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. She ran not towards the top of a mountain but towards the highest heaven c. The threatning of the Judg c. pressed her to flie with greater haste towards heaven c. She went out of her Chamber out of the Woman's Closet into another Chamber that is to say heaven c. Which is as much as he could have said and what he had said in substance of the greatest Martyrs St. Ignatius of Antioch St. Romanus St. Julian St. Juventinus St. Maximus and others whose Elogies he writ The same St. Chrysostome says also of Philogonius Arch-Bishop of Antioch deceased the twentieth of December about the year 322. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Ascending into heaven he hath no need of the Praises of men since he is gone to a greater and more happy portion c. He is transferred to the Society of Angels c. Of Eustathius who had held the same See and died about the year 359. upon the sixteenth of July 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Transferred to heaven he is gone towards Jesus whom he had desired and almost in the same Terms of Meletius his Ordinary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He is gone towards Jesus whom he had desired St. Augustine of Verecundus who had entertained him and all his Company at his Countrey-House Retribues illi Domine in resurrectione Justorum quia jam ipsam sortem retribuisti ei c. O Lord thou shalt reward him in the Resurrection of the Just because thou hast already cast that Lot upon him And of Nebridius who was come out of Africk into Italy to live with him Nunc ille vivit in sinu Abrahae c. Now he lives in Abraham ' s Bosom whatsoever it be that is understood by that Bosom There my Nobridius lives that dear Friend of mine and thy adopted Son O Lord who had once been a Bond-slave but was after freed There he liveth for what other place can be fit for such a Soul In that place he liveth whereof he was wont to ask me miserable and unexperienced man so many Questions Now he no longer laies his Ear to my Mouth but applies his spiritual mouth to thy Spring and drinks Wisdom after the rate of his greedy Thirst happy to all Eternity Paulinus of Rusina the Wife of Alethius Habes jam in Christo magnum tui pignus c. Thou hast already in Christ a great pledge of thy self an earnest Suffr age thy Wife who prepares as much favour for thee in the Heavenly Places as thou furnishest her with abundance from those upon Earth c. She abounds by the supplies of thy Wealth being clad in a Golden Vesture and cloathed all over with variety viz. precious light c. Paulinus the African of St. Ambrose Ubi corpus Domini accepit c. After be had received the Body of our Lord he gave up the Ghost taking along with him a good provision that his Soul being more refreshed by the strength of that Viand should be now rejoycing in the Society of Angels and Elias whose Life he lived here Sulpicius Severus of St. Martin who died on Sunday November the eleventh 400. Spiritum coelo reddidit c. He resigned his Spirit to Heaven c. There was an holy rejoycing at his Glory c. The Heavenly Company singing Hymns accompanies the Body of the Blessed man to the place of his Enterment c. Martin hath the Acclamations of divine Psalms Martin is honoured with Ecclesiastical Hymns c. Martin is entertained with joy in Abraham ' s Bosom Martin who had been here poor and beggarly enters Rich into Heaven c. And it is to be noted by the way that that Great Man a little before he gave up the Ghost had answered those who would have had him to lie on his side Sinite me Fratres coelum potius respicere quà m terram ut suo jam itinere iturus ad Dominum Spiritus dirigatur Suffer me Brethren rather to look up towards Heaven then down upon the ground that my Spirit which is now taking its journey to God may be directed in its way Palladius writes of St. Chrysostome who dyed November the seventh 407. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Passing hence to Christ c. Ennodius Bishop of Pavia of Epiphanius his Praedecessour deceased January the twenty first 496. Cùm beatissimus cerneret Pontifex c. The blessed Prelate seeing c. that he was ready to fly to the pure brightness of Heaven c. assured of his perfection he added My heart is confirmed in the Lord c. So as that heavenly Soul resounding with Hymns and Songs even at the point of Death returned to her Lord c. He whose departure we bewail upon Earth is in possession of the high places with God c. And of Anthony the Hermit of Valtelina afterwards a Monk in the Monastery of Lerina deceased December the twenty eighth 488. Mundi istius sarcinam deponens c. Laying down the burthen of this World and having overcome the Ambushes laid by the craft of the old Serpent he hath exchanged our day and the light of this present World for that which is perpetual If the Harmony of all these Testimonies which have been produced suffice not to satisfie and perswade the most-prepossessed Spirits that the most eminent and best-informed Antiquity reforming the
year 398. Nunc requiem sentit coelestia regna potitus c. Now got to Heav'n he does his rest enjoy That of Celsus a young Lad a Spaniard deceased about the year 394. and celebrated by Paulinus since Bishop of Nola Laetor obîsse brevi functum mortalia saec'lo Ut citò divinas perfrueretur opes c. Placidam Deus aethere Christus Arcessens merito sumpsit honore animam c. Spiritus Angelico vectus abit gremio c. Superno in lumine Celsum Credite vivorum lacte favisque frui c. Glad that he 's soon discharged hence I am That sooner he Riches divine might claim c. Christ hath his peacefull Soul to Heav'n receiv'd With its deserved honour To Angels Bosoms his spirit is convey'd c. Celsus in light above doubt not though dead With living Milk and Honey-combs is fed That of Clarus deceased the 8th of November about the year 402. Libera corporeo mens carcere gauder in astris Pura probatorum sedem sortita piorum c. Spiritus aethere gaudet Discipulúmque pari sociat super astra Magistro c. Emeritus superis Spiritus involitas Sive Patrum sinibus recubas Dominive sub ara Conderis aut sacro pasceris in nemore Qualibet in regione Poli siâ—â—s aut Paradisi Clare sub aeterna pace quietus agis c. Among the Just his Habitation is Of Body free'd possess'd of Heav'nly bliss c. His Soul to Heav'n is flown The Scholar to the Master equal grown c. Thou a discharged Spirit to Heav'n fly'st And whether thou i th' Patriarch ' s Bosom ly'st Or under the Lord ' s Altar art detain'd Or an aboad i th' Sacred Grove hast gain'd What part or place of Paradise thou 'st got Eternal Peace and Rest is Clarus lot That of Paula deceased in the year 404. Aspicis angustum praecisa rupe Sepulchrum Hospitium Paulae coelestia regna tenentis c. Seest thou a Rock into a Coffin hewn 'T is Paula ' s Mansion who to Heav'n is flown That of Concordius of Arles deceased about the same time Integer â—tque que pius vitáque corpore purus Aeterno hîc positus vivit Concordius aevo c. Hunc citò sideream raptum Omnipotentis in Aulam Et Mater bland 〈◊〉 Fratres in funere quaerunt c. Here Pious Good of Life and Body pure Coâ—…dius of Eternity lies sure c. Him snatch'd to the Almighty's starry Hall A Mother kind and Brethren do bewail That of Pope BONIFACE the First deceased the 25th of October 423. Membráque clausit Certus in adventu glorificanda Dei c. Quis te Sancte Parens cum Christo nesciat esse c. His Members he did lay Assur'd of Glory on the last great day c. Who doubts thy being with Christ Great Man That of Pope CELESTINE gathered to the rest of the LORD April the 6th 432. Vitam migravit in illam Debita quae Sanctis aeternos reddit honores c. Mens nescia mortis Vivit aspectu fruitur bene conscia Christi c. He to that life is gone Where blessed Saints eternal Honours crown c. The Mind immortal lives And guiltless Christ contemplates That of St. Hilary of Arles departed this world to a better Life May the 5th 449. Hîc carnis spolium liquit ad astra volans c. Nec mirum post mortem tua limina Christe Angelicásque domos intravit aurea regna Divitias Paradise tuas fragrantia semper Gramina nitentes divinis floribus hortos Subjectásque videt nubes sidera coeli c. To Heav'n flown his Fleshy Robe lies here c. Nor is it much if after Death To Angels Mansions he admittance hath And of the Golden Kingdoms is possest And with thy Wealth O Paradise is blest Where ever-fragrant Verdures he may tread And Gardens with divinest Flow'rs or'espread And Clouds and Stars beneath him c. That of the Abbot ABRAHAM deceased the 15th of June about the year 480. in Auvergne Jam te circumstant Paradisi millia sacri Abraham jam te comperegrinus habet Jam patriam ingrederis sede qua decidit Adam Jam potes ad fontem fluminis ire tui c. Thousands of Paradise now round thee are With Abraham thy Fellow-traveller Thou art possessed of that whence Adam fell Thou mayst of thine own Streams go to the Well That which Ennodius the Deacon and afterwards Bishop of Pavia made in Honour of Bonus Exemplum terris linquens ad sidera raptus c. The World he leaves Taught by 's Example him the Sky receives That of Abundantius composed by the same Ennodius Non sentit damna Sepulchri c. Feels not the Losses of the Grave That of Rustica writ by the same Hand Purior aethereas graderis sine carne per arces c. Disrob'd of flesh thou walk'st th' ethereal Tow'rs That of Melissa due to the same Authour De vita ad vitam transitus iste placet c. From life to life to pass is my delight That whereby he celebrated the Memory of Victor Bishop of Novara Spiritus aetherea congaudet lucidus arce c. His lightsom Soul sports in the Starry Vault That which he hath left in Honour of Euphemia Mens niveis quà m bene juncta