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PURGATORY; 
 
 Doctrinally, Practically, and His- 
 torically Opened. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM BARROWS, D. D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN." ' 
 
 WITH AH INTRODUCTIOH, 
 BY AIvEXANDER McKENZIE, D. D. 
 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 
 
 150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 
 
 T 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1882, 
 BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I HAVE yielded to the desire of the author that I would 
 write a few words as an Introduction to this work. I cannot 
 think that a book whose theme is of so general interest, and 
 which has been so seldom treated with any detail, or with 
 any approach to completeness, needs anything beyond itself 
 to commend it to thoughtful readers. If there were such ne- 
 cessity, it is not for me to meet it. I am compelled to turn 
 to the book for my own enlightenment, rather than with any 
 hope of making a substantial addition to the information which 
 it is designed to present. The protracted study and investi- 
 gation of the author, with his characteristic acuteness of 
 thought and of statement, prepare the reader to be at once 
 instructed and interested. 
 
 So long as we see men passing out of the world, and stand 
 with strained and tearful eyes watching them as they vanish 
 beyond our sight, so long as we ourselves are hastening into 
 the land which stretches far away from us and from which 
 there is no return, will it be a question of intensest interest into 
 what estate and condition of life men enter when they have 
 gone hence and are not here any more. We ask with an 
 earnestness which is deeper and more sacred than curiosity, 
 and " there comes no answer of reply." Centuries of ques- 
 tioning, ages of longing, have added nothing to our knowl- 
 edge. If we have learned more of the origin of man, we 
 have gained nothing which explains his destiny. All that 
 we know comes not by study, but by revelation. God has 
 
iv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 spoken by the prophets. The Son of God has come from 
 the world beyond, and, incarnate among us, has told us of 
 that which is and is to be. He has taught us all that we need 
 for our present governance. He has declared the will of God, 
 and with that our duty and the issues of our life. We are 
 assured of man's eternal being, and that whatsoever a man 
 sows, being here, that shall he reap, being there. To make 
 our endless years into a life of righteousness and blessedness, 
 the Lord has come into the world, lived here, died, risen, as- 
 cended, and now makes intercession, until he shall come again 
 and receive his own unto himself This is our simple and 
 practical faith. We have enough knowledge for duty and for 
 hope. It would have been well if men had been content with 
 that which is clearly revealed. This is more than could be 
 expected. Man knows too much not to wish to know more. 
 We tenderly repeat the words of solace and of promise, " Until 
 He come ;" and while the words linger on our lips the heart 
 frames again the questions so long asked, so long unanswered, 
 When ? When will He come ? What shall be till the day 
 dawns; till the throne is set and the Lord comes with his angels ? 
 It is clear that the first Christians expected the speedy return 
 of the Lord. It was not long to wait for the consummation of 
 all things. When they found that his coming was delayed, 
 they knew not for how long, out of the delay sprang the ar- 
 dent inquiry. Where, then, are the departed saints whose glory 
 awaits his return ? The question still remains. If there is to 
 be a day of resurrection, when all who are in their graves 
 shall come forth ; if there is to be a day of judgment, when 
 all shall give account for the deeds done in the body, in what 
 condition are they living who have gone from this world, 
 leaving the body in the grave, and waiting for that day of 
 wonder and of triumph for the saints ? It is in vain that we 
 
INTRODUCTION. v 
 
 put aside the inquiry. It is almost equally in vain that we 
 attempt to answer it. Every man has asked it. Every min- 
 ister has had the question put to him, and has been sad as 
 the disappointed questioner turned away from him. We 
 must wait. The day comes when we shall know. To-day's 
 duty is enough for to-day's moments. 
 
 The doctrine of Purgatory is an attempt to answer the 
 question. It has been put to other and to base uses, but it 
 had its place in a scheme of knowledge which claimed to over- 
 leap the boundaries between the worlds. In its simplest form 
 the doctrine is not to be held up to scorn. Too many intel- 
 ligent and devout hearts have believed it. The absurd forms 
 which it has assumed, the ridiculous accretions which have 
 gathered about it, should not blind us to the principle which 
 lies underneath the belief But even that principle we are not 
 able to receive. It has no authority which commends it to 
 the Protestant mind. Nor does it lessen the number or di- 
 minish the urgency of our inquiries. It raises new difficulties. 
 It darkens counsel. The profound questions of the soul are 
 not satisfied. The doctrine of the Resurrection is not illu- 
 mined. Through all its superstitions, past even its clearest 
 suggestions, we return to the words of Christ and his apos- 
 tles, to find that which we can at least believe ; which com- 
 mends itself to our conscience and our hope; which gives us 
 courage to wait until we know. The Reformation did well, 
 a work of light and of liberty, when it swept away this whole 
 fabric and brought men face to face with the Word of God. 
 
 It cannot be without advantage that we review the rise and 
 the course of this doctrine of purgatory under the guidance of 
 the writer whose pages are now before us. It is right that he 
 should examine and judge the doctrine in its historic devel- 
 opment and in its present form. It is fair to use its absurdi- 
 
 I* 
 
vi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ties against its principles. It is wholesome for the reader to 
 see how far and into how wild paths speculation may be led 
 when it wanders away from that which is revealed, into that 
 which for the present is unknown. It is good to be brought 
 back to the Word of God and to be set in new content among 
 its teachings and its promises. That will be the end of the 
 book. > 
 
 With these words of introduction I leave the reader to the 
 author. He will lay aside the book wiser than when he takes 
 it in hand, with a larger sense of the greatness of the themes 
 of which this work treats but one, and of the discontent which 
 must follow the study of them in the present light ; let it be 
 hoped also with a devout willingness that the secret things 
 should wait God's day of fuller revelation, while the things 
 which are already revealed receive a prompt and cheerful 
 belief and obedience. 
 
 ALEXANDER McKENZIE. 
 
 Campobello, N. B., Aug. 14, 1882. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Preliminary ----page i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Doctrine of Purgatory Stated- — 5 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 . Purgatory as a Place 13 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Theory of Purgatorial Sufferings 19 
 
 •CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Nature of the Sufferings in Purgatory ■ 25 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Visits from Purgatory - — 32 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Visits to Purgatory 39 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Theory of Indulgences 56 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 The Theory of the Mass, and its Use - 83 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Other Methods of Relief 87 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Cases of Rescue and Escape from Purgatory 95 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Aid from Souls in Purgatory 99 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 The Introduction of the Doctrine into the Church 104 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Gregory the Great shapes the Theory of Purgatory • 112 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 The Purgatorial System of the Ancient Egyptians-. 125 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 The Purgatorial System of the Ancient Hindoos 140 
 
 CHAPTER XVII, 
 The Purgatory of Zoroaster and the Parsi - 152 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 The Greek Purgatory - - i6g 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 The Roman Purgatory - — 183 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 The Gnostic Pressure on the Church igo 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 The Manichaan Pressure on the Church 199 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Retrospect and Summary 214 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 Conclusion 220 
 
PURGATORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PRELIMINARY. 
 
 The Doctrine of Purgatory is interwoven with the 
 entire Papal System, and modifies all the other tenets 
 of this Church. It follows the devout Romanist with 
 a power that pertains to no other dogma, for it touches 
 him in those points where man feels most deeply^ — ^his 
 dread of sufiering, and afiection for kindred and friends. 
 If one within the holy communion of Rome incline to 
 be irreverent, disobedient, contumacious or heretical, 
 the practical application of this doctrine is the extremest 
 veto power of the hierarchy. It not only traces him 
 through all the ways of his erring life with admonition 
 and check, but at his dying bed it points him signifi- 
 cantly to approaching sufierings such as language can 
 but poorly set forth. 
 
 Claiming to be the successors of the apostles and 
 the vicegerents of God in the prerogative of forgiving 
 sins, the priests have used this doctrine as the great 
 Key of St. Peter in opening and shutting the door of 
 
2 PURGATORY. 
 
 heaven. There is a terrible power in it when brought 
 to bear on an ignorant, or a sensitive conscience, and 
 that power is obtained and applied by appeal to all 
 that we shrink from in anguish, and to all that is 
 endearing and tender in the ties of affection. 
 
 What Mosheim says of the power and use of this 
 doctrine in the tenth century will apply with but little 
 variation to the practical workings of it in any age or 
 community. "The fire which bums out the stains 
 remaining on human souls after death was an object 
 of intense dread to all, nay, was more feared than the 
 punishments of hell. For the latter, it was supposed, 
 might be easily escaped, if they only died rich in the 
 prayers and merits of the priests, or had some saint to 
 intercede for them. But not so the former. And the 
 priests, perceiving this dread to conduce much to their 
 advantage, endeavored by their discourses, and by 
 fables and fictitious miracles, continually to raise it 
 higher and higher. ' ' * 
 
 It is proposed in this treatise to present a systematic 
 collection of the statements, principles and illustrations 
 of the doctrine of Purgatory, as held formerly and in 
 our own times, but specially in our own times, by the 
 Roman-catholic Church. 
 
 The uses of this doctrine in the United States are 
 fully illustrated from American authors, well accred- 
 ited by American Archbishops and Bishops. Indeed, 
 one peculiarity of this work is a total reliance on well- 
 known and ofiicially approbated Papal writings, about 
 
 * Eccl. His. Cent. X. Part II. ch. 3. 
 
FRELIMINAIi Y. 3 
 
 forty being quoted. The book is not controversial, 
 theological or argumentative, but simply historical, 
 that this leading, compacting and pivotal doctrine in 
 the Papal system of faith and practice may be well 
 understood. And it is believed that no candid Roman- 
 ist will take serious exception to the collated historical 
 statement of the doctrine in its principles and uses, or 
 to the tone and manner i^ which it is done, 
 
 As Romanism is putting forth anew its special 
 claims and prerogatives, perhaps it will not prove an 
 ill-timed service to the Church and the State, particu- 
 larly in America, to present authoritatively from their 
 side, and totally, this central dogma. Its relations to 
 the physical sciences and to psychology, as well as to 
 morals and theology, as held and taught commonly in 
 the nineteenth and not the twelfth century, will be 
 appreciated by the studious reader. 
 
 Moreover, it is believed that no doctrine within the 
 Christian area, holding the faith of so many, and 
 aspiring to the faith of so many more, is in waiting, 
 like this, for explanatory and practical and historical 
 unfolding. With all our books, at least in English, 
 it is thought that the place for a round treatise on this 
 topic is yet wanting its book. The more is the won- 
 der, when it is considered how much Protestants have 
 to do with this doctrine practically and socially and 
 civilly. 
 
 The genealogy or genetic exposition of the general 
 doctrine of purgatory, as held before Christian times, 
 claims a large space in the book. For since the Scrip- 
 
 Piirsfttory. 2 
 
4 PURGATORY. 
 
 tures are so barren of material for this elaborate system, 
 it seemed good to look up the sources whence it came. 
 Therefore the eschatology of the ancient Egyptians, 
 Hindoos, Persians, Greeks, and Romans has been 
 analyzed and reproduced as to the point in hand. The 
 same may be said of the Gnostic and Manichgean sys- 
 tems of religion, that so environed and struggled to 
 permeate young Christianitj^ 
 
 In this gleaning of the ancients concerning the 
 punitive state of their dead, the author finds that he 
 has prematurely and unconsciously written on one of 
 the leading topics of the day within the field of divine 
 government and religious theories, namely. Future 
 Punishment. The historical digest thus made, for 
 another purpose, furnishes a fair statement of the views 
 of the ancient religionists on this now popular question. 
 Here is, therefore, a well-defined background prepared 
 by the reason and philosophy and anticipation of un- 
 inspired men, to which the Christian inquirer should 
 add all and only what inspiration has added, while 
 bringing life and immortality into the light. 
 
THE DOCTRINE STA2ED. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DOCTRIKE OF PURGATORY STATED. 
 
 A STATEMENT of Tht Doctrine of Purgatory can 
 be best made only in the language of those who believe 
 and teach and practise it. We quote, therefore, 
 definitions and expositions of it from catechisms, 
 canons, manuals and creeds that have been officially 
 adopted or accredited by the Papal Church. The first 
 quotations made will show the doctrine as held and 
 practised to-day, and in our own neighborhoods. 
 
 Miiller says that at death every soul goes "either 
 to purgatory, or to heaven, or to hell." They go to 
 purgatory " who leave this world without having fully 
 paid the debt of temporal punishment due to their 
 sins, the guilt of which has been forgiven by the 
 sacrament of penance." There they "suffer for a 
 time on account of their sins." "Because it cannot 
 be supposed that those who die suddenly have either 
 the time or the dispositions necessary to atone for all 
 their faults, therefore the divine goodness has made a 
 place in the world to come, in which the soul is cleansed 
 from his little faults and imperfections. ' ' * 
 
 * Familiar Explanations of Christian Doctrine. By Rev. M. Miiller ; 
 approbated by J. R. Bayley, Archbishop of Baltimore. Catholic Publi- 
 cation Society, 1875. 
 
6 PURGATOR Y. 
 
 Purgatory is " a middle state of souls suflFering for 
 a time on account of their sins." Such souls go there 
 ' ' when they die in less sins, which we call venial ; or 
 when they have not satisfied the justice of God for 
 former transgressions."* 
 
 Purgatory is "a place in the other life, where 
 some souls suffer for a time before they can go to 
 heaven." All go there "-hJio die indebted to God's 
 justice on account of mortal sin."t 
 
 The Papal Church ' ' knows that a temporal punish- 
 ment frequently remains due to the sinner, after the 
 guilt of his crime has been remitted. . . . She knows 
 that frequently her children are summoned from life 
 with part of this penalty unpaid, and that they endure 
 a purgation, therefore, in the other world until, being 
 no longer debtors to justice, they shall be made par- 
 takers of mercy, and having paid the last farthing, 
 they shall enter into the glory of the Lord. "J 
 
 In the Douay Catechism we find the following: 
 * ' Whither go such as die in venial sin, or not having 
 fully satisfied for the punishment due to their mortal 
 sins? To purgatory, till they have made full satis- 
 faction for them, and then to heaven. ' ' 
 
 "A middle state of souls who depart this life in 
 
 * Boston Catechism. For the use of the Catholic Church in the 
 Diocese of Boston. Boston, Patrick Donahoe, 1873. 
 
 t Butler's Catechism ; Revised, Enlarged, Improved and Recom- 
 mended by the four Roman-catholic Archbishops of Ireland, and by The 
 Right Rev. Dr. Keiirick of Philadelphia. New York, 1847 ; Boston, 1873. 
 , % Dr. England's Garden of the Soul : A Manual of Papal Doctrines, 
 Forms and Devotions. With the Approbation of the Right Rev. Dr. 
 Hughes. Pp. 63, 64. See also pp. 36, 84, 265-280 and 305. New York, 
 1847. 
 
THE DOCTRINE STATED 7 
 
 God's grace, yet not without some lesser stains or 
 guilt of punisliment which retard them from entering 
 heaven. ' ' * 
 
 "A middle state of souls suffering for a time on 
 account of their sins. ' ' f 
 
 "There is a place distinct from hell and from 
 paradise, called Purgatory, because in it those souls 
 are purified which die in a state of grace, yet have 
 not satisfied in their life the punishment of the sins, 
 either venial but not yet remitted, or mortal and 
 already pardoned. " " They do not come out thence 
 without having first entirely paid to divine justice the 
 punishment corresponding to their guilt. "J 
 
 ' ' Constanter teneo purgatorium esse, animasque 
 ibi detentas fidelium suffiragiis juvari."§ 
 
 The words of the Council of Trent, run thus: 
 
 "Whereas the Catholic Church, instructed by the 
 Holy Ghost, has, from the sacred writings and the 
 ancient traditions of the fathers, taught, in sacred 
 councils, and very recently in this oecumenical synod, 
 that there is a purgatory, and that the souls there 
 detained are relieved by the suffrages of the faithful, 
 but chiefly by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar, the 
 holy synod enjoins on bishops that they diligently 
 
 * The Grounds of the Catholic Doctrine, Contained in the Profession 
 of faith by Pope Pius IX. P. 47. Dunigan & Brother, New York, 1855. 
 
 t Sunday-school Manual. Approved by Benedict, Bishop of Boston. 
 P. 17. Patrick Donahoe, Boston, 1843. 
 
 t Purgatory Opened to the Piety of the Faithful ; or The Month of 
 November. With the Approbation of the Most Rev. John Hughes, 
 D. D., Archbishop of New York. Pp. 15, 22. Dunigan & Brother, 1855. 
 
 § Creed of Pius IV. A. D. 1560-65. 
 2* 
 
8 PURGATORY. 
 
 strive that the sound doctrine touching purgatory, 
 delivered by the holy fathers and sacred councils, be 
 believed, held, taught and everywhere proclaimed by 
 the faithful in Christ."* 
 
 This Decree was passed on the last night of the 
 last session of the last ecclesiastical council of the 
 Church of Rome, Dec. 3, 1563. It is therefore not 
 only supreme, but the last authorized statement of 
 that church. 
 
 The Catholicism of this council is more specific 
 than its Decree: "Est purgatorius ignis, quo piorum 
 animas, ad definitum tempus cruciatse, expiantur, ut 
 eis in setemam patriam ingressus patere possit, in 
 quam nihil coinquinatum ingreditur."t 
 
 "The Catholic doctrine concerning purgatory may 
 be briefly stated thus: That Almighty God has ap- 
 pointed in the next world a third place, which is 
 neither heaven nor hell, but a middle place as it is 
 called, in which certain souls, who will in the end go 
 to heaven, are for a while detained. 
 
 ' ' We believe that some souls, the souls of little 
 children, for instance, who have been made members 
 of Christ's church by holy baptism; or of others 
 who, by God's grace, have been enabled to preserve 
 through life the purity and innocence of children; 
 or of others, again, who, by the help of the same 
 grace, have by their sufferings, or acts of voluntary 
 penance satisfied God's justice for the temporal pun- 
 
 * Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Twenty-fifth Session. 
 Buckley's Translation, 
 t Part II., De Symb. 5. 
 
THE DOCTRINE STATED. 9 
 
 ishment due for the sins of their past life, are re- 
 ceived by Almighty God, as soon as they have left 
 the body, into the enjoyment of everlasting bliss. 
 
 ' ' In like manner, we believe that there are other 
 souls which pass at once out of this world into the 
 realms of everlasting torment in the next. 
 
 "But we believe also that there are many others 
 which, although not destined to receive eternal pun- 
 ishment, are yet not fit for immediate admission into 
 that place into which ' there shall not enter anything 
 that is defiled. ' For when we consider the careless- 
 ness of the majority of men, their want of rigid self- 
 examination, and blindness to their own faults, we 
 can readily understand how the multitude of ordinary • 
 good persons may commit a thousand sins — not indeed 
 grievous sins, yet sins for which they have to render 
 an account in the day of judgment, such as ' idle 
 words, ' for example — for which they never feel com- 
 punction, nor ask the forgiveness of God. 
 
 "Concerning many souls, therefore, although we 
 dare not hope that at the moment of their passage 
 out of this world they are so free from all spot and 
 stain of sin as to be ready to pass immediately into 
 the presence of that Being who is of purer eyes than 
 to behold iniquity, there to dwell with him at once 
 and for ever; yet we feel confident that they have 
 departed in the grace and favor of God, and that their 
 everlasting lot, therefore, will not be cast among liars 
 and blasphemers and idolaters. And we believe that 
 the mercy and justice of God, in his dealings with 
 
lo PURGATORY. 
 
 these souls, are reconciled by their being detained for 
 a certain time in a middle place, there to be punished 
 and purified, and dealt with according to his good 
 pleasure until he sees fit to admit them to the enjoy- 
 ment of that beatific vision which is life and bliss 
 everlasting. 
 
 "It is also a part oT Catholic belief that even 
 when Almighty God has forgiven sin and justified 
 the repentant sinner, so that he is once more in a 
 state of grace, he still reserves the infliction of some 
 degree of punishment for his transgressions, as we see 
 in the instance of the royal penitent David. . . . He 
 yet reserves some smaller punishments to be under- 
 gone by the sinner, either in this world or the next. . . . 
 And when we speak of souls being purified by the 
 sufferings of Purgatory, we mean, not that they are 
 thus cleansed from the guilt of their sins, but only 
 that they are paying this debt of punishment. . . . 
 Those souls who leave this life with venial sins unre- 
 pented of, obtain the remission of the guilt of them 
 by the first act of contrition and love which they 
 make on their separation from the body. But since 
 that act is the effect of the pure bounty of God, and 
 is not performed in a state of probation, it is just that 
 they should suffer for their neglect in not repenting 
 before death. ' ' * 
 
 * The Clifton Tracts. Published under the Sanction of the Bishop of 
 Clifton, Cardinal Wiseman, and Republished with the Approbation of 
 the Most Rev. John Hughes, D. D., Archbishop of New York. Tract 
 No. 10. Purgatory. Dunigan & Brother, New York, 1856. 
 
 We are informed in the Introduction that these tracts, thirty-seven of 
 
THE DOCTRINE STATED. ii 
 
 There is, perhaps, no better authority on this 
 point than the Rev. Dr. John Milner. He says: 
 
 "There are some venial or pardonable sins, for 
 the expiation of which, as well as for the temporary 
 punishment due to other sins, a place of temporary 
 punishment is provided in the next life; where, how- 
 ever, the souls detained may be relieved by the 
 prayers, alms and sacrifices of the faithful here on 
 earth. 
 
 "Oh, how consoling are the belief and practice 
 of Catholics in this matter, compared with those of 
 Protestants! The latter show their regard for their 
 departed friends in costly pomp and feathered pa- 
 geantry, while their burial service is a cold, discon- 
 solate ceremony; and as to any further communica- 
 tion with the deceased, when the grave closes on 
 their remains, they do not so much as imagine any. 
 
 ' ' On the other hand, we Catholics know that 
 death itself cannot dissolve the communion of saints 
 which subsists in our church, nor prevent an inter- 
 course of kind, and often beneficial oflices, between 
 us and our departed friends. Oftentimes we can help 
 them more effectually, in the other world, by our 
 prayers, our sacrifices, our alms-deeds, than we could 
 in this by any temporary benefits we could bestow 
 upon them."* 
 
 them, were prepared "with the encouraging sanction of all the Catholic 
 Bishops of England," and " that his Holiness the Pope, unsolicited, was 
 graciously pleased to send them [the authors] his benediction upon the 
 work." 
 
 * End of Controversy. Letter XLIII. 
 
12 PURGATORY. 
 
 On the fact of a purgatory we find a wider state- 
 ment as to the time when it was instituted. While 
 nothing is declared, we are left to infer that the 
 middle state of souls opened with the other two. 
 The following suggests this: "Before the birth of 
 Jesus, purgatory existed for those souls which were 
 condemned to it for not having fully satisfied the 
 punishment due to sin. And that for these sacrifices 
 and prayers were offered, it will suffice, among the 
 many texts of Scripture which prove it, to adduce 
 the fact described in the second book of Maccabees, 
 where mention is made of the pious collection of 
 twelve thousand silver drachmae, equivalent to about 
 three hundred pounds of our money, which Judas 
 sent to Jerusalem to get sacrifices ofiered in the 
 temple for the sins of the deceased soldiers. ' ' * 
 
 * Purgatory Opened : or The Month of November. Consecrated, to 
 the Relief of the Souls in. Purgatory. With the Approbation of the Most 
 Rev. John Hughes, D. D., Archbishop of New York. Pp. 15, 16. Dun- 
 igan & Brother, New York, 1855. 
 
AS A PLACE. 13 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PURGATORY AS A PLACE. 
 
 Having fully stated the Doctrine of Purgatory, 
 and in tlie words of its defenders, we now pass to 
 some notices of the Place. It is true, the learned and 
 cautious Dr. Alexander Natalis says that nothing 
 certain is known of the location of Purgatory. But 
 we shall see that the leading papal writers, ancient 
 and modem, do enter into delineations, topographical 
 and more or less minute, of the interior and local 
 arrangements of purgatory. This is what we should 
 expect. For the doctrine fails of the end for which 
 it was introduced into the Roman Church, unless 
 the pains and penalties and horrors of purgatory are 
 so located and depicted as to work strongly on the 
 fears of transgressors, and on the sympathies of those 
 who may suppose they have friends there. 
 
 Nor must any one suppose that the materialism, 
 the grossness, or the absurdity of the location and 
 its arrangements and delineations would destroy the 
 credibility and utility of the doctrine. For the 
 absurdity of the local descriptions has usually corres- 
 ponded to the ignorance and superstition of the age 
 and region. 
 
 Then, as is well known, papal policy and teaching 
 
14 PURGATORY. 
 
 discard reason and philosophy where their exercise 
 endangers a dogma of the church. Moreover, a vast 
 majority of any Roman-catholic population, specially 
 in papal countries, gives unlimited confidence to the 
 teachings of the priests. As in the dark ages, so in 
 the purely papal communities of to-day, as Italy, 
 Spain and Mexico, no representation of the doctrine 
 is so repulsive to sense and reason that the mass will 
 not believe it. Taylor sets forth correctly this con- 
 fidence of the multitude in their priesthood, and the 
 way in which this doctrine has gained credence. 
 
 "We do not think that the wise men in the 
 Church of Rome believed these narratives; for if they 
 did, they were not wise. But this we know, that by 
 such stories, the people now brought into a belief of 
 it, and having served their turn of them, the master- 
 builders used them as false arches and centries, taking 
 them away when the parts of the building were made 
 firm and stable by authority. But even the better 
 sort of them do believe them, or else they do worse, 
 for they urge and cite the Dialogues of St. Gre- 
 gory," etc.* 
 
 ' ' Purgatory, ' ' says Bellarmine, " is a certain place, 
 in which, as if in a prison, souls are purged after this 
 life which have not been fully purged in it, in order 
 that, thus purged, they may be enabled to enter 
 heaven, which nothing defiled shall enter." Dr. 
 Alexander Natalis, of the Sorbonne, who flourished 
 in the latter half of the seventeenth century, is not 
 
 * Dissuasives fiom Popery. Part I. chap. I. § IV, 
 
AS A PLACE. 15 
 
 clear where the place may be, but that there is such a 
 place he assumes and declares. " It is not determined 
 concerning the place, whether it be in this world, 
 or upon earth, or in the dark air where the devils 
 are, or in the hell of the damned, or in some place 
 underneath, nearer the earth, that the souls are 
 purged. ' ' 
 
 It would seem that while the doctrine lay in a 
 crude and ill-defined state in some minds, the location 
 was not determined by common consent, and so the 
 subjects of these pains were scattered through the 
 world, as prisoners at large. The following exam- 
 ples will illustrate this fact. They are taken from 
 a very ancient Catholic work, entitled, ' ' Speculum 
 Exemplorum," being quoted by Taylor in his Dis- 
 suasives from Popery. 
 
