XXII. cap. 7. them; that it was the peculiar privilege of Jesus Christ to ART. be above all our prayers; but that no men, not excepting the Apostles, nor the blessed Virgin, were above the prayers of the Church. They thought this was an act of church-communion, that we were to hold even with the saints in heaven, to pray for them. Thus in the apostolical constitutions, in the books of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and in the Liturgies that are ascribed to St. Basil and Dion. de St. Chrysostom, they offer unto God these prayers, which Eccl. Hier. they thought their reasonable service, for those who were at rest in the faith, their forefathers, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, religious persons, and for every spirit perfected in the faith; especially for our most holy, immaculate, most blessed Lady, the Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary. Particular instances might also be given of this, out of St. Cyprian, St. Ambrose, Nazianzen, and St. Austin; who in Aug. Conf. that famous and much cited passage concerning his mo- 1.9. c. 19. ther, Monica, as he speaks nothing of any temporal pains that she suffered, so he plainly intimates his belief that God had done all that he desired. Thus it will appear to those, who have examined all the passages which are brought out of the Fathers, concerning their prayers for the dead, that they believed they were then in heaven, and at rest; and by consequence, though these prayers for the dead did very probably give the chief rise to the doctrine of Purgatory; yet, as they then made them, they were utterly inconsistent with that opinion. Tertullian, Supra. who is the first that is cited for them, says, we make oblations for the dead, and we do it for that second nativity of theirs (Natalitia) once a year. The signification of the word Natalitia, as they used it, was the Saint's day of death, in which they reckoned he was born again to heaven: so, though they judged them there, yet they offered up prayers for them: and when Epiphanius brings in Aerius asking, why those prayers were made for the dead? though it had been very natural, and indeed unavoidable, if he had believed Purgatory, to have answered, that it was to deliver them from thence: yet he makes no such answer, but only asserts, that it had been the practice of the Church so to do. The Greek Church retains that custom, though she has never admitted of Purgatory. Here then an objection may be made to our constitution, that in this of praying for the dead, we have departed from the practice of the ancients we do not deny it, both the Church of Rome and we in another practice, of equal antiquity, of giving the Eucharist to in ART. fants, have made changes, and let that custom fall. The XXII. curiosities in the second century seem to have given rise to those prayers in the third; and they gave the rise to many other disorders in the following centuries. Since, therefore, God has commanded us, while we are on earth, to pray for one another, and has made that a main act of our charity and church-communion, but has no where directed us to pray for those that have finished their course; and since the only pretence that is brought from Scripture, of St. Paul's praying, that Onesiphorus might find mercy in the day of the Lord, cannot be wrought up into an argument, for it cannot be proved that he was then dead; and since the Fathers reckon this of praying for the dead only as one of their customs, for which they vouch no other warrant but practice; since, also, this has been grossly abused, and has been applied to support a doctrine totally different from theirs; we think that we have as good a plea for not following them in this, as we have for not giving infants the sacrament, and therefore we think it no imputation on our Church, that we do not in this follow a groundless and a much abused precedent, though set us in ages which we highly reverence. The greatest corruption of this whole matter comes in the last place to be considered; which is, the methods proposed for redeeming souls out of Purgatory. If this doctrine had rested in a speculation, we must still have considered it as derogatory to the death of Christ, and the truth of the Gospel: but it raises our zeal a little more, when we consider the use that was made of it; and that fears and terrors being by this means infused into men's minds, new methods were proposed to free them from these. The chief of which was the saying of masses for departed souls. It was pretended, that this being the highest act of the communion of Christians, and the most sublime piece of worship, therefore God was so well pleased with the frequent repetition of it, with the prayers that accompanied it, and with those that made provisions for men, who should be constantly employed in it, that this was a most acceptable sacrifice to God. Upon this followed all those vast endowments for saying masses for departed souls; though in the institution of that sacrament, and in all that is spoken of it in the Scripture, there is not an hint given of this. Sacraments are positive precepts, which are to be measured only by the institution, in which there is not room left for us to carry them further. We are to take, eat and drink, and thereby shew forth the Lord's death till his second coming: all which has no relation to the applying this to others who are ART. gone off the stage; therefore if we can have any just no- XXII. tions either of superstition, or of will-worship, they are applicable here. Men will fancy that there is a virtue in an action, which we are sure it has not of itself, and we cannot find that God has put in it; and yet they, without any authority from God, do set up a new piece of worship, and imagine that God will be pleased with them in every thing they do or ask, only because they are perverting this piece of worship, clearly contrary to the institution, to be a solitary mass. In the primitive Church, where all the service of the whole assembly ended in a communion, there was a roll read, in which the names of the more eminent saints of the Catholic Church, and of the holy bishops, martyrs, or confessors of every particular Church, were registered. This was an honourable remembrance that was kept up of such as had died in the Lord. When the soundness of any person's faith was brought in suspicion, his name was not read till that point was cleared, and then either his name continued to be read, or it was quite dashed out. This was thought an honour due to the memory of those who had died in the faith and in St. Cyprian's time, in the infancy of this Cypr. practice, we see he counted the leaving a man's name out Epist. 