ever, that they had no proper idea of sumed in the fire that was to destroy the eternity of hell torments. And it the world. 1 SECTION II. Am- OF THE OPINIONS CONCERNING THE STATE was the opinion of Origen, and after. OF THE DEAD, FROM THE TIME OF In the last period we have seen something like the doctrine of Purgatory, but it is so exceedingly unlike the present doctrine of the Church of Rome on that subject, that we can hardly imagine that it could even serve as a foundation for it. The ancient fathers only thought that when this world would be destroyed by fire, Austin speaks very doubtfully with that fire would purify the good, and respect to the dead. He sometimes destroy the wicked. Whereas, this seems very positive for two states only; purgatory is something that is supbut as he asserted the last probatory posed to take place immediately after fire, so he seems to have thought that death, to affect the soul only, and to good souls might suffer some grief in terminate sooner or later, according to their sequestered state, before the last circumstances, especially the pains day, on account of some of their past that are taken in favour of the dead, sins, and that they might rise to their by the masses and other good offices proper consummation by degrees. See of the living, as well as by their own his sentiments on this subject pretty benefactions and bequests for religious much at large in his first question to uses before their death. Dulcidius; where he inclines to think that they who have faith in Christ, but love the world too much, will be saved, but so as by fire; whereas they who, though they profess faith in Christ, yet neglect good works, will suffer eternally. In his treatise De Civitate Dei, he does not seem disposed to controvert the opinion of those who say that all will be saved at last, through the intercession of the saints. The Gnostics are said to have maintained that the greatest part of mankind would be annihilated at the day of judgment, which was probably the same thing that was meant by those who said that they would be con 1 Sueur, A. D. 389. (P.) On the whole, therefore, it looks as if this doctrine of purgatory had been built upon some other ground; and nothing is so likely to furnish a groundwork for it, as the notions of the Heathens concerning the state of souls in the regions below, which were always supposed capable of being brought back again. Also the popular opinions of the Northern nations concerning the state of souls after death of the Greeks and Romans; and such were, in many cases, similar to those their hold of the common people on opinions as these would not easily quit their conversion to Christianity; and being held, together with the opinion of the fathers above mentioned, the present doctrine of purgatory might, in time, be the produce of both. It is generally said that the foundation of the present doctrine was laid by Gregory the Great, who lived in the sixth century, about 160 years after Austin. But his opinions on the subject were very little different from those of Austin himself, and of others before him, of which an account has been given in the former period; Gregory, however, did suppose that there was a purgatory to expiate the slight offences of which very good men might be guilty; but he does not say that this punishment would always be by means of fire, nor did he suppose this expiation to be made in the same place, but sometimes in the air, and sometimes in sinks, &c., or places full of filth and nastiness. He also speaks of some good men whose souls went immediately to heaven. But in one way he certainly did greatly promote the doctrine, viz. by the many idle stories which he propagated about what happened to particular souls after they had left their bodies, as concerning the soul of King Theodoric, which was boiled in the pot of Vulcan.1 Narrow, however, as these foundations were, the monks were very industrious in building upon them, finding it the most profitable business they were ever engaged in; and about the tenth century the present system seems to have been pretty well completed. For, then, not even the best of men were supposed to be exempted from the fire of purgatory; and it was generally represented as not less severe than that of hell itself. But then souls might always be delivered from it by the prayers and masses of the living, which prayers and masses might always be had upon certain pecuniary considerations; and the fables and fictitious miracles that were propagated to secure the belief of this new kind of future state, were innumerable. Thomas Aquinas says, that the place of purgatory is near to that in which the damned are punished; that the pains of purgatory exceed all the pains of this fife; that souls are not pun 1 Sueur, A. D. 594. (P.) ished by demons, but by divine justice only, though angels or demons might conduct them to the place. By the pains of purgatory, he says, venial sins are expiated even quod culpam, or from the guilt of them, and that some are delivered sooner than others.2 The present doctrine of the Church of Rome on the subject of purgatory, is, "that every man is liable both to temporal and eternal punishment for his sins; that God, upon the account of the death and intercession of Christ, does, indeed, pardon sin as to its eternal punishment; but the sinner is still liable to temporal punishment, which he must expiate by acts of penance and sorrow in this world, together with such other sufferings as God shall think fit to lay upon him.3 But if he does not expiate these in this life, there is a