 "A certain priest, in an ecstacy, saw the soul of 
 Constantius, Turritanus in the eaves of his house 
 tormented with frosts and cold rains, and afterwards 
 climbing up to heaven upon a shining pillow. And 
 a certain monk saw some souls roasted upon spits like 
 pigs, and some devils basting them with scalding 
 lard. But a while after they were carried to a cool 
 place. . . . Bishop Theobald, standing upon a piece 
 of ice to cool his feet, was nearer to purgatory than 
 he was aware, and was convinced of it when he heard 
 a poor soul telling him that under that ice he was 
 tormented; and that he should be delivered if for 
 thirty days continual he would say for him thirty 
 masses. And some such thing was seen by Conrade 
 
 Purgatory. "X 
 
1 6 PURGATORY. 
 
 and Ulderic in a pool of water, for the place of purga- 
 tory was not yet resolved on. " * 
 
 Concerning the locality of purgatory the church 
 has not made any formal decision. The schoolmen, 
 however, have found a place for it in their division of 
 the interior of the earth. Here they make four com- 
 partments; Hell, for those for ever damned; Limbus 
 Puerorum, for children who died without baptism; 
 Ivimbus Patrum, for godly men who died before Christ; 
 and Purgatory, for Christians yet suffering punish- 
 ment, though certain of heaven. 
 
 In process of time not only was purgatory deter- 
 mined as a locality, but its topography and architec- 
 tural arrangements. In the sixteenth century the 
 Spanish priests and monks shrewdly assigned graded 
 apartments to purgatory, agreeing with the social 
 grades in community. Of these they made eight, in 
 those abodes of sorrow, as for kings; for princes; for 
 grandees; for noblemen; for merchants; for ladies of 
 quality ; for the wives of tradesmen ; and for the poor 
 common people. Acccording to this scale the poor 
 suffer the least, and the suffering increases with the 
 rank, till we come to kings. Here is a net spread 
 with meshes for all. There is an ad valorem assign- 
 ment according as those in the several departments 
 are able to pay for relief. 
 
 Of course, to give anything like Scriptural proof 
 or coloring to these notions about purgatorial regions, 
 the greatest possible use was made of any passage of 
 
 * Dissuasives from Popery. Part I. ch. I. § IV. 
 
AS A PLACE. 17 
 
 Scripture that could be put into service. Such 
 liberty was taken with St. Paul's statement of the 
 vision of a certain One caught up to the third heaven. 
 Among the manuscripts of Trinity College I,ibrary, 
 Oxford, there is a short relation entited: "Visio 
 Sancti Pauli Apostoli de Poenis Purgatorii." It was, 
 perhaps, a work of the twelfth century, when such 
 legends were most popular and profitable. At the 
 entrance of purgatory St. Paul saw growing fiery 
 trees, on which people were hanging by their differ- 
 ent members, as by their tongues, eyes, or hair, accord- 
 ing to the crimes they had committed on earth. 
 Within was a great furnace with a dreadful fire, and 
 beyond it a fiery lake. After having witnessed the 
 operations of purgatory, he was taken to paradise to 
 see the condition of the saints. By the intercession 
 of St. Paul and the angels, the torments of the 
 damned are remitted every week from Saturday even- 
 ing to Monday morning. * 
 
 ' ' Where this place is, and if there is any suspen- 
 sion or interval of punishment allowed to it, is not 
 expressly determined, says the Angelic Doctor, in the 
 Scriptures. It is probable that it is not far from 
 hell, and that the just souls are purged with the same 
 fire as that with which the damned are tortured in 
 hell."t 
 
 In a work by Bellarmine, recently, if not still, a 
 
 * St. Patrick's Purgatory ; An Essay on the Legends of Purgatory, 
 Hell, and Paradise, current during the Middle Ages. By Thomas 
 Wright, Esq., London, 1844. 
 
 t The Month o£ November. P. 17. 
 
i8 PURGATORY. 
 
 handbook on papal doctrines at Rome, we find the 
 following: 
 
 "Hell is the lowest and deepest place in the 
 world, that is, the centre of the earth; and thus 
 Scripture in many places contrasts heaven with hell, 
 as the highest place with the lowest. But in this 
 depth of the earth there are four, as it were, very 
 great caverns: one for the damned, which is the deep- 
 est of all; and thus it is fit that the proud demons, 
 and the men their followers, should be in the low- 
 est place, and as far from paradise as can be found. 
 In the second cavern, which is somewhat higher, are 
 those souls who suffer the pains of purgatory. In the 
 third, which is also a little higher, are the souls of 
 those children who have died without baptism, the 
 which do not sufier the torments of fire, but only 
 the perpetual privation of eternal happiness. In the 
 fourth, which is the highest of all, were the souls of 
 the patriarchs and prophets and other saints who died 
 before the coming of Christ. For although those 
 holy souls had nothing to be purged of, nevertheless 
 they could not enter the blessed glory before Christ, 
 by his death, had opened the gates of eternal life." 
 This fourth apartment is ' ' the bosom of Abraham. ' ' * 
 
 The author of this declaration — the preeminent 
 controversial teacher of Romanism — the recent date of 
 the re-publication, and the place where it is used as 
 the Catechism of Christian Doctrine make it an ulti- 
 mate authority on the location of purgatory. 
 * Dottrina Cristiana, Breve. Rome, 1839. 
 
ITS THEORETICAL GROUND. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE THEORY OF PURGATORIAL SUFFERIHGS. 
 
 The ground for this imprisonment and suflFering 
 in purgatory may be briefly stated. The most clear 
 as well as most recent exposition of the theory of 
 purgatorial pains is found in Miiller. We extract 
 passages enough for a full and candid statement, from 
 a book having the imprimatur of Joannes Josephus, 
 Episcopus. Boston. 
 
 "I,et us imagine a soul on the point of leaving 
 this world in perfect charity with God. . . . That 
 soul, no doubt, will immediately be admitted into the 
 presence and enjoyment of God. ... If, on the con- 
 trary, a soul leaves this world in disgrace with God, 
 and dead to him by the guilt of mortal sin, that soul 
 will undoubtedly be condemned to hell. . . . But 
 when a soul leaves this world in the friendship of 
 God, yet sullied with the stains of venial sins and 
 imperfections, or without having fully satisfied the 
 divine justice for the debt of temporal punishment 
 due for her smaller sins, or for her more grievous 
 sins, whose guilt has already been forgiven in the 
 sacrament of penance, it is plain that such a soul 
 cannot, in that state, go to heaven, where ' nothing 
 defiled can enter ;' neither can it be condemned 
 to hell, because it is in friendship with God and a 
 
 3* 
 
20 PURGATORY. 
 
 living member of Jesus Christ. Therefore there 
 must be some middle state where such a soul is con- 
 fined for a time, till, by suffering, it is cleansed and 
 purged from all these defilements of venial sins, and 
 rendered fit to be admitted to the presence and enjoy- 
 ment of God. . . . This place cannot be heaven; for 
 no sin can enter there to be forgiven; it cannot be 
 hell, for in hell there is no forgiveness; therefore it 
 must be in a middle place, distinct from both. Neith- 
 er can these sins which are forgiven in the next life 
 be mortal sins, for a soul that dies in mortal sin is 
 immediately condemned to hell, like the rich glutton 
 in the gospel. Therefore it is only venial sins from 
 which the soul is purged in purgatory. ' ' * 
 
 "The souls in purgatory are holy souls. They 
 are confirmed in grace, and no longer in a condition 
 to offend God, or to forfeit heaven. They love God 
 above everything; all their disorderly affections and 
 passions have" died away, and as they love God, so 
 are they loved by him in an unutterable manner. 
 For this reason our L,ord wishes that they should be 
 united to him as soon as possible; but as he is a 
 God most holy and most just, his holiness and justice 
 forbid him to admit them into the city of the heavenly 
 Jerusalem before their indebtedness to his divine 
 justice has been fully discharged, either by their own 
 sufferings, or by the prayers and good works of their 
 brethren on earth. ' ' f 
 
 * Charity to the Souls in Purgatory. By Michael Miiller, C. SS. R., 
 Boston. Patrick Donahoe, 1872, pp. 5-10. 
 
 t Ibid., pp. 95, 96. See also pp. iiS, 134, 141. 
 
ITS THEORETICAL GROUND. 21 
 
 And this is but an enlargement of an earlier state- 
 ment: "Purgatory is a middle state of souls who 
 depart this life in God's grace, yet not without some 
 lesser stains or guilt of punishment which retard 
 them from entering heaven. " " What sort of Chris- 
 tians then go to purgatory? First. Such as die guilty 
 of lesser sins, which we commonly call venial, as 
 many Christians do who either by sudden death or 
 otherwise are taken out of this life before they have 
 repented of their ordinary failings. Secondly, such 
 as have been formerly guilty of greater sins, and 
 have not made full satisfaction for them to the divine 
 justice."* 
 
 On this theory of suffering, making purgatory nec- 
 essary, his Eminence, Cardinal Wiseman, is not only 
 very high, but very recent authority. A few passages 
 from him will close this chapter. 
 
 "We believe that sin is forgiven, and can be for- 
 given, by God alone ; we believe, moreover, that in 
 the interior justification of the sinner, it is only God 
 that has any part ; for it is only through his grace as 
 the instrument, and through the redemption of Christ 
 as the origin of grace and forgiveness, that justification 
 can be wrought. And, in fact, no fasting, no prayers, 
 no alms-deeds, no work that we can conceive to be 
 done by man, however protracted, however extensive 
 or rigorous they may be, can, according to the Catholic 
 
 * The Grounds of the Catholic Doctrine, contained in the Profession 
 of Faith published by Pope Pius IX, p. 47. Dunigan & Brother, New 
 York, 1855. Dublin, 1838. 
 
22 PURGATORY. 
 
 doctrine, have the most infinitesimal weight for obtain- 
 ing the remission of sin, or of the eternal punishment 
 allotted to it. This constitutes the essence of forgive- 
 ness, of justification, and in it we hold that man of 
 himself has no power. . . . We believe that upon this 
 forgiveness of sins, that is, after the remission of that 
 eternal debt which God in his justice awards to trans- 
 gressions against his law, he has been pleased to reserve 
 a certain degree of inferior or temporary punishment, 
 appropriate to the guilt which had been incurred ; and 
 it is on this part of the punishment alone that, accord- 
 ding to the Catholic doctrine, satisfaction can be made 
 to God. ... It is only with regard to the reserved 
 degree of temporal punishment that we believe the 
 Christian can satisfy the justice of God. " " Is it God' s 
 ordinance that when he has forgiven sin, and so justi- 
 fied the sinner as to place him once more in a state of 
 grace, he still reserves the infliction of some degree of 
 punishment for his transgressions? We say that un- 
 doubtedly it is." "God, after the remission of sin, 
 retains a lesser chastisement in his power, to be inflicted 
 on the sinner. Penitential works, fasting, alms-deeds, 
 contrite weeping, and fervent prayer have the power 
 of averting that punishment. ' ' * 
 
 It will be noticed that this theory of lesser chas- 
 tisements and this aversion of certain punishments 
 apply only to true Christians, regenerated and justified 
 
 * Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
 Church. By His Eminence, Cardinal Wiseman. Dublin, 1867, pp. 338, 
 343- 
 
ITS THEORETICAL GROUND. 23 
 
 ones, who are assured of salvation. These punish- 
 ments of the inferior and temporary kind, and that the 
 children of God only are liable to, are those which the 
 priests are supposed to have power to remit. In other 
 words, the papal theory of absolution, whether taking 
 eflFect here or in purgatory, has to do only with the 
 children of God ; and by ' ' the power of the keys, ' ' it 
 is left to the judgment of father confessors to say how, 
 and when, and to what extent, these punishments may 
 be remitted. And the Cardinal says, that in the exer- 
 cise of this power, and discharge of this duty, they 
 have obliged the poor penitents ' ' to lie prostrate for a 
 certain term of months or years before the doors of the 
 church," and sometimes "until they were at the point 
 of death."* 
 
 Passing along to the principal topic of our inquiries, 
 Dr. Wiseman says, "From this subject of satisfaction, 
 I naturally proceed to the consideration of another 
 topic intimately connected with it, the Catholic doc- 
 trine of purgatory . . . which follows as a consequence 
 or corollary from that of which I have just treated ; so 
 much so that the Catholic doctrine of satisfaction 
 would be incomplete without it. The idea that God 
 requires satisfaction, and will punish sin, would not 
 go to its furthest and necessary consequence, if we did 
 not believe that the sinner may be so punished in 
 another world as not to be wholly and eternally cast 
 away from God. ... I am at a loss to conceive what 
 
 * Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of tlie Catholic 
 Church, p. 345. 
 
24 PURGATORY. 
 
 can be considered in it repugnant to the justice of God 
 or to the ordinary ways of Providence; what can be 
 found therein opposed to the moral law in the remotest 
 degree. . . A middle and temporary state, in which 
 those who are not sufficiently guilty for the severer 
 condemnation, nor sufficiently pure to enjoy the vision 
 of His face, are for a time punished and purged, so as 
 to be qualified for this blessing. ' ' * 
 
 ' ' Suppose that a Christian dies who has committed 
 some slight transgression; he cannot enter heaven in 
 this state, and yet we cannot suppose that he is to be 
 condemned for ever. What alternative, then, are we 
 to admit? Why, that there is some place in which 
 the soul will be purged of sin and qualified to enter 
 into the glory of God." f 
 
 * Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
 Church, pp. 347-348. 
 t Ibid., p. 352. 
 
NATURE OF ITS PAINS. 25 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE SUFFERINGS IH PURGATORY. 
 
 This papal Church has never been able to give 
 such a definition of the nature of the pains in purga- 
 tory as could obtain a common consent. The suffer- 
 ing condition of her members in that third state 
 between earth and heaven has been left for delinea- 
 tion to the policy and imagination of the priesthood 
 in different ages and places. Where the intellectual, 
 aesthetic, and social culture have been high, these 
 sufferings have been made to take on a more incor- 
 poreal nature, and so have assumed the mental, and 
 spiritual, and emotional cast. But in the missionary 
 fields of this church, and among her uneducated 
 masses, the most physical, material, and gross views 
 possible have been given and received. Her unity 
 of faith in this respect is a figment. The definition 
 has, of course, changed from age to age, with change 
 of view, as in some other doctrines ; but it has also 
 shown an elasticity and adaptation to different com- 
 munities in the same age. St. Thomas Aquinas, of 
 the thirteenth century, makes the point very distinct: 
 "Not only is there a fire, in which the souls are 
 tormented, but it is the very same fire that torments 
 the damned in hell and the just in purgatory. ' ' Yet 
 Dr. Alexander, of the seventeeth century says it is 
 
26 PURGATORY. 
 
 not determined ' ' concerning the quality of those 
 sensible pains which the souls held in purgatory- 
 undergo, whether it be true, corporeal fire, or whether 
 darkness and sorrow, or any other torment and sorrow 
 inflicted by the justice of God, punishing them after 
 a wonderful and yet true manner." Yet Miiller, 
 writing for the papists of to-day in Massachusetts, 
 says: "The souls in purgatory are poor souls, because 
 they suffer the greatest pain of the senses, which is 
 that of fire. ' ' * And he quotes with endorsement and 
 to the same effect from Bede, of the eighth century: 
 ' ' Venerable Bede relates a strange thing which hap- 
 pened in his time. An Englishman, named Drithel- 
 mus, a good, honest man, died, and, by permission of 
 God, rose again for the salvation of many. He said 
 that immediately after his death his soul was con- 
 ducted to purgatory by an angel. It seemed a great 
 valley of deep extent, filled on one side with fire 
 and flames, and on the other with snow and icebergs. 
 'And I saw,' continued he, 'a great number of 
 souls horribly tormented, being tossed from the fires 
 to the snows, from the snows to the fires, thus passing 
 from the most extreme cold to the most excessive 
 heat, without having a moment of rest. I was so 
 terrified at this sight, that I believed it was hell, so 
 dreadful were the torments. But the angel told me 
 it was purgatory, where the souls of the just expiated 
 their faults. ' " f Hence in the devout exercise for 
 
 * Charity for the Sriils in Purgatory, p. 34. 
 t Ibid, pp. 37, 38. 
 
NATURE OF ITS PAINS. 27 
 
 the nine days preceding All Souls' Day for the 
 Repose of Holy Souls in Purgatory, we find this form 
 of prayer by St. Alphonsus: "Have pity on me, and 
 have pity also on those blessed souls who burn in that 
 fire. Mary, mother of God, succor them by thy pow- 
 erful prayers." 
 
 Miiller further says, that ' ' the least degree of the 
 pains of purgatory far surpasses the most excruciating 
 torments of this world. ' ' And he confirms his state- 
 ment by the following incident. 
 
 "In the life of Blessed Margaret Alacoque it is 
 related that the soul of one of her departed sisters 
 appeared to her, and said, ' There you are lying com- 
 fortably in your bed ; but think of the bed on which 
 I am lying, and suffering the most excruciating 
 pains. ' ' I saw this bed, ' says the saint, ' and I still 
 tremble in allmy limbs at the mere thought of it. 
 The upper and lower part of it was full of red-hot 
 sharp iron points, penetrating into the flesh. She 
 told me that she had to endure this pain for her care- 
 lessness^ in the observance of her rules. ' ' My heart 
 is lacerated,' she added, 'and this is the hardest of 
 my pains. I suffer it for those fault-finding and 
 murmuring thoughts which I entertained in my 
 heart against my superiors. My tongue is eaten up 
 by moths, and tormented on account of uncharitable 
 words, and for having unnecessarily spoken in time of 
 silence. ' ' ' Yet in another connection our author 
 remarks that ' ' the soul suffers more from the priva- 
 
28 PURGATORY. 
 
 tion of the beatific vision of God, than from all the 
 other torments of purgatory. ' ' * 
 
 In The Month of November we find the following: 
 "It is generally allowed that there exists in purga- 
 tory a real material fire, the properties of which have 
 a marvellous intensity given to them by the divine 
 the justice for the purpose of tormenting the souls of 
 just after this life is over. . . . Compared with the 
 pains of purgatory, all those wounds and dark pris- 
 ons, all those wild beasts, all those heavy chains, all 
 those woes and scourges, all those wheels and hatch- 
 ets, all those hooks of iron, all those red-hot plates 
 and caldrons of oil and boiling pitch, all those racks, 
 swords, gratings, and crosses which the holy martyrs 
 suffered with unconquered patience, are nothing, "f 
 
 The same author quotes Augustine thus: "St. 
 Austin is of opinion that the pain sufiered by a soul 
 in purgatory only during the time required to open 
 and shut one's eye is more severe than what St. 
 Lawrence sufiered on the gridiron. ' ' % 
 
 ' ' Could these poor souls leave the fire of purgatory 
 for the most frightful earthly fire, they would, as 
 it were, take it for a pleasure garden; they would 
 find a fifty years' stay in the hottest earthly fire more 
 endurable than an hour's stay in the fire of purga- 
 tory. "§ 
 
 As to the nature of purgatorial pains, the Latin 
 
 * Charity for the Souls in Purgatory, pp. 217, 119, 138, 32. 
 
 t The Month of November, pp. 42, 43. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 51. 
 
 § Charity for the Souls in Purgatory, p. 35. 
 
NATURE OF ITS PAINS. 29 
 
 and Greek Churclies could not agree. The Romans 
 believed that a material fire was one of the instru- 
 ments, which the Greeks denied. The settlement of 
 this point, and if possible the reconciliation of the 
 Eastern and Western churches on it, was one of the 
 four questions that led to the convocation of the 
 Council of Florence, A. D. 1431. 
 
 After months of vain and vexatious discussion the 
 views of the two churches were drawn out, but not 
 harmonized. The Greek Church held that at death 
 the souls of imperfect Christians are doomed to endure 
 the hidings of God's face in a region of sorrow and 
 gloom, where they may be aided by the mass, pray- 
 ers, and alms of the church. To this the L,atin 
 Church would add that the perfect go to heaven at 
 once on dying, while the penitent, who yet have not 
 had time to do suitable penance, are consigned to the 
 pains of purgatorial fire. The dividing question was 
 on material fire as a means of punishment. 
 
 To this the papists then and since gave strict 
 adhesion. And this theory of actual pain pervades 
 their entire system. They do not hold that persons in 
 purgatory commit sin there, or grow holier. They 
 are ready for heaven except that they owe a debt for 
 sin which can only be discharged by sufiering. As 
 Bellarmine illustrates it, they are as travellers who 
 have come to the end of their journey, but it is after 
 nightfall, and the gates of the city are shut. They 
 must wait till morning, when they are sure of admit- 
 tance. Hence he says: "You will object that they 
 
30 PURGATORY. 
 
 may be in doubt whether they are in hell or purgatory. 
 Not so. For in hell God is blasphemed, in purgatory 
 he is praised. In hell there is neither habit of faith, 
 nor hope, nor love of God ; in purgatory all of these. ' ' 
 
 The Catechism of the Council of Trent thus 
 speaks of the nature of the pains in purgatory: 
 "There is a purgatorial fire [ignis], tormented in 
 which the souls of the pious make expiation for a 
 certain period, that an entrance may be opened for 
 them into that eternal country where nothing that 
 defileth can enter. ' ' * 
 
 The duration of the detention in purgatory is as 
 uncertain among papal authorities as the nature of 
 the sufferings. Dr. Alexander says that it is not 
 determined ' ' concerning the duration of these purga- 
 tory pains, how long the souls are detained there. 
 Soto thought that no soul continued in purgatory 
 above ten years, yet it is a matter altogether un- 
 certain how many years their pains shall last. ' ' Miil- 
 ler cites the case of a brother who procured thirty 
 masses for the soul of his sister. At the offering of 
 the last one for her it was revealed to him that but 
 for those thirty masses she "would have suffered in 
 purgatory to the end of the world, "f 
 
 The whole region of purgatory is a land of tor- 
 ment. Massy mountains of fire are there, and on 
 their sides these miserable ones wander about. They 
 glide through valleys of flame, as fishes in their own 
 
 * On the Fifth Article of the Creed. 
 
 \ Charity for the Souls in Purgator_v, p., 24. 
 
NATURE OF ITS PAINS. 31 
 
 element. They are driven by avenging fiends into 
 caves, whose roof, sides, and floor, are a flaming 
 furnace. They are made to float wildly about in 
 boiling lakes, and anon they are stifiening on ice- 
 bergs. Through the same member, appetite or pas- 
 sion by which the guilty sufierer offended, is he now 
 tormented. So the blasphemer or slanderer is hung 
 up by the tongue to swing to and fro in the never 
 weary wind. As one traveller after another is sent 
 through these gloomy regions, and they have been 
 sent as often as the church needed, they make piti- 
 ful details of the sorrows witnessed or experienced, 
 and in glowing terms they set forth the relief expe- 
 rienced there by the offerings of the living. 
 
32 PURGATORY. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 VISITS FROM PURaATORY. 
 
 A COMMON method adopted by the priests to prove 
 the existence of purgatory and to set forth the suffer- 
 ings there endured, and so awaken the fears and 
 sympathies of the living, was to pretend to certain 
 intercommunications between the living and those in 
 that dread place. The fiction of visits from it was a 
 frequent and fruitful resort, as also visions, signs, ap- 
 paritions, and dreams. 
 
 The theory of the return of the dead from pur- 
 gatory to hold intercourse with the living is thus 
 set forth in words under the approbation of Arch- 
 bishop Hughes: 
 
 ' ' The souls in purgatory cannot, ordinarily speak- 
 ing, at their own will or of their own power, appear 
 among us with an assumed body, or one of air. . . . 
 Yet by a particular and extraordinary dispensation 
 and permission of the Lord, the souls of the dead are 
 able, and are wont, to hold intercourse with the 
 living. Many apparitions, at various successive 
 times, confirm our opinion, which is also that of St. 
 Thomas, who asserts that, according to the dispensa- 
 tion of divine power they come from their abodes and 
 present themselves to the sight of men, which is 
 accorded* to them," subjoins the holy doctor, for 
 
VISITORS FROM IT. zT, 
 
 others' sake, ' ' in order to their being instructed and 
 terrified; and for their own sake, that they may ask 
 for spiritual succors. ' ' * 
 
 Miiller, however, says that ' ' those cases, in which 
 some of them were permitted to appear to their friends 
 and ask assistance, are but the exceptions, "f 
 
 The case of Drithelm, the Englishman, quoted 
 elsewhere, as related by Bede, is illustrative and 
 instructive on this theory of returning spirits. It 
 seems that Drithelm was permitted to resume his life 
 in the body, while his fearful memories of what he 
 had seen in purgatory came nigh to taking it away 
 again. He took up his abode in the monastery of 
 Mailross, where the austerity of his life amazed every 
 one. "Sometimes he was seen plunged up to the 
 neck in icy water, praying with incredible fervor. 
 When he was asked how he could bear such extreme 
 cold, he replied, with heart-rending sighs, ' Ah ! it is 
 little compared to what I have seen.' When he 
 macerated his body by unheard-of mortifications, his 
 brethren said to him, ' Why do you treat yourself so 
 barbarously? In God's name, spare yourself a little.' 
 But he replied, ' Ah ! I have seen far greater austeri- 
 ties. The most bitter pains of this life are but as 
 roses, if compared to those of purgatory, to which I 
 shall be subjected if I do not expiate my faults here 
 below.' "t 
 
 * The Month of November, p. i8. 
 t MiiUer's Charity, etc., p. 40. 
 t Ibid., pp. 37-39. 
 
34 PURGATORY. 
 
 One would suppose that infancy and tender years 
 might be exempt from the pains and horrors and 
 loathsomeness of that intermediate region; yet Butler, 
 in his lyives, relates this incident. Dinocrates, a lad 
 of seven years, had died, whose reappearance his 
 sister, St. Perpetua, thus describes : "I saw Dinocrates 
 coming out of a dark place, where there were many 
 others, exceedingly hot and thirsty; his face was 
 dirty, his complexion pale, with the ulcer in his face 
 of which he died, and it was for him that I prayed. 
 There seemed a great distance between him and me, 
 so that it was impossible for us to come to each other. 
 Near him stood a vessel full of water, whose brim was 
 higher than the stature of an infant. He attempted 
 to drink ; but though he had water, he could not reach 
 it. ' ' She prayed for him with tears day and night, 
 and afterward ' ' saw the place, which had been dark 
 before, now luminous; and Dinocrates, with his body 
 very clean and well clad, refreshing himself, and 
 instead of his wound a scar only. ' ' * 
 
 We recognize at once the paganism of the legend, 
 and prefer the more beautiful original in the classical 
 story of Tantalus. 
 
