would contiune to the end of the world, but Dominicus a Soto limited it to ten years, and and others made the time to depend on the number of maffes, &c. that should be faid on their behalf, or on the will of the pope. Thomas Aquinas, as has been feen above, makes the pains of purgatory to be as violent as thofe of hell; whereas, the Rhemifts fay that fouls are not in a bad condition there, and Durandus, holding a middle opinion gives them fome intermiffion from their pains on fundays and holidays. Bede tells a long ftory of a Northumberland man, who after he died returned to life again, and said that he had paffed through the middle of a long and large valley, which had two lakes in it, in one of which fouls were tormented with heat, and in the other with cold; and that when a foul had been fo 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 fo great, that the whole doctrine must have been difcredited, 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 compaffion and piety of many perfons, could not fail to be excited in their Stavely's Romish Horfeleach, p. 205. favour. favour. Before the tenth century, it had been customary in many places, to put up prayers on certain days for the fouls that were confined in purgatory, but these were made by each religious fociety for its own members and friends; but in this century a feftival was inftituted by Odilo bishop of Clungy, in remembrance of all departed fouls, and it was added to the Latin calendar towards the conclufion of the century*. The Greeks, though in moft respects they had fuperftitions fimilar to thofe of the Latins, yet they never adopted their notions concerning purgatory. At the time that this opinion was formed in the Weft, the two churches had very little intercourse with each other; and befides, the Greeks were fo alienated from the Latins, that the reception of it by the latter would have rendered the former more averse to it. According to the doctrine of purgatory, the moment that any foul is released from that place, it is admitted into heaven, to the presence of God and of Chrift, 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 fouls continued in bades, until the refurrection, or at moft that an exception was made in favour of the martyrs. However this doctrine of purgatory, Mofheim, vol x. 223. and and the opinion of the efficay of prayers, and of maffes, to procure complete happiness for those who were exposed to it at length obliterated the antient doctrine, as appeared when an attempt was made to revive fomething like it by pope John XXII. Towards the conclufion of his life, this pope incurred the disapprobation of the whole catholic church, by afferting in fome public discourses, that the fouls of the faithful in their intermediate state, were permitted to behold Christ as a man, but not as God. This doctrine particularly 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 oppofition, foftened his opinion in the year following, by faying that the unembodied fouls of the righteous behold the divine effence as far as their feparate ftate and condition will admit; and for fear of any ill confequences, from dying under the imputation of herefy, when he lay upon his death bed, he fubmitted his opinion to the judgment of the church. His fucceffor Benedict XII. after much controversy, established the prefent doctrine, viz. that the fouls of the bleffed, during their immediate ftate, do fully and perfectly contemplate the divine nature *. Mofheim, vol iii. p. 158. It may just deserve to be mentioned, at the close of this period, that the doctrine of the refurrection of the fame body, was queftioned by Conon bishop of Tarfus, in the sixth century; who, in oppofition to Philoponus a philofopher of Alexandria (who had afferted that both the form and the matter of the body would be restored at the refurrection) maintained that the form would remain, but that the matter would be changed. SECTION III: Of the Revival of the genuine Doctrine of Revelation concerning the State of the Dead. So general was the belief of a pur gatory 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 abfurdity of fuppofing that God had entrusted any man with power to relieve finners from such a state; though whether the fouls of the dead might not be profited by the prayers of the living, he seems to have been in doubt†. * Mosheim, vol. i. p. 473. The The antient Waldenfes, however, who feparated 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, fo that this doctrine is now peculiar to that church. The doctrine of a foul, however, and of its existence in a separate conscious ftate, from the time of death to that of the refurrection, which was the foundation of the doctrine of purgatory, and of many other abuses of popery, was still retained by moft. But Mofheim mentions fome anabaptifts who held that the foul sleeps till the refurrection*; and the Helvetic confeffion condemns all thofe who believed the fleep of the foult, which fhews that a confiderable 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 fo many of the reformers of that age, that had it not been for the authority of Calvin, who wrote exprefsly against it, the doctrine of an intermediate confcious ftate would, in all probability, have been as effectually exploded as the doctrine of purgatory itself. Several perfons in this country have, in every period fince the reformation, appeared in favour * Vol. iv. p. 163. Syntagma, p. 10. of |