state of suffering and misery in the next world, where the soul is to bear the temporal punishment of its sins, which may continue longer or shorter till the day of judgment; and in order to the shortening this, the prayers and supererogations of men, here on earth, or the intercessions of the saints in heaven, but above all things, the sacrifice of the mass, are of great efficacy. This is the doctrine of the Church of Rome, as asserted in the Councils of Florence and Trent." * Before this time, the opinions concerning purgatory were exceedingly various, with respect to the place of purgatory, the nature of the pains of it, and indeed everything belonging to it. Eckius maintained that it was in the bottom of the sea. Others would have it to be in Mount Etna, Vesuvius, or some other burning mountain. Sir Thomas More says, that the punishment will be only by fire, but Fisher, his fellow-sufferer, by fire and by water. Lorichius says, neither by fire nor * Summa. III. p. 446, &c. (P.) 8 Petrarch says, "I pray God every day to make my purgatory in this world." Mémoires pour la Vie de Petrarch, III. p. 277. (P.) xxii. Ed. 4, p. 197. See Sess. xxv. Decretum de Purgatorio. Con. Trid. Can. et Decret. p. 233. 4 Burnet on the Articles, p. 269. (P.) Art. The Greeks, though in most respects they had superstitions similar to those of the Latins, yet they never adopted their notions concerning purgatory. At the time that this opinion was formed in the West, the two churches had very little intercourse with each other; and besides, the Greeks were so alienated from the Latins, that the reception of it by the latter would have rendered the former more averse to it. water, but by the violent convulsions festival... in remembrance of all deof hope and fear. Fisher maintained parted souls, was instituted by...Odilo, that the executioners would be the holy, abbot of Cluni, and added to the Latin angels, but Sir Thomas More thought calendar towards the conclusion of the they would be the devils. Some again century." thought that only venial sins are expiated in purgatory, but others that mortal sins are expiated there likewise. Dennis the Carthusian thought that the pains of purgatory would continue to the end of the world; but Dominicus a Soto limited it to ten years, and others made the time to depend on the number of masses. &c., that should be said on their behalf, or on the will of the Pope. Thomas Aquinas, as has been seen above, makes the pains of Eurgatory to be as violent as those of hell; whereas, the Rhemists say that souls are not in a bad condition there; and Durandus, holding a middle opinion, gives them some intermission from their pains on Sundays and holidays. Bede tells a long story of a Northum berland man, who, after he died, returned to life again, and said that he had passed through the middle of a long and large valley, which had two lakes in it, in one of which souls were tormented with heat, and in the other with cold; and that when a soul had been so long in the hot lake that it could endure no longer, it would leap into the cold one; and when that became intolerable, it would leap back again. This uncertainty was so great, that the whole doctrine must have been discredited, if it had not been for the profits which the popes, the priests, and the friars, made of it. The living, being, by means of this doctrine of purgatory, deeply interested in the fate of the dead, and having them very much at their mercy, the mistaken compassion and piety of many persons could not fail to be excited in their favour. Before the tenth century it had been customary, in many places, to put up prayers on certain days for the souls that were confined in purgatory, but these were made by each religiouB society for its own members and friends; but in this century a "yearly 1 Stayeley's Romish Horseleach, p. 2<W. (P.) According to the doctrine of purgatory, the moment that any soul is released from that place, it is admitted into heaven, to the presence of God and of Christ, and made as happy as it can be in an unembodied state, which was contrary to the opinion of the early fathers, viz. that all souls continued in hades until the resurrection, or, at most, that an exception was made in favour of the martyrs. However, this doctrine of purgatory, and the opinion of the efficacy of prayers, and of masses, to procure complete happiness for those who were exposed to it, at length ob literated the ancient doctrine, as appeared when an attempt was made to revive something like it by Pope John XXII. Towards the conclusion of his life, this pope incurred the disapprobation of the whole Catholic church, by asserting, "in some public discourses, that the souls of the faithful, in their intermediate state, were permitted to behold Christ, as man, but not the face of God or the divine nature. . . . This doctrine highly offended Philip VI., king of France," who caused it to be examined and condemned by the divines of Paris, in 1333." The pope, being alarmed at this opposition, softened his opinion in the year following, by saying," that the unembodied souls of the righteous beheld the divine es 66 2 Mosheim, II. p. 223. (P.) Cent. x. Pt. ii. Ch. lv. Sect. ii. sence as far as their separate state and condition would permit; " and for fear of any ill consequences, from dying under the imputation of heresy, when he "lay upon his death-bed, he submitted his opinion to the judgment of the church." His successor, Benedict XII., after much controversy, established the present doctrine, viz. "that the souls of the blessed, during their intermediate