choris c. How well her minde suits with the snowy Quires Of Blessed Spirits That of Atolus of Rheims Contemporary with Saint Remy Proprium censum coelum transvexit in altum In quo suscepit quod miserendo dedit c. Praerutilum detinet ipse Polum Heav'ns Treasure he to Heav'n ha's reassign'd Where what he here in pity gave does finde c. Of Heaven he 's possest That of the Consul BOETHIUS Beheaded in the year 524. by the command of Thierry King of the Ostrogoths Probitas me vexit ad auras c. Ecce Boethus adest in coelo magnus c. My piety to Heaven me brought c. Behold in Heav'n the great Boethius is c. That of Petronius Corpus humo animam Christo Petroni dedisti Nam justae mentes foventur luce celesti Sidereásque colunt sedes mundóque fruuntur c. Thy Body earth does finde Thy Soul Petronius th' hast to Christ assign'd Just minds celestial Light surrounds the Sky Their Seat they onely what is pure enjoy That of Liberius Praefect of that Part of the Gauls now called Languedoc under Theodorick King of the Ostrogoths Cùm membra recedunt Nescit fama mori lucida vita manet c. Thy Limbs may rot Thy Fame remains a brighter Life's thy lot That of Pope FELIX the Fourth deceased February the 29th 528. Certa fides justis coelestia regna patere Antistes Felix quae modo laetus habet c. Felix in Heaven hath felicity Whose Courts unto the Just ev'r openly That of Florentinus Abbot of Saint Croix d'Arles deceased April the 25th Indict 1. in the 12th year after
c. He rejoyces with the Angels in the Kingdom of heaven I acknowledg that the Opinion of Purgatory crept in among the Latines about the end of the sixth Age having by little and little gained credit many were easily induced to compose Epitaphs containing certain Wishes and Prayers for the Dead Yet did not their scrupulous manner of proceeding hinder any that would from attributing to them the possession of Celestial glory immediately upon their departure out of this life Thus the Epitaph of Pope Stephen the Sixth deceased the one and twentieth of May 891. hath these express Terms Aethera scandit spiritus almus ovans c. His milde Spirit ascends heaven triumphing That of the Kings Conrade the First Otho the First and Second and Zuentibold of Adalberon Bishop of Mets of Count Hugh and his Wife of the Countess Eve and her Sons of Arnoul and Rembal of Oudri Arch-Bishop of Rheims of Beatrix and Warin Abbot of Saint Arnoul de Mets express that their Souls In Coelis aeternâ pace fruuntur c. In heaven enjoy eternal Peace That of Reynold Abbot of S. Cyprian in Poictiers deceas'd in the year 1100. Rainaldi pars promptior Astra petivit c. Reynold's more willing part to heav'n is gone That of the Nun Benedicta Spiritus Astra tenet c. Of heav'n her Spirit 's possest That of Ranulphus the Priest her Contemporary Protinus ad Superos carne solutus abis c. Spiritus ecce tuus gaudens fuper Astra perennat c. Flesh once lay'd by to heav'n thou streight dost go c. Thy Spirit above eternal Joy attends Again Dans animam Coelo reddidit ossa solo c. To heav'n thy soul to earth thy bones return That of King Philip the First deceased in the year 1108. Augusti ternis conscendit in aeth'ra Kalendis c. He on the third of the Calends Of August unto heav'n ascends That of Reynold de Martigni Arch-Bishop of Rheims deceased in the year 1137. Hunc duodena dies Februi praeeuâ—do Kalendas Destituit mundo substituitque Polo c. On January's one and twentieth day He left the world and went to heav'n to stay That of Gerald first Abbot of Selue-Majour in Bourdelois deceased in the year 1094. the sixth of April En felix anima Coeli laetatur in Aula c. Coelorum civis dormîit in Domino c. Liber Coelos spiritus obtinuit c. Spiritus Abbatis vindicat Astra sibi c. Spiritus alta tenet c. His blissfull soul in Heav'n rejoycing is c. Heav'n's Citizen rests in the Lord c. His unconfin'd spirit in Heav'n is fix'd c. The Abbot's soul does challenge heav'n c. His spirit is on high That of Berenger Arch-Deacon of St. Maurice's of Anger 's deceased the sixth of January 1088. In Jano patuit tibi Janua vitae c. In Janus Moneth Life's Gate receiv'd thee And again Coelos animâ corpore ditat humum c. His Body Earth his Soul does Heav'n enrich That of the Empress Agnes deceased the 14th of December 1077. Die XIV Mensis Decembris animam bonis operibus foecundam Lateranis Salvatori suo atque omnium bonorum Authori reddidit hic quintâ die Mensis Januarii expectans spem Beatae Resurrectionis adventum Magni Dei membra carnis commendavit in pace Amen Vpon the fourteenth of December at Lateran she returned to her Saviour and God the Authour of all good things her soul fruitfull in good Works and on the fifth of January she recommended to this place her fleshly Members expecting the hope of a blessed Resurrection and the coming of the Great God Amen That of Bruno first General of the Carthusians deceased the sixth of October 1101. Ossa manent Tumulo Spiritus Astra petit c. Earth hath his bones to heav'n his spirit flies That of Geoffrey Bishop of Amiens deceased the eighth of November 1118. Hic jacet Astra petens c. Here going to Heav'n he lies That of Peter of Placentia Cardinal Terra suum Corpus Animámque recepit Olympus The Earth his body Heav'n his soul receiv'd That of Burohard Arch-Bishop of Vienna deceased about the year 1035. August the twenty ninth Cum quo perpetuò pace viget placidâ c. Sanctus Spiritus Astra petit c. Curribus ignicomis ad Superos gereris c. With him he lives in undisturbed peace c. His Holy Spirit to Heav'n flies c. In fiery Chariots to Heav'n thou' rt convey'd That of Alberic Arch-bishop of Bourges deceased in the year 1140. Modò major in arce Polorum c. In Heav'n he greater is That of Peter Leo in the year 1144. Junius in Mundo fulgebat Sole secundo Separat hunc nobis cùm Polus atque Lapis c. June's second day shone bright when joyless we Lost him between Earth and Felicity That of Peter Bishop of Poictiers deceased in the year 1115. unjustly reduced by Cardinal Baronius to the year 1130. Nunc dives liber stabilis sua praemia Christum Astra petit sequitur possidet iste Petrus c. Promovit privavit eum profugúmque recepit Papa Comes Christus ordine sede Polo c. This Peter rich freed firm rewards Christ Heav'n Now seeks pursues possesses freely giv'n c. A Pope Count Christ him rais'd depriv'd with love Receiv'd to Prelacy of 's See above That of Thomas Arch-bishop of Canterbury Assassinated the nine and twentieth of July 1170. Ab Orbe Pellitur fructus incipit esse Poli c. Forc'd hence in Heav'n he begins to grow That of Stephen Bishop of Meaux deceased the 12th of January 1187. Liber vivit terrâ divisus Astris Quae dederat Coelum Terráque solvit eis c. He freely lives 'tween Heav'n and Earth bestow'd And pay'd what unto Heaven and Earth he ow'd That of Robert Arch-bishop of Vienna deceased in the year 1195. June the seven and twentieth Junius aethereis mensis te reddidit oris c. Thee to thy Heav'nly Countrey June hath brought That of Mauricius Bishop of Paris deceased the eleventh of September 1196. Migrat Parisii Pater ad patriam Paradisi Mauricius c. Father of Paris Mauricius is hence To Paradise transferr'd That of Humbert Arch-bishop of Vienna deceased the twentieth of November 1125. Spiritus aeth'ra Praesulis Umberti petit c. The Prelat Umbert's Soul to Heav'n is gone That of Raoul Bishop of Arras deceased in the year 1220. Coeli Civis meritorum pondere vivis c. The weight of thy Good Works do thee sustain Thou Citizen of Heav'n That of Peter of Doway Arch-bishop of Sens deceased the twelfth of June 1222. Qui Spei certae suberat modò cernit apertè c. Who what he surely hop'd now clearly sees That of Hervey Bishop of Troyes deceased July the second 1223. Reddo Polo Spiritum ossa Solo c. My soul to heav'n my bones to
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
cunctipotens animae c. Pardon thy Soul he whom all things obey he takes him for an Intercessour as he in requital Prays for him saying Oramus pro te pro nobis quaesumus ora c. We pray for thee thou us thy Pray'rs afford And elsewhere he lays it down as certain that the one and twentieth of January the day of his Decease Destituit Mundo substituitque Polo Snatch'd him from hence to place him in the Skie which cannot stand without his being received into Heaven In those of Howel Bishop of Mans deceased in the year 1129. and of the Abbot Joel having said Morte pari modicò Deus attigit ambos Ut sint translati Sidera magna Poli c. In equal death God did them both conjoyn Translated hence in Heav'n great Stars to shine A Discourse representing them already possessed of Celestial Glory and and particularly of the former Coram Sancto Vota vovent Tumulo c. Before his Tomb their Vows they pour Whence it follows that they took him for their Patron and must of necessity think him in Happiness Yet does he nevertheless pray for him saying Praesulis obtineat Spiritus Astra Poli c. May Heav'n the Prelate's Soul obtain as if contrary to his precedent Protestations he had thought him at a great distance from it In those of Audebert Abbot of Bourg-dieux and Arch-Bishop of Bourges deceased in the year 1098. he is very liberal of his Wishes as Communem Patrem communi tangite voto Ut det Pastori sedem super aethera vestro Again Audeberte vale sit pax tibi lúxque perennis Again In Domino requiem Spiritus inveniat c. Omnipotens animam Pontificis foveat c. To th' common Father your joynt Vows address That he your Pastour bring to happiness c. Audebert be well Eternal peace and light Thy Portion be May's Soul in God finde rest Kindely may God the Prelate's soul receive Who hearing him talk after this rate would not say that he were out of Heaven deprived of light peace and rest But look