"gatorial fire;" and that those doctrines are neither primitive nor scriptural, in the way in which they are now taught in the Roman Catholic church. It is by no means agreeable to me to enter upon this part of the argument, in the manner which truth compels me to adopt ; but it is to be hoped, that you will be able to reconcile the conduct which, as an historian, you have here exhibited. You are, I presume, acquainted with the canons attributed to the synods of St. Patrick; they are edited in his Opuscula ; transcribed into the Concilia of Spelman, and of Wilkins; commented on by yourself, (p. 225;) and several of them even quoted in your history. You should have read them all, occupying as they do but a very few pages; and bearing most importantly upon the subject on which you were at once undertaking to inform the public, and arraigning of something compounded of bigotry ignorance and folly, one whom you are compelled to consider as learned, and whom you feel it just to call admirable. What then will the candid and intelligent part of that public think of the fact, that the words of the canon thus quoted, whose title, which is all that you have produced, appears to imply an acknowledgment of "Oblation for the dead," seems most unequivocally to oppose the doctrine? The fact will appear from the document itself, which I shall transcribe in full; I find that this title is referred to, independently of the canon itself, in O'Connor's first index to his Rer. Hiber. Script., p. 258; and the best apology I can suppose for you is, that finding it there, apparently suited to your system, you gave into the temptation, and took it upon conjecture, in order to save further research. The canon is as follows: 66 Chapter xii. De oblatione pro defunctis." "Audi Apostolum dicentem-Est autem peccatum "ad mortem, non pro illo dico ut roget quis;' et "Dominus-Nolite donare sanctum canibus '-Qui “enim in vitâ suâ sacrificium* non merebitur accipere, quomodo post mortem illi poterit adjuvare ?" "Of oblation for the dead." should pray for it;' "Hear the apostle saying- there is a sin unto "death, I do not that one say "and our Lord-'Give not that which is holy unto "dogs'-for he who in his lifetime does not deserve "to receive the sacrifice, how can it assist him after "death ?" But this is not the only circumstance in our existing remains of St. Patrick, to shew that he did not admit of the doctrine of purgatory; there is among his works one upon the following subject-" De "tribus Habitaculis," "the three habitations;" and, in describing these, he says-"There be three "habitations under the power of Almighty God; "the first, the lowermost, and the middle : the "highest whereof is called the kingdom of God, or "the kingdom of the heavens; the lowermost is "termed hell; the middle is named the present * The meaning of the words "receiving the sacrifice," as used in these early days, has been already fully explained by a passage from Usher, transcribed under the next preceding head of doctrine. “world.”--And again—“In this world there is a “mixture of good and of bad; but in the kingdom of "God none are bad, but all good; but in hell 66 66 none are good, but all bad; and either place is supplied from the middle one." There is no mention of purgatory here, nor indeed in the entire tract, although its peculiar topic be the future condition of the soul; and this silence on the subject, while it distinctly proves that he does not inculcate the doctrine, affords a strong implication that he had never even heard of it. There was nothing before him to suggest the thought of it to his mind; for were it otherwise, he could not possibly, on such an occasion, have passed it by entirely unnoticed. I should make a similar remark upon another ancient canon, attributed to a synod of St. Patrick, although not so with any certainty, yet unquestionably of great antiquity. (See Us. Rel. &c. p. 24.) It speaks thus of the soul-" Neither can the archangel lead it to "life, until the Lord have judged it; nor the devil 66 transport it to hell, until the Lord have condemned "it." I think that, had purgatory been a doctrine of those times, it could not have passed entirely unnoticed here. I would just add that St. Columbanus, in spite of the missal of Bobbio, directs his disciples thus-(Syl. &c. p. 11.) "Vive Deo fidens, Christi præcepta sequendo, "Live believing in God, following the precepts of "Christ, while life remains, while the times for obtain“ing salvation are certain ;" which seems to me to exclude the idea of any such time after death, and in a purgatorial state while the later Sedulius says, (in Rom. 7. and in 1. Cor. 3 ; from Us. Rel. &c. p. 24—) that, at the end of life," either death or life suc "ceedeth;" and "that, death is the gate by which "we enter into the kingdom." Claudius, whom I have mentioned before, has a very strong passage upon this subject. I do not, however, quote him on his own account, as you have not thought proper to mention him in your history, and, therefore, have not appeared to admit him as an authority; but because he merely refers to the words of St. Jerome, one of the greatest and most ancient fathers of the Roman Catholic church; and will therefore serve, fitly, to lead us from the consideration of this doctrine as holden by the early Irish Christians, to the views entertained of it by the rest of Christendom. He shews us the utter vanity of prayers for the releasing of souls out of purgatory, where he tells us, that, "While we are in this present world 66 we may assist each other by prayers, or by counsels; "but when we shall come before the tribunal of "Christ, neither Job, nor Daniel, nor Noah can "intreat for any one, but every one shall bear his 66 own burden." This sentence from St. Jerome is remarkably similar to one upon the same subject, which is used by St. Clement, third Pope of Rome, in his Second Epistle written to the Corinthians, c. 3. After quoting the same text from Ezek. xiv., 14. &c. respecting Noah, Daniel and Job, he says" Let us "therefore repent, whilst we are yet upon the earth; "for as the potter, if he make a vessel, and it be "turned amiss in his hands, or broken, again forms "it anew; but if he have gone so far as to throw it "into the furnace of fire, he can no more bring any "remedy of it; so we, whilst we are in this world, "should repent, with our whole heart, for what 66 soever we have done in the flesh, while we have you yet the time of repentance; that we may be saved "by the Lord." There is no direct condemnation of purgatorial fire most certainly here, because the good pontiff, who lived about the year 100, had never heard of it; but the sentiments are entirely inconsistent with a belief in it, and substantially combat its absurdities. Remember that these sentiments are delivered by the head of that Church with which argue the ancient Irish to have agreed; and they prove, decidedly, that, old as the doctrine of prayer for the dead might be, and it must be old, for we find it in the Maccabees, (lib. II. c. 12,) that of purgatory is not by any means primitive. The former crept in gradually into the early church abroad, but it was not connected with the latter until of very late years. Fisher, a Roman Catholic, and Bishop of Rochester, (in confut. Luther. Art. 18,) confesses, that it was never or seldom mentioned by the ancient fathers ;* * I was very much surprised at these passages in Fisher's work-" Nemo certè jam dubitat orthodoxus an purgatorium "sit, de quo tamen apud priscos illos nulla, vel quàm rarô, |