 Peter, abbot of Cluny, relates a thrilling and 
 tragic incident. Blancus, abbot of St. Giles, had 
 died, but returned one night, and meeting one of the 
 monks of Cluny, implored the prayers and alms of 
 the monastery, that he might be delivered from 
 purgatory. The monk replied that probably no one 
 
 » Butler's Lives of the Saints. March 7. 
 
VISITQRS FROM IT. 35 
 
 would believe the story, to which the dead abbot 
 responded, "In order, then, that no one may doubt, 
 you may assure them that within eight days you will 
 die." 
 
 The monk reported the next day, but was dis- 
 credited ; and was soon taken sick, and died within 
 the prescribed days. * 
 
 A similar story is told of one of the cavalry of 
 Charlemagne. When dying, he left his horse and 
 equipments to a nephew, who was to sell the same 
 and turn the proceeds into masses for the departed 
 soul of his uncle. This he neglected to do, when his 
 uncle reappeared to him from the land of spirits, up- 
 braided him for his neglect, complained, of his own 
 terrible sufferings in consequence, and warned his 
 nephew of a premature death, and peculiar sufferings 
 in the middle state. The young man was soon taken 
 off by a sudden death, f 
 
 Nor do these messengers from the spirit land return 
 singly. St. Frances of the Blessed Sacrament was 
 thronged by them. ' ' By day and by night these 
 souls used to come to her cell in crowds, asking her 
 charitable prayers. . . . Sometimes they appeared to 
 her all surrounded with fire; at other times in forms 
 as black as coal, from which sparks of fire were 
 issuing. ' ' While she was assisting in the choir, they 
 would await her return near the holy-water font, and 
 follow her to her cell. ' ' She prayed for them almost 
 unceasingly, had masses said, fasted on bread and 
 
 * Miiller, pp. 69-71. f Ibid., pp. 92, 93. 
 
36 PURGATORY. 
 
 water almost throughout the whole year, took the 
 discipline for hours, offered up her communions, pains, 
 privations of sleep, her fears, labors, troubles, anxie- 
 ties, and all her steps, not reserving for herself as 
 much as one breath."* 
 
 A singular incident among the reappearances of 
 the departed is said to have occurred in Paris in 1827. 
 A poor servant-girl was accustomed to have mass said 
 monthly for the souls in purgatory nearest to release 
 and heaven. But she lost her health and place, and 
 so became very poor. Barely able to walk, and with 
 only one dollar, she went out in search of a new place 
 for service. Going into a church to say her prayers, 
 she was led to pay her last dollar for her accus- 
 tomed monthly mass. Resuming her search, a tall, 
 pale young man of noble demeanor met her with the 
 remark, ' ' My good girl, I think you are looking for a 
 place." She assented. He directed her to a certain 
 street and number, with the encouragement that she 
 would find a good one. She met at the door the 
 former domestic leaving in a pet. She informed the 
 lady of the house by whom and how she had been 
 directed to her house. The lady replied, ' ' What you 
 say is very strange. This morning I was not yet in 
 need of a servant. I have only just now sent away 
 an impudent servant that I had. Who could have 
 sent you here?" The girl entered, and noticing a 
 portrait on the wall, exclaimed, "That is the exact 
 likeness of the young man who told me to come 
 
 * Muller, pp. 125-129. 
 
VISITORS FROM IT. 37 
 
 here." The lady was greatly agitated, for that was 
 the portrait of her son, who died two years before. 
 
 On inquiry the girl told of her devotions, sickness, 
 poverty, her last dollar, and the morning mass, when 
 the lady threw her arms around her neck, saying, ' ' It 
 is my son, my darling son, that has appeared to you ; 
 it is to you he owes his deliverance. You shall 
 henceforward always remain with me, not as my 
 servant, but as my daughter and my dear friend, and 
 we shall always pray together for the poor suffering 
 souls in purgatory. ' ' * 
 
 There are striking features about this incident: a 
 servant-girl, devout, poor, sick, out of employment, 
 yet still devout beyond her last penny; the soul she 
 has rescued appearing, giving her a place at the house 
 of his own mother, where she is treated as a daugh- 
 ter. Here is a rare combination of the spiritual, the 
 heroic, the practical, and, for this kind of worship, 
 the politic. And the story has this for its warrant: 
 Imprimatur: Joannes Josephus, Episcopus. Boston, 
 1872. 
 
 Of these visits of returning spirits Bellarmine 
 makes much use in proving and enforcing the notion 
 of purgatory. The following are some that he ad- 
 duces from the I/ives of the Saints. 
 
 "St. Gregory the Great writes that the soul of 
 Paschasius appeared to St. Germanus, and testified 
 to him that he was freed from the pains of purgatory 
 for his prayers." "Peter Damiani writes that St. 
 
 * Miiller, pp. 104-109. 
 
38 PURGATORY. 
 
 Severin appeared to a clergyman, and told him that 
 he had been in purgatory for not having said the 
 divine service at due hours, and that afterwards God 
 had delivered him, and carried him to the company 
 of the blessed." "St. Bernard writes that St. Mala- 
 chy freed his sister from the pains of purgatory by 
 his prayers, and that the same sister had appeared 
 unto him, begging of him that relief and favor." 
 "And St. Bernard himself, by his intercession, freed 
 another who had suffered a whole year the pains of 
 purgatory, as William, abbot, writes in his life." 
 And the learned cardinal adds, ' ' Many more might be 
 cited, etc., but what we have quoted are the more 
 authentic. ' ' 
 
VISITS TO PURGATORY. 39 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 VISITS TO PURGATORY. 
 
 But it is not always enough to receive a visit from 
 a resident of that spirit realm. To some minds un- 
 duly scientific, or philosophical, or variously inquis- 
 itive, or given to the cross-questioning of witnesses, 
 some doubts might linger as to the reality, personality, 
 identity, and square, human honesty of the ghostly 
 visitor. The ghost of Crugal, a chief who fell in 
 fight, is a beautiful conception by Ossian : 
 
 ' ' Dim, and in tears, he stood and stretched his 
 pale hand over the hero. Faintly he raised his 
 feeble voice, like the gale of the reedy I^ego: 'My 
 spirit, Connal, is on my hills; my corse on the sands 
 of Erin. Thou shalt never talk with Crugal, nor find 
 his lone steps in the heath. I am light as the blast 
 of Cromla. I move like the shadow of the mist ! Con- 
 nal, son of Colgar, I see a cloud of death; it hovers 
 dark over the plains of Lena. The sons of green Erin 
 must fall. Remove from the field of ghosts.' Like 
 the darkened moon he retired, in the midst of the 
 whistling blast. . . . The stars dim-twinkled through 
 his form. His voice was like the sound of a dis- 
 tant stream. He is a messenger of death ! He speaks 
 of the dark and narrow house. ' ' * 
 
 * Ossian's Fingal, Book II. 
 
 Purgatory. C 
 
40 PURGATORY. 
 
 All this is beautiful, grand, thrilling. We see and 
 feel it all, as Connal lies there in the still night, on 
 the heath of Lena, apart from his army, with a mossy 
 stone for his pillow, and the mountain-stream mur- 
 muring by. The figure of the ghost of Crugal is 
 very distinct to our fancy, though dim and shadowy. 
 ' ' Dark is the wound of his breast, ' ' like the ulcer on 
 the face of the boy Dinocrates, of which he died. Both 
 are from the middle kingdom of souls, and very im- 
 pressive in their testimony. Yet, as having passed 
 from the mortal to the spirit land, we would not take 
 their measurement of a load of wood, their affidavit to 
 the signature of a note, or their testimony in a case of 
 fifty dollars. When a witness moves to the stand like 
 "the shadow of a mist," and when standing there 
 "the stars dim-twinkle through his form," his testi- 
 mony would ordinarily be received as thin. Moreover, 
 such a witness could "retire like the darkened moon," 
 before the opposing counsel had examined him, and 
 ever after refuse to obey a subpoena. 
 
 Perhaps Romanism met some of these difficulties 
 on the part of thoughtful and inquiring minds as 
 pertaining to ghostly witnesses alone concerning pur- 
 gatory. Very likely there was a demand, that could 
 not be resisted, for genuine flesh and blood witnesses. 
 Hence we have the travels and sketches of that under 
 realm from those who had not seen death. Their itin- 
 eraries of purgatory, published on return, describing 
 its mountains, valleys, and caves, volcanic lakes and 
 icebergs, torments, grades of sorrow, alternate pains 
 
VJSIl'S TO PURGATORY. 41 
 
 and joys, with the coming and going of the hosts of 
 disembodied and yet corporate immortals, would make 
 a small, fearful library. This unearthly spiritual lit- 
 erature has been well managed in its materials and 
 editing and circulation. Miiller's Charity for the 
 Souls in Purgatory, so often quoted in this treatise, is 
 a good illustration of the reproduction and modern 
 issue of this kind of literature. 
 
 Sometimes the priest himself, or some well-known 
 saint, would make the tour of those purgatorial regions, 
 through the special favor of God, and return with de- 
 tailed accounts. Sometimes one of the honored dead, 
 widely known, would be found, after his death, to 
 have made the visit in his lifetime, and so divulged 
 the coveted information to his monastery, to be pub- 
 lished after his real and final departure. 
 
 In this way the hierarchy were able to make this 
 part of their spiritual machinery work with a terrible 
 power. For by the aid of these messengers to these 
 regions they could, as they had need, describe mi- 
 nutely the different apartments of the place, the differ- 
 ent kinds, modes, and degrees of punishment, the con- 
 dition and prospects of certain individuals known to 
 the living and declared to be there, and the effects of 
 the offerings and prayers of the church for them. So 
 by this fiction of intercommunication the priests could 
 make any use they pleased of the hopes and fears of 
 their people; while their pretended knowledge of the 
 pains and wants of friends detained there, and of the 
 efl&cacy of alms and prayers for them, gave them an in- 
 
42 PURGATORY. 
 
 conceivable power over tlie living, through the common 
 and so strong principles of natural love and friendship. 
 
 For if money, penance, or prayers would alleviate 
 or shorten the sufferings of any loved one in that place 
 of painful purification, who would not grant either, 
 and to any possible amount ? 
 
 In time these feigned visits became historic mate- 
 rial in the hands of the clergy, and so were a kind of 
 funded historical and doctrinal treasure, from which 
 they could draw as need required. 
 
 It being known that such intercommunication was 
 possible, there followed visits direct to the place, and 
 information more and more minute concerning it and 
 its inmates and their sufferings was gradually spread 
 abroad. An example found in Bellannine, already 
 partially quoted, should not be omitted : ' ' One Dri- 
 thelm, during a visit to the spiritual world, was led 
 on his journey by an angel in shining raiment, and 
 proceeded, in the company of his guide, towards the 
 rising sun. The travellers at length arrived in a val- 
 ley of vast dimensions. This region to the left was 
 covered with roasting furnaces, and to the right with 
 icy cold, hail and snow. The whole valley was filled 
 with human souls, which a tempest seemed to toss in 
 all directions. The unhappy spirits, unable in the 
 one part to bear the violent heat, leaped into the shiv- 
 ering cold, which again drove them into the scorching 
 flames which cannot be extinguished. 
 
 ' ' A numberless multitude of deformed souls were 
 in this manner whirled about and tormented without 
 
VISITS TO PURGATORY. 
 
 43 
 
 intermission in the extremes of alternate heat and 
 cold. This, according to the angelic conductor who 
 piloted Drithelm, is the place of chastisement for such 
 as defer confession and amendment till the hour of 
 death."* 
 
 The Vision of Charles the Bald, or, according to 
 some, of Charles the Fat, is of the same general tenor. 
 These Visions and Tours of Purgatory are of course 
 but the wildest fancies of private authors. Yet we 
 have reason to suppose that they are a fair reflection of 
 the popular faith and feelings concerning this doctrine, 
 and hence they find properly a place in the exposition 
 of it. 
 
 This Charles wore crown in the last half of the 
 ninth century. He was led by an angel through the 
 spirit world, being guided and protected by a brilliant 
 flaming thread that his conductor held. Thus pro- 
 gressing, he passed through deep valleys of fire, filled 
 with pits of sulphur, lead, pitch, and oil. In these 
 pits turbulent bishops were punished. Black fiends 
 gathered about him to cast him in, but his guide and 
 thread saved him. 
 
 ' ' My conductor, who carried the ball, wound about 
 my shoulder a doubled thread, drawing me to him with 
 such force that we ascended high mountains of flame, 
 from whence issued lakes and burning streams, melt- 
 ing all kinds of metals. 
 
 ' ' There I found the souls of lords who had served 
 
 * This legend, with variations, is found in many old Romish authors. 
 Its earliest appearance is probably in Bede, who died A. D. 735. 
 
 5* 
 
44 PURGATORY. 
 
 my father and my brothers, some plunged up to the 
 hair of their heads, others to their chins, others with 
 half their bodies immersed. . . . While I was timidly 
 bending over their suflFerings I heard at my back the 
 c\a.v[iox oivoicQs: Potentes fotenter tormentapatiuntur. . . . 
 I looked up and beheld on the shores boiling streams 
 and ardent furnaces, blading with pitch and sulphur, 
 full of great dragons, large scorpions, and serpents of 
 a strange species; where also I saw some of my ances- 
 tors, princes, and my brothers also. . . . I^eading me 
 there securely, we descended into a great valley, which 
 on one side was dark, except where lighted by ardent 
 furnaces, while the amenity of the other was so splen- 
 did that I cannot describe it. ' ' 
 
 On this pleasant side he finally discovers two foun- 
 tains, one scalding and one temperate. "The lumi- 
 nous thread rested on the one of the fervid waters, 
 where I saw my father I/Cwis, covered to his thighs, 
 and though laboring in the anguish of bodily pain, he 
 spoke to me, ' My son Charles, fear nothing. I know 
 that thy spirit shall return unto thy body, and God has 
 permitted thee to come here that thou mayest witness 
 the punishments I endure because of the sins I have 
 committed. One day I am placed in the boiling bath 
 of this large vessel, and on another changed into that 
 of more temperate waters. This I owe to the prayers 
 of St. Peter, St. Denis, and St. Remy, who are the 
 patron saints of our royal house. But if by prayers 
 and masses, offerings and alms, psalmody and vigils, 
 piy faithful bishops and abbots, and even all the eccle- 
 
VISITS TO PURGATORY. 45 
 
 slastical order assist me, it will not be long before I 
 am deliverd from these boiling waters. I^ook at your 
 left. ' I looked, and beheld two tuns of boiling waters. 
 'These are prepared for thee,' he said, 'if thou wilt 
 not be thine own corrector, and do penance for thy 
 crimes.' "* 
 
 In his Treatise on Purgatory Bellarmine introduces 
 this personal narrative of St. Christina: 
 
 ' ' Immediately after I departed from the body my 
 soul was received by ministers of light and angels of 
 God, and conducted to a dark and horrid place, filled 
 with the souls of men. The torments which I there 
 witnessed are so dreadful that to attempt to describe 
 them would be utterly in vain. And there I beheld not 
 a few who had been known to me while they were alive. 
 
 ' ' Greatly concerned for their hapless state, I asked 
 what place it was, thinking it was hell. But I was 
 told that it was purgatory, where are kept those who 
 in their life had repented indeed of their sins, but had 
 not paid the punishment due for them. I was next 
 taken to see the torments of hell, where also I recog- 
 nized some of my former acquaintances upon earth. 
 
 "Afterwards I was translated into Paradise, even 
 to the throne of the divine Majesty; and when I saw 
 the I^ord congratulating me, I was beyond measure re- 
 joiced, concluding, of course, that I should hencefor- 
 
 * This Vision in varied forms may be found in D'Israeli's Curiosities 
 of Literature, under "Dante's Inferno," as quoted from the sncient 
 chronicles of St. Denis, and also in St. Patricia's Purgatory, p. 20, and 
 in William of Malraesbury's IIistoryth.it ends with A. D. 1143. 
 
46 PURGATORY. 
 
 ward dwell with him for evermore. But he presently 
 said to me, ' In very deed, my sweetest daughter, here 
 you shall be with me; but for the present I offer you 
 your choice. Will you stay for ever with me now ? or 
 will you return to the earth, and there in your mortal 
 body, but without any detriment to it, endure punish- 
 ments by which you may deliver out of purgatory all 
 those souls whom you so much pitied; and may also, 
 by the sight of your penance and the example of your 
 life, be a means of converting to me some who are yet 
 alive in the body, and so come again to me at last 
 with a great increase of your merits ?' 
 
 ' ' I accepted, without hesitation, the return to life, 
 on the condition proposed; and the lyOrd, congratula- 
 ting me on the promptitude of my obedience, ordered 
 that my body should be restored to me. 
 
 ' ' And here I had an opportunity of admiring the 
 incredible celerity of the blessed spirits; for, in that 
 very hour, having been placed before the throne of 
 God at the first recital of the Agnus Dei, in the mass 
 which was said for me, at the third my body was 
 restored. This is an account of my death, and return 
 to life." 
 
 The author of her life then narrates that "she 
 walked into burning ovens, and though she was so 
 tortured by the flames that her anguish extorted from 
 her the most horrible cries, yet when she came out 
 there was not a trace of any burning to be detected on 
 her body. Again, during a hard frost she would go 
 and place herself under the frozen surface of a river 
 
VISITS TO PURGATORY. 47 
 
 for six days and more at a time. Sometimes she 
 would be carried round by the wheel of a water- 
 mill, with the water of the river, and having been 
 whirled round in a horrible manner she was as 
 whole in body as if nothing had happened to her; 
 not a limb was hurt. At another time she would 
 make all the dogs in the town fall upon her, and 
 would run before them like a hunted beast. And yet, 
 in spite of being torn by thorns and brambles, and 
 worried and lacerated by the dogs to such a degree 
 that no part of her body escaped without wounds, 
 there was not a weal nor scar to be seen. ' ' 
 
 By these terrible suflFerings, endured voluntarily, 
 she redeemed out of purgatory the souls of those 
 whom she so much loved. ' ' And this not for a few 
 days, but for forty-two years, during which she con- 
 tinued alive after her resurrection. ' ' * 
 
 The experience of Catharine of Raconisio is so 
 peculiar, and throws so much light on the interior 
 and more spiritual life of a devout Roman-catholic, 
 that we must not omit a passage from it. 
 
 "Once when lying in bed tormented with a violent 
 pain, she set herself to meditate on the greater 
 flames of purgatory, when she was rapt in spirit so as 
 to see them. Then the Lord, in order that she might 
 be the more moved to compassion towards these 
 souls, willed not only that she should gaze with her 
 
 * Book IT. chap. 9. De Gemitu Columbee. Translation from Man- 
 nal of Romish Controversy. By the Rev. R. P. Blakeney, LL. D., pp. 
 159-160. T. Nelson & Sons, Edinburgh. 
 
48 PURGATORY. 
 
 eyes upon their pains, but that she should have exper- 
 imental proof of them. And so, while she stood 
 absorbed in contemplation, a single spark of this fire 
 darted out, and lighted upon her left cheek. So keen 
 was the pain she felt from it, that her face soon swelled 
 up, and the pain lasted several days, and was such 
 that she confessed that, compared with this agony, the 
 pains of this life were a mere nothing. From this 
 time there arose in her a burning desire to extend 
 suffrages to those souls with every kind of penance; 
 and she offered herself to her Saviour, to suffer with 
 all readiness every affliction of the soul or toil of the 
 body, to liberate them from such cruel torments. And 
 forthwith she not only commenced a most rigorous 
 life, but was often taken with various pains of the 
 greatest severity, and by this she earned a vision 
 from time to time of many souls going forth from 
 purgatory and flying to heaven by her means. ' ' * 
 
 These narratives of tours to and in and from pur- 
 gatory, by which the papal doctrines are most power- 
 fully taught, are sometimes exceedingly interesting, 
 as showing the intelligence of the masses for whom 
 they are published, and the power of adaptation on 
 the part of their teachers. The following is a good 
 illustration. 
 
 "It is related of a religious of St. Dominic that 
 finding himself at the point of death, he earnestly 
 begged a friend who was a priest to be pleased, as 
 soon as he was dead, to offer the sacrifice of the mass 
 
 * Month of November, pp. 44, 45. 
 
VISITS TO PURGATORY. 
 
 49 
 
 for a suf&age for his soul. He had scarce expired 
 when the priest went to the church, and celebrated 
 with devotion for the soul of his deceased friend. 
 When the sacrifice was done, he had hardly taken oflF 
 the sacred vestments when the deceased religious 
 presented himself to him, and rebuked him severely 
 for his hardness of heart in leaving him in the most 
 cruel fire of purgatory for the long space of thirty 
 years. ' How thirty years ?' answered the good priest, 
 all astonishment ' why, it is not yet an hour since you 
 left this life, so that your corpse is, so to say, still 
 warm. ' To this the dead man replied, ' lycam hence, 
 my friend, how tormenting is the fire of purgatory, 
 when barely an hour seems to be thirty years ; and 
 learn to have pity, too, upon us. " * 
 
 Yet this little manual of private devotion, this 
 Daily Food for the devout papist through the month 
 of November, is a publication of this century ! It was 
 issued in New York in 1855, not in Old York in 1055, 
 and is ' ' approbated ' ' by Archbishop Hughes ! 
 
 Some of the causes that assign those ancient saints 
 to such terrible suflFerings are singular. ' ' The vener- 
 able I/udovico Blosio, a great master of spiritual life, 
 and of equal learning, relates that a devout servant of 
 God, whom he was well acquainted with and loved, 
 had it granted him to see a departed soul all surrounded 
 with flames, and he gave him to understand that he 
 was deprived of the beatific vision of God for having 
 received the Saviour under the sacramental species 
 
 * Month of November, pp. 51, 32. 
 
so PURGATORY. 
 
 without being duly prepared; and that he lay im- 
 mersed in burning flames for having come with culpa- 
 ble tepidity to the eucharistic table. ' ' * 
 
 Were the following found in some black-letter 
 quarto, or monastic and mediaeval manuscript, we 
 should not think it worth transcribing, or presume to 
 hold any living man to its sentiment; but it has its 
 place in a devotional book recently published, and 
 under the ' ' approbation " of an American archbishop. 
 What can we think of a religious body in which such 
 statements are published in all sincerity and received 
 in all confidence ? 
 
 One Catharine, a devout convert, ' ' took especial 
 delight in the devotion of the Rosary, reciting it de- 
 voutly more than once in the day, and applying it 
 wholly, or in part, as a suffrage for the souls in purga- 
 tory. Now the Lord, to show how great relief to these 
 souls such a devotion was, made known to the afore- 
 said saint in writing that, while Catharine one day 
 was reciting a third part of the Rosary for the dead, 
 meditating the while on the mysteries of the passion, 
 there gushed from the limbs of a most beautiful infant, 
 who represented our Lord Jesus Christ, fifty-five foun- 
 tains, just the number of the Aves and Pater-nosters 
 which compose a third part of the Rosary ; which sent 
 forth in great abundance most clear waters, which all 
 fell into purgatory, and refreshed the tormented souls 
 so much that they seemed no longer to have any sense 
 of pain. And at this, voices, all of joy, mounted up, 
 
 * Month of November, p. 78. 
 
VISITS TO PURGATORY. 51 
 
 thanking and blessing Catharine, their pious benefac- 
 tor. Oh, how much to be praised are those families 
 who join. every evening in reciting together the Ro- 
 sary, as a suffrage for the souls in purgatory !"* 
 
 It is very gratifying to find, now and then, among 
 these purgatorial incidents of devout authors some that 
 take a very practical turn; and if they are believed by 
 the living, they must tend to make better men. The 
 following is a sample, given on the authority of Ben- 
 edict XIII. : 
 
 "A brother who belonged to the order of preach- 
 ing friars related that his father, a very powerful and 
 wealthy lord, availed himself of the services of a cer- 
 tain farrier to shoe his horses, to whom, when he died, 
 he was a debtor to a certain amount for his labor; and 
 his work had been done several years before that 
 time. 
 
 "When he was dead, he appeared to a certain 
 faithful servant of his, and, holding in his hand a 
 hammer and a farrier's tongs with some red-hot horse- 
 shoes, ' Go, ' said he, ' and beg my wife to be so good 
 as to pay off the debt for which I am suffering here in 
 purgatory. ' 
 
 ' ' The pious woman did so, satisfying not only the 
 demands of the aforesaid farrier, but those of all her 
 husband's other creditors, "f 
 
 This is certainly a novel way of settling accounts; 
 and if communication with that middle state were free 
 and open, doubtless many truthful and profitable mes- 
 
 * Month of November, pp. 81, 82. t Ibid., pp. 115, 116. 
 
 Piirffator,v, 6 
 
52 PURGATORY. 
 
 sages could be forwarded to the heirs of some Protes- 
 tant estates left deeply in debt and said to be insol- 
 vent. 
 
 Herein is a grim hint at justice. If all the unpaid 
 bills due to honest and hard-working mechanics are 
 thus worked out in the lower world by deceased debt- 
 ors, purgatory must be a busy and a noisy place. Not a 
 few, who passed through this life easily and on credit, 
 will find themselves for the first time at work and 
 earning their own living. This feature of the papal 
 purgatory, it must be confessed, has a look quite utili- 
 tarian for a Protestant. 
 
 It is interesting to study the workings of this papal 
 system of purgatorial suffering, and note the causes 
 that expose and condemn to it. Sometimes the cause 
 is ritual, canonical, and apparently quite trivial; but 
 in other instances it lies in the injury of the vital 
 structure of good society, or in the infringement of the 
 fundamental principles of good morals. We make a 
 condensed statement of several cases, gathered miscel- 
 laneously from the authors already quoted. 
 
 One has yet ten years more to serve in his iron 
 and burning armor for having injured the reputation 
 of another; another, for having recited the canonical 
 hours hurriedly; another, for having kept some money 
 without permission; another, for obstinacy in refusing 
 to submit to the will of others; another, for too great 
 familiarity with merely worldly men; another, for 
 neglect of penance. 
 