upon the Reverse of the Medal and you shall finde he looks on him as his Patron already possessed of Heaven saying Tu Pater à Superis saepe revise tuos c. Vadis te Christo per idonea signa vocante Et velut emerito tibi praemia digna parante Omni momento nostrî Patrone memento Et succurre gregi mortali morte redempto Again Nunc quoque cum Christo nos saepè revisat ab alto Thou Father from on high revisit thine c. By Christ hence As a discharged Champion thou art Of great rewards call'd to receive thy Part O Patron ever-mindfull of us be And those relieve whom mortal death set free With Christ from Heav'n often revisit us What could he have said more to St. Peter or St. Paul according to the Theologie of that Time In that of William Bishop of Engoulesm having invited those of his Diocess to worship his Body he advises them to pray for him Artus venerare Paternos Dic quoque Transcendat Gulielmi Spiritus Astra Thy Father's body having worship'd pray That William's soul to Heav'n may finde the way What could have been more ridiculous then to have perswaded People to the Veneration of a Body whose Spirit should at the same time have been in a place of Pain and deprived of Glory In that of Gerald of Orleans he says Datur hîc sua portio Terrae Spiritus in tenues vivens elabitur auras Cui tamen è rebus lutulentis si quid inhaesit Expediat totum clemens miseratio Christi His Precibus Lector Amen adjiciendo faveto Here Earth hath had her share The Spirit lives dissolv'd to subtile Air Which yet if stain'd with ought terrestrial May Christ in his great Mercy pardon all T advance these Prayers Reader Amen let fall Since then he conceived that at the fall of the Body when it became the portion of the Earth the Spirit lived and was escaped who sees not that he believed it to be in some other place then that of a grievous punishment and that the Prayer he afterward makes tends rather to assure the Expiation of his Offences then to implore it for him in as much as the Mercy of God is not communicated after death but to those who obtained it while they lived In that of Durand Bishop of Cler-mont deceased the nineteenth of November 1095. during the time of the Councel or Croisado for the Conquest of the Holy Sepulchre was published he exhorts the People of Auvergn to worship him and thereby declares him to be in Happiness saying Arvernus sanctos cineres reverenter habeto Atque Patrocinio tutior esto suo Worship his sacred ashes Cler-mont and Thou shalt in his protection safer stand In those of Gerald Abbot of Selue Majour in Bourdelois he is yet more excessive as hath been observed in the precedent Chapter And though the Prayers he makes in the Epitaphs of his other Friends as Reynold Clere Guy Raoul Clerembant William of Mont-soreau Berenger Arch-Deacon of Anger 's Froden of Anger 's Peter Dean of Dol Reinould Canon of Poictiers Geoffrey of Rheims Alexander of Tours Eriland Peter Prior Eudes Abbot of St. John d'Angely Raoul Arch-Deacon of Poictiers Chevalier Bouchard Chevalier Rahier the Countess Osanna Guy Tourangeau William Abbot of Bourgueil and Herard of Loudun though I say those Prayers might presuppose the Belief of Purgatory yet since they are consistent with the other Presuppositions and that Baldric made the like for Persons whom he believed crowned with Glory in Heaven it cannot be safely concluded that he ever intended to apply any one of them to the common Opinion current in his Time and which the Church of Rome maintains at this day The same is to be said of those who after him and to this present have declared and do declare according to the Custom of the Church of Rome and even in her Communion that the Persons whose Memory they have celebrated by their Verses and Sepulchral Inscriptions are in Happiness and possessed of celestial Glory For though they do not openly impugn the Opinion of Purgatory as the Protestants do and though they use such Expressions as might seem to maintain it yet do they not oblige themselves to maintain it in Effect and without any injury done them it may be taken for certain that they believed no more of it then the Reverend Peter Chastellain Bishop of Mascon who having on the three and twentieth of May 1547. advanced into Glory the great King Francis and scandalized the College of Sorbonne which looked on his Discourse as a Piece of Lutheranism flatly contradicting the common Opinion of Purgatory and demanded of him either the formal Retractation or Explication of it thought it satisfaction enough to give the Complainers and that in the presence of King Henry the Second and all his Court a Jest instead of an Apologie
that to address to her either separately or joyntly with God Almighty the solemn Sacrifice is to serve her with the service of Latria and to transfer to the Creature the Glory of the Creatour Or when Jovianus Pontanus a Great Person otherwise Councellour and Secretary of State to Ferdinand of Arragon King of Naples feigned that St. Michael the Archangel appearing to Laurence Bishop of Sipontum in Apulia had entertained him with this horrid and necessarily-false Discourse concerning the Grot of the Mountain Garganus now called Mont di S. Angelo Michael ego sum qui hoc excavato saxo hac antro hoc habitaculo his assidue manantibus stillis abluturus sum ac deleturus meam ad aram confugientium mortalium errata c. I am Michael who having hollowed this Rock this Cave this Habitation shall by these perpetually falling drops wash away and take off the sins of those who have recourse to my Altar as if ever any one of the blessed Angels of Light of whom St. Augustine sometime said to the Heathens Utinam vos illos colere velletis facilè enim ab ipsis disceretis non illos colere c. I wish you would also attempt to serve them as sometime did St. John for you might learn of them not to serve them as if I say it had been a thing becoming any of the Angels to importune men for Temples and Altars or at least to erect them to themselves or lastly to attribute to themselves the honour of washing away and blotting out the sins of men or as if any other then the Son of God had purged our sins and that by the sacrifice of himself appearing now once for to put away sin sanctifying those who are his through the offering of his Body once for all having offered one Sacrifice for sins for ever and by that offering for ever perfected them that are sanctified Upon which accompt St. John says that he is the Propitiation for our sins and that his blood cleanseth us from all â—n yet this very Church of Rome I say who hath in those of her Communion forborn to take any notice of the wicked and scandalous Expressions we have even now refuted made no difficulty after St. Augustine to declare those guilty of sacrilege who should presume to sacrifice to any of the Saints nor in imitation of him to affirm that it is a less sin to return drunk from the Memorials or Sepulchres of the Martyrs then to sacrifice to them fasting But considering with the whole antient Church in her Liturgies the things distributed in the Eucharist no otherwise then as gifts and presents which God gives us and which he creates and dayly leaves to our disposal though by their consecration we hold with the Holy Fathers that they become Religious Sacraments Figures Images Signs and Similitudes of the Body and Blood of Christ nay that very Body and Blood in a Sacramental way no man ought to think they absolutely cease to be what they were according to the condition of their nature before the Consecration viz. aliments of refection created for our use and left to our discretion to be communicated to those who are with us whether effectually or in outward appearance in the Communion of the Church Upon this accompt St. Ambrose might say that he made a Present of it to Valentinian a Catechumen indeed as to outward appearance but in effect one of the Faithfull in as much as he had made a Vow to receive Baptism much after the same manner as at this day the Church of Rome in the distribution of the Bread which she calls Holy reserves even for the absent that are in Communion with her whom the Persons that offer it are willing to honour their portion as a kinde of Honourary Present Thirdly I intreat the Reader to observe that St. Ambrose who had said of the Great Theodosius that he had attained salvation through his humility in imitation of David that his soul was returned into her rest c. that she had made haste to enter into the City of Jerusalem into true glory in the Kingdom of the blessed in the enjoyment of perpetual light rejoycing in the fruits of the reward for the things he had done in his body does not when he concludes his Discourse with this Wish Grant thy servant perfect rest that rest which thou hast prepared for thy Saints any way insinuate to the prejudice of what he had said before that the Soul of that Prince was then when he spoke in expectation of her rest for he adds immediately after that he remains in light and is glorified in the Assemblies of the Saints in the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus enjoying the society of Gratian his Brother-in-law of Flaccilla his Daughter and of the great Constantine but he desires on his behalf not absolutely rest since he was possessed of it as to his Soul but the perfect rest the possession whereof he could not arrive to in Body and Soul till after the Resurrection and in comparison to which what he was then possessed of could not be accompted other then imperfect and as it were half since he enjoyed it but in one of the parts of his Person the other being to remain under the power of Death till the Last day at which time it was to be rejoyned to the other that they might be joyntly