proof of Purgatory, he was really but interpreting them; he was teaching what they ought to mean, what in charity they must be supposed to mean, what they might mean as far as the very words went, probably meant considering the Church so meant, and might be taken to mean, even if their authors did not so mean, from the notion that they spoke vaguely, and, as children, really meant something besides what they formally said, and that after all they were but the spokesmen of the then existing Church, which, though in silence, held, as being the Church, the same doctrine which Rome has since defined and published. This is to treat Bellarmine with the same charity with which he has on this supposition treated the Fathers, and it is to be hoped, with a nearer approach to the matter of fact. So much as to his first use of them but afterwards, in noticing what he considers erroneous opinions on this subject, he treats them, not as organs of the Church infallible, but as individuals, and interprets their language by its literal sense or by the context, and in consequence condemns it.... How hopeless then is it to contend with Romanists, as if they practically agreed to the foundation of faith, however much they pretend to it! Ours is antiquity: theirs the existing Church. Its infallibility is their first principle; belief in it is a deep prejudice, quite beyond the reach of any thing external. It is quite clear that the combined testimonies of all the Fathers, supposing such a case, would not have a feather's weight against a decision of the Pope in Council, nor would matter at all, except for the Fathers' sakes who had by anticipation opposed it. They consider that the fathers ought to mean what Rome has since decreed, and that Rome knows their meaning better than they themselves did. That venturesome Church has usurped their place, and thinks it merciful, only not to banish outright the rivals she has dethroned. By an act, as it were, of grace she has determined, that when they contradict her, though not available as witnesses against her, yet, as living in times of ignorance, they are only heterodox, and not heretical; and she keeps them around her, to ask their advice when it happens to agree with her

own.

Let us then understand the position of the Romanists towards 6

us; they do not really argue from the Fathers, though they seem to do so. They may affect to do so on our behalf, happy if by an innocent stratagem they are able to convert us; but all the while in their own feelings, they are taking a far higher position. They are teaching, not disputing or proving. They are interpreting what is obscure in antiquity, purifying what is alloyed, correcting what is amiss, perfecting what is incomplete, harmonizing what is various. They claim and use all its documents as ministers and organs of that one infallible Church, which once forsooth kept silence, but since has spoken, which by a divine gift must ever be consistent with itself, and which bears with her her own evidence of divinity."

Leaving Bellarmine then, let us proceed to inquire what the opinion of the Fathers in the foregoing passages really is.

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3. HISTORY OF THE RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF PURGATORY AND OPINIONS IN THE EARLY CHURCH CONCERNING IT.

THE argumentative ground of the doctrine of Purgatory as far as the Infallibility of the Church has not superseded any, bas ever been, I conceive, the report of miracles and visions attesting it; but the historical origin is to be sought elsewhere, viz. in the anxious conjectures of the human mind about its future destinies, and the apparent coincidences of these with certain obscure texts of Scripture.

These may be supposed to have operated as follows; as described in the work already cited. "How ALMIGHTY GOD will deal with the mass of Christians, who are neither very good nor very bad, is a problem with which we are not concerned, and which it is our wisdom, and may be our duty, to put from our thoughts. But, when it has once forced itself upon the mind, we are led in self-defence, with a view of keeping ourselves from dwelling unhealthily on particular cases, which come under our experience and perplex us, to imagine modes, not by which GoD does, (for that would be presumptuous to conjecture,) but by which He may solve the difficulty. Most men, to our apprehensions, are too unformed in religious habits either for heaven or for hell, yet there is no middle state when CHRIST Comes in judgment. In consequence it is obvious to have recourse to the interval before His coming, as a time during which this incompleteness might be remedied; a season, not of changing the spiritual bent and character of the soul departed, whatever that be, for probation ends with mortal life, but of developing it into a more determinate form, whether of good or of evil. Again, when the mind once allows itself to speculate, it will discern in such a provision, a means whereby those, who not without true faith at bottom yet have committed great crimes, or those who have been carried off in youth while still undecided, or who die

after a barren, though not an immoral or scandalous life, may receive such chastisement as may prepare them for heaven, and render it consistent with God's justice to admit them thither. Again, the inequality of the sufferings of Christians in this life, compared one with another, would lead the unguarded mind to the same speculations, the intense suffering, e. g. which some men undergo on their death-bed, seeming as if but an anticipation in their case of what comes after death upon others, who without greater claims on God's forbearance, have lived without chastisement and die easily. I say, the mind will inevitably dwell upon such thoughts, unless it has been taught to subdue them by education or by the experience of their dangerousness.

"Various suppositions have, accordingly, been made, as pure suppositions, as mere specimens of the capabilities, (if one may so speak,) of the Divine Dispensation, as efforts of the mind reaching forward and venturing beyond its depth into the abyss of the divine counsels. If one supposition could be produced to solve the problem, ten thousand others were conceivable, unless indeed the resources of God's Providence are exactly commensurate with man's discernment of them. Religious men, amid these searchings of heart, have naturally gone to Scripture for relief, to see if the inspired word anywhere gave them any clue for their inquiries. And from what was there found, and from the speculations of reason upon it, various notions have been hazarded at different times; for instance, that there is a certain momentary ordeal to be undergone by all men after this life, more or less severe according to their spiritual state; or that certain gross sins in good men will be thus visited, or their lighter failings and habitual imperfections; or that the very sight of divine perfection in the invisible world will be in itself a pain, while it constitutes the purification of the imperfect but believing soul; or that, happiness admitting of various degrees of intensity, penitents late in life may sink for ever into a state, blissful as far as it goes, but more or less approaching to unconsciousness; infants dying after baptism may be as gems paving the courts of heaven, or as the living wheels in the Prophet's vision; while matured Saints may excel in capacity of bliss, as well as in dignity, the

highest Archangels. Such speculations are dangerous when indulged; the event proves it; from some of these in fact seems to have resulted the doctrine of Purgatory.

"Now the texts to which the minds of the early Christians seem to have been principally drawn, and from which they ventured to argue in behalf of these vague notions, were these two: 'The fire shall try every man's work,' &c.; and 'He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.' These texts, with which many more were found to accord, directed their thoughts one way, as making mention of 'fire,' whatever was meant by the word, as the instrument of trial and purification; and that, at some time between the present time and the judgment, or at the judgment. And accordingly, without perhaps having any definite or consistent meaning in what they said, or being able to say whether they spoke literally or figuratively, and with an indefinite reference to this life, as well as to the intermediate state, they sometimes named fire as the instrument of recovering those who had sinned after their baptism. That this is the origin of the notion of a Purgatorial fire, I gather from these circumstances, first, that they do frequently insist on the texts in question, next, that they do not agree in the particular sense they put upon them. That they quote them shows they rest upon them; that they vary in explaining them, that they had no Catholic sense to guide them. Nothing can be clearer, if these facts be so, than that the doctrine of the Purgatorial fire in all its senses, as far as it was more than a surmise, and was rested on argument, was the result of private judgment exerted in defect of Tradition, upon the text of Scripture......

"As this doctrine, thus suggested by certain striking texts, grew in popularity and definiteness, and verged towards its present Roman form, it seemed a key to many others. Great portions of the books of Psalms, Job, and the Lamentations, which express the feelings of religious men under suffering, would powerfully recommend it by the forcible and most affecting and awful meaning which they received from it. When this was once suggested, all other meanings would seem tame and inadequate. "To these must be added various passages from the Prophets,