 When such pretended knowledge of the spirit land 
 
VISITS TO PURGATORY. 53 
 
 is faithfully spread abroad through a community and 
 among a people who believe it most profoundly, the 
 fiction exercises a power inconceivable. For when 
 one believes that his precious dead are broiling, roast- 
 ing, buffeting the surges of a lake of fire, or freezing 
 in more than polar cold, and all because his alms and 
 prayers are withheld, what will he not do ? In a 
 homily preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 
 written probably in the eleventh centur}-, are found 
 these words: "Some are there long, some a little 
 while, according to what their friends do for them 
 here in life. ' ' * 
 
 These old words give us an insight into the nature 
 and utility of the doctrine. It is thus made an engine 
 of terrible power. If monarch or peasant be refrac- 
 tory, if the wealthy be too close in his contributions, 
 if the negligent sinner omit any rite profitable or cour- 
 teous to the church, if the dying remember not with 
 sufficient liberality the church and chair of St. Peter, 
 the fires of purgatory are flashed in his face. If a de- 
 ceased one leave wealthy relatives, it is soon known 
 that the departed is in need of many and expensive 
 masses for the repose of his soul. 
 
 Dr. England well states the practical utility of this 
 intercommunication with the middle land: "They 
 who are in this state of purgation are still members of 
 the church, and may, therefore, be aided by our prayers 
 
 * St. Patrick's Purgatory : an Essay on the Legends of Purgatory, 
 Hell, and Heaven, current during the Middle Ages. By Thomas Wright, 
 Esq., M. A., F. S. A., etc. London, 1844. P. 25. 
 
54 PURGATORY. 
 
 and sacrifices; and hence from the days of the apos- 
 tles commemoration was made for them in the 
 mass. ' ' * 
 
 In a family known to the writer five hundred dol- 
 lars were thus expended in masses for the soul of the 
 husband and father. When O'Connell died, collec- 
 tions were taken extensively in the churches that his 
 soul might be hastened and eased through purgatory. 
 When Bishop Penwick of Baltimore, and De Neker of 
 New Orleans, had been long dead, and it could be 
 hoped at rest, as good bishops are expected to be when 
 they die, high mass was celebrated, and at great ex- 
 pense, for the repose of their souls. 
 
 Says Rockwell, in his ' ' Foreign Travels and L,ife 
 at Sea," "In that part of Spain where I have spent 
 the last month (near Madrid and in it), the common 
 price of a mass is twenty-five cents; but the people are 
 taught that the more they pay above this sum, the 
 more influence the mass will have in delivering souls 
 from the pains of purgatory. " " When last in Naples 
 I purchased a large supply of Catholic tracts, many of 
 which are in poetry, and have awful pictures of the 
 day of judgment, purgatory, and other matters, with 
 horrid-looking devils thrusting pitchforks through the 
 poor wretches who have fallen into their power. One 
 of the most cirrious tracts I have met with, however, 
 is a letter from souls in purgatory to those living on 
 earth, asking for alms to be given to the priests to hire 
 them to chant masses for the benefit of the poor sufier- 
 
 * Garden of the Soul, Explanation of the Mass, p. 64. 
 
VISITS TO PURGATORY. 55 
 
 ers in those lower regions. ' ' * And it is not long since 
 that Sir Culling Hardly Smith stated at a public meet- 
 ing in I,ondon, that an Indian Begum, mother of Col. 
 Dyce Sombre, had paid several thousand pounds for a 
 single mass for the repose of her soul when she should 
 leave the body. 
 
 A volume of these visits from and to purgatory, 
 and of these visions, might be gathered; but we have 
 introduced enough for the purpose in hand. As mir- 
 rors of the common belief of the times in which they 
 originated, they give a fair idea of the religious senti- 
 ments then held. Yet, where such representations are 
 believed, we can form but faint conceptions of the 
 priestly power. If one believes in the reality of these 
 sufferings, and that his father confessor has power to 
 abate them, the circle of his personal liberty is narrow. 
 Yet for substance they were believed. Says Bellar- 
 mine, ' ' Poenas Purgatorii esse atrocissimas, et cum 
 illis nullas poenas hujus vitse comparandas, docent 
 constanter patres."t 
 
 » Foreign Travels and Life at Sea, vol. V., pp. 305, 310, 311. 
 
 t "The fathers strongly affirm that the pains of purgatory are exceed- 
 ingly severe, and cannot come in comparison with any of the sufferings of 
 this life." 
 
 6* 
 
S6 PURGATORY. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE THEORY OF INDUL.GEHGES. 
 
 We come now to consider the radical, pivotal force 
 of the papal system. In her Theory of Indulgences 
 are the hidings of power in the Roman - catholic 
 Church. 
 
 According to the Papacy every sin has a certain 
 amount of penalty attached to it, as by weight or 
 measure. We can, if we will, bear and exhaust that 
 penalty in this life by penance. But if we neglect 
 penance, or for any reason die before we have met the 
 full penalty due our sins, we must endure the balance 
 in purgatory. This is said of true Christians, and not 
 of unregenerate persons. And repentance does not 
 stay this definite penalty. It must be visited on the 
 sinner here or in purgatory, whether he has repented 
 and is forgiven and justified of God or not. But some 
 very good men, as prophets, apostles, martyrs, and 
 eminent saints, not only meet the full debt of penalty 
 that they owe, but they do and suffer more than is 
 demanded of them in justice. When they die there is 
 a surplus of good works, or merit, standing to their 
 account. They do not need it. They go at once to 
 heaven. This surplus of merit constitutes a kind of 
 church fund of merit. It is united with the merits of 
 Christ, and is held in trust b3' the church to be dis- 
 
THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 57 
 
 pensed at her option to those who have died debtors to 
 justice and unvisited penalty, and so are in purgatory. 
 Or one while in life may do more good works than 
 God demands, and the value of these will be put to his 
 credit. He may voluntarily suffer beyond any per- 
 sonal demerits, and the value of all such pains will 
 also be put to his credit, all which will stand in his 
 name and favor, like a surplus in a bank account, and 
 he may check it out in orders in favor of whom he 
 will. This fund of merit, made up by the dead and 
 the living, Miiller calls ' ' the treasures of the church, ' ' * 
 and the Council of Trent "the heavenly treasures of 
 the church. " t A draft on this fund, and the applica- 
 tion of it for the relief of any soul in purgatory, is an 
 Indulgence. 
 
 If, for example, the penalty yet to be endured be 
 ten years in purgatory, the priest, for a consideration, 
 grants the application of so much merit from this fund 
 as is equivalent to those ten years of purgatorial sor- 
 row. Sometimes the indulgence is plenary, that is, it 
 covers all and every demand on the individual for pun- 
 ishment. If that person be in purgatory, the result of 
 this plenary indulgence is his immediate release, and 
 departure for heaven. Or, as Tetzel is said to have 
 expressed it, ' ' The very moment the money jingles in 
 the chest, the soul for whom it is paid escapes from 
 the pains of purgatory and ilies to heaven. ' ' 
 
 The dispensation of this fund is also accommodated 
 to the living. One knowing his crimes ascertains the 
 
 * Charity for the Souls in Purgatory, p. 143. t Sess. XXI., ch. 9. 
 
SS PURGATORY. 
 
 purgatorial penalty due, and buys himself off in ad- 
 vance of death, and so opens his way clear and direct 
 to heaven. Not only so, but so accommodating and 
 gracious a management is made of the fund, that one, 
 for a price, can buy himself off from punishment for 
 any particular sin that he may yet commit, or intends 
 to commit, or even from the sins of all his future life. * 
 
 ' ' God has left in his church the power of granting 
 indulgences, and indulgences are extremely advanta- 
 geous to the Christian people, "t 
 
 ' ' Indulgences in themselves contain all the treas- 
 ures of the merits of Jesus Christ, the most blessed 
 Virgin, and the Saints, so that they are distributed 
 only by the authority of the Pope and of the bishops, 
 for the sole end of giving to divine justice the satisfac- 
 tion due in punishment for our sins. "J 
 
 That this is the theory of Indulgences, as held by 
 the Roman-catholic Church, a few citations of author- 
 ity will make evident. They hold that a definite 
 amount of suffering, as a penalty, is due, and must be 
 
 * This application of an indulgence to future sins, either intended or 
 unforeseen, is denied by many good papal authorities. Yet its practice 
 cannot be denied, as we shall show. We present both sides historically, 
 the practice and the denial, and leave the church, that claims immutabil- 
 ity and infallibility in the fundamentals of doctrine and of usage, to adjust 
 the discrepancies. 
 
 t Keenan's Doctrinal Catechism, p. 153. Approved by the Most Rev. 
 John Hughes, D. D., Archbishop of New York. Dunigan & Brother, 
 New York, 1855. 
 
 \ Purgatory Opened to the Piety of the Faithful, or The Month of 
 November Consecrated to the Relief of the Souls in Purgatory. With 
 the approbation of the Most Rev. John Hughes, Archbishop of New 
 York. P. 97. Dunigan & Brother, New York, 1855. 
 
THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 59 
 
 endured or met, for every sin, and that the forgiveness 
 and justification of God do not dispense with this pen- 
 alty. So the Council of Trent: 
 
 "If any one shall say, that after the grace of justi- 
 fication received, unto every penitent sinner the guilt 
 is so remitted, and the penalty of eternal punishment so 
 blotted out, that there remains not any penalty of tem- 
 poral punishment to be discharged, either in this world, 
 or in the next in purgatory, before the entrance to the 
 kingdom of heaven can be laid open, let him be anath- 
 ema. ' ' * 
 
 To the same import is the exposition of the Ursu- 
 line Manual. An indulgence " is a releasing of the 
 temporal punishments which remain due to sin al- 
 ready pardoned. These temporal punishments God 
 inflicts on sinners whose crimes he has forgiven, in 
 the same manner as a good parent punishes a child to 
 give him a horror of his fault, and prevent him 
 again relapsing into the same. This punishment, 
 which remains due to sinners whose crimes have been 
 forgiven, is suffered either in this world by sickness, 
 pains of mind or body, loss of goods, or voluntary 
 penances, or else in the next world by the fire of 
 purgatory, and it is from the necessity of that atone- 
 ment that an indulgence dispenses, "f 
 
 In The Grounds of the Catholic Doctrine, this 
 
 * Buckley's Trans., Sess. 6, ch. 16, Canon 30. 
 
 t "The Ursuline Manual, or a Collection of prayers, etc., for forming 
 youth to the practice of solid piety; arranged for the Young Ladies 
 educated at the Ursuline Convent, Cork." P. 165. 
 
6o PURGATORY. 
 
 article on indulgences stands thus: "I affirm that the 
 power of indulgences was left by Christ in the church, 
 and that the use of them is most wholesome to Chris- 
 tian people. ' ' * 
 
 And that the Church of Rome in her theory of 
 indulgences holds to a fund of merit, as above stated, 
 is evident from all her defenders who speak on this 
 topic. Says L,eo XII. in his Jubilee Bull of 1824, 
 ' ' We have resolved, by virtue of the authority given 
 to us from heaven, fully to unlock that sacred treasure 
 composed of the merits, sufferings, and virtues of 
 Christ our Lord, and of his virgin mother, and of all 
 the saints, which the Author of human salvation has 
 entrusted to our dispensation. ' ' 
 
 Or take certain inscriptions found in the churches 
 of Rome, which are but posted advertisements of what 
 can be obtained and done in those churches. On a 
 marble slab in the chapel in St. Mary Major is the 
 following: . . . "We grant and indulge in perpetuity 
 that whensoever any priest, secular, or of any regular 
 order, shall at the aforesaid altar celebrate a mass for the 
 dead, for thesoulof any one of the faithful, which, joined 
 to God in charity, shall have passed from this life, the 
 same soul shall obtain indulgence by means of suffrage 
 from the treasure of the church; so that obtaining the 
 suffrages of the merits of the same our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the 
 
 * The Grounds of the Catholic Doctrine, contained in the Profession of 
 Faith published by Pope Pius IX., p. 69. Dunigan & Brother. New 
 York, 1855. 
 
THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 6i 
 
 saints, it may be freed from the pains of purgatory, 
 anything to the contrary notwithstanding. Given at 
 Rome, at St. Mary Major, under the seal of the fisher- 
 man, 19th of August, 1 61 3, ninth year of our Pontifi- 
 cate. ' ' This perpetual grant was made by Paul V. * 
 
 In the Church of St. Sebastian, and at the entrance 
 to "the Catacombs" in it, is the following: "In this 
 most sacred place which is called, ' At the Catacombs, ' 
 where were buried the bodies of 174,000 holy martyrs 
 and of 46 High Pontiffs, likewise martyrs," etc. 
 Then on the opposite side of the church, cut in marble 
 is this: "Whosoever, contrite and confessed, shall 
 have entered it [the Catacombs] shall obtain plenary 
 remission of all his sins, through the merits of the 
 174,000 Holy Martyrs," etc. f 
 
 Moreover drafts may be made on this fund of merit 
 for particular persons. ' ' The mass and prayers and 
 the other good works, although in some measure they 
 are common to all, nevertheless they profit much more 
 those for whom they are made in particular than the 
 others."! 
 
 In the Church of St. Lawrence at Rome, there is 
 on a marble slab a grant in perpetuity that whenever 
 a mass is there celebrated ' ' for the liberation of one soul 
 existing in purgatory, the same soul shall, from the 
 treasure of the church, the merits of the same of our 
 
 * Romanism as it exists at Rome. By the Hon, J. W. Percy. London, 
 1847. Pp. 12, 13. 
 
 t Ibid., pp. 27, 28. 
 
 t Cliristian Doctrine. A Manual of Faith in common use at Rome. 
 See Percy, ut supra, pp. 9, 14, 15. 
 
62 PURGATORY. 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ and all his saints, obtain the same 
 indulgences and remissions of sins by the acceptance 
 of divine clemency, and the said mass shall operate 
 for the liberation of the same for which it shall be 
 celebrated," etc.* 
 
 This perpetual grant for that church was made by 
 Gregory XIII. And thus high mass was celebrated 
 for O' Connell and Bishops Fenwick and De Neker in 
 particular. 
 
 The indulgences thus obtained may be plenary or 
 limited, according to contract, price and circumstances. 
 A common inscription on the entrances to many of 
 the churches at Rome is, ' ' Indulgentia plenaria, per- 
 petua et quotidiana, pro vivis et defunctis." "A 
 partial indulgence, ' ' says the Ursuline Manual, ' ' such 
 as of ten years, or a hundred days, or forty days, 
 dispenses from as much of the temporal punishment 
 due to sin as would be remitted by ten years, a 
 hundred days, or forty days of the canonical penances 
 formerly imposed on sinners, "t And so we find on 
 these marble slabs and in papal books of faith and 
 of devotion definite remissions, thus: Nicolas IV. 
 granted to those who should visit the Church of St. 
 John Lateran, indulgence for " three years and three 
 quarantines" to those living in the vicinage, "five 
 years and five quarantines" to Tuscans, Apulians 
 and Lombards, and ' ' seven years and seven quaran- 
 
 * Percy, I, 2. 
 
 t Ursuline Manual, p. i66. 
 
THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 63 
 
 tines" to those beyond the Alps and the sea.* In 
 1836 Gregory XVI. granted an "Indulgence of 200 
 days " to any one who would visit the image of the 
 Blessed Virgin in the Church of St. Maria Sopra Mi- 
 nerva. In another part of the church is this inscription 
 in marble : ' ' The first Friday after Easter is the Station 
 with Indulgence of 14,000 years." As you leave St. 
 Paul's you read thus: "Kissing devoutly the most 
 Holy Cross in any place gains one year and 40 days 
 of Indulgence by concession of the Chief Pontifis, 
 John XXII. and Clement VI." In the Church of St, 
 Dominic at Naples there hangs a long list ' ' of the 
 Indulgences of the most Holy Rosary," which con- 
 cludes thus three chapters: "By the series of the 
 above mentioned Indulgences, it is to be observed, 
 that every brother, by the sole recital of the Rosary 
 can gain even hundreds of thousands of Indulgences 
 every day, besides the Plenary Indulgence several 
 times in the year. ' ' f 
 
 Sometimes the length of the indulgence is uncer- 
 tain from its very conditions. For example, in the 
 ' ' Hours of the Blessed Virgin, ' ' as quoted by Stopford, 
 we find the following: "Pope John XXII. granted to 
 all that say this following prayer as they pass through 
 any churchyard or place of burial so many years of 
 pardon as there are bodies buried in it. ' God save all 
 faithful souls whose bodies rest here, and everywhere 
 in the dust' " etc. J 
 
 * Percy, p. 34. t Ibid., pp. 45, 46, 48, 68. 
 
 X Pagano-Papismus: or, An Exact Parallel between Rome-Paijan and 
 
 Pursatory. 7 
 
64 PURGATORY. 
 
 At the entrance of the Church of St. Saviour de 
 Themis, cut in marble, is the following notice : 
 
 "St. Gregory, Pope, and doctor of the church, con- 
 secrated this church in the honor of the holy Saviour, 
 and conceded to all, truly penitent and confessed, visit- 
 ing it on each day, seven years and the same number 
 of quarantines; on each day, however, of Lent plenary 
 indulgence. Afterwards Sylvester, Gregory and Nic- 
 olas, Roman Pontiffs, also conceded to strangers devout- 
 ly visiting this church plenary indulgence ; and lastly, 
 as well the aforesaid as other Roman Pontiffs con- 
 ceded to those visiting it at the time of Lent two 
 thousand two hundred and sixty years; but on each 
 day of the whole year eleven hundred and thirty 
 years of indulgence. ' ' 
 
 Near the door of this church, on the street, and in 
 marble, is this advertisement also: "Indulgences con- 
 ceded in perpetuity by high Pontiffs, in this church. 
 Every day of the year there are twelve hundred and 
 thirty years of indulgence; for all Lent there is ple- 
 nary indulgence: for the pilgrims there is every day 
 plenary indulgence."* 
 
 In the Chapel of St. Helen, and on parchment, 
 this was suspended while Percy was in Rome in the 
 years 1843, 1844 and 1846. 
 
 ' ' On the Second Sunday of Advent there is the 
 
 Rome-Christian in their Doctrines and Ceremonies. By Joshua Stopford, 
 B. D., Rector o£ All Saints, in the City o£ York, 1675, p. 116. London, 
 J. Hatchard & Son, 1844. 
 * Percy, pp. 48, 49. 
 
THE THE OR V OF IND UL GENCES. 65 
 
 station, and eleven thousand years of indulgence, and 
 the remission of all sins. ' ' * 
 
 So in another thus: "Gregory I. granted to all 
 and each one visiting this Church of Sts. Cosmo and 
 Damian one thousand years of indulgence, and on 
 the day of the station of the same church, the same 
 Gregory granted ten thousand years of indulgence, "f 
 
 In the Church of St. Dominic, at Naples, Percy 
 made copies of these among other inscriptions: 
 
 "Whoever recites the third part of the Rosary 
 gains forty days' indulgence. More, other five years, 
 and as many quarantines. More, sixty thousand 
 years, and as many quarantines of penances enjoined. ' ' 
 "Whoever carries about him the Holy Rosary, one 
 hundred years, and as many quarantines of indul- 
 gences of the penances enjoined. "J 
 
 These marble and parchment advertisements of 
 indulgences, copied off - by Mr. Percy, carry up the 
 time for which one may buy off himself or a friend in 
 purgatory from canonical punishments, into scores of 
 thousands of years. He says he might have much in- 
 creased the collection, "but it would be useless to 
 fatigue the reader with any more."§ 
 
 The Rev. Henry Alford, D. D., Dean of Canter- 
 bury, visiting Rome some time after Mr. Percy was 
 there, says: 
 
 "One's mind is perfectly confounded with the 
 vastness of the numbers of years which may be gained 
 
 * Percy, p. 50. t Ibid., p. 51. 
 
 X Ibid., p. 67. § Ibid, 53, 54. 
 
66 PURGATORY. 
 
 by any worshipper on solemn occasions; indeed, on 
 every day of his life. By visiting the church of Santa 
 Croce in Gerusalemme on the Second Sunday in Ad- 
 vent may be gained ' eleven thousand years of indul- 
 gence and the remission of all one's sins. ' By visiting 
 the Church of Saints Cosmo and Damian, in the Forum, 
 any day, one thousand years, and on the station at 
 the same church ten thousand years. By kissing the 
 foot of the idol in St. Agostino once in every day, one 
 hundred days' indulgence may be gained. So that 
 if a devout Roman chose to pass in his walk, every 
 day for a year, these last two churches, he might gain 
 at St. Agostino thirty-six thousand five hundred, and 
 at Saints Cosmo and Damian, three hundred and 
 sixty-five thousand years' remission of purgatory; in 
 all four hundred and one thousand five hundred years 
 for every year of his life, by these two churches only. ' ' 
 
 It was not straining a papal truth, therefore, when 
 Pope Innocent said, ' ' So many and so numerous are 
 the indulgences of the Lateran Church, that they 
 cannot in any wise be numbered but by God alone, all 
 of which I myself confirm. ' ' 
 
 Much business tact is shown in securing visits to 
 these churches, and no little shrewdness in advertising 
 the spiritual wares offered within ; as over the door of 
 the chapel Domine quo Vadis this little poster was 
 hung: 
 
 " Stop, O traveller, and enter into this holy tem- 
 ple, for you will find there the footprint and image of 
 our lyord Jesus Christ when he met with St. Peter, 
 
THE THE OR Y OF IND UL GENCES. 67 
 
 who was flying from prison. Alms are requested for 
 wax and oil for the liberation of some soul from pur- 
 gatory." This advertising leaflet was withdrawn in 
 1845.* 
 
 The tiling is better done thus in the Chapel of St. 
 Mary of the Ladder: 
 
 ' ' In this temple, while St. Bernard was celebrating 
 the Sacrifice of the Mass, he beheld the ladder where 
 descending and ascending angels bore souls to heaven. 
 From hence it happened that that holy place, before 
 dedicated to the Virgin Mother of God, was called St. 
 Mary of the I^adder, and Roman Pontifls granted in- 
 dulgences; so that, by the oblation of the divine Sac- 
 rifice, souls might be redeemed from the pains of pur- 
 gatory. ' ' t 
 
 When it is the purpose of the devout one visiting 
 any church to ofier prayer for an indulgence for him- 
 self or for some one, known or unknown, in purgatory, 
 a prescribed form of prayer is necessary. These forms 
 of prayer may be purchased at the book-stores, though 
 they are found framed and hanging in the most of the 
 churches. They are in different languages and of 
 great variety, and are addressed to the Saviour, to the 
 Virgin, or to the Saints, to suit the varied necessities 
 and fancies of the worshippers. 
 
 There is other tact, as well as in advertising, in 
 disposing of these indulgences. They have at Rome 
 a fac simile imprint of the sole of the shoe of the Vir- 
 gin. On this is printed, among other matter, this: 
 
 * Percy, p. 57. .^ t Ibid., p. 29. 
 
 7 
 
68 PURGATORY. 
 
 " The Pontiff John XXII. conceded three hundred 
 years' indulgence to whomsoever shall three times kiss 
 this measure, and at the same time recite three Ave 
 Marias; the which also was confirmed by Pope Clem- 
 ent VIII., the year of our redemption 1603. . . . This 
 indulgence may be applied to the souls in purgatory. 
 And it is permitted, to the greater glory of the Queen 
 of Heaven, to take from this measure other similar 
 measures, the which shall have the same indulgence. ' ' 
 
 The German fac simile, however, lying before the 
 writer, is much more narrow and delicate under the 
 instep than the Italian, on which John's and Clement's 
 endorsement grants seven hundred years' indulgence, 
 rather than the three hundred as on the broader Ital- 
 ian copy. The German is preferable by four hundred 
 years out of purgatory for the same number of kisses 
 and Aves. 
 
 To all this evidence that the living, by their prayers 
 and sufferings and masses, may benefit the dead and 
 shorten their delay and pains in purgatory, this caveat 
 is carefully filled in by the mother church. If one is 
 careless about penance, neglects the confessional, and 
 fails to obtain absolution before death, he cannot be at 
 once aided in purgatory by any works of the living. 
 If not in earnest for a holy life, careless of little sins, 
 uncharitable to neighbors, negligent of the commu- 
 nion, with no sorrow for the crimes of youth, and con- 
 verted on the death-bed — "ah ! how much combusti- 
 ble matter, how many imperfections, venial sins, and 
 temporal punishments due to mortal and venial sins, 
 
THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 69 
 
 do you think they took with them to be cancelled in 
 the flames of purgatory ? . . . In the life and revela- 
 tions of St. Gertrude we read that those who have 
 committed many grievous sins, and who die without 
 having done due penance, are not assisted by the ordi- 
 nary sufirages of the church until they are partly puri- 
 fied by divine justice in purgatory."* 
 
 While this celestial treasure of the church, this 
 spiritual bank of merit, has deposits almost infinite for 
 the benefit of suffering souls, and while it can be 
 checked out on call at the option of the priest, it is 
 under special and stringent guards and limitations. 
 Eminently proper and sacredly right it is that such a 
 brokerage in the policies, stocks, insurances, and col- 
 laterals of the world to come should be hedged about 
 to the extreme limits of human caution and invention. 
 If malfeasance, breaches of trust, perversion of funds, 
 and financial ' ' irregularities ' ' are irrepressible and 
 almost inevitable in matters of dollars and cents, how 
 much greater the temptations and liabilities at a spir- 
 itual banking-house, where the receiving and paying 
 tellers have the momentous handling for their custom- 
 ers of sins and salvation and perdition ! 
 
 There is a society, entitled The Arch-Confraternity 
 for the Relief of the Souls in Purgatory. According 
 to the Brief of Pius IX., dated March 37, 1862, the 
 members of this society may gain the indulgence of 
 seven years and seven quarantines for each visit to a 
 graveyard, praying there for the repose of the departed, 
 * Miiller, pp. 23, 24. 
 
70 PURGATORY. 
 
 and a plenary indulgence, on the usual conditions, for 
 four such visits made within a month. * 
 
 Some years since a society was formed in Dublin 
 to assist the sick and dying, and prepare them by the 
 last sacraments for death, and then to pray for their 
 souls after death. 
 
 The mutual advantages of this organization, under 
 the patronage of St. John the Evangelist, are suggested 
 by the ninth rule: ' ' Every superior shall, on his death, 
 be entitled to three masses, every rector to two, and 
 ever subscriber to one, provided he shall have died a 
 natural death, being a subscriber for six months, and 
 been clear of all dues at the time of his death. Sub- 
 scriptions received in the chapel on every Wednesday 
 evening. ' ' f 
 
 Enough has been indicated and set forth in the 
 above quotations to show the faith and practice of the 
 papal Church on the doctrine of Indulgences. It may 
 be well to show their views and usages concerning 
 future and intended sins, though these are often inclu- 
 ded in a Plenary Indulgence. 
 