received into Glory Into this Doctrine which in the main presupposes the Hypothesis of the Protestants concerning the Beatitude of the Faithfull as to their souls from the Moment of their Body's dissolution we finde a little rubbish shuffled which the Protestants do not conceive any one should force them to take upon their accompt In the first place according to the then Custom but without any Command or Promise of God and without the Example of the Apostolique Church the onely means able to Authorise his Action St. Ambrose prays for him whom he acknowledged in Bliss in the Kingdom of God a kinde of Office which he himself in his Funeral Oration for Valentinian had declared purely Arbitrary and proceeding from the Will-worship whereof St. Paul had about three hundred and thirty years before expresly advertized the Colossians and by them the whole Church through all Ages to beware And secondly where he prays that the Soul of Theodosius might return into the rest whence it had descended he not onely makes a superfluous Wish and consequently ill-grounded according to his own confession since that Soul was already gotten into the place where he wished it But he shews further that he had a little Tincture of Origene's Venom whose Imagination it was that the souls having sinned in Heaven and being forced to depart thence were descended guilty of Crimes and as such had been disposed into Bodies An Opinion which was condemned in the year 399. by the unanimous consent of the whole Church which constantly maintains even to this day and that
every where that all Souls are produced by God at the very instant of their infusion into the Bodies they are to animate and that for as much as they were not at all before they were united to their Bodies they could not either be or sin in Heaven or consequently descend thence as St. Ambrose presupposed that which is not absolutely neither having before it is any Being nor pre-existing nor capable of either Action or Motion from one place to another or of any Passion any way conceivable by us But as to the main point it is manifest that St. Ambrose and all the Church of his Time had absolutely rejected the first Hypothesis derived from the pretended Sibylline Writing maintaining that all Souls without exception descend into Hell after their departure out of the Bodies wherewith they every one as to its own particular constituted humane Persons and that that other Branch of Errour which had prepossessed the Spirit of Justine Martyr and his Contemporaries whereby they imagined that the Souls of the greatest Saints during their pretended detention in Hell were in some sort subject to the power of Evil Spirits and upon that accompt stood in need of being relieved by the Prayers of the Living imploring on their behalf the Protection of God and his good Angels was no longer held it being the perswasion even of those who continued to make the same Prayers as they who had been of that Belief that the true Christians departing out of the Body were with the Lord in an eternal rest and absolute safety In so much that these who recommended the Dead to God grounded not their so doing on either of these two Motives St. Ambrose telling us plainly concerning Valentinian the Second Requiescamus inquit anima pia in Castellis ostendens illic esse quietem tutiorem quae septo Coelestis refugii munita atque vallata non exagitatur soecularium incursibus Bestiarum c. Let us rest says the Faithfull soul in Towers shewing that there where she is received there is a more assured Repose which being encompassed and fortified with the Enclosure of celestial refuge is not disturbed by the Incursions of the Beasts of this World that is to say Evil Spirits and Wicked Men. And concerning Theodosius Lapsum sentire non poterit in illa requie constitutits c. Being seated in that Rest he cannot be subject to fall from it And Paulinus not long before the Death of St. Ambrose to Pammachius concerning his Wife Paulina deceased in the year 396. Satis docuit Rex Propheta c. The Royal Prophet hath sufficiently taught us how far we should be troubled at the departure of our Friends and Kinred to wit so as rather to think of our Journey after them then of that which they are already come to the end of It is indeed an Expression of Piety to be cast down at the taking away hence of Just men but it is also an Holy thing to be raised up into Gladness upon the Hope and Faith of God's Promises and to say to him that it is in trouble Why art thou sad Be it so that Piety bewail for a time yet is it necessary that Faith should always be joyfull Upon this Ground was it that all those who for the space of six hundred years made it their Business to write the Lives of the Faithfull accompted them among the Blessed not admitting any adjournment of their Peace and Felicity after their death In so much as Gregory Arch-Bishop of Tours deceased the seventeenth of November 592. about which time Pope GREGORY first of that Name was designing the first-draught of Purgatory should not have spoken of those Virtuous Persons whose memory he celebrated in other Terms then those who had preceeded him saying of Gregory Bishop of Langres of Nicetius Bishop of Lyons of Porcianus Ursus and Caluppa Religious Men Migravit ad Dominum c. He is gone hence to the Lord of Gullus Bishop of Cler-mont of Nicetius Bishop of Trier and of Lupicinus Spiritum coelo intentum proemisit ad Dominum c. He sent before his Body to the Lord his Soul imployed in Thoughts of Heaven of Friard Christus animam suscepit in Coelo c. Christ hath received his soul into Heaven of Martius Ad Coronam commigravit c. He is gone hence to receive a Crown of Venantius Vitam percepturus aeternam emicuit saeculo c. He is hurried hence to receive eternal Life of Leobord Manifestum est eum ab Angelis susceptum c. It is manifest he hath been entertained by Angels In a word the great number of those who admire the Novelties that have crept into the Opinion of Purgatory hath been no hindrance but that the Authours of Lives who have written since the year 600. have spoken and believed of their Dead consonantly to what had been done by the most Antient. If therefore even in the Time of St. Ambrose the Opinion of the Millenaries was so lost to credit that St. Hierome who out of respect towards the Great Persons that had followed it forbore to express his Thoughts thereof and to number it among Heresies thought it a great Tenderness towards it to assign it a place among the dreaming Imaginations of mis-informed Spirits it is not to be conceived that after the year 500. descending still it should have regained any Partizans and that there should have been any man whose Prayers for his deceased Friends proceeded from that Motive so as that he thought himself obliged to wish them their part in the First Resurrection which no man then understood in the sense wherein Tertullian and those of his Time had conceived it But indeed many even till after the year 600. relying on that Hypothesis partly extracted out of the pretended Oracles of the Counterfeit Sibyl that All Souls should pass through the last Conflagration of the World demanded on the Behalf of their departed Friends two things One that they might pass through that great Conflagration as through a Purgative Fire not to be prejudiced thereby no more then the Gold melted in the Crucible Another that they might have their part with all the Saints in the Resurrection to Glory Upon this perswasion Kindasvind King of the West-Goths in Spain who reigned between the year 642. and 649. had caused these Verses to be written on the Tomb of his Wife Reciberga Ego te Conjux quia vincere fata nequivi Funere perfunctam Sanctis commendo tuendam Ut cùm Flamma vorax veniet comburere Terras Coetibus ipsorum meritò sociata resurgas Since death on my desires would not thee spare Of thee departed may the Saints take care That thou with them mayst rise again that day When of the Fire the Earth shall be the prey The First of these Demands hath lost much of that Consideration with those who have embraced the New Opinion of Purgatory which seemed to require the Example of the
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
Reliques as if they had been animated with the same Spirit as had made use of them to the glory of God during the course of his life and intended onely to signifie thus much that if they had been capable of Resentment they might have suffered through the nearness of his Body to them the shame and dissatisfaction which happen to generous Persons who being unequally matched desire and endeavour to free themselves out of the slavery of an importunate and dishonourable Society CHAP. XLVII The Sentiments of Saint Ambrose and Paulinus concerning the Burial of the Faithfull in Churches Examined BUt all the rest of the Prelates were not so scrupulous as Pope Damasius on the contrary Saint Ambrose carried away the rest by Custom as by the violence of an impetuous Torrent had not onely caused his Brother Satyrus deceased the seventeenth of September 383. to be buried near St. Victor Martyr but made his Tomb famous with this Epitaph Uranio Satyro Supremum frater honorem Martyris ad laevam detulit Ambrosius Haec meriti merces ut sacri sanguinis humor Finitimus penetrà ns adluat exuvias Here on the Martyr's left Ambrose bestows Here on the Martyr's left Ambrose bestows Last Honours on his Brother Satyrus That 's sacred Blood merit's reward it is May piercing drench the neighbouring Carkases In like manner commendation is given to his Sister Marcellina deceased the seventeenth of July about the year 398. or 99. for that she had chosen the place of her Burial near her Brethren in sacred