1. as a thing that only left a blot upon him, but not as a pleb. Furthing of any consequence to his soul; for when a priest uit. had died, who had by his last will named another priest the tutor (or guardian) of his children, this seemed to him a thing of such ill example, to put those secular cares upon the minds of the clergy, that he appointed that his name should be no more read in the daily sacrifice ; which plainly shews, unless we will tax St. Cyprian with a very unreasonable cruelty, that he considered that only as a small censure laid on his memory, but not as a prejudice to his soul. This gives us a very plain view of the sense that he had of this matter. After this roll was read, then the general prayer followed, as was formerly acknowledged, for all their souls; and so they went on in the Communion Service. This has no relation to a mass said by a single priest to deliver a soul out of Purgatory. Oxon. ad 17. Here, without going far in tragical expressions, we cannot hold saying what our Saviour said upon another occasion, My house is a house of prayer, but ye have made it a Mark xi. den of thieves. A trade was set up on this foundation. The world was made believe, that by the virtue of so many masses, which were to be purchased by great endowments, souls were redeemed out of Purgatory; and scenes 38. XXII. ART. of visions and apparitions, sometimes of the tormented, and sometimes of the delivered souls, were published in all places which had so wonderful an effect, that in two or three centuries endowments increased to so vast a degree, that if the scandals of the clergy on the one hand, and the statutes of mortmain on the other, had not restrained the profuseness that the world was wrought up to upon this account, it is not easy to imagine how far this might have gone; perhaps to an entire subjecting of the temporalty to the spiritualty. The practices by which this was managed, and the effects that followed on it, we can call by no other name than downright impostures; worse than the making or vending false coin: when the world was drawn in by such arts to plain bargains, to redeem their own souls, and the souls of their ancestors and posterity, so many masses were to be said, and forfeitures were to follow upon their not being said: thus the masses were really the price of the lands. An endowment to a religious use, though mixed with error or superstition in the rules of it, ought to be held sacred, according to the decision given conNumb. xvi. cerning the censures of those that were in the rebellion of Corah so that we do not excuse the violation of such from sacrilege; yet we cannot think so of endowments, where the only consideration was a false opinion first of Purgatory, and then of redemption out of it by masses; this being expressed in the very deeds themselves. By the same reasons, by which private persons are obliged to restore what they have drawn from others by base practices, by false deeds, or counterfeit coin; bodies are also bound to restore what they have got into their hands by such fraudulent practices; so that the states and princes of Christendom were at full liberty, upon the discovery of these impostures, to void all the endowments that had followed upon them; and either to apply them to better uses, or to restore them to the families from which they had been drawn, if that had been practicable, or to convert them to any other use. This was a crying abuse, which those who have observed the progress that this matter made from the eighth century to the twelfth, cannot reflect on without both amazement and indignation. We are sensible enough that there are many political reasons and arguments for keeping up the doctrine of Purgatory. But we have not so learned Christ. We ought not to lie even for God, much less for ourselves, or for any other pretended ends of keeping the world in awe and order; therefore all the advantages that are said to arise out of this, and all the mischief that may be thought to follow XXII. on the rejecting of it, ought not to make us presume ART. to carry on the ends of religion by unlawful methods. This were to call in the assistance of the Devil to do the work of God: if the just apprehensions of the wrath of God, and the guilt of sin, together with the fear of everlasting burnings, will not reform the world, nor restrain sinners, we must leave this matter to the wise and unsearchable judgments of God. The next particular in this Article is, the condemning the Romish doctrine concerning Pardons: that is founded on the distinction between the temporal and eternal punishment of sin; and the Pardon is of the temporal punishment, which is believed to be done by a power lodged singly in the Pope, derived from those words, Feed my sheep, and To thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven. This may be by him derived, as they teach, not only to Bishops and Priests, but to the inferior orders, to be dispensed by them; and it excuses from penance, unless he who purchases it thinks fit to use his penance in a medicinal way, as a preservative against sin. So the virtue of indulgences is the applying the treasure of the Church upon such terms as Popes shall think fit to prescribe, in order to the redeeming souls from Purgatory, and from all other temporal punishments, and that for such a number of years as shall be specified in the bulls; some of which have gone to thousands of years; one I have seen to ten hundred thousand: and as these indulgences are sometimes granted by special tickets, like tallies struck on that treasure; so sometimes they are affixed to particular churches and altars, to particular times, or days, chiefly to the year of jubilee; they are also affixed to such things as may be carried about, to Agnus Dei's, to medals, to rosaries and scapularies; they are also affixed to some prayers, the devout saying of them being a mean to procure great indulgences. The granting these is left to the Pope's discretion, who ought to distribute them as he thinks may tend most to the honour of God, and the good of the Church; and he ought not to be too profuse, much less to be too scanty in dispensing them. This has been the received doctrine and practice of the Church of Rome since the twelfth century; and the Council of Trent in a hurry, in its last session, did in very general words approve of the practice of the Church in this matter, and decreed that indulgences should be continued ; only they restrained some abuses, in particular that of selling them; yet even those restraints were wholly referred to the Popes themselves: so that this crying abuse, the |