 The theory and practice of Tetzel will illustrate 
 this point. He assumed to sell indulgences for un- 
 known future sins, be they more or less, and for defi- 
 nite and intended crimes. In one of his public 
 addresses, before offering his indulgences, he said, 
 "Come, and I will give you letters, all properly 
 
 * Miiller, pp. 154, 155. 
 
 t Blakeney's Manual of Romish Controversy, p. 215. T. Nelson & 
 Sons, Edinburgh. 
 
THE THEORY GF INDULGENCES. 71 
 
 sealed, by which even the sins that you intend to 
 commit may be pardoned. ' ' * One of his letters of in- 
 dulgence runs thus: ... "I, in virtue of the apostolic 
 power that has been confided to me, absolve thee from 
 all ecclesiastical censures, judgments, and penalties 
 which thou mayest have incurred; moreover, from all 
 excesses, sins, and crimes that thou mayest have com- 
 mitted, however great and enormous they may be. . . . 
 I remit the penalties thou shouldest have endured in 
 purgatory. ... In the hour of death, the gate by which 
 sinners enter the place of torments and punishment 
 shall be closed against thee, and, on the contrary, the 
 gate leading to the paradise of joy shall be open. And 
 if thou shouldst not die for long years, this grace shall 
 remain unalterable until thy last hour shall arrive, "f 
 
 And this indulgence, covering all future sins, was 
 tested and sustained, on a particular case, in the court 
 at Hagenau in 151 7. A lady who had purchased a 
 full indulgence till death, died soon after. The hus- 
 band, procuring no mass for the repose of her soul, 
 was brought by the priest before the magistrate for 
 contempt of religion. The following conversation 
 ensued: 
 
 '" Is your wife dead ?' 'Yes.' 'What have you 
 done for her?' 'I have buried her body and com- 
 mended her soul to God. ' ' But have you had a mass 
 said for the repose of her soul ?' ' I have not ; it was 
 of no use; she entered heaven at the moment of her 
 death.' 'How do you know that?' 'Here is the 
 
 * D'Aubigne's Reformation, Book 3, chap. i. t Ibid. 
 
72 PURGATORY. 
 
 proof,' and gave the indulgence to the magistrate. 
 In it he read that at the moment of death the woman 
 who had received it would at once enter heaven with- 
 out going to purgatory. The husband then said, ' If 
 the reverend gentleman maintains that a mass is still 
 necessary, my wife has been deceived by our most holy 
 father the Pope; if she has not been, it is the priest 
 who deceives me.' There could be no reply, and the 
 husband was acquitted. ' ' * 
 
 A Saxon nobleman gave a more practical and per- 
 sonal test of Tetzel's theory of indulgence for intended 
 sins. He asked Tetzel if he could pardon a slight 
 revenge that he wished to take on an enemy. The 
 monk assented, and the price was fixed at thirty 
 crowns, and paid. When Tetzel left Leipsic and was 
 in a wood between Jiiterbock and Treblin, the noble- 
 man waylaid and robbed him of his indulgence money. 
 It was for this very act that he bought the indulgence. 
 Tetzel carried the case into the courts, but the noble- 
 man was acquitted, f Nor is there any evidence that 
 Tetzel went beyond the instructions of I^eo in thus 
 granting pardon for future as well as for past sins. It 
 was the common theory of the church. 
 
 It will be understood, from what has been said, that 
 these indulgences could be obtained only by purchase, 
 or in some manner rendering an equivalent. So 
 alone could the Church of Rome realize the utility and 
 ultimate design of the system. It was a system for 
 relieving at times, and for replenishing at any time, 
 
 * D'Aubign^'s Reformation, Book 3, chap. 2. t Ibid. 
 
THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 73 
 
 tlie papal treasury. Those visits to churches, altars, 
 and sacred places, and those masses and prayers for 
 the dead, do not become of value and force except as 
 some oflBcial of the church takes part in them. For 
 this he has his fee or unavoidable gratuity. Indulgen- 
 ces and pardons have their prices graded to the sins, 
 rank, and pecuniary ability of him asking for them. 
 Thus in their sale by Tetzel, ' ' kings, queens, princes, 
 archbishops, bishops, were, according to the scale, to 
 pay twenty-five ducats for an ordinary indulgence. 
 Abbots, counts, and barons, ten. The other nobles, 
 the rectors, and all those who possessed an income of 
 five hundred florins, paid six. Those who had two 
 hundred florins a year, paid one, and others only a 
 half ' ' So run the papal instructions to this broker of 
 pardons. ' ' For particular sins, Tetzel had a particular 
 tax. For polygamy it was six ducats; for sacrilege 
 and perjury, nine ducats; for murder, eight ducats; for 
 witchcraft, two ducats. Samson, who exercised the 
 same trade in Switzerland as Tetzel in Germany, had 
 a somewhat difierent scale. For infanticide he re- 
 quired four livres toumois., and for parricide and fratri- 
 cide, one ducat. ' ' * 
 
 But much earlier than the days of Tetzel a volume 
 of sins, with prices carried out, was prepared and pub- 
 lished by the papal Church. The book is entitled, 
 "Taxa Cancellarise Apostolicae. " This arrangement 
 of sins by catalogue, and marking their respective cost 
 by a tariff" of prices, is thus characterized by Claude 
 
 * D'Aubign6's Reformation, Book 3, chap. i. 
 
74 PURGATORY. 
 
 d'Bspence, a candid Papist, and rector of the Sor- 
 bonne: "A book wherein thou mayest learn more 
 wickedness than was ever yet discovered in all the 
 summists and summaries of vices that are extant in 
 all the world. A shameful book, a very index point- 
 ing men the way to the most foul and hateful sins. ' ' 
 
 After 1569 the Romish Church denied the genu- 
 ineness of this work, though during the one hundred 
 years preceding twenty-seven editions of it had been 
 published, the first fifteen at Rome. * 
 
 A few items will show the quality of the work 
 and the cost of crime about the times of the Reforma- 
 tion. Murder by a bishop or abbot cost one hundred 
 grosses, a grosso being from two to four pence. If a 
 layman kill a layman, the absolution cost six grosses; 
 and the same if a woman destroy her unborn child. 
 For killing father, mother, brother, or wife, one ducat 
 and five carlins; for a priest to keep a concubine, 
 seven grosses, for a layman, eight; fornication for a 
 man, six grosses, for a nun, nine ducats and thirty 
 grossos; for defiling mother, sister, kinswoman, or 
 godmother, five grossos; and for perjury, six grossos.t 
 
 Ivike any article of commerce, indulgences have 
 been put on the market of the world. In the year 
 1709 an English privateer from Bristol captured a 
 Spanish vessel on her way to America, and there were 
 found on board upwards of three millions of indulgen- 
 
 * The Literary Policy of the Church of Rome. By the Rev. Joseph 
 Mendham, M. A. London : James Duncan. 1830. Pp. 75. 7<5' 
 t Stopford's Pagano-Papismus, pp. 360, 361. 
 
THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 75 
 
 ces, outward bound for a market. They varied in 
 price from twenty pence for the poor, to eleven pounds 
 for the rich. In 1800 another Spanish ship was cap- 
 tured by Admiral Harvey off the coast of South Amer- 
 ica, having among her invoiced merchandise bales of 
 this ecclesiastical paper, bearing the seals of the courts 
 of Spain and of Rome, valued at ;^7,500. Here were 
 indulgences for various sins, and for eating flesh on 
 fast days, with prices from fifty cents each to seven 
 dollars. Some Dutch merchants at Tortola bought 
 the lot for ;^200, hoping to put them on the Spaniards 
 in ^outh America at vast profits. 
 
 The proclamation of Jubilee Years, as they have 
 been termed, has made this system of indulgences 
 very specially profitable to the chair of St. Peter. 
 Boniface VIII. proclaimed the first by a bull of Feb- 
 ruary 22, 1300. By this bull he granted a full absolu- 
 tion of all sins to such as should visit St. Peter's and 
 St. Paul's at Rome between Christmas 1300 and 1301. 
 And this Jubilee he ordained to be repeated at the 
 close of each succeeding century. Pilgrims, to gain 
 this indulgence, must visit these two churches daily 
 for fifteen days in succession. The number that 
 flocked to Roine on this call is perfectly incredible. 
 The entire city through the whole year was as one 
 crowd, the average being two hundred thousand stran- 
 gers constantly. The offerings at the tombs of the two 
 apostles were immense. Those in brass, and so of the 
 poor alone, amounted to fifty thousand florins of gold. 
 The gold florin being about seven shillings sterling, 
 
76 PURGATORY. 
 
 and tlie value of money being then six times greater 
 than now, this income from the poor alone must have 
 been equal to about half a million of dollars. Then 
 the offerings made by the wealthy, and in silver and 
 gold, must have been immense indeed. * 
 
 Clement VI. and the Romans, seeing the advan- 
 tage that accrued from the first Jubilee, were anxious 
 to shorten the time for the second. It was therefore 
 proclaimed for 1350. The crowd of strangers anxious 
 for a full absolution varied through the year from 
 eight to twelve hundred thousand. The receipts in 
 offerings and for masses, prayers, and other priestly 
 service, must have been vastly great. Again the 
 time was shortened to thirty-three years, and multi- 
 tudes gathered at Rome in 1390. To royal persons 
 who did not attend the Pope granted the same absolu- 
 tion as if they had attended, but charged for it what 
 would have been the cost of their journey to Rome. 
 Not only so, but after the Jubilee was past the Pope 
 sent his indulgence brokers into all parts of his domin- 
 ions, to sell pardons to all who had been necessarily 
 prevented from going to Rome. The receipts for this 
 were great, f 
 
 The year 1400 being the time for the Centennial 
 Jubilee, according to the original plan of Boniface 
 VIII., the people flocked to Rome in multitudes to 
 gain the promised indulgences. Some idea may be 
 formed of their number and of the amount of treasure 
 
 * Bowers' History of the Popes, Cox's ed., vol. 3, pp. 47, 48. 
 t Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 143, 144. 
 
THE THE OR Y OF IND UL GENCES. 7 7 
 
 they carried, from tlie fact that the king of France 
 forbade his own subjects attending, giving as a reason, 
 that should they go as freely as they wished, his king- 
 dom would become depopulated, and the whole wealth 
 of the nation would be transferred to Rome. His ene- 
 mies might also then come on him and find him with- 
 out men or money. * 
 
 Such facts as these will indicate what wide sweeps 
 for treasure the popes were able to make through this 
 power of granting indulgences. It is not strange, 
 therefore, that Leo X. , wishing to immortalize himself 
 by building St. Peter's, scarcely then conceived, sent 
 out Tetzel and a host of others to raise the funds by 
 selling indulgences. And the policy succeeded well. 
 For of the sixty or eighty millions of dollars which 
 that basilica has cost, the most of the funds came by 
 this means. And so the sale of indulgences procured 
 for the world two noble gifts, St. Peter's and the Ref- 
 ormation. 
 
 It is due, however, to say that the papal Church, 
 in the general Councils of Lateran, Lyons, Vienne, 
 and Trent, tried to prevent these abusive sales of in- 
 dulgences. The Council of Trent has these words: 
 
 "Whereas many remedies, applied heretofore by 
 divers councils against the wicked abuses of questors 
 of alms, have in later times become useless, yea, rather 
 the depravity of such, to the great scandal and com- 
 plaint of all the faithful, found daily so much the more 
 to increase, as that there seems no longer to be any 
 
 » Bowers' History of the Popes, Cox's ed., vol. 3, p. 150. 
 
78 PURGATORY. 
 
 hope left of their amendment," the Synod ordains 
 that the sale of indulgences be canonically stopped. * 
 
 These ' ' abuses ' ' of sales by Tetzel and others had 
 recently shamed and shocked the Christian world into 
 the Reformation, and hence the diplomatic veto of the 
 traffic by this august council in July, 1562. Yet the 
 sales went on, as we have noticed above, and they 
 continue to this day, as witness the advertisements of 
 them so common in the churches at Rome: Indulgen- 
 tia plenaria et perpetua et quotidiana, pro vivis et 
 defunctis. t 
 
 And why not ? While there is this vast heavenly 
 treasure of the church on deposit, without spiritual 
 interest, and subject to call, and may be applied for 
 the relief of those suffering terribly in the middle 
 state, it would seem to be most Christian and humane 
 to encourage its distribution among the needy. May 
 a government have its crowded granaries, and the 
 starving and dying in its streets and hospitals, and yet 
 refuse to sell supplies for the relief of these suffering 
 ones? 
 
 It would be a wrong to the latest type of Romanism 
 not to quote here so eminent authority as Cardinal 
 Wiseman on Indulgences. It is gratifying to feel that 
 his clear and comprehensive statements leave nothing 
 wanting to our full understanding of this dogma. If 
 the wide sweeping practice of this doctrine runs into 
 painful and reproachful liberties, as in the days of 
 lyUther, as well as before and since, we must consider 
 
 * Sess. XXI., ch. 9. t Percy's Romaiiism as it exists at Rome, p. 17. 
 
THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 79 
 
 thoughtfully what his Eminence says to his L,ondon 
 audiences in his lectures at St. Mary's, Moorsfields, 
 already quoted in Chapter IV. ' ' Religion is a lively 
 practical profession ; it is to be ascertained and judged 
 by its sanctioned practices and outward demonstration, 
 rather than by the mere opinions of a few. ' ' * 
 
 But, as to the matter of this chapter, the cardinal 
 says, "What is an Indulgence? It is no more than a 
 remission by the church in virtue of the Keys, or the 
 judicial authority committed to her, of a portion or 
 the entire of the temporal punishment due to sin. The 
 infinite merits of Christ form the fund whence this 
 remission is derived. 
 
 ' ' But besides, the church holds that by the com- 
 munion of saints, penitential works performed by the 
 just, beyond what their own sins might exact, are 
 available to other members of Christ's mystical body; 
 that, for instance, the sufferings of the spotless Mother 
 of God, afflictions such as probably no other being ever 
 felt in the soul — the austerities and persecutions of the 
 Baptist, the friend of the Bridegroom, who was sancti- 
 fied in his Mother's womb, and chosen to be an angel 
 before the face of the Christ — the tortures endured by 
 numberless martyrs, whose lives had been pure from 
 vice and sin — the prolonged rigors of holy anchorites, 
 who, flying from the temptations and dangers of the 
 world, passed many years in penance and contempla- 
 tion, all these made consecrated and valid through 
 
 * lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
 Church, p. 360. ^.., 
 
8o PURGATORY. 
 
 their union with the merits of Christ's passion — were 
 not thrown away, but found a store of meritorious 
 blessings, applicable to the satisfaction of other 
 sinners. ' ' * 
 
 From this store of meritorious blessing, as a re- 
 serve fund for general use, grants are made to needy- 
 ones, here or in purgatory. The first has the dispen- 
 sing power, and he may make a substitution of suffer- 
 ings, endured by others, and not needed for their 
 perfect salvation, and so left on deposit, or as we say 
 commercially, subject to draft, for the benefit of others 
 now under condemnation to suffering. " Such a sub- 
 stitution is what constitutes all that Catholics under- 
 stand by the name of an Indulgence. ' ' f 
 
 ' ' It appears that in the ancient church relaxation 
 from the rigor of the penitential institutions was 
 granted in consideration of the interposition of the 
 martyrs of Christ, who seemed to take on themselves 
 the punishment due to the penitents according to the 
 canonical institutions. " " From all that I have said, 
 you will easily conclude that our indulgence and that 
 of the ancient church rest upon the following common 
 grounds: First that satisfaction has to be made to 
 God for sin remitted, under the authority and regula- 
 tion of the church. Secondly, that the church has 
 always considered herself possessed of the authority to 
 mitigate, by diminution or commutation, the penance 
 which she enjoins, and that she has always reckoned 
 
 * Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices o£ the Catholic 
 Church, p. 365. t Ibid., p. 365. 
 
THE THEORY OF INDULGENCES. 8i 
 
 such a mitigation valid before God, who sanctions and 
 accepts it. Thirdly, that the sufierings of the saints, 
 in union with and by virtue of Christ's merits, are 
 considered available towards the granting this mitiga- 
 tion. Fourthly, that such mitigations, when pru- 
 dently and justly granted, are conducive towards the 
 spiritual weal and profit of Christians."* 
 
 It is due to the fulness of statement of the doctrine 
 as theoretically held, whatever ' ' the sanctioned prac- 
 tices and outward demonstration ' ' may be, to add 
 these words of Cardinal Wiseman: "In Indulgences 
 the church has no reference to the inward guilt, or to 
 the weight of eternal punishment incurred by sin, but 
 only to the temporal chastisement and its necessary 
 expiation." "The church always makes and has 
 made confession and communion, and consequently 
 exemption from the guilt of sin, an indispensable con- 
 dition for receiving an indulgence. So that forgive- 
 ness of sin must precede the participation of any such 
 favor, "t 
 
 An illustration given by this author, and in this 
 connection, will place his meaning beyond doubt. 
 "In the middle ages Europe saw its princes and 
 emperors, its knights and nobles, abandon country and 
 home, and devote themselves to the cruel task of war 
 in a distant clime, to regain the sepulchre of Christ 
 from the hands of infidels. And what reward did the 
 
 * Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
 Church, pp. 373, 375. 
 t Ibid., p. 376. 
 
82 PURGATORY. 
 
 church propose ? Nothing more than an indulgence. ' ' * 
 So the Council of Clermont decreed in 1095, ' ' Who- 
 ever shall go to Jerusalem to liberate the Church of 
 God, out of pure devotion, and not for the purpose of 
 obtaining honor or money, let the journey be counted 
 in lieu of all penance." "Iter illud pro omni pceni- 
 tenti^ reputetur. ' ' 
 
 * Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic 
 Church, p. 377. 
 
THEORY AND USE OF THE MASS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE THEORY OF THE MASS, AND ITS USE. 
 
 To appreciate the historical and doctrinal facts 
 that we are quoting and the line of argument de- 
 veloped by them, it is necessary to understand clearly 
 what is meant by the sacrifice of the mass. It is the 
 re-crucifixion and offering of Jesus Christ. In the 
 mass that vicarious sacrifice, with all its expiatory 
 power, is repeated. 
 
 Dr. England thus defines it: "Under the appear- 
 ance of bread and wine the Redeemer of the world is 
 offered up in an unbloody manner upon our altars 
 as a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the 
 living and the dead. It is not a different sac- 
 rifice from that of the cross, for the victim in each 
 is the same. ... In the mass Christ is the victim; 
 he is produced by the consecration, which by the 
 power of God, and the institution of the Redeemer, 
 and the act of the priest, places the body and blood of 
 Christ, under the appearance of bread and wine, upon 
 the altar. Then the priest makes an oblation of 
 this victim to the Eternal Father, on behalf of the 
 people, and the victim undergoes a destructive 
 change. ' ' * 
 
 * Dr. England's Garden of the Soul. Of the Mass, pp. 4, 5. 
 
84 PURGATORY. 
 
 The Council of Trent is explicit to the same point, 
 that the true and proper Christ is offered vicariously 
 in the mass. 
 
 "In this divine sacrifice which is performed in the 
 mass, that same Christ is contained and immolated in 
 a bloodless manner who once offered himself in a 
 bloody manner on the altar of the cross. . . . This 
 sacrifice is truly propitiatory, and by means thereof 
 this is effected, that we obtain mercy. . . . For the 
 victim is one and the same, the same now offering by 
 the ministry of priests who then offered himself on the 
 cross, the manner alone of offering being different. . . . 
 Wherefore, not only for the sins, punishments, satis- 
 factions, and other necessities of the faithful who 
 are alive, but also for those who are departed in 
 Christ, and who are not as yet fully purified, is 
 it rightly offered agreeably to a tradition of the 
 apostles. ' ' * 
 
 Therefore at the celebration of The Mass for the 
 Dead, after the consecration, the priest says, "We offer 
 before the throne of thy most excellent majesty in 
 behalf of these departed souls, whom thy justice still 
 detains in the pains of temporal punishment, this most 
 holy, pure and unspotted victim. ' ' f 
 
 And if the doctrine of purgatory and of the mass 
 be true, then this must be most true that Miiller 
 says in another place: "The most efficacious of all 
 
 * The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent By Theodore 
 Alois Buckley, B. A. Session XXII, Chap. II. 
 t Miiller, p. 343. 
 
THEORY AND USE OF THE MASS. 85 
 
 means to release these poor souls from their painful 
 captivity is, undoubtedly, the holy sacrifice of the 
 mass. ' ' * 
 
 "Indeed, so great is the efficacy of this sacrifice to 
 obtain relief for the souls in purgatory, that the appli- 
 cation of all the good works which have been performed 
 from the beginning of the world would not afford so 
 much assistance to one of these souls as is imparted by 
 a single mass."t 
 
 It is a most fortunate thing for the theory of the 
 mass and of its power to deliver from purgatory, that 
 some of those delivered have come back to earth and 
 given in their testimony. In the time of St. Bernard, 
 a monk of Clairvaux did this. When questioned as to 
 the special means of deliverance, he led the inquirer 
 to the church, where a priest was celebrating mass, 
 and said, ' ' This is the means by which my deliver- 
 ance has been effected; this is the power of God's 
 mercy, this is the salutary sacrifice which takes away 
 the sins of the world. ' ' % 
 
 A conspicuous instance of the power of the mass to 
 relieve a suffering soul is found in the case of the 
 Greek Emporor Theophilus. The Empress Theodora 
 procured masses for her husband in all the convents 
 of Constantinople, and so enlisted the sympathies of 
 the patriarch Methodius that he ordered prayers for 
 the Emperor by all the clergy and laity of the city. 
 
 * Muller, p. 51. 
 t Ibid., p. 54, 55. 
 X Ibid., p. 54. 
 
86 PURGATORY. 
 
 While they were thus engaged in the church of St. 
 Sophia, an angel appeared to Methodius, saying, 
 ' ' Thy prayers, O bishop, have been heard, and The- 
 ophilus has obtained pardon." And our I^ord himself 
 informed the Empress that her husband had been 
 delivered from purgatory. 
 
OTHER METHODS OF RELIEF. 87 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OTHER METHODS OF RELIEF. 
 
 The means placed in human hands for the relief 
 of those suffering in purgatory are almost innumerable. 
 They are as varied as human sympathies could call 
 for, or human fancies invent. No mother could have 
 a greater variety of pitying emotions, or show greater 
 aptness and versatility in devising compassionate plans 
 and tender methods for the comfort of a suffering child, 
 than this holy mother church for the relief of her un- 
 fortunate and suffering children. 
 
 While the sacrifice of the mass has a preeminence 
 beyond all comparison, according to the proper Chris- 
 tian conception of the infinite and vicarious value of 
 the crucifixion, and m^ay for a trifle be repeated and 
 applied totally for the benefit of one in particular, or 
 many miscellaneously, in purgatory, still other and 
 varied and multiplied means for their relief are in 
 daily use, and should be noticed. 
 
 The best authority on this branch of our subject is 
 Miiller's Charity for the Souls in Purgatory ; for it 
 is confined to this topic, and is a handbook for pri- 
 vate devotions, of very recent date — Boston, 1873 — 
 and specially for a section or meridian where ad- 
 vanced science and religion combine to throw their 
 
 Pargatory. g 
 
88 PURGATORY. 
 
 clearest liglit. It is no mediaeval work, reedited for a 
 fossil Italy or Spain or Mexico. 
 
 "Lamenting, sobbing, and sighing, shedding tor- 
 rents of tears and crying aloud, these poor souls stretch 
 out their hands for one to help, console, and relieve 
 them. We are the only ones who have it in our power 
 to assist them in their sufferings." Then the author 
 proceeds to illustrate, by citing the case of the Empe- 
 ror Henry, who was about to put a whole city, young 
 and aged, to massacre, because of long obstinacy in 
 not surrendering. The little children were sent out in 
 long procession, and with bitter wailing and supplica- 
 tion that the city be spared ; and it was. He contin- 
 ues : ' ' Would to God I could open the dungeons of 
 purgatory and let you see the immense procession of 
 poor suffering souls coming forth and crying in most 
 lamentable and heart-rending voices, one after the 
 other, ' Father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife, 
 friend, have pity on me !' "* 
 
 Then he makes these suffering ones plead thus for 
 aid: "Tell Christians to give us their feet, by going to 
 hear mass for us; to give us their eyes, by seeking an 
 occasion to perform a good work for us; to give us 
 their hands, by giving an alms for us, or by offering 
 often the honoraries of one or more dollars for the ' in- 
 tention ' of the masses of the priest in our behalf; to 
 give us their lips, by praying for us; to give us their 
 tongue, by requesting others to be charitable to us; to 
 give us their memory, by remembering us constantly 
 * MUUer, pp. 44, 46. 
 
OTHER METHODS OF liELlEF. 89 
 
 in their devotions; to give us their body, by offering 
 up for us to the Almighty all its labors, fatigues, and 
 penances. ' ' * 
 
 In this extract the theory of the Roman Church 
 stands out distinctly. She holds that there are many 
 pious acts which we can do for others that neverthe- 
 less we are not obligated to do, and the neglect of 
 them would not be sin. If we do them, we acquire a 
 moral credit or merit for them. They have a spiritual 
 value or worth with God, and we may apply that 
 value or worth to whom we will, just as we make any 
 other donation. If we apply it to a soul in purgatory, 
 it goes so far to pay his debts to divine justice and 
 hasten his release; as when we contribute to pay off 
 the claims on some poor debtor, and so release him 
 from legal suits and imprisonments. Any fatigue, 
 pain, sorrow, fasting, self-denial, or sacrifice of any 
 kind, thus voluntarily and unnecessarily borne for the 
 benefit of a soul in purgatory, is, according to its pious 
 valuation, a relief to that soul, bringing it so much 
 nearer to its exit from purgatory. 
 