Ground for her Epitaph runs thus Marcellina tuos cùm vita resolveret artus Sprevisti Patriis corpus sociare Sepulchris Cùm pia fraterni superas consortia somni Sanctorúmque cupis charâ requiescere terrâ c. Nor would'st thou be when death thy Limbs disjoyn'd To thy forefather's Sepulchres confin'd Out of a hope t' injoy thy Brother's rest And to remain'ith Region of the Blest Saint Paulinus then indeed onely a Priest but afterwards Bishop of Nola shewing that he had conceived an Imagination suitable to that of St. Ambrose writ concerning Celsus a young man deceased at Complutum or Alcada de Henarez in Spain about the year 393. Complutensi mandavimus urbe propinquis Conjunctum tumuli foedere Martyribus Ut de vicino Sanctorum sanguine ducat Quo nostras illo purget in igne animas c. In Complutum he 's dispos'd Among the Martyrs in a Tomb inclos'd That from th' adjacent blood o' th' Saints he may Derive what can our Souls purge in that day viz. that of the Conflagration of the Universe Of these Epitaphs the result is that as the Prophet Elizeus was heretofore so assisted by the Almighty power of the God of Glory that a dead Carkase cast by those that carried it into his Grave without any other Design then that to rid themselves of a trouble which might have retarded their Flight recovered Life as soon as it had touched his bones so according to the Opinion as well of St. Ambrose as Paulinus the Bodies of Martyrs were endued with a certain Virtue such as Sanctified and Purged the Things that were placed near them We cannot at this day affirm whether St. Ambrose did or did not change his Opinion but we are obliged to observe by the way what there is in it that is inconvenient nay indeed unmaintainable since that it presupposed that from the body of St. Victor beheaded at Milan the eighth of May 303. under Maximian and from that time shut up in a Tomb the Blood should eighty years after issue out in such quantity as to penetrate the Ground all about and moisten the body of Satyrus though enclosed also in his Grave and communicate its Virtue to him But if beheaded Bodies must necessarily be Bloodless and if that Blood be naturally fixed into a consistency as soon as it is issued out of the Veins what possibility was there in the Supposition which St. Ambrose made of that which Saint Victor had spilt eighty years before representing it onely liquid but streaming in such quantity as might penetrate the adjacent Ground And if it be pretended he grounded it on the Conception of some Miracle whence did he derive it unless from his own voluntary Devotion or Will-worship which inclined him to believe as actually existent what he thought possible to the power of God Besides this inconvenience whereto the Opinion of St. Paulinus writing the Epitaph of Celsus lies open and that the more expresly the more likely it is he conceived or pretended to conceive that from the Bodies of Justus and Pastor who had their Throats cut and consequently lost all their Blood at Complutum on the sixth of August 303. that is to say ninety years at least before the Death of Celsus the Body of that young man should derive Blood that purges souls as if of any other blood then that of the Lamb of God who of God hath been made unto us Sanctification and Redemption and hath himself purged our Sins it could be truly and in good sence said that it taketh away the Sin of the World and cleanseth us from Sin those Imaginations which taken rigorously would be found Diametrically opposite to the Doctrine of Faith do stand so much in need of a candid Reader who must do his Judgment some violence to draw them into a good sense that without the Byas which a forced Interpretation may give them it were impossible to deducc thence I will not say any thing good but any thing excusable About nine years after the same Paulinus writing the Epitaph of Clarus Disciple of St. Martin and a Priest of Tours deceased the eighth of November 401. in as much as his Body was to be Interred at the foot of the Altar takes a new Fancy and says Sancta sub aeternis Altaribus ossa quiescunt Ut dum nostra Pio referuntur munera Christo Divinae è sacris animae jungantur odores c. His sacred Bones now undisturbed lie Under Eternal Altars that when we To Christ our Presents offer his Soul may Be joyn'd to th'odours Sacred things convey He pretended as you see that the placing of the Body of the Faithfull Person departed near the Altar would be of such advantage to the Soul that some increase of Grace might accrue to her thereby and all this with much sincerity and good meaning which is wont to open a spacious Gap to those that consult it But upon what grounded What place of Holy Scripture can be produced to Authorise the Advice thereof Accordingly the same Paulinus to let us know that he found not himself any way satisfied with either of those two Presuppositions with much confidence and asseveration acknowledged that he was yet to be advised therein in the year 419. wherein two fresh Accidents to wit the Interrment of Flora's Son and that of Cynegius a young man who had at his Death required that his Body might be Buried in
the Church of Saint Felix of Nola had reduced him to confess his Perplexity For though he had commended the Affection as well of the deceased as of their Mothers yet as it were acknowledging he knew not why and that he was not very well assured of what he did he desires to be informed by St. Augustine asking him Utrùm profit cuiquam post mortem quòd corpus ejus apud Sancti alicujus memoriam sepeliatur c. Whether it be beneficial to any one after Death that his Body be buried in the Memorial of some Saint which signifies no less in Effect then to be reduced to the same Predicament as St. Cyril of Hierusalem Denys the pretended Areopagite and Athanasius of Antioch who before and after Paulinus made this Question Of what benefit to the Dead were the Prayers made by the surviving for them CHAP. XLVIII The Sentiment of St. Augustine concerning the Burial of the Faithfull in Churches enquired into SAint Augustine in his Treatise De cura pro mortuis to give greater satisfaction to his Brother lays down that the Care which is taken of the dead Body the manner of Sepulture and the Funeral Solemnities are rather Alleviations of the grief of the Living then of any assistance or benefit to the Dead Secondly That the care taken of the Funeral and the choice of the place for Burial are Effects of the Piety of the surviving towards the Dead Thirdly That the advantage which may be drawn from the Interrment of the deceased Person in the Church of some Saint can be no other then that of recommending him more commodiously and affectionately to the Saint as to a kinde of Patron that that Office might be done to the deceased Party though his Body were not present in the same place and that the Sepulture of it in the same place is to no other end then to excite a desire and affection to pray for him Fourthly That what is said of the Visions of Souls is to be understood in the same manner as we do the Dreams we have of those who are yet alive and think not in the least of what the Imagination of the such as are asleep attribute to them as when Evodius afterwards Bishop of Uzalis dreamed that St. Augustine shewed him the sence of a Passage in Cicero's Rhetorick and when Curmas Curialis dreamed of the death of Curmas the Lock-Smith and imagined that he saw St. Augustine and the Priests of his City exhorting him to receive Baptism Fifthly That the Souls of the Departed neither know nor concern themselves about what is done here that if they did St. Monica his Mother would often discourse with him and God himself would not have said of his children whom he calleth hence before he exercises his Judgments on those which remain that he calls them Lest they might see Evil. Sixthly That the Souls Departed may know somewhat that concerns the Living either from the report of such as Die or from that of Angels or by Revelation from God Seventhly That the perswasion which we have of the assistance given by the Martyrs to those who implore it may be taken in the same sence as that which the Living have of assisting the Dead by their Prayers though they know not any thing in particular of their Condition and onely desire of God for them and on their behalf Grace and Rest Or that of the assistances which the Living think they receive from them there may be made the same Judgment as of the Opinion which the People of Nola had of the Apparition of St. Felix during the time they were besieged by the Barbarians or of the Promise which John the Monk made to shew himself the Night following to a certain Woman who thought she really saw him though he stirred not from the place where he was Eightly That we must not be overy-ready upon the clamours of Evil Spirits complaining that they are tormented by the Martyrs to infer that the Martyrs have in Effect tormented them since that in the Church of the Saints Gervasius and Protasius they said as much of St. Ambrose then living who yet never attributed to himself any thing of what they imputed to him Ninthly That in fine what may be thought of the Sepulture bestowed on the Departed is that it is an Office of Humanity towards them and not any assistance and that Prayers and Oblations may be beneficial to them if by the Life they led before they were in a capacity of receiving the benefit thereof From this Abridgment of the afore-said Treatise of St. Augustine it is manifest that that Great Man who had been Disciple to St. Ambrose and continued even to his Death an intimate Friend to St. Paulinus held nothing of the Hypotheses which those two famous Prelates had advanced with a kinde