state, do fully and perfectly contemplate the divine nature."1 It may just deserve to be mentioned, at the close of this period, that the doc trine of the resurrection of the same body, was questioned by Conon, bishop of Tarsus, in the sixth century; who, in opposition to Philoponus, a philosopher of Alexandria, (who had asserted that both the form and the matter of the body would be restored at the resurrection,) maintained that the form would remain, but that the matter would be changed.' SECTION III. prayers of the living, he seems to have been in doubt."3 The ancient Waldenses, however, who separated from the Church of Rome before the doctrine of purgatory had got established, never admitted it; and presently after the Reformation by Luther, we find it abandoned by all who left the Church of Rome, without exception, so that this doctrine is now peculiar to that church. The doctrine of a soul, however, and of its existence in a separate conscious state, from the time of death to that of the resurrection, which was the foundation of the doctrine of purgatory, and of many other abuses of Popery, was still retained by most. But Mosheim mentions some Anabaptists who held that the soul sleeps till the resurrection; and the Helvetic confession condemns all those who believed the sleep of the soul, which shows that a considerable number must have maintained it. Luther himself was of this opinion; though whether he died in it has been doubted. It was, however, the firm belief of so many of the reformers of that age, that had it not 4 OF THE REVIVAL OF THE GENUINE DOC- been for the authority of Calvin, who So general was the belief of a purgatory in this Western part of the world, that Wickliffe could not entirely shake it off. But though he believed in a purgatory, he saw the absurdity of supposing that God intrusted any man with a power to release sinners from such a state: but whether the souls of the dead might be profited by the a 1 Mosheim, III. pp. 157, 158. (P.) Cent. xiv. Pt. ii. Ch. ii. Sect. ix. See [Rutt's Priestley] Vol. III. p. 376. Dr. Maclaine, the translator of Mosheim, remarks, that "all this Pope's heretical fancies, about the beatific vision, were nothing, in comparison with vile and most enormous practical heresy that was found in his coffers after his death, viz. twenty-five millions of florins, of which there were eighteen in specie, and the rest in plate, &c., squeezed out of the people and the inferior clergy during his pontificate." Ibid. Note, p. 158. 2 Ibid. I. p. 473. (P.) Cent. vi. Pt. ii. Ch. v. Sect. X. wrote expressly against it, the doctrine of an intermediate conscious state would, in all probability, have been as effectually exploded as the doctrine of purgatory itself. Several persons in this country have, in every period since the Reformation, appeared in favour of the sleep of the soul, and it always had a considerable number of followers. Of late this opinion has gained ground very much, especially since the writings of the present excellent bishop of Carlisle, and of archdeacon Blackburne on the subject. But I think the doctrine of an intermediate state can never be effectually extirpated, so long as the 3 Gilpin's Life of him, p. 70. (P.) See also Brit. Biog. I. p. 48. (P.) Cent. xvi. Sect. iii. 4 Vol. IV. p. 163. Pt. ii. C. iii. Sect. xxiii. • Syntagma, p. 10. (P.) See Blackburne's Hist. Kino, Appendix, Ed. 2, p. 344. belief of a separate soul is retained. For while that is supposed to exist independently of the body, it will not be easily imagined to sleep along with it, but will be thought to enjoy more or less of a consciousness of its existence.1 Bin when, agreeably to the dictates of reason, as well as the testimony of Scripture rightly understood, we shall acquiesce in the opinioa that man is an homogeneous being, and that the powers of sensation and thought belong to the brain, as much as gravity and magnetism belong to other arrangements of matter, the whole fabric of superstition, which had been built upon the doctrine of a soul and of its separate conscious state, must fall at once. And this persuasion will give a value to the gospel, which it could not have before, as it will be found to supply the only satisfactory evidence of a future life. For though a future state of retribution might appear sufficiently consonant to some appearances in nature, yet when the means of it, or the only method by which it could be I See The State of the Dead, in [Rutt's Priestley] Vol. III. pp. 374-379. brought about, (viz. that of the resurrection of the very body that had putrefied in the grave, or had been reduced to ashes,) were so little visible, (since, to all appearance, men die exactly like plants and brute animals, and no analogy drawn from them can lead us to expect a revival,) we must eagerly embrace that gospel, in which alone this important truth is clearly brought to light. It is in the gospel alone that we have an express assurance of a future life, by a person fully authorized to give it, exemplified also in his own person; he having been actually put to death, and raised to life again, for the purpose of giving us that assurance. To give this value to revelation, by proving the proper and complete mortality of man, on the principles of reason and scripture, is the object of my Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit, to which, and also to what I have added in support of it, in my discussion of the subject with Dr. Price, 1 beg leave to refer my readers. 2 See ibid., Vo). IV. pp. 18-121; also Vol. II. pp. 354-364; and Vol. III. pp. 181, 182, 242258.. |