 A peculiar method of relief is suggested by an inci- 
 dent related by Father Clement Hoffbauer of Vienna, 
 who died in 1820. He had administered the last rites 
 to a dying nobleman. Soon after, the deceased ap- 
 peared in a haggard, ragged, and pitiable condition to 
 his wife, begging for relief. Father Hoffbauer, her 
 confessor, advised her to clothe and comfort some poor 
 beggar, which she did. In brief time her husband 
 
 * MUlIer, p. 49. 
 
go PURGATORY. 
 
 reappeared in white garments and with much joy, 
 thanking her for comforting him. * 
 
 If one is heir to the property of a deceased person, 
 the duty is binding and urgent to use some of it at 
 once for the relief of the departed. "But if the de- 
 ceased in their last will have left legacies for holy 
 masses or other pious works to be offered up for the 
 repose of their souls, then it is not only a duty of char- 
 ity, but an obligation of the strictest justice for their 
 heirs and executors to execute their will most punctu- 
 ally and without delay, "f 
 
 All discomforts, pains, sufferings, and tortures, vol- 
 untarily assumed and properly borne, we have said, 
 are works of merit, by which one gains credit or dues 
 from God. These claims may be relinquished or 
 turned in favor of souls in purgatory. In this way 
 self-imposed trials, as fasting, bodily inflictions, and 
 pilgrimages, may be borne to relieve some friend in the 
 sorrows of the middle state. The following is a case 
 in point. Miiller says it took place in Dole, in France. 
 
 "One day, in the year 1629, long after her death, 
 Leonarda Colin, niece to Hugueta Roy, appeared to 
 her, and spoke as follows: ' I am saved by the mercy 
 of God. It is now seventeen years since I was struck 
 down by a sudden death. My poor soul was in mortal 
 sin, but, thanks to Mary, whose devoted servant I had 
 ever striven to be, I obtained grace in the last extrem- 
 ity to make an act of perfect contrition, and thus I am 
 rescued from hell fire, but by no means from purga- 
 
 « Miiller, pp. 73, 74. t Ibid., pp. 89, 90. 
 
OTHER METHODS OF RELIEF. 91 
 
 tory. My sufferings in those purifying flames are be- 
 yond description. At last Almighty God has permit- 
 ted my guardian angel to conduct me to you, in order 
 that you may make three pilgrimages to three churches 
 of our Blessed Lady in Burgundy. Upon the fulfil- 
 ment of said condition my deliverance from purgatory 
 is promised. ' " Of course the pilgrimages were per- 
 formed, and l/conarda was rescued. * 
 
 There is yet another method of relief that must not 
 fail of notice; where one formally makes over all his 
 meritorious works for the benefit of souls in purgatory. 
 A paper is drawn for signature, with blanks to be 
 filled, as a kind of spiritual quit-claim. A part of it 
 runs thus: 
 
 ' ' I sincerely promise, and I here offer to thee my 
 own free vow, to wish the liberation from purgatory 
 of all those souls whose deliverance the Blessed Virgin 
 may wish; and to that effect I place in the hands of 
 this most pious Mother all my satisfactory works, and 
 those of others applied to me, in life or death, and 
 
 after my passage to eternity And if, perhaps, 
 
 my works of satisfaction be not sufficient to pay the 
 debts both of those souls which the Blessed Virgin 
 wishes to liberate, and also my own for my sins, which 
 I heartily detest and abhor, I offer myself, O Lord, if 
 it please thee, to make up by my sufferings in purga- 
 tory what is wanting for their release, committing 
 myself into the arms of thy mercy and those of my 
 most sweet Mother, "f 
 
 * Muller, pp. 133, 134. t Ibid., pp. 171, 172. 
 
 9 
 
92 PURGATORY. 
 
 When St. Gertrude had done this and impoverished 
 herself, the Lord appeared to her, and said, 
 
 ' ' My daughter, your charity towards the souls in 
 purgatory has pleased me so much that, in reward for 
 it, I have forgiven all the temporal punishment due to 
 your sins. Moreover, I, who have promised a hun- 
 dred-fold for every good action, intend to reward you 
 more liberally than you can conceive, by increasing 
 your glory and happiness in heaven. Finally, I will 
 order all those souls whom you have delivered from 
 purgatory to come and be present at your death, and 
 to accompany your soul, with hymns of praise and 
 .thanksgiving, to paradise. ' ' * 
 
 With this papal theory of suffering in purgatory, 
 and with all these varied means of relief coupled with 
 this theory, there is an eloquence and a force in ap- 
 peals to the living like this of Miiller: 
 
 ' ' There is a lavish expense for the funeral. A 
 hundred dollars are spent, where the means of the 
 family hardly justify the half of it. Where there is 
 more wealth, sometimes five hundred or a thousand 
 dollars, and even more, are expended upon the poor 
 dead body. But let me ask you, what is done for the 
 poor living soul? Perhaps the poor soul is suffering 
 the most frightful tortures in purgatory, while the 
 lifeless body is laid out in state, and borne pompously 
 
 to the graveyard What joy has the departed 
 
 and perhaps suffering soul in the fine music of the 
 choir, even should the choir be composed of the best 
 
 * Miiller, pp. 175-177. 
 
OTHER METHODS OF RELIEF. 93 
 
 opera singers in the country ? What consolation does 
 the poor suffering soul feel in the superb coffin, in the 
 splendid funeral ? Poor, unhappy souls ! Those that 
 loved you in life might help you, and do not for want 
 of knowledge or of faith. ' ' * 
 
 But many, through human frailty, will neglect to 
 provide in due season for themselves, as about to enter 
 the other world, and the frailty of human friendships 
 will perhaps leave them to neglect when they are 
 gone. There is much worldly wisdom, therefore, in 
 providing against these failures and losses by a spirit- 
 ual corporation or moral and religious insurance com- 
 pany. This the Romanists have wisely and kindly 
 done by establishing what they call The Arch-Confra- 
 ternity, for the Relief of the Souls in Purgatory. It 
 was founded in 1840 at Rome by the Redemptorist 
 Fathers, in the church of S. Maria Monterone. Greg- 
 ory XVI. approbated it, and he and Pius IX. have 
 endowed it with the treasures of the church to the ex- 
 tent of thirty-five plenary and over two hundred par- 
 tial indulgences. Among the twenty-three advantages 
 of membership, fully set forth, the twenty-first may be 
 quoted as illustrative: 
 
 "Count, if you can, how many thousands of masses 
 are offered up for the deceased members of the Arch- 
 Confraternity. How many millions of prayers, of good 
 works, of indulgences, especially those attached to the 
 privileged altars and to the heroic act of charity above 
 mentioned, which is certainly made by hundreds of 
 
 * Miiller, pp. 16-18. 
 
94 PURGATORY. 
 
 members of the Confraternity. Oh, what great conso- 
 lation and comfort for you in the hour of death, and 
 far more in purgatory, to have been a member of this 
 Arch-Confraternity ! How soon must the souls of its 
 deceased members be delivered from their place of tor- 
 ment ! Ah, when millions of tongues cry every day 
 to our lyord, ' Have mercy, O I^ord, have mercy on 
 the souls of our departed brethren !' his justice will be 
 put to the blush, as it were, and give way to his mer- 
 cy, either by releasing them at once from their prison 
 of fire, or by shortening the duration and diminishing 
 the intensity of their sufferings. ' ' * 
 
 * MuUer's Charity for the Souls in Purgatory, p. 182. 
 
CASES OF RESCUE AND ESCAPE. 95 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CASES OF RESCUE AND ESCAPE FROM PURGA- 
 TORY. 
 
 Of course it must be very gratifying to friends to 
 know that their eflforts to deliver souls from that abode 
 of suffering have been successful. Moreover, this 
 knowledge of success is indispensable to confirm the 
 popular mind in the belief of the doctrine, and to in- 
 crease the canonical ways and means to deliver those 
 imprisoned debtors to justice. If cases of confessed 
 deliverance could not be cited, there would be a great 
 defect and deficiency in this wonderful scheme of Ro- 
 manism, that makes so much of the middle state of 
 souls. There would be one little area left on the sur- 
 face of human nature that Romanism, in its marvel- 
 lous swaying of the soul, had failed to touch. Hence 
 there are cases of escape, secured by specific means, 
 that have come to the knowledge of the benefactors 
 by revelation or vision or apparition. 
 
 For a long time Sister Catherine of Paluzzi offered 
 prayers and other means for the release of the soul of 
 her father, and supposed she had been successful. But 
 one day, led in spirit to purgatory, she made the sor- 
 rowful discovery of her mistake. Then she cast her- 
 self at the feet of her Divine Master, saying, ' ' Charge 
 me, O Ivord, with my father's indebtedness to thy jus- 
 
96 PURGATORY. 
 
 tice. In expiation of it I am ready to take upon my- 
 self all the afflictions thou art pleased to impose on 
 me." This act of heroic charity was accepted, and 
 the daughter had the unspeakable joy of assurance 
 that her father was released. Yet her own substituted 
 and solicited sufferings were fearful. * 
 
 After St. Vincent Ferrer had said the thirtieth 
 mass for the repose of the soul of his sister Frances, 
 it was revealed to him that, but for his efforts, she 
 would have suffered in purgatory to the end of the 
 world, t 
 
 St. Malachy, the Irish bishop, had a more trying, 
 extended struggle for the release of his sister, though 
 with a success well known at last. She had led a 
 worldly life, but he followed her death with prayers 
 and masses till he supposed she had joined the blessed. 
 Then he seemed to see her standing outside the grave- 
 yard, pale and sad, and famished with hunger, as she 
 told him. He understood her to refer to the mass, 
 food for the soul, and so continued that sacrifice for a 
 time. Then he saw her again, near the church door, 
 but unable to enter. He continued his offerings, and 
 again saw her within, but at a distance from the altar. 
 At length, while he stood by the altar, after many 
 and long prayers and offerings for her, she drew near, 
 accompanied by a multitude of blessed spirits; and 
 thanking him for his so tender and persevering labors 
 in her behalf, she departed for glory. % 
 
 So St. Gregory the Great said mass for thirty days 
 * MUller, p. i8. t Ibid., p. 24. J Ibid., pp. 52-54- 
 
CASES OF RESCUE AND ESCAPE. 97 
 
 for a deceased monk, who appeared to Gregory on 
 the thirtieth day, and told him that he was all right 
 now. * 
 
 The only son of a pious widow in Bologna was 
 murdered, and the murderer came into the hands of 
 the poor mother. Instead of bringing him to punish- 
 ment, she thought it would be more Christlike to for- 
 give him, and so pardoned him, and adopted him into 
 the place of the murdered son. This so pleased God 
 ■that he at once released her son from purgatory. 
 "The happy son then appeared to his mother in a 
 glorified state, at the very moment when he was en- 
 tering heaven. ' ' f 
 
 Miiller quotes another striking case in these words: 
 "When the priest came to the moment of consecra- 
 tion, he took the sacred host in his hands, aiid said, 
 ' O holy and eternal Father, let us make an exchange. 
 Thou hast the soul of my friend, who is in purgatory, 
 and I have the body of thy Son, who is in my hands. 
 Well, do thou deliver my friend, and I offer thee thy 
 Son, with all the merits of his death and passion.' 
 In fact, at the moment of the elevation, he saw the 
 soul of his friend rising to heaven, all radiant with 
 glory, "t 
 
 A woman of public scandal, banished from an 
 Italian town, died in neglect, and was denied a Chris- 
 tian burial. No one presumed to pray for her, assu- 
 m.ing that she was lost. After four years she appeared 
 to Sister Catherine of St. Augustine, begging a few 
 
 , * Muller, p. 56. t Ibid., 78-80. } Ibid., p. 57. 
 
98 PURGATORY. 
 
 prayers and masses that she might be passed along 
 towards heaven. The request was granted, and in a 
 few days she appeared again, saying, ' ' I thank you, 
 sister, for your kind service. I am now on my way to 
 heaven, there to praise the mercies of God and Mary, 
 there to pray for you. ' ' * 
 
 * Muller, pp. 130-133. 
 
AID FROM SOULS IN PURGATOR V. 99 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 AID FROM SOULS IN PURGATORY. 
 
 The incident of the Parisian servant-girl, else- 
 where narrated, opens up to us a separate line of 
 facts and thoughts on our general subject. She, 
 being out of a place for service, was led to a per- 
 manent home, and into all the comforts and priv- 
 ileges of adoption, by the young man whose soul 
 she, by prayers and masses, had delivered from pur- 
 gatory. 
 
 It seems that such aid from those redeemed is no 
 unusiial thing, and in their gratitude they are fre- 
 quently returning favors on their benefactors. 
 
 "It is true," says Miiller, quoting from St. Al- 
 phonsus, ' ' they are unable to pray or merit anything 
 for themselves, yet when they pray for others they are 
 heard by God. The reason is simply this: these souls 
 are friends of God; they are spouses of Jesus Christ, 
 to whom gratitude is as agreeable as ingratitude is 
 hateful. How, then, could God turn a deaf ear to the 
 prayers of gratitude sent up by the suffering souls? 
 God hears such intercessions willingly. Nay, he not 
 unfrequently allows the poor souls to assist their bene- 
 factors in a most striking manner, not merely in tri- 
 fling matters, but in great necessities of body and 
 
 soul." 
 
 10 
 
100 PURGATORY. 
 
 Then follow many illustrative cases, taken from 
 St. Gregory the Great and others. "Whenever St. 
 Catharine of Bologna wished to obtain a certain favor, 
 she had recourse to the souls in purgatory, ' and her 
 prayers were immediately heard." Indeed, she was 
 often successful with them when prayers directed to 
 the saints in glory failed of answers. 
 
 In 1649 a bookseller of Cologne, one Freyssen, had 
 a very sick child, of whom the doctors despaired. 
 The anxious father went to a church altar and vowed 
 to distribute, gratuitously, one hundred copies of a 
 little work on souls in purgatory, written by Father 
 Montfort, trusting that souls there would thus be 
 moved to pray for his child. Nor was he disap- 
 pointed; for, returning home, he "found his child 
 considerably better, and the day after it was perfectly 
 cured." Three weeks later, his wife being danger- 
 ously ill, he promised at the altar to double the distri- 
 bution of the books if she should recover. ' ' On his 
 way home he met one of his servants, who brought 
 him the good news that his wife was out of danger. ' ' 
 The father and husband must have had the double 
 comfort of both restored health in his family and an 
 increase in his book business. For two hundred 
 books, given away in those circumstances, with rea- 
 sons assigned and results stated, must have been a 
 splendid advertisement of his goods as well as of his 
 doctrines. 
 
 A certain pious knight was accustomed to pray for 
 the poor souls in purgatory Vv'henever he passed 
 
AID FROM SOULS IN PURGATOR Y. loi 
 
 through a graveyard. On one occasion he was beset 
 suddenly and dangerously by certain enemies, so that 
 he feared for his life and fled. Coming to a grave- 
 yard, he stopped and knelt and prayed as usual for 
 those suffering souls. When his enemies came up 
 they saw him surrounded by a host of armed men. 
 Then it was their turn to be frightened and flee, 
 which they did, and the knight escaped. To which 
 recital Miiller adds: "We may most piously be- 
 lieve that these armed men were the souls of those 
 faithful departed for whom the good knight had 
 prayed, and whom our Lord had permitted to as- 
 sume those forms to protect their benefactor in his 
 danger. ' ' 
 
 The same author gives a case even more interest- 
 ing, illustrative of the fact that the souls in purgatory 
 do remember gratefully and helpfully those who have 
 prayed for them. The increased interest lies in the 
 fact that the one aided is no less a personage than his 
 late Holiness Pius IX. The facts, as stated by Miil- 
 ler, are these: 
 
 The Pope appointed to the Italian Episcopate an 
 humble and retiring monk in Tuscany. He was 
 greatly unwilling to take the ofiice, and among other 
 objections said he had a most miserable memory. To 
 this Pius IX. replied, ' ' At one time of my life I also 
 was threatened with the loss of my memory. But I 
 found a remedy, used it, and it has not failed me. 
 For the special intention of preserving this faculty of 
 memory, I have said every day a De Profundis for the 
 
102 PURGATORY. 
 
 souls in purgatory. ' ' We share with Miiller the sur- 
 prise that he thus expresses in view of this statement 
 of His Holiness : " It is a new revelation that our 
 Holy Father, Pius IX. , was ever threatened with the 
 loss of memory. Of all his faculties of mind, there is 
 not one that excites such general astonishment as his 
 wonderful memory. It seems as if he never forgets 
 anything he once hears. Now the souls in purgatory 
 obtained this blessing for the Holy Father in reward 
 for the prayers he was accustomed to offer up to God 
 for their deliverance. ' ' * 
 
 We confess to an astonishment beyond what Miil- 
 ler here shows over the wonderful aid from the under 
 world to the mental powers of His Holiness. Of 
 course, the methods by which disembodied and in- 
 carcerated spirits could approach and develop and 
 strengthen his faculty of memory must be mysterious. 
 The laws of psychology and mental processes are not 
 well enough understood to make the statement a sub- 
 ject of rational investigation and metaphysical analy- 
 sis. The offered fact must be taken on faith, just as 
 we receive so much concerning the incomprehensible, 
 unknown, and infinite. If the statement is received 
 with some tinge of incredulity, that must be par- 
 doned to the weakness of an inquisitive Protestant 
 mind. 
 
 It is interesting to note that this idea of aid to 
 mortals from the departed is nothing new to Roman- 
 ism. In the Hindoo Rig Veda, a collection of a thou- 
 
 * Miiller, pp. 101-116. 
 
AID FROM SOULS IN' PURGATORY. 103 
 
 sand hymns, ante-dating Christianity by eight cen- 
 turies, we find this passage : ' ' On the path of the 
 fathers there are eight and eighty thousand patri- 
 archal men, who turn back to the earthly life to sow 
 righteousness and to succor it. " * 
 
 * Oriental Religions. By Samuel Johnson. India. P. 132. 
 
104 PURGATORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE INTRODUCTION OF THE DOCTRINE INTO THE 
 CHURCH. 
 
 Ali, additions to the Christian systems, and all 
 improvements, so called, of Christian theology, have 
 been from small beginnings, and, but for consequences, 
 we should call them insignificant. With his charac- 
 teristic unfairness towards a revealed religion, the infi- 
 del Hume throws a sneer at the iota controversy, over- 
 looking the fact that the question of deity or no deity 
 there turned on an iota. In the investigation before 
 us it will be found that the defection from the line of 
 true faith is so nearly imperceptible, and to the easy 
 mind so unappreciable, as to have the relations of the 
 asymptote to the curve. 
 
 We have gone so far in this historical disquisition 
 as to find a middle place for souls departed that is local 
 and architectural — architectural, if that term may be 
 applied to hall and cave, hill, cliff and valley, courts, 
 avenues, lakes, lawns, and corridors. Here we have 
 found the souls of the deceased, with bodies suited to 
 a place whose material and atmosphere, and heat and 
 cold, and total constitution and laws, are peculiarly its 
 own. These souls are burdened with unfinished pro- 
 bations, whose completion they are incessantly hasten- 
 ing with agonies and anxieties and expectations. To 
 
ITS INTRODUCTION. 105 
 
 this end no form of toil or endurance is wanting that 
 can be expiatory and punitive and purifying. All 
 forms of guilt and every grade of each are here, wear- 
 ing off painfully and with the months or ages its de- 
 merit. In this vast and awful crucible of the moral 
 universe souls are constantly coming and going in 
 crowded and disorderly procession. It is as if some 
 hundred-gated Thebes, with radiating railways at each 
 portal, should be constantly filling and emptying itself 
 with the populace of an empire. 
 
 To stay the ingress of this multitude the church, 
 Roman and oecumenical, is bending her ritual and 
 ceremonial energies; and to hasten the egress of the 
 multitude within, this church belts the whole habita- 
 ble globe, day and night, with prayer and mass, vigil 
 and fasting, penance and pain, self-sacrifice, toils, and 
 tears. 
 
 The firm belief of these millions in such a place, 
 with such suffering inmates, and in the ability and 
 duty of the living to help and hasten them out, is 
 equalled only by the sincerity, ardor, and painful de- 
 votion with which they struggle to deliver them. For, 
 whatever may be thought of the inner views on this 
 subject of the more advanced minds in the papal com- 
 munion, very firm and devout convictions on it must 
 be conceded to the great multitude in that commu- 
 nion. 
 
 How such a doctrine could gain a place in the the- 
 ology of the church, and how it could attain to such 
 prominence and power in one section of the church, is 
 
io6 PURGATORY. 
 
 another branch in our investigations, to which we now 
 turn. 
 
 The introduction into the church of this doctrine 
 and practice was from small beginnings and by slow 
 growth. This wonderful departure from the simplicity 
 and truth of an apostolic Christianity finds its begin- 
 ning in an anterior deflection from the true line. As 
 early as A. D. 150 regeneration was confounded with 
 baptism. A certain magical power was supposed to 
 pertain to the baptismal rite, and forgiveness of all 
 sins preceding the act was supposed to accompany it. 
 A century later this was common doctrine. Indeed, it 
 was then supposed that forgiveness through the merits 
 of Christ could be obtained only for those sins commit- 
 ted before baptism. Hence many, as Constantine, de- 
 ferred the rite as long as they could presume on life. 
 Then, as to sins committed after baptism, it was sup- 
 posed that they were pardoned in consideration of pen- 
 ance and good works. So Cyprian taught: "The 
 forgiveness of sin having been once obtained at bap- 
 tism, we earn, by constant exercise in well-doing, 
 which is as it were a repetition of baptism, the divine 
 forgiveness anew. ' ' 
 
 The next step was easily gained — that if one satis- 
 fies not for sins committed after baptism by alms, good 
 works, and penance, he must do penance for them 
 after death in an intermediate state ; for this Jewish, 
 Magian, and Platonic notion of such a state had al- 
 ready gained disciples among the Christian teachers. 
 Miiller, already frequently quoted as one of the latest 
 
ITS INTRODUCTION. 107 
 
 Roman-catliolic authorities, says in his Charity for the 
 Souls in Purgatory, "The belief in this doctrine is 
 much more ancient than Christianity itself. ' ' * And 
 Neander thinks it probable that Cyprian is the first to 
 promulgate this idea in the church, and that he does 
 it in these words of his fifty-second epistle : ' ' Missum 
 in carcerem non exire inde, donee solvat novissimum 
 quadrantem, pro peccatis longo dolore cruciatum emun- 
 dari, et purgari diu igne."t This wants but little if 
 anything of the theory of the ' ' ignis purgatorius ' ' of 
 the Western Church so fully developed afterwards. 
 
 Whether Cyprian stood sponsor at the baptism into 
 the Christian Church of this notion of a purifying fire 
 after death may admit of a question. It is, however, 
 certain that this was the fruitful germ of that vast 
 Romish aftergrowth, the purgatorial system, and that 
 its incipient development in the church first appeared 
 in the times of Cyprian, whose martyr-death occurred 
 A. D. 258. If we pass along to the times of Pelagius 
 and Augustine, early in the fifth century, we shall 
 find that the doctrine under inquiry had assumed both 
 a definite and a warmly - disputed position in the 
 church. Its tendencies and fruits began so to show 
 themselves that Pelagius opposed the doctrine as inju- 
 rious to good morals. While he is full of sorrow for 
 the moral degradation of the masses of nominal Chris- 
 tians in his day, he makes special attack on this pur- 
 gatorial system as aiding to this sad degeneracy. 
 
 * Miiller, p. 12. 
 
 t Church History, 1:654. Torrey's Trans, 
 
io8 PURGATORY. 
 
 Many in the church led a vicious life, assuming that 
 an orthodox faith and a formal use of the rites of the 
 church made their final salvation sure, though they 
 expected temporary punishments for their sins in the 
 future state of purgation. In defence of this comfort- 
 ing and corrupting expectation they pleaded the decla- 
 ration of Paul that "the fire shall try every man's 
 work," etc. 
 
 But this passage, Pelagius contended, taught the 
 punishments of hell, which were unending. And to 
 combat the same error he maintained with much stren- 
 uousness the eternity of future punishments. Hence, 
 when he was summoned before the Synod of Diospolis 
 in Palestine, in the year 415, he was accused of stating 
 and holding this position: "In die judicii iniquis et 
 peccatoribus non esse parcenduni ; sed seternis eos ig- 
 nibus esse exurendos. ' ' * 
 
 Augustine, however, took an opposite view, though 
 with much carefulness of statement. He thought it 
 supposable that the purifying trials of God's children 
 might be continued after death for a longer or shorter 
 time, as need might be, and in a purgating fire. His 
 language on the continuance of punishment hereafter 
 is: "Tale aliquid etiam post hahc vitam fieri incredi- 
 bile non est, et utrum ita sit, quseri potest. Et aut 
 inveniri aut latere, nonnullos fideles per ignem purga- 
 torium, quanto magis minusve bona pereuntia dilexe- 
 runt, quanto tardius citiusve salvari."t 
 
 On the other hand, the Council of Carthage, A. D. 
 
 * Neander, II. p. 584, note i. t Hagenba^h's His. Doc, I. p. 382. 
 
ITS INTRODUCTION. 109 
 
 418, condemned the doctrine of an intermediate state, 
 and on the ground that no third state can be conceived 
 of between heaven and hell. 
 
 It was reserved for Gregory the Great to make this 
 doctrine of Purgatory a necessary article of faith. He 
 set it forth distinctly as a dogma of the church that 
 must be received by all the faithful. " De quibusdam 
 levibus culpis esse ante judicium purgatorius ignis 
 credendus est. ' ' * 
 
 He also first taught in the Christian Church that 
 masses and prayers for the dead avail to deliver them 
 from purgatory. And if he did not clearly develop 
 the plan of pecuniary commutation for sins, he more 
 than any other one prepared its bold outlines, and led 
 the way to that unblushing sale of indulgences which 
 culminated in L,eo X. and Tetzel. 
 
 But departures from a pure faith in times long an- 
 terior to Gregory prepared him for this bold advance. 
 In the days of Augustine and Chrysostom, Neander 
 tells us that there was ' ' the delusive persuasion that 
 any man, no matter what his life, could make sure of 
 being delivered from divine punishment, and intro- 
 duced into the community of the blessed, by the charm 
 of outward baptism ; which mistaken confidence in the 
 magical cleansing and atoning efficacy of baptism en- 
 couraged numbers to persevere to the last in the indul- 
 gence of their lusts, hoping to avail themselves of this 
 as a final remedy. ' ' And he adds that the same delu- 
 sion prevailed "respecting the sanctifying effects of 
 * Dialogues, IV. p. 39. See also Hagenbach, I. pp. 382. 
 
no PURGATORY. 
 
 the communion, " "of pilgrimages to spots consecrated 
 by religious remembrances, of donations to cburches, 
 of almsgiving, especially to ecclesiastics and monks. ' ' * 
 The idea had also obtained that the sacrament of 
 the Supper in its celebration was not simply commem- 
 orative, but also sacrificial, and as such eificacious. 
 The officiating priest was supposed to act, after some 
 manner, the part of a mediator between God and man, 
 and Christ was supposed to become so connected with 
 the elements, after their consecration, as to impart an 
 atoning efficiency to the sacrament. And at this ser- 
 vice, observed with this notion of its efficacy, interces- 
 sions were made for the living and the dead, and a 
 peculiar power was supposed to attach to these pray- 
 ers. Special pains were taken by friends to call up 
 the names of the departed, on the anniversaries of 
 their death, during this sacrament, that so its efficacy 
 through special prayers might turn to the repose of 
 their souls. So Cyrill of Jerusalem taught: "As when 
 the emperor condemns one to banishment ; but if his 
 kinsmen present a chaplet in his behalf, the emperor 
 is induced to show him favor ; so we present to God, 
 in behalf of those who are asleep, though they were 
 sinners, the Christ who was offered for our sins. ' ' And 
 so even Augustine: "Oblationes pro spiritibus dor- 
 mientium, quas vere aliquid adjuvare credendum 
 
 est."t 
 
 Moreover, the patrons of churches and donors to 
 churches, with their gifts, were publicly announced 
 * Neander, II. p. 224. t I^id-> H- PP- 33'. 33^. 
 