of Emulation and which the later had afterwards tacitely disacknowledged as such as whereof he himself was not satisfied But though his Conceptions are much more Rational and less Subject to Contradiction yet does it not hinder but they have this palpable Default that he lays down as a thing confessed what he might justly have disputed and what would be at this day actually denied him by the Protestants to wit That he was assured that there accrues a benefit to the Dead from the Prayers and Offerings made for them by the Living and that the Living have a sufficient ground to dedicate to the Dead those two Offices and to suppose upon Authority of the Custom which hath introduced the Exercise thereof into the Church that they effectually relieve them Julian Arch-Bishop of Toledo who in the Preface of his Prognostick to Idalius Bishop of Barcelona ingenuously confesses that neither of them thought himself able to resolve the Difficulties arising from the consideration of the State of the Dead chose rather to follow the Track of St. Augustine then of his Master St. Ambrose and that not without reason CHAP. XLIX The Sentiment of Maximus Tyrius concerning the Interment of the Faithfull Departed in Churches Considered BUt notwithstanding the Authority of that great Luminary of Africk which was not received every where Maximus who held the See of 〈◊〉 in the year 465. and on the eighteenth of November the same 〈◊〉 was present at the Councel of Rome under Pope Hilarus discovers 〈◊〉 Presupposition beyond that of St. Ambrose and Paulinus writing Ideo à Majoribus provisum est ut Sanctorum corporibus nostra corpora sociemus ut dum illos Tartarus metuit nos poena non tangat dum illos Christus illuminat nobis tenebrarum caligo diffugiat cùm sanctis ergo Martyribus quiescentes evadimus Inferni tenebras eorum propriis meritis attamen consocii sanctitate c. For this Reason have our Ancestours made provision that we should joyn our Bodies to those of the Saints to the end that while Hell stands in fear of them no Pain
â—ejurrection of the Saints to comfort the Faithfull cast down at the death of their Brethren setting before their eyes so many Certificates of the future Resurrection of him whose Memory they celebrated and inclining every one of them by the Meditation of so many celestial Documents to the expectation of that last deliverance wherein their Lord making them to triumph over Death shall cloath them with incorruption and crown their heads with eternal Glory If then the set Form of the Mass for the Dead cannot afford us any Text of Holy Scripture which may serve either for the confirmation of the Doctrine of Purgatory or the insinuation of the Custom of praving for the dead we are not to promise our selves that the Office of the Dead contained in the Breviary should furnish us with any thing more express In this later we meet with several Lessons out of the Book of â—ob the First taken out of the seventh Chapter from the sixteenth Verse to the end the Second out of the tenth Chapter from the first Verse to the seventh inclusively the Third out of the same Chapter from the eighth Verse to the twelfth the Fourth out of the thirteenth Chapter from the twenty second Verse to the twenty eighth the Fifth out of the fourteenth Chapter from the first Verse to the sixth the Sixth Lesson out of the same Chapter from the thirteenth Verse to the eighteenth the Seventh out of the seventeenth Chapter from the first Verse to the third and from the eleventh to the fifteenth Verse the Eighth out of the nineteenth Chapter from the twentieth Verse to the twenty seventh and the Ninth out of the tenth Chapter from the eighteenth Verse to the two and twentieth We finde there also the seventh and eighth Verses of the seventh Chapter and every where we have certain bewailings of that great Example of Patience groaning under the Scourge of God and forced to Lamentations under the greatness of his Chastisements but who from the cries and complaints of a man alive forcing their way from the Bottom of his Heart through the violence of his Anguish and the Dread he was in of the Judgment of God will conclude either that there is Purgatory or any necessity of Prayer for the dead Must the Expressions used by afflicted Persons reduced to bemoan themselves in this Life serve for a Precedent to the separated Souls which are supposed not simply to pass through but to be melted again after a certain manner in the Fire appointed to purge them Were it granted that some Blessed Soul crushed after its departure out of the Body under the Hand of the great Judge might make to her self some certain Application of the grievances of Job shall the Church of Rome take upon her without falling into the inconvenience of making her self ridiculous to attribute unto it the Lessons she hath extracted out of his Discourses which cannot suit but with the Condition of a man languishing in this World For example what he says in the First My days are vanity c. How long wilt thou not let me alone till I swallow down my spittle c. Now shall I sleep in the dust c. In the Second My Soul is weary of my life c. In the Third Thou hast made me as Clay and wilt thou bring me into dust again Thou hast cloathed me with skin and flesh c. In the Fourth I am to be consumed as a thing that is rotten and as a Garment that is Moth-eaten In the Fifth Man that is born of a woman is of few days In the Sixth If a man die shall he live again In the Seventh My days are extinct the Graves are ready for me In the Eighth My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh hardly am I escaped with the skin of my Teeth And in the Ninth Are not my days few cease then c. These complaints proceed not from a Spirit destitute of Body but may well fall from a diseased Person suffering as well in Body as Spirit who makes accompt to die without any respite and who considers with horrour that his languishing life is as it were swallowed up in a Gulf of misery It is to be considered also that there are some Passages which discover so much disorder that Job being come to himself after he had been reproved not onely by Elihu but by God himself condemned them acknowledging that he spoke what he knew not abhorred himself and repented in dust and ashes For who could endure in the second Lesson the bitter reproaches against God Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress me that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands and shine upon the counsel of the wicked And in the Seventh I have not sinned and my eye is fastened on bitterness To speak sincerely could the Church of Rome who holds as a thing decided by the Scripture and the Fathers that the Souls of the Faithfull are Impeccable from the moment of their departure out of the Bodies they animated without extravagance mold her Devotions on those slips of Discourse which God himself hath charged with Sin She hath therefore made an Extract of these Nine Lessons taken out of the Book of Job not to serve for a Draught of the dolefull state of the Souls which she pretends condemned into her Purgatory but to instruct every one of those whom she exhorts to relieve them with their Suffrages that to be well disposed to render them that office he should view himself in the example of Job religiously imitate his Virtues and Faith and be always carefull to avoid his miscarriages Upon the same accompt hath she inserted into the Office of the Dead abundance of Psalms containing not onely Lessons of Penance as the 6. 32 38 51 102 130 and 143. called upon that occasion the seven Penitential Psalms but also of Prayer as the 5 7 25 42 67 120 123. of Praise as the 65 121 126 127 128 131 132 133 134 135 146 148 149 150. of Thanksgiving as the 23 27 40 63 116 124 129 136. the Canticles of Ezechias and Zacharies of Blessing and Exhortations as the 41 122 125 131. the first verse of the 95th Psalm and the 8th Verse of the 113th For who could ever be perswaded that the Protestations which we make in the presence of God of our mortification and the Prayers whereby we beg his Protection and Favour towards our selves and the Praises whereby we celebrate the glory of his sacred Majesty and the Thanks we give him for the benefits which he daily communicates to us and the Benedictions which we pour out with joy being to publish the welfare as well of the whole State of his Church as of the Members whereof it consists and the Exhortations whereby we encourage them to well doing should rationally be looked on as Suffrages whereby we relieve our departed Brethren
of both Sexes whereever resting in Christ that being freed from all their sins they may rejoyce with thee world without end And this O mercifull God receive this Hoast offered for the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes whereever resting in Christ that delivered by this super-excellent Sacrifice out of the Chains of dreadfull death they may obtain eternal life And this O God whose property it is ever to have mercy and to forgive be favourable unto the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes and pardon all their sins that being loosed from the Chains of Death they may obtain passage into life And this Free O Lord we beseech thee the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes from all the bands of sin that being raised up among thy Saints and Elect they may live again in the glory of the Resurrection And this O Almighty and everlasting God who rulest as well over the living as the dead and shewest mercy unto all those whom thy fore-knowledge seeth will be thine in faith and good works we humbly beseech thee that those for whom we have appointed to pour out our Prayers and whom either this world does still detain in the flesh or the next hath already received uncloathed of the body may through the greatness of thy clemency be made worthy to obtain the forgiveness of all their sins and joy everlasting And this O Almighty and most mercifull God we humbly beseech thee that the Sacraments which we have received may purifie us and grant that this thy Sacrament be not unto us an obligation to punishment but a comfortable intercession for pardon that it be the cleansing of crimes that it be the strength of the fainting that it be a Bulwark against the dangers of the World that it be the remission of all the sins of the faithfull living and dead through Jesus Christ It might seem at the first sight that all these Prayers in general and every one in particular upon this very accompt that they speak of the forgiveness of sins for those who are departed this life do presuppose if not a Purgatory such as the Church of Rome hath imagined and described it some Ages since at least a certain necessity incumbent on the deceased to make satisfaction to the justice of God after their death But we must necessarily infer the contrary For not to take notice that to punish an evil doer is not to purge him if according to the tenour of the Prayers contained in the Mass of the Dead God forgives the sin of the deceased he does not require he should be punished for it if he loose the Chains he suffers him not to be still bound thereby if he exercises towards him his mercy through Jesus Christ he does not execute against him the rigour of his Justice such as it is conceived is felt by the Souls which they pretend are to pass through the fire of Purgatory Whence it follows that the design of those prayers which desire of God the effect of his mercy in the remission of their sins whom he hath called hence never was nor could be to procure their deliverance out of the torment which they are imagined at this day to suffer and whoever would finde the true meaning thereof is to reflect on the perswasions of those who were the first Authours thereof for they held that all those of whom they made a Commemoration were in as much as they were dead in the Lord gathered by him into Abraham's Bosom where they rested in a sleep of peace as it is expresly set down in the Memento So that no man well-informed prayed for them as for wretched Criminals and such as are deprived of the felicity which God hath prepared for his Saints but as for Champions already triumphant and glorious And yet out of a consideration that the perpetuity of the bliss into which every one presupposed them introduced proceeded from the continuation of the mercy according to which God had at first bestowed it and that it comprehended in it self the ratification of the pardon once granted to the deceased in pursuance whereof they were entred into and continued in the possession of celestial peace and joy the surviving thought fit to desire on their behalf mercy and remission of sins not absolutely as if they were still under the weight of God's wrath but upon a certain accompt to wit in as much as it is necessary that even in Heaven the mercy of God should be perpetually communicated to those whom it had already visited incessantly assuring them of the free gift he had made them first of his grace and afterwards of his glory as believing that those who enjoy so great a happiness are nevertheless to expect a more solemn sentence of Remission and Absolution in that great Day whereof we are all obliged both for our selves and on the behalf of our Brethren living upon Earth and reigning in Heaven to desire the blessed coming In this sence indeed the Antients never made any difficulty to desire on the behalf of the Blessed in Heaven the Pardon they had already obtained in as much as they were to obtain it again after a more glorious manner at the Day of Judgment whereto are particularly referred many of their Prayers As for instance that which we have already cited wherein they desire that their Souls freed from all the Bands of sin may be raised up again among the Saints in the Glory of the Resurrection And again thus Non intres c. Enter not into Judgment with tthy servant O Lord for in thy sight shal no man be justified unless thou grantest him the remission of all his sins We beseech therefore that the Sentence of thy Judgment may not lie heavy on him whom the sincere supplication of Christian Faith recommends but grant that he who while he lived was signed with the Sign of the blessed Trinity may by the assistance of thy Grace avoid the Judgment of Vengeance Again Oremus Fratres charissimi c. Let us pray dear Brethren for the spirit of our Brother whom the Lord God hath been pleased to deliver out of the snares of this world whose body is this day put into the Ground that the Lord would out of his goodness vouchsafe to place him in the Bosom of Abraham Isaac and Jacob that when the day of Judgment comes he may be placed among the Saints and Elect raised up again on the right hand And this taken out of the Ceremonial Deus cui omnia vivunt c. O God to whom all things live and to whom our bodies though they die perish not but are changed for the better we humbly beseech thee that thou command that the soul of thy servant N. be carried into the bosom of the Patriarch Abraham by the hands of thy holy Angels to be raised up again the last day of the great Judgment that what imperfections soever it hath through the deceit of the Devil
he saw him returned and understood that the Councel who was not of his Opinion and had reduced him to quit it and by a second Deputation sent Brother John de Raguse a Domiuican afterwards Bishop of Argos Henry Menger Canon of Constance and Simon Freron Canon of Orleans who as to his particular had Order to pass through Rome to aquaint the Court with the occasion of his Message instead of being satisfied with this submission which seemed absolutely to secure his Interest he conceived a greater jealousie thereof and taking it very ill that as he thought the Councel should think to get the glory of the Reconciliation with the Greeks he so far prevailed with them by his sollicitations and the sums of Money he paid them out of his own Purse which was better furnished then that of the Councel that they broke their Word with the Deputies suffered the House where John de Raguse the chiefest among them was lodged to be set upon by a Party of Cross-bowsiers who attempted to force it and openly took their resolution to go to Ferrara where the Pope was in Person and was drawing together all his Partisans It were impossible to avoid being importunate to the Reader if we should trouble our selves to give a particular Relation of all the complaints reciprocally made by the Pope and Cauncel It shall therefore suffice to observe that the Councel defeated of their Hope saw another convened as it were in defiance of it at Ferrara where the Greeks to the number of about twenty Metropolitanes and a dozen others of their Clergie made their appearance with their Emperour at the Pope's Charges upon the fourth and eighth of March 1438. sojourned there without any thing done till Wednesday the fourth of June at which time were begun some private Conferences upon the Questions of Purgatory and the State of Souls after their departure out of the Body yet so as that on the Part of the Greeks till Thursday the seventeenth of July there passed no other decision save that the Souls of the Saints enjoy immediately after Death the perfect felicity competent to them though they expect upon the compleating of their Persons a more full perfection After two Moneths delay laying aside that kinde of Dispute when the General Sessions of the new Councel began they were taken up in debating concerning the Addition made by the Latines to the Creed and the manner of the Procession of the Holy Ghost which they pretend to be not from the Father and the Son but from the Father by the Son About this there passed at Ferrara from that time to the eighth of January 1439. sixteen Sessions and the Plague having made the place not onely incommodious but also dangerous the Pope resolved to leave it transferred the Assembly to Florence on the eleventh defrayed the charges of the Greeks by paying nineteen thousand Florens for the Garison of Constantinople and on the nineteenth following departed with the Greeks who made their entrance into Florence on Friday the fourteenth and Sunday the sixteenth of February began their Sessions on Thursday the twenty sixth of the same Moneth and continued them to no purpose till the seventeenth of March Two days after the Emperour weary of Disputing and seised with an apprehension of his own danger pressed his People to capitulate with the Latines addressing himself to them in these pitifull Terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Time is spent to no purpose and we have done nothing as to the furtherance of our Affair remember our House what hazard it runs amongst the wicked If any thing happen alass how heavy will it fall upon us I hold the Persecution will be more intolerable then that of Diocletian and Maximian wherefore let us lay aside Discourses and Debates and finde out some Mean so to pass into the same Sentiment Mark and Anthony Arch-Bishops of Ephesus and Heraclea notwithstanding those Deplorations making some difficulty to comply were by him forbidden to come into the two following Congregations and the rest yielding the Pope was not awanting to take his advantage and to extort from those poor People a forced Acquiescence the Patriarch Joseph having upon the thirtieth of March being Munday in the Passion-Week given them this sad accompt of the