ITS INTR OD UCTlOJSr. 1 1 1 
 
 during this celebration, and public prayers offered for 
 them. And all this, in connection with the sacrificial 
 character of the Supper, was supposed to have a kind 
 of magical effect for the spiritual good of these persons. 
 
 In this form, substantially, lay the material for this 
 huge system of purgatory when Gregory the Great 
 came to be a leading mind in the church. A little 
 reflection will show that all the elements necessary for 
 the system had been developed. There was the inter- 
 mediate state and the purifying fire in it, the sacrificial 
 and vicarious efiicacy of the mass, the virtue of pray- 
 ers connected with it for the repose of the dead, and 
 the atoning power of alms and oblations and works of 
 penance. These materials came drifting along the 
 stream of the centuries to the times of Gregory. But 
 they were not organized; they were disjecta membra. 
 He had penetration enough to see that, united and de- 
 veloped, they would constitute a mighty instrumental- 
 ity. He gathered and organized these elements into a 
 system. Under his shaping hand arose, in its principal 
 outlines, this vast purgatorial fabric. As none before 
 him gave it definiteness of form, so none after him 
 varied it in its essential features. . 
 
 We turn, then, to a sketch of the system as it lay In 
 his mind and was matured in his times and under his 
 influence. 
 
 Purgatory. 1 1 
 
112 PURGATORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 GREGORY THE GREAT SHAPES THE THEORY OF 
 PURGATORY. 
 
 Gregory, it will be remembered, received the 
 highest honors of the Church in the chair of St. Peter 
 A. D. 590, and died A. D. 604. He was strongly in- 
 clined to believe in a magical or supernatural efficacy 
 in the sacraments and in the priestly offices of the 
 church. In the celebration of the communion he saw 
 the passion of our Lord virtually repeated. His words 
 are: " Christus iterum in hoc mysterio sacrse oblatio- 
 nis immolatur. ' ' The act of the priest at this service 
 was, by virtue of his office, of a sacrificial character. 
 It was the atoning offering of Christ repeated. And 
 so, as often as the mass was celebrated, some at least 
 of the power of the first and real sacrifice of our L,ord 
 pertained to the act, and passed over to the benefit of 
 those for whom the act was performed. Yet it should 
 be added, as due to his full view, that he insisted on 
 contrition and the entire devotion of ourselves to God 
 when we thus receive this wonderful benefit from the 
 mass. In his fourth dialogue he thus states his views 
 on this point: " Necesse est, ut cum hsec agimus, nos- 
 metipsos Deo in cordis contritione mactemus, quia 
 qui passionis dominicae mysteria celebramus, debemus 
 imitari quod agimus. Tunc ergo vere pro nobis hos- 
 
POPE GRE GORY'S FOLIC Y. 113 
 
 tia erit Deo, cum nos ipsos hostiam fecerimus. ' ' And 
 as this supernatural power in the sacrifice of the mass 
 could be applied for the benefit of any for whom it 
 was celebrated, he conceived that its efficacy could 
 be realized by both the absent and the dead. The 
 notion of a preceding age had located many of the 
 departed in a purgatorial state, till sins yet adhering 
 should be cast off and due penance suffered. For the 
 more speedy release of such, he taught that this 
 priestly iteration of the sacrifice of Christ in the mass 
 could be made. This position he fortified by actual 
 testimony from the spirit world in those legends and 
 stories with which his fourth dialogue abounds. Illus- 
 trations of these are there found in the stories of Pascha- 
 sius, St. Severin, St. Malachy, St. Bernard, and others, 
 as already quoted. In the same dialogue he states the 
 position dogmatically in such forms as these : "Much 
 profits souls even after death the sacred oblation of the 
 life-giving Sacrifice, so that the souls of the dead them- 
 selves sometimes seem to ask for it." " They who are 
 not weighed down by grievous sins are profited after 
 death by burial in the church, because that their rela- 
 tives, whenever they come to the same sacred places, 
 remember their own kin whose tombs they behold, 
 and pray to the lyord for them." This legendary evi- 
 dence had wonderful power in an age so superstitious. 
 Its misty, intangible, mysterious character magni- 
 fied it. 
 
 The position thus taken, fortified, and credited, 
 that the oblation of the mass thus availed for the dead. 
 
114 PURGATORY. 
 
 the priests were of course besought earnestly, and with 
 various and often very valuable presents, to say mass 
 for the repose of the souls of dear friends departed. 
 And as the efScacy pertained wholly to the priestly 
 part of the service, the congregation gradually fell oflF 
 from attendance. Hence sprung up the ' ' missse pri- 
 vatse," though under protest, when at the offering of 
 the mass the priest alone was present. And thus came 
 there into an accredited place in the church that broad 
 portion of the purgatorial system that pertains to the 
 efficacy of masses and prayers for the dead. 
 
 It is next in order to note the introduction and es- 
 tablishment of another important branch of the system, 
 the Theory of Indulgences, whose practical workings 
 we have already outlined. In this part of the process 
 of constructing the system of purgatory and introdu- 
 cing it into the church, the cooperation and master- 
 hand of Gregory are not so obvious, though the germ 
 of the indulgence theory appeared before his pontifi- 
 cate, and its maturity soon after. 
 
 Anterior to the introduction of Christianity among 
 them, the barbarous Germanic tribes, as well as those 
 of England, had the civil practice of compounding 
 crimes for money. A pecuniary mulct exempted from 
 punishment for murder or any smaller crime. The 
 painfully compromising and heathenizing spirit and 
 policy of Christian missions, by which pagan notions, 
 rites, and habits, were introduced into the church, 
 were manifested even as early as the fourth and fifth 
 centuries. 
 
POPE GREGORY'S POLICY. 115 
 
 This civil custom of pecuniary redemption from 
 punishment the early Christians among those nations 
 incorporated into their regulations of church penance; 
 and so, instead of the usual and prescribed satisfaction 
 for sins, the delinquent was absolved for a fine. So 
 Boniface, the missionary, says in a fragment of one of 
 his sermons still extant, ' ' We address you, not as the 
 messengers of one from the obligation of obedience to 
 whom you can purchase exemption with money." 
 ' ' Doubtless an allusion, ' ' says Neander in a note on 
 the passage, ' ' to the compositiones customary among 
 the German tribes. Out of accommodation to this cus- 
 tom, against which Boniface seems here to be guard- 
 ing himself, grew the indulgences. ' ' * 
 
 How early this custom obtained is not evident. Of 
 penitential certificates thus granted the Second Coun- 
 cil of Chalons, A. D. 813, thus speaks: " Quorum sunt 
 certi errores, incerti auctores. ' ' Certain it is that the 
 custom prevailed in the fifth century ; for Neander 
 says, ' ' Even a church father of the fifth century, per- 
 haps Maximus of Turin, felt constrained to speak ear- 
 nestly against the abuse of indulgences practised by 
 the Arian ecclesiastics among the barbarian tribes, and 
 which had sprung out of accommodation to these pre- 
 vailing customs, t 
 
 * Neander, III. p. 52. 
 
 + " Praepositi eorum, quos presbyteros vocaiit, dicuntur lale habere 
 mandatum, ut si quis laicorum fassus fuerit crimen admissum, non dicat 
 illi, age poenitentiatn ; defle peccata ; sed dicat, pro hoc crimine da tantum 
 mihi, et indulgetur tibi. Vanus plane et insipieris presbyter, qui cum ille 
 praedam accipiat, putat, quod peccatum Christus indulgeat. Nescit, quid 
 
 II* 
 
ii6 PURGATORY. 
 
 Another species of commutation for ecclesiastical 
 penance came into use in the Anglo-Saxon Church, 
 showing a like tendency to the completion of the sys- 
 tem of indulgences. 
 
 Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury in the sev- 
 enth century, prepared a penitential system for the 
 English Church. The principal punishment enjoined 
 in it was fasting. And the time ranged, according to 
 the sin, from ten days to one, iive, seven years, and, 
 in extreme cases, even to the remnant of life. But it 
 was found too severe a system. Anglo-Saxon, not to 
 say human nature, would not endure it. Then arose 
 the species of commutation referred to. One advanced 
 in life, or apparently nigh to death, yet owing a long 
 canonical penance, was allowed to commute it in do- 
 nations to the church, or he might ' ' build bridges over 
 deep waters and over foul ways, " " help poor men, 
 widows, and step-children and foreigners, free his own 
 slaves, and redeem to freedom the slaves of other men, 
 feed the needy, and clothe, house and fire, bathe and 
 bed them."* 
 
 This idea developed into "a perfect system, which 
 regulated with precision, according to the rank and 
 wealth of the penitent, the price at which the fast of 
 a day, a month, or a year, might be lawfully re- 
 deemed. ' ' This was for the sick and infirm. But it 
 
 salvator solet peccata donare et pro delicto quxrere pretiosas lacrimas, 
 lion pecunias numerosas."* 
 * Thorpe, II. p. 282. 
 
 * Neander, III. p. 137. 
 
POPE GREGORY'S POLICY. 117 
 
 did not work equally well for rich and poor. Egbert, 
 therefore, Archbishop of York, modified the plan, and 
 ' ' intrusted it to the prudence of the confessor to en- 
 join, when the penitent pleaded infirmity or inability, a 
 real equivalent in prayers or money. Thus, ' ' says the 
 Catholic I/ingard, "a- new system of canonical arith- 
 metic was established; and the fast of a day was taxed 
 at the rate of a silver penny for the rich, or of fifty 
 pater-nosters for the illiterate, and fifty psalms for the 
 learned. ' ' 
 
 With this conformity to civil usage and the com- 
 mutation of church penance to a fine, there at length 
 grew up a confounding of priestly absolution with the 
 divine forgiveness of sins. Closely on this came the 
 fatal delusion, so pregnant with evils for a thousand 
 years following, that immunity from punishment for 
 sins here and in purgatory could be purchased of the 
 priest. Not only so, but the sentiment prevailed that 
 almsgiving, repetition of psalms and prayers, various 
 sufferings and good works, when procured to be done 
 through others, had an adequate merit for the absolu- 
 tion of him procuring them. For this reason men 
 deep in sin sought to be enrolled as members of mon- 
 asteries celebrated for their piety, that they might share 
 in the benefit of the good works done there. Individ- 
 uals hired others to recite prayers and psalms for them. 
 They went through suffering by proxy, engaging mer- 
 cenary penitents to endure the austerities appointed to 
 themselves. The rich thane or noble would put his 
 
 * Lingard's Anglo-Saxon Church, I. pp. 334-337. 
 
ii8 PURGATORY. 
 
 entire body of tenantry under penitential regimen, and 
 appropriate tlie amount of merit so acquired to his own 
 redemption. "At his summons, his friends and de- 
 pendents assembled at his castle ; they also assumed 
 the garb of penitence ; their food was confined to 
 bread, herbs, and water ; and these austerities were 
 continued till the aggregate amount of their fasts 
 equalled the number specified by the canons. Thus, 
 with the assistance of one hundred and twenty asso- 
 ciates, an opulent sinner might, in the short space of 
 three days, discharge the penance of a whole year. ' ' * 
 
 And so the Council of Cloveshoe, assembled in 
 747 for the reformation of the English Church, com- 
 plained that recently a wealthy man, asking a speedy 
 absolution for some great crime, affirmed that it had 
 been expiated so fully by the aid of others in fasting, 
 almsgiving, and chanting of psalms for him, that 
 should he live three hundred years, he would not need 
 to suffer any more penance. 
 
 But though this council and others and individuals 
 reprobated this system of vicarious penance, and in- 
 sisted on personal sorrow for sin, and placed many 
 checks and guards and limitations around a purchased 
 absolution, and the efficacy of the mass and the pray- 
 ers of the living for the dead, the great body of the 
 church felt otherwise. This was too easy a way for 
 the sinner, and too lucrative and powerful a way for 
 the priest, to be abandoned. 
 
 The system allowed too free a play to the propen- 
 
 * Lingard, I. p. 339. 
 
rOPE GREGORY'S POLICY. 119 
 
 sities of the natural heart to be given up. And besides 
 this, the system had a kind of tangible, material, out- 
 side character, that suits so well the ritual and cere- 
 monial tendencies of our nature. 
 
 The main outlines, as drawn by Gregory, were 
 filled up in following times and in various places as 
 sinner or priest felt the need. A schedule of crimes, 
 and of prices for their absolution, as published by the 
 Roman See in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
 was a matter of course. It was but a question of time 
 to come to a board of ecclesiastical and penal assessors 
 and to their Tax Book of Sins. That fund of merit, 
 that vast spiritual exchequer, on which indulgences 
 are drawn, as bills of sight, was a necessary part of the 
 notion of penance, works of merit, and vicarious suf- 
 fering. For if one may suffer and work, personally or 
 by proxy, for merit, he may overwork. And then 
 why may not the surplus go on deposit, subject to 
 order ? 
 
 The materials, therefore, for purgatory, and the 
 outline-plans of the entire structure, and the structure 
 itself well in progress of building, were in the hands 
 of Gregory the Great when he died. At his death he 
 stood related to the whole system, much as Michael 
 Angelo, at his death, did to St. Peter's. That splendid 
 structure he had planned, begun, and carried well on 
 towards its completion. As the work crept slowly on 
 to its grand consummation, the animating genius and 
 spirit of the departed architect still presided, witness- 
 ing only variations that himself very likely would 
 
I20 PURGATORY. 
 
 have introduced as developments and improvements. 
 And if ever finished, or in whatever stage of progress, 
 St. Peter's will still be Michael Angelo's. 
 
 The master mind of Gregory still rules the papal 
 Church in the perpetuated power of this structure in 
 her spiritual architecture. True, like St. Peter's, it 
 remains unfinished, and workmen are constantly add- 
 ing in details, and with pleasant surprises. The very 
 recent and remarkable aid from that ghostly region to 
 his late Holiness Pius IX. , in his faculty of memory, 
 shows improvements and progress in purgatory, even 
 in the nineteenth century. Still, the Roman purga- 
 tory is the great Gregory's. 
 
 It remains now to indicate, in summary, what 
 material came to his hand, from the drift of the his- 
 toric ages, with which he could begin to build, and to 
 which his creating mind could add, as a supplement, 
 anything needed. Material did lie about him, and in 
 such abundance that his constructive and adapting, 
 rather than conceptive and creating powers, were 
 called in requisition. 
 
 Purgatorial theories and places and processes, well 
 preserved and presented in the poetry and philoso- 
 phies and religions of the pagan world, embellished 
 with much legendary lore, were all about him. At 
 that time Rome, semi-Christian and semi-pagan, as 
 a centre of letters, was well supplied with all this. 
 Not a little of it, as we shall see, had been al- 
 ready baptized into the church by the only par- 
 tial Christian conversion of some of her leading 
 
POPE GREGORY'S POLICY. 121 
 
 men from the ranks and ambitions of pagan scholar- 
 ship. 
 
 We should doubtless be more lenient towards those 
 who allowed the admission of the doctrine of purga- 
 tory into the Christian church, if we could appreciate 
 the outside pressure that they were made to feel. All 
 the old religions of the East were pervaded by a germ 
 of this doctrine, and there was a universal force, out- 
 side the Christian system, to incorporate it into the 
 dogmas of the church. That ancient and subtle idea 
 of a purgatory would, almost of necessity, color any 
 new religion that might spring up. This result will 
 seem the more natural and probable, when we remem- 
 ber that many, educated under those old systems, 
 were converted to Christianity, and came into the 
 church with the moulding influences of a ripe, though 
 pagan scholarship. If new creatures, old things would 
 not pass away totally and suddenly, and a reverence 
 for ancestral training and faith would hold them, per- 
 haps unconsciously. Christianity, therefore, in the 
 gristle yet, and not in the bone, would feel their sha- 
 ping force. 
 
 While we here turn ourselves, therefore, towards 
 the close of this historical disquisition, it will be ne- 
 cessary to direct our steps of inquiry backwards and 
 upward the stream of human invention and opinion 
 to find the very head waters. For, in any genetic 
 exposition of this papal theory and practice of purga- 
 tory, the sources or springs are found in the historic 
 fields,^and then back of them in the mythic, shadowy, 
 
122 PURGATORY. 
 
 and prehistoric marshes of paganism. The Egyptian, 
 Judsean, Indian, and Persian philosophies abound 
 with it, while it furnishes the heroic staple in the 
 classics of Greece and Rome. 
 
 Of all the elements in the old religions that so 
 environed young Christianity and foreordained their 
 incorporation into it, the dogma of the preexistence 
 of the human soul stood preeminent. Out of this no- 
 tion there had grown, naturally and among them all, 
 the practical theory of a future purgatorial metempsy- 
 chosis; and each religious system has shaped this the- 
 ory to its own genius. For the idea of preexistence 
 almost necessarily requires, certainly has always be- 
 gotten, the idea that the soul runs in a serial of mani- 
 festations or embodiments, each being probational, till 
 the perfect and final one be attained. Theorists and 
 dreamers, not knowing the limits of human thought 
 on divine problems, and not content to listen only, 
 where only the Infinite can speak, have found this 
 conception of the soul in serial existences a convenient 
 hypothesis on which to hang and air their fancies. 
 Thus hypothecating outside of all known limits, they 
 have found free range for unlimited follies, and have 
 kept up the struggle of the ages by confident leans on 
 the unknown past and daring drafts on the unknown 
 future — an amazing credit system in the grand com- 
 merce of moral and religious truths. 
 
 Sixteen hundred years ago Origen propounded the 
 theory that the justice of God can be vindicated for 
 the different fates of men in this world only on the 
 
POPE GREGORY'S POLICY. 123 
 
 ground of the theory of preexistence. "It is easy, ' ' 
 he says, ' ' to understand that there were before rational 
 vessels, both clean and unclean; that is, which either 
 had or had not purified themselves; and that hence 
 each vessel, according to its degree of purity or impu- 
 rity, received its place, region, or condition of birth 
 and action in this world." "Thus, then, as I may 
 say, out of the clay of the same lump of rational minds, 
 for certain previous reasons, he formed some unto 
 honor and some unto dishonor. " "If our course be 
 not marked out according to our works before this life, 
 how is it true that it is not unjust in God that the elder 
 should serve the younger, and be hated before he had 
 done things deserving of servitude and of hatred ?' ' * 
 
 It is one of the curiosities of modem literature to 
 find sometimes the debris of efiete paganisms. We 
 prize, of course, the antiques of the iron or stone age 
 of a dead civilization ; and we accord to the antiquary 
 worthy credit for successful research among ruins and 
 in old mounds, so long as he offers his results as rel- 
 ics, and not inventions or improvements. What has 
 been foisted into papal Christianity and attempted for 
 Protestant, has this pedigree and no more. 
 
 Under the universal and immense outside pres- 
 sure on the new religion of the cross, it was too nat- 
 ural and almost inevitable, that the church should 
 incorporate into her theory and practice the notion 
 of preexistence, and its irresistible if not logical infer- 
 ence of purgatory. 
 
 * Biblica Sacra, XII. p. 164. 
 
 Furgatorj'. 1 2 
 
124 PURGATORY. 
 
 We shall probably most briefly and clearly make 
 this manifest by beginning on the most distant histor- 
 ical borders, where notions of a purgatory prevailed, 
 and working our way thence to an accepted and well- 
 organized purgatory in the papal Church. Of course 
 we turn to Egypt, whose Book of the Dead is sup- 
 posed to be older than any other sacred writings in 
 the world. 
 
THE EG YFTIAN S YSTEM. 1 25 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE PURaATORIAL SYSTEM OF THE ANCIENT 
 EGYPTIANS. 
 
 The Egyptian theology set forth distinctly the 
 doctrine of a future life ; for when Herodotus tells us 
 that they held to the theory of transmigration, he re- 
 veals the fact of their belief in a life after death.* 
 
 The system of embalming is supposed by many to 
 have sprung from the expectation of continued exist- 
 ence after death. As those early Egyptians were not 
 spiritual enough to discern between the body and the 
 soul and allow for the latter a separate and indepen- 
 dent existence, they coupled the notion of immor- 
 tality of soul with human embodiment, and so 
 sought, by embalming, to purify and perpetuate the 
 body for its immortal work of companionship with 
 the soul. 
 
 " I^et the bodily organs, it was felt, be saved from 
 putrefaction, and the spirit also will have something 
 left on which to lean for help as her companion and 
 receptacle. In virtue of the strength afforded to her 
 by this union with the former cause of her vitality, 
 she will continue to subsist in some analogous condi- 
 
 * Herodotus, II. p. 123. 
 
126 PURGATORY. 
 
 tion ; disembodied, it is true, but still associating with 
 her previous tenement, and still in some mysterious 
 fashion living by its life. ' ' * 
 
 If there are earlier records extant of the supposed 
 condition of man beyond the grave than those left to 
 us by Ancient Egypt, they are yet to be discovered 
 and published ; that is, if we are to accept the schol- 
 arly conclusions of a man as careful and reverent and 
 Christian as Baron Bunsen. 
 
 The Funereal Ritual, or Book of the Dead, is com- 
 paratively recent authority on our topic, and enlarges 
 and enriches our sources of information. Modern 
 scholarship has but lately been able to read and make 
 it public, though as early in the world as B. C. 2250 
 it was, in some of its prayers and hymns, old enough 
 to be obscured by glosses and annotations. Even then 
 it was so old, says Bunsen, " as to be all but unintelli- 
 gible to royal scribes, "f 
 
 This Ritual is, of course, adapted to the Egyptian 
 mythology, and parts of it are allegorical, poetic, and 
 often mysterious. The lines of thought, however, 
 bearing on our topic, run through the entire book, and 
 are quite upon its surface ; for the ancient Egyptians 
 were fully persuaded of a life beyond the present, and 
 a life, too, afiected by discriminating rewards and pun- 
 ishments. These punishments, moreover, were with 
 
 * Christ and other Masters. By Charles Hardwick, M. A. Part IV. 
 Religion of Egypt, p. 82. Cambridge, England, 1859. 
 
 t Egypt's Place in Universal History, vol. 5, pp. 88-go. London: 
 Longmans, Green, & Co., 1867. 
 
THE EGYPTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 127 
 
 many, if not all, reformatory, and the subjects of them 
 moved on in an ascending grade of being. 
 
 The quotations that we are about to use will be set 
 in the best light before the reader if we first outline 
 the design, composition, and uses of this Funereal 
 Ritual. It sets forth in words the thoughts and feel- 
 ings that a soul may be supposed, on the Egyptian 
 theory, to have as it departs this life and makes its 
 pilgrimage along other stages of being. The ritual is 
 to that soul as the liturgy to a Christian worshipper — 
 the thoughts of it being presumed from his heart and 
 the words of it adapted and given to his lips. Yet it 
 is more than a ritual and a liturgy and a litany. It is 
 the hymns and prayers and confessions and creeds, the 
 hopes and fears and observations, of a soul on its prog- 
 ress in the future state. Of all this there are, in the 
 edition of Bunsen, and after the editions of Champol- 
 lion and of I/Cpsius, one hundred and sixty-six chap- 
 ters. * They might as well be called booklets and sec- 
 tions and paragraphs, according to length. 
 
 If these ever made up one volume, the book is lost, 
 and only three chapters or sections remain, which had 
 been copied out and enclosed with the dead body in 
 the processes of embalming and of Egyptian burial. 
 These copies have been found on the inner sides of the 
 chests enclosing the mummies, on papyrus and pieces 
 of linen, and on the wrappings and bandages of the 
 mummies, and indeed on whatever would receive the 
 writings or hieroglyphics that could properly go into 
 
 * Hardwick makes one hundred and sixty-five, p. 79. 
 12* 
 
128 PURGATORY. 
 
 the mummy-case. If these chapters ever had a logical 
 or systematic or chronological arrangement, according 
 to the dates of their composition or the progress of the 
 souls using them, that arrangement is now lost. Ex- 
 cepting possibly some of later dates, as of the twenty- 
 sixth dynasty and after, they came together miscella- 
 neously as discovered or translated, and were like the 
 articles of an encyclopaedia unarranged. We now have 
 them in groups, so far as a common thought would 
 tend to bring them into clusters of chapters, Cham- 
 poUion leading in this subdivision and classification. 
 These funereal papyri were prepared for the old Egyp- 
 tian market, and became articles of trade, blanks be- 
 ing left for the name of the purchaser and for any other 
 personal items. We have noticed that the same thing 
 is done under the papal system in the preparation and 
 sale of prayers for the dead and to the saints. These 
 forms are for sale in many of the bookstores and 
 churches at Rome and elsewhere. 
 
 The theory was that these forms were what the 
 soul would need to use on its way when meeting dia- 
 bolical and hostile agencies, and they were prepared 
 for him to adopt and utter as his own when the occa- 
 sion required. Hence they were enclosed* about his 
 person in the embalming, and placed within his reach, 
 as some pd^gans bury food or implements of war or of 
 the chase with their dead. ' ' To the soul they assured 
 a passage from the earth ; a transit through purgatory 
 and other regions of the dead ; the entrance into the 
 Empyreal Gate by which the souls arrived at the pres- 
 
THE EG YPTIAN S YSTEM. 1 29 
 
 ence of the Sun [the Egyptian heaven] ; and protec- 
 tion from the various liers-in-wait, or adversaries, who 
 sought to accuse, destroy, or detain it on its passage or 
 destiny. ' ' * 
 
 We have elsewhere intimated that the notion of a 
 purgatory is found intimately related to the theory of 
 preexistence, and that such a process of purgation 
 comes in naturally as one stage in a series of existences. 
 This fact shows itself in the Egyptian system of religion. 
 
 ' ' The deceased, in fact, lived again after death, or, 
 according to Egytian notions, did not die again in 
 Hades. The first death of the soul was its birth into 
 
 the world, imprisoned in the human form In 
 
 the future or separated state the soul still continued to 
 
 revisit the body The distinction between soul 
 
 and body in the future state is not rigorously kept up, 
 and the deceased is often described as if existing as a 
 mortal even in the Hades, "f 
 
 Here, then, in Egypt, if not to be found elsewhere 
 and nearer, Origen, and after him the author of the 
 Conflict of Ages, may find all needed material for that 
 scheme of a sinful preexistence of man, a punitive and 
 restorative existence in this world, and possibly an- 
 other probation in the next. Here, too, on the banks 
 of the Nile, we find foundation-stones that, twenty- 
 eight hundred years later, reappear on the banks of 
 the Tiber, for the superstructure of an under-world 
 purgatory, with a mystic confusion and semi-continu- 
 ance of soul and body together, and occasional revisits 
 
 * Bunsen, V. p. 134. t Ibid, V. pp. 134, 135. 
 
I30 PURGATORY. 
 
 to the upper world. So, as the crowned heads of Eu- 
 rope have taken from Egypt her monumental treasures 
 and antiquities to adorn their own thrones and reigns, 
 he of the triple crown has borrowed from the theolo- 
 gians and spiritual r%ime of that pagan and twilight 
 land ecclesiastical strength and ornament for St. Pe- 
 ter's. 
 
 But items of fact from the mummy records of that 
 dim past will best interest the reader and assure him 
 of the pedigree of the purgatory whose genesis we are 
 tracing up. The argument, in outline, is this : the 
 Egyptian soul lives after death, being born again in 
 the Sun — the type of the Egyptian resurrection. It 
 reappears beyond the grave, and as the phoenix, their 
 emblem of immortality, it enters the celestial gate, or 
 heaven. In doing this it goes through regions of dark- 
 ness and dangers and hostile dsemons, but comes out 
 justified, with all corruption of heart cleansed away, 
 and so enters on a new and perfect and perpetual life. 
 
 The chapter, section, or paragraph of ritual, found 
 in the chest of the embalmed one, is to be uttered by 
 him, as occasion calls, in his spirit journey. Some- 
 times it is written in the third person, as to be said for 
 him. Often there is attached to it a rubric, or expla- 
 nation, telling how it is to be used. So, under the 
 one hundred and forty-fifth chapter, we read : 
 
 ' ' Said over the passenger, who is in these pictures 
 painted in yellow, and over the company of the boat 
 of the Sun." The sun is the symbol of heaven, and 
 a boat is a symbol of conveyance to heaven. 
 
THE EGYPTIAN SYSTEM. 131 
 
 I. This Funereal Ritual assumes and declares a 
 purgatory similar to the papal as a part of the Egyp- 
 tian scheme of salvation. We quote from the seventy- 
 second chapter. This is often found in cofSns, sar- 
 cophagi, and on other monuments and remains of the 
 dead. It seemed an indispensable credential, or sacred 
 writing, for the soul to utter, that it might gain abso- 
 lution and speedy passage and happy entrance to 
 Elysium. So the passing soul prays: 
 
 "Oh ye lyords of Truth, without fault, who are 
 for ever, cycling for eternity ! Let me pass to the 
 earth, I am a spirit in your changes, I prevail through 
 your magic spells, I judge through your judgment. 
 Save me from the annihilation of this region of the 
 Two Truths. . . . Rub ye out [my sin] in the purga- 
 tory. The wicked do not prevail against me. Do 
 not turn me out of your doors. ' ' * 
 
 The one hundred and forty-eight chapter has the 
 title of The Staircases of the House of Osiris. This 
 is to be recited to facilitate the passage of the deceased 
 through the mystical region of Hades. What these 
 staircases may mean, of which there are seven, it is 
 impossible as yet to tell; but the implication is that 
 the soul passes that way, and from the names of the 
 keepers of them, the way is evidently beset with 
 dangers and purifying trials. Of the first it is written, 
 ' ' The name of its keeper is Firepasser ;' ' of the second, 
 ' ' The name of its guardian is Fireface ;' ' of the fourth, 
 "The name of its guardian is Purgation;" of the 
 
 * Bunsen V. pp. 143, 214, 215. 
 
132 PURGATORY. 
 
 sixth, "The name of its guardian is Bringer of 
 Fire." 
 
 Similar to this are the one hundred and forty- 
 ninth and fiftieth chapters, the rituals by which the 
 soul is supposed to pass through the fourteen abodes 
 of Hades. Under this religious passport for the 
 ghostly pilgrim the soul goes, according to the rubric, 
 ' ' traversing the secret places in Hell, prevailing against 
 the Evil, passing the secret valleys, the mouth and 
 path of which are unknown. ' ' The purgatorial horrors 
 of this section of the soul's journey will appear in 
 some quotations. 
 
 ' ' Oh, Father of the gods. Mother of the gods in 
 Hades ! save from every evil thing, from all evil 
 deriders, or pollution, from all evil liers-in-wait, from 
 the wicked netting of the dead [deficient] gods, spirits, 
 quicker dead!" "Oh, abode of the spirits! There 
 is no sailing through it. It is of flame, of smoking 
 fire. " " Oh, great secret abode ! Oh, the very tall 
 hill in Hades ! . . . There is a snake on it, Sati is his 
 name. He is about seventy cubits in his coil. He 
 lives by decapitating the condemned spirits in Hades. ' ' • 
 ' ' The spirits belonging to it [Hades] are seven cubits 
 in their thighs; they live as wretched shades." 
 ' ' Open your road. I pass by your faces passing to 
 the good West. . . . No god comes out against me 
 or opposes his face to me. If any condemned spirit, 
 male or female, sets his mouth against me, or any 
 male or female devil comes to me on that day, he falls 
 at the block, ' ' loses his head. ' ' There is a snake there, 
 
THE EG YPTIAN S YSTEM. 133 
 
 Ruhak is his name. He is about seven cubits in the 
 length of his back, living off the dead, strangling 
 their spirits. Go back, Ruhak, biting with the mouth 
 to catch his fishes, fascinating or striking cold with 
 his eyes. Draw thy teeth, weaken thy venom to me, 
 overthrowing and prostrating me through it. Empty 
 is thy poison in this land." "Do not take me to the 
 block, do not strangle my soul, as they wish to do 
 to me; I am the passenger of the northern horizon." 
 " Oh, the secret place of destruction of the gods, 
 which has terrified the spirits not knowing its name ! 
 There is neither going in nor out of it. The great 
 god who is in it, he has terrified the gods or spirits; 
 with his terror he has terrified the spirits or the con- 
 demned by his roaring. It has opened with fire; the 
 blasts are stifling the nostril." "Oh, the place of 
 waters ! None of the dead can stand in it. Its water 
 is of fire, its flow is of fire, it glows with smoking fire; 
 if wished, there is no drinking it. The thirst of those 
 who are in it is inextinguishable. Through the 
 greatness of its terror, and the magnitude of its fear, 
 the gods, the damned, and the spirits look at its 
 waters from a distance. Their thirst is inextinguish- 
 able; they have no peace; if they wish they cannot 
 escape it." 
 
 Of these gloqmy and fearful abodes Bunsen well 
 says, "The description of these regions is in every 
 way horrible. They are terrible to the gods them- 
 selves, not only as being inhabited by fearful demons, 
 but in some instances as regions of fiery flames, rival- 
 
134 PURGATORY. 
 
 ling in all tlieir horrors the Phlegethon, or burning 
 stream of the Greek Hades. A similar series of regions 
 is described on the sarcophagus of the monarch Nekh- 
 
 therhebi in the infernal purgatorj- The halls 
 
 are ten in number, and the groans and screams of the 
 damned burst on the ear of the passer-by in a mingled 
 chorus of agony and confusion. They howl as lions, 
 roar as bulls, squall like tom-cats, tinkle as brass, and 
 
 buzz with the incessant hum of bees They 
 
 give an esoteric notion of the nature of the regions of 
 the damned, rivalling the cold Hades of Homer, or 
 the hotter hell of a Dante or a Milton. Whether they 
 were of a purgatorial nature, or the wicked were 
 detained there, does not appear, but a more minute 
 examination of the principal tombs and sarcophagi of 
 the kings will hereafter throw a fuller light upon the 
 nature of the Egyptian Hades."* 
 
 2. This Funereal Ritual of the Egyptians shows pur- 
 gation of the departed by fire, after the manner of the 
 papal Romans. The departing spirit looked forward 
 with dread to the boiling flames of the Egyptian fire 
 river in the under world. To protect him against 
 these the celestial waters are provided, the mystic 
 Nile. In the seventy-first chapter the embalmed one, 
 speaking from his mummy-case, after the words of his 
 enclosed ritual-speech, says, "I am the Hawk within 
 the bandages, passing through the earth out of the 
 
 case, or the doors Oh, seven Chief Powers at 
 
 the arm of the Balance, the day of judgment, cutting 
 * Egypt's Place in History, V. pp. 152, 153. 
 
THE EG YPTIAN S YSTEM. 135 
 
 oflF heads, breaking necks, destroying hearts, making 
 blows in the Pool of Fire." The hawk was the 
 symbol of the soul in its death-passage from the mortal 
 to the immortal. 
 
 In its passage to Elysium, or heaven, the symbol 
 of which is the sun, the soul must pass this Phlegethon, 
 and is represented as going by boat; and in the one 
 hundred and fiftieth chapter there is reference to this 
 soul-boat and to the river of fire. The difficulties and 
 dangers of the passage over it seem almost insuperable. 
 ' ' Oh, abode of the spirits ! There is no sailing through 
 it. It silences the spirits. It is of flame, and of 
 smoking fire. ' ' 
 
 In the one hundred and thirtieth chapter the 
 passage of the soul in the sun-boat to the sun is 
 represented. As the Ritual is assumed to be divine 
 or inspired, or the words of the gods put into the lips 
 of the passing souls, so sometimes a god personifies the 
 soul and speaks as if he were the soul. It is so in this 
 chapter. The ghost-man on his voyage, and standing 
 in his sun-boat, and speaking of himself, says, ' ' The 
 Osiris corrects his faults, he delights the Sun, and 
 Osiris [the real god]. He has made his boat, he has 
 
 gone forth There are no shades where he is. 
 
 He has not been turned back by the Sun, or by 
 Osiris; he has not been turned away for what he has 
 done with his hands. The Osiris does not walk in 
 the Valley of Darkness, he does not ^o in the Pool of 
 the Damned. He is not in the fissure a moment. He 
 knows no terror in the place in which he is, for he 
 
 FiiTgator7. 1 3 
 
135 PURGATORY. 
 
 can take his head behind the block of Setp." That 
 is, he is immortal now, and decapitation in Hades 
 will not destroy him. 
 
 One other case may be cited, illustrating the point 
 that the Egyptians and Romanists alike have purga- 
 tion by fire for their departed dead. In the ninety- 
 eighth chapter of this Book of the Dead the soul is 
 represented as standing in the Boat of the Sun and 
 sailing for Elysium. In the passage he must cross 
 this fiery lake, or Egyptian Phlegethon. Having 
 passed this terrible and dreaded section in the soul- 
 journey, the departed one says triumphantly in his 
 liturgy, ' ' I see I have not lain down, I stand, I live, 
 
 I rise as a god I have flown, as a hawk, out of 
 
 the net of the great destroyer. I pass from earth to 
 
 heaven My arms pull the paddle, I go along 
 
 to the never tranquil gods I have brought the 
 
 ropes, stopping the wicked as I go along in the boat 
 of Ptah [second life]. I have come from the Scalding 
 Pools, from the Flaming Fields, alive from that great 
 
 Pool I stand in the boat, I pass the waters, I 
 
 stand in the boat, I pass the god. I stand and come 
 forth from the mud, towed along. The gates of 
 S'Khem have opened to me." 
 
 The case is evident. The similarity, almost the 
 sameness of the Egyptian and the Papal fires of Pur- 
 gatory flash up from old histories. If the papal are 
 more clear in their lurid glare, and better outlined to 
 our sight, and if they appear as better adapted to the 
 soul needing and sufiering them, we must remember 
 
THE EGYPTIAN SYSTEM. 137 
 
 that they are two thousand years and more nearer to 
 to us. It is a long way, historically, from Rome to 
 Thebes, from the Tiber to the Nile. 
 
 3. This Funereal Ritual of the Egyptians shows 
 that souls, having passed purgatory, come forth into 
 Elysium justified, as in the Papal System. It will be 
 enough, under this head, to make a few quotations 
 from the ritual declarations of the soul as it passes 
 along and finally enters the better land: 
 
 ' ' I have raised myself as a hawk coming out of 
 his ^^^. ... I rise and make myself entirely as a 
 good hawk of gold, whose head is in shape of a phcE- 
 nix. ... I have prevailed against those making 
 watch for me. ' ' Chapter LXX VII. 
 
 ' ' I have passed the secret roads. ... I have risen 
 as a divine hawk, ... I have crossed those who 
 guard the blocks, having my head and my hands." 
 The loss of the soul in Hades was well illustrated by 
 that familiar chopping off of hands and heads in old 
 Egypt. In the under-Egypt there was a demon heads- 
 man to decapitate the hopelessly wicked. ' ' A road 
 has been made to me. . . . I^et me pass the empyreal 
 gate. Guardians of heaven, guardians of earth, open 
 a path to me. Let there be no stoppage to me. I 
 reach thy place, O Osiris ! Lend me thy strength, O 
 Osiris. ' ' Chapter LXXVIIL 
 
 " O ye Lords of Eternity, let me come to you. I am 
 pure; I am divine; I am spiritualized; I am strong; 
 I am become a soul; I prevail. ... I rise as a god 
 from men. . . . Glory has been given to me by those 
 
138 PURGATORY. 
 
 who are in the gate in this mortal body. ' ' Chapter 
 IvXXIX. 
 
 ' ' O gods, delicious is the smell of your fire which 
 comes out of the horizon. . . . Guardian of the cor- 
 ner, lead me. Give me thy arm. I keep a watch in 
 the Pool of Fire. I come by [my] efibrts. I have 
 come, having the writing. ... I have dissipated my 
 sins; I have destroyed my failings, for I have got rid 
 of the sins which detained me on earth. O door- 
 keepers, I have made roads. ' ' Chapter LXXXVI. 
 
 Perhaps it will be enough to introduce one more 
 citation under this head. These scraps of liturgy, 
 inscribed or enclosed in the mummy-cases, had fre- 
 quently rubric reading or directions for use on their 
 margins, and sometimes vignettes or drawings illus- 
 trative of the lesson of the liturgy. Prefixed to the 
 chapter from which we are about to quote is the vig- 
 nette of a basin of Purgatorial Fire, with four jets of 
 fire. The soul is taught to say in the liturgy, ' ' Ex- 
 tract ye all the evil out of me, obliterate ye my faults, 
 annihilate my sins; guard ye and give ye me to pass 
 the pylon [gateway] to go from the plains." Then 
 the Gods of Justice are represented as responding, 
 "Thou mayest go; we obliterate all thy faults, we 
 annihilate all thy sins. Thou hast been severed from 
 the world; we dissipate all thy sins. Thou hast sev- 
 ered thyself from earth; thou hast dissipated all the 
 sin which detained thee." Chapter CXXVI. 
 
 The case is plain. Certain conditions being sup- 
 plied, the papal purgatory is a mere question of devel- 
 
THE E G YPTIAN S YSTEM. 139 
 
 opment from these Egyptian germs. Add the time, 
 two thousand years, the philosophies that are waiting 
 to come, and the Christian revelations of a future life, 
 clouded and corrupted, and Egypt's Book of the Dead 
 may be published at Rome, in revised edition, as a 
 Christian volume, under Vatican imprint. 
 
 13* 
 
14° PURGATORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE PURGATORIAL SYSTEM OF THE ANCIENT 
 HINDOOS.- 
 
 In tracing the pedigree of the theory under inves- 
 tigation we proceed naturally from Egypt to India; 
 for in the birth of the nations that became historic 
 and made religious records, the land of the Hindoos 
 comes next into prominence when we leave the valley 
 of the Nile. When Israel was in Egypt, the people 
 of the Pharaohs had a well-defined religious system. 
 Their eschatology — the dying man, the migratory 
 soul, purgatorial fires, and other pains besetting the 
 way of the wanderer to a better land, and the liturgy 
 for the soul in its passage — has been outlined in the 
 preceding chapter. It has been shown, too, how far 
 resemblances would suggest these Egyptian notions as 
 germinal or protoplastic to the papal theories of pur- 
 gatory. 
 
 When Israel was going out of Egypt in the fif- 
 teenth century before Christ, the authors of the Hin- 
 doo system were coming into Hindostan. They came 
 down from the heights of Central Asia, whence also, 
 as from the primitive Asiatic cradle, the Chinese crept 
 off eastward in their infancy, and the Iranians west- 
 ward. The Hindoo invaders subjugated where they 
 did not exterminate the prior nation, and the rem- 
 
THE HINDOO SYSTEM. 141 
 
 nants became the Shudra or lowest Hindoo caste. 
 The religious subjugation was never total, and to this 
 day remnants of the former religion still linger in the 
 Deckan, while Brahminism there is proportionally 
 weak. 
 
 The main sources of the information that we are 
 about to use, in tracing the purgatorial pedigree from 
 the Nile to the Tiber, are the Vedas and the Institutes 
 of Manu. Sir William Jones and other eminent Ori- 
 entalists fix the composition of the former at about 
 fifteen hundred years before Christ.* The latter are 
 supposed to have been written somewhere between the 
 tenth and the twelfth centuries before the Christian era. 
 
 According to these authorities our life is a series of 
 existences, past and to come, midway in which is this 
 earthly or human one. The present is to be immedi- 
 ately followed by a punitive and purifying one, lead- 
 ing into a higher grade in another order of being. 
 This idea of serial and progressive existence is central 
 and permeating in the systems of religion that have 
 shaped the sacred notions of Central and Southern 
 Asia from Persia to the Chinese Wall. 
 
 The Brahmins ' ' believe that souls . . . were pro- 
 duced long before the formation of this present world ; 
 that they were originally in a state of purity, but that 
 having sinned, they were thrown down into the bod- 
 ies of men and beasts, according to their respective 
 demerits, so that the body, where the soul resides, is a 
 sort of dungeon or prison. After a certain number of 
 
 * See Johnson, p. 88, 
 
142 PURGATORY. 
 
 transmigrations, all souls shall be reunited to their 
 origin, readmitted into the society of the gods, and be 
 deified. ' ' * 
 
 The dogma of preexistence was, with the Hindoo, 
 an essential part, and indeed the prior half of his doc- 
 trine of immortality. Those old observers and philos- 
 ophers noted the human fact of all centuries and lati- 
 tudes, that wealth and want, success and failure, joy 
 and sorrow, come with an apparently blind indiscrim- 
 ination on the good and the bad. Virtue and vice 
 receive alike one and the same tempest and dew, as if 
 right and wrong were not inherent in the subject of a 
 divine government, and merit and demerit were not 
 discriminated by the governor. Hence they made the 
 assumption of a preexistent life of responsibility and 
 of unsettled accounts, and regarded this life as a neces- 
 sary sequence in the growth of being, and administered 
 as a system of rewards and punishments, t 
 
 For men of their narrow range of thought and 
 declarative logic, in that preface age to the world's 
 volumes and centuries, this assumption solved doubts 
 and gave rest. So theories have their cycles of move- 
 ment and periodic revolutions across the philosophic 
 
 * Rogers' Religion of the Brahmins, p. -2., ch. 7, and quoted in Ram- 
 say, 2, p. 356, or 363, note. The Philosophical Principles of Natural and 
 Revealed Religion, by the Chevalier Ramsay, Glasgow, 1749, is quite a 
 thesaurus of antique learning on the Oriental Religions, and we are 
 much indebted to it. 
 
 t The History of India, by J. Talboys Wheeler, pp. 75-78. Oriental 
 Religions, by Samuel Johnson, pp. 517-520. Ward's View of the His- 
 tory, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos. London edition of 1822, 
 vol. in., pp. 391-400. 
 
THE HINDOO SYSTEM. 143 
 
 heavens. This one seems to have timed its period by 
 its third appearance in an orbit of sixteen hundred 
 years. The "Conflict of Ages" is settled first in the 
 thirteenth century before Christ, then in the third 
 Christian century, and again in the nineteenth. The 
 three settlements have a difference of authors, rather 
 than of ideas, as a Hindoo, a Greek, and an Ameri- 
 can ; and dropping out Origen as merely a "middle 
 man" in the commerce of ideas, perhaps the "Con- 
 flict" was as logically settled, and as flnally, on the 
 Ganges as in New England. 
 
 To a Hindoo mind post-existence was a natural 
 and logical sequence to preexistence, and the dogma 
 of a future life was accepted as a matter of course. 
 Indeed, existence was unmarked in their religion by 
 beginning or end, but was simply a series of lives that 
 births and deaths opened and closed. "If life was 
 followed by death, so death might only be the intro- 
 duction into a new life; in other words, after the death 
 of the body the soul entered a new body, either of a 
 human being or an animal. ' ' * 
 
 " They taught that each successive existence was 
 a reward or a punishment exactly proportioned to the 
 good or evil deeds that had been performed in previous 
 existences ; that the poorest man might enjoy wealth 
 and prosperity in the next life by being strictly virtu- 
 ous and religious in the present life ; and that the most 
 powerful sovereign might be condemned to poverty 
 and disease in the next life if he failed in his religious 
 
 » J. Talboys Wheeler, p. 72. 
 
144 PURGATORY. 
 
 duties in the present life. ' ' Yet ' ' if the soul be suffi- 
 ciently purified from all the passions and desires of 
 existence, it will return to the Supreme Spirit of 
 Brahma" — the highest heaven of the Hindoo.* 
 
 ' ' The various heavens and hells were merely a 
 part of the moral system of the universe, where tran- 
 scendent merits might be sufficiently rewarded and 
 the greatest crimes be sufficiently punished. ' ' f 
 
 One description of the purgatorial regions of the 
 Hindoos is fearfully graphic, making it quite like, and 
 hardly improved or surpassed by, the papal. The re- 
 semblance to the grosser and more material Roman 
 purgatory of the Middle Ages will be noticed at 
 once. 
 
 ' ' The wicked have six hundred and eighty-eight 
 thousand miles to travel to the palace of Yiimu to re- 
 ceive judgment. In some places they pass over a 
 pavement of fire ; in others the earth in which their 
 feet sink is burning hot ; or they pass over burning 
 sands, or over stones with sharp edges, or burning hot; 
 sometimes showers of sharp instruments, and at oth- 
 ers showers of burning cinders, or scalding water, or 
 stones, fall upon them ; burning winds scorch their 
 bodies ; every now and then they fall into concealed 
 wells full of darkness, or pass through narrow passages 
 filled with stones, in which serpents lie concealed ; 
 sometimes the road is filled with thick darkness ; at 
 other times they pass through the branches of trees, 
 the leaves of which are full of thorns ; again they walk 
 
 * J. Talboys Wheeler, p. 73. t Ibid., p. I2i. 
 
THE HINDOO SYSTEM. 145 
 
 over broken pots or over hard clods of earth, bones, 
 putrefying flesh, thorns, or sharp spikes. They meet 
 tigers, jackals, rhinoceroses, elephants, terrible giants, 
 etc. ; and in some parts they are scorched in the sun 
 without obtaining the least shade. They travel naked ; 
 their hair is in disorder ; their throats, lips, etc. , are 
 parched ; they are covered with blood or dirt ; some 
 wail and shriek as they pass along ; others are weep- 
 ing ; others have horror depicted in their countenan- 
 ces. Some are dragged along by leathern thongs tied 
 around their necks, waists, or hands ; others by cords 
 passed through holes bored in their noses ; others by 
 the hair, the ears, the neck, or the heels ; and oth- 
 ers are carried, having their legs and heads tied to- 
 gether. ' ' * 
 
 All this is coarse and physical, like the Roman 
 purgatory, yet it accorded with their highest concep- 
 tion of spiritual existence. ' ' Manu represents the vital 
 spirit of the wicked as furnished with a coarser body, 
 expressly provided with nerves susceptible of extreme 
 torment, "t 
 
 The purgatorial stages or departments, for different 
 kinds and grades of sinners, are outlined in the sacred 
 books of the Hindoos with all the graphic and horrid 
 characteristics that their dark minds could imagine. 
 Their likeness and almost identity with the papal 
 
 * A View of tlie History, Literature, and Mytliology of tlie Hindoos. 
 Ey William Ward. London, 1822, vol. UI. p. 375. See also, India, An- 
 cient and Modern. By David O. Allen, D. D., pp. 409-413. 
 
 t Johnson's Oriental Religions, p. 545. 
 
146 PURGATORY. 
 
 abodes of the suflFering will be noticed by the careful 
 reader. There are for the victims, as assorted and 
 grouped according to their demerits, the region of 
 great darkness, the enclosure of rabid dogs, and an- 
 other of ravening beasts, and another of all venomous 
 and deadly reptiles, constantly worrying and lacerating 
 the inmates ; the chambers of burning copper and of 
 boiling oil ; the halls of red-hot iron machinery, a kind 
 of under-ground Inquisition, to sear and tear the flesh 
 of the guilty ; burning iron images of females for the 
 embrace of adulterers ; precipices and almost bottom- 
 less rocky and thorny ravines for falling sinners, with 
 birds of prey to pick out their eyes and feed on their 
 living flesh. 
 
 No wonder, as Ward says, ' ' The Hindoos in gen- 
 eral manifest great fear of future punishment. Some- 
 times, after committing a dreadful sin, these fears are 
 expressed to a friend in some such words as these : ' I 
 have committed a shocking crime, and I must endure 
 great and long-continued torments, but what can I do? 
 There is no remedy now. ' Sometimes these fears are 
 so great that they drive a man to perform many works 
 of merit, particularly works of atonement. If the of- 
 fender be rich, they extort large sums of money from 
 him, which are expended in gifts to bramhuns, or in 
 religious ceremonies. If he be poor, he bathes in the 
 Ganges with more constancy, or goes on pilgrimages 
 to different holy places. ' ' * 
 
 * ' The Hindoos profess to have a great reliance 
 # Ward's View, vol. III. p. 387, 388. 
 
THU HINDOO SYSTEM. 147 
 
 upon the merit of their works, though they do not 
 appear to be satisfied that any one ceremony will pro- 
 cure future happiness. One Hindoo travels to the 
 south, another to the north, to obtain some salvation- 
 giving charm ; but after all, he