Pope's Pleasure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That we should resolve to do of two things one either finde out by Easter falling that year on the fifth of April the means of an Union with him or take some course to return into our Countrey And notwithstanding that Isidore and Bessarion Arch-Bishops of Russia and Nicaea who had engaged in the Party of the Latines and given their Hands saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is more expedient for us to unite in body and soul then to go hence without having done any thing for it is no hard matter to be gone but how we should go or to what place or when I know not Dositheus Bishop of Monembasia cried out immediately 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What would you that our departure hence may be defrayed by the Pope would you have us betray our Doctrine I will die rather then ever Latinize The Arch-bishop of Heraclea added that the Antient Fathers were for his Opinion that of Ephesus that the Latines were not onely Schismaticks but also Hereticks And the Nobility who had an Aversion for the Agreement so exasperated those of their Party that being met the first of April at the Patriarch's Lodgings who was then so indisposed that on the Saturday following they were forced to administer the Extreme Unction to him as soon as the poor Patient had opened his Mouth to ask what they had to say made him this short answer by the Arch-bishop of Heraclea 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. There are four things demanded of you First Whether you are satisfied with the most clear and solid Demonstration according to which we have shewn you by the Scriptures that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and by the Son if you are so be it if not tell us what you doubt of and why you are not satisfied that we may finde out some remedy and way clearly and purely establish that in very truth the same Procession is also from the Son Secondly If you have any Proofs from the Holy Scriptures maintaining the contrary to what we affirm Produce them Thirdly If you have any strong places out of the Scriptures proving that what you hold is better and more holy then our Doctrine Fourthly If you will not stand to these things let us meet together in an Assembly Let the Hierarch celebrate the Divine Service Let us all as well Latines as Greeks take an Oath Let the Truth be boldly discovered by the Oath and what shall appear most clear to the Major part be embraced by both sides For among Christians an Oath is not violated After this Overture all that remained was to press those poor People by bitter Reproaches
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
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
be maintained that the Books called the Sibylline were written by Divine inspiration 55 XXII The Sentiment of Aristotle concerning Enthusiasts taken into consideration 57 XXIII That it was unadvisedly done by the Authour of the Sibylline VVriting to put himself into the number of Enthusiasts 59 XXIV That the Fathers who were surprized by the pretended Sibylline VVritings supposed the Authour to have been an Enthusiast 60 XXV The common Sentiment of the Fathers concerning Enthusiasts 62 XXVI Consequences following upon the common Sentiment of the Fathers concerning Enthusiasm 70 XXVII Certain Dis-circumspections of the Fathers concerning the VVriting unjustly named the Sibylline considered 72 XXVIII That the conjecture of Cardinal Baronius concerning the correspondence between Virgil and Herod is not maintainable 73 XXIX That the Opinion of Antonius Possevinus concerning the Sibyls and their pretended VVritings is not more rational then that of Cardinal Baronius 75 BOOK II. CHAP. I. AN Enquiry about the time when St. John writ his Revelation 79 II. The Sentiment of St. Epiphanius concerning the time of the Apocalyps refuted 82 III. The Sentiment of the late Grotius concerning the time of the Apocalyps refuted 87 IV. A refutation of the Sentiment of Johannes Hentenius of Macchlin concerning the time of the Apocalyps 89 V. A refutation of Possevinus concerning the time when the Sibylline Writing came first abroad 93 VI. Of the time when the Sibylline Books were written 96 VII A Conjecture concerning the Authour of the Sibylline Writings 97 VIII Divers Extravagances remarkable in the Sibylline Writings 98 IX The first principal Tenet of the Sibylline Writing concerning the pretended Descent into and detention of all Mens Souls in Hell till the time of the Resurrection of their Bodies 99 X. The second Capital Tenet of the Sibylline VVriting so called concerning the Conflagration of the World at the last Day which the Authour of it pretends is to serve for a Purgatory to the Souls and Bodies of the Saints 104 XI The third main Tenet proposed by the Sibylline VVriting concerning the re-attainment of a Terrestrial Paradise which he imagines should be the place of retirement for some of the Saints after their Resurrection 108 XII The fourth Capital Tenet proposed by the Sibylline VVriting concerning the Temporal Reign which the Authour thereof supposes must be established by our Saviour in Jerusalem during the space of a thousand years before the last Judgment 111 XIII Inducements to pray for the Dead arising from the Hypotheses proposed in the pretended Sibylline Writing 115 XIV The Motives proposed by Justin Martyr disallowed and those which St. Epiphanius had to pray for the Dead taken into consideration 117 XV. Of the Prayers made and the Alms given heretofore by the Christians for the damned even those whom they acknowledged to be in that state 118 XVI The third and fourth Motives of St. Epiphanius taken into consideration 122 XVII St. Epiphanius's fifth Motive considered 123 XVIII The sixth Motive of the same Epiphanius considered 124 XIX The seventh Motive of the same Epiphanius considered 126 XX. The Motive upon which Dionysius the pretended Areopagite prayed for the Dead taken into consideration 128 XXI The Motives which Tertullian had to pray for the Dead considered 129 XXII An enquiry made into the Sentiment of Saint Ambrose 130 XXIII The time when Prayers for the Dead were first introduced into the Service of the Church 132 XXIV Whether the Prayers made by Christians for the Dead be really grounded on the place in the second Book of the Maccabees and the Examples of the Jews alledged to that purpose 136 XXV Whether it may be with any reason affirmed that the Prayers made by Christians for the Dead are justly grounded on the second Book of the Maccabees 144 XXVI That divers of the Fathers have expressed more respect to the Book attributed to the Sibyll then to the Apocalyps 148 XXVII That the third Hypothesis of the Sibylline Writing so called is at this day abandoned by all Christians 150 XXVIII That the second Hypothesis of the Sibylline Writing so called made way for the late Opinion of Purgatory 151 XXIX Proofs of the novelty of the precedent Opinion of Purgatory 155 XXX That the first Hypothesis of the Sibylline Writing so called concerning the detention of Souls in Hell till the Resurrection is generally disclaimed by all Christians 158 XXXI That the passage of the twelfth Chapter of the second Book of the Maccabees hath no relation either to the Opinion of Purgatory or Service of the Churches 161 XXXII That the Primitive sence of the Prayers whereby the remission of sins was desired for the Dead is not embraced by any 163 XXXIII The Censures pronounced by the Doctours of the Church of Rome against the Fathers taken into examination 165 XXXIV The Uniformity of the Sentiment of the Fathers and that of the Protestants concerning the State of the faithfull departed in the Lord. 168 XXXV The Sentiment of the Protestants further proved by the description which the Fathers have made of Abraham's bosom 170 XXXVI The same Sentiment further confirmed by the Pomp and Solemnities of antient Enterments 171 XXXVII A particular confideration of the Sentiment of St. Augustine and his Prayers for his Mother 174 XXXVIII The Sentiment of the Protestants further confirmed by the Eloges antiently bestowed on the faithful departed 184 XXXIX The same Sentiment further confirmed from Sepulchral Inscriptions 189 XL. The same deduced from larger Epitaphs 196 XLI Of the Prayers contained in the Epitaphs of the faithfull whom the surviving presupposed already received into glory 212 XLII Of the true Motives which the Antients had to pray for those whom they believed to be in bliss 222 XLIII The Obscurity and uncertainty of the Opinion of Purgatory 229 XLIV That the proofs produced by Cardinal Bellarmine for Purgatory are weak and defective 233 XLV That the Testimonies produced by Jodocus Coccius for the opinion of Purgatory are also defective 234 XLVI Of the Reasons which might have moved the Antients to inter their departed friends in the Churches consecrated to the memory of the Saints 237 XLVII The Sentiment of St. Ambrose and Paulinus concerning the buriall of the faithful in Churches examined 241 XLVIII Enquiry made into the Sentiment of St. Augustine concerning the Burial of the faithful departed in Churches 244 XLIX Enquiry made into the Sentiment of Maximus Tyrius concerning the Burial of the faithful in Churches 245 L. A reflection on certain followers of the Sentiment of the said Maximus 146 LI. Of the Lessons of holy Scripture contained in the Missal and Breviary as to what relates to the Office of the Dead 249 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 255 LIII An accompt of the Sentiment of the Modern Greeks concerning the State of the Dead 268 LIV. The conclusion of the whole Treatise 290 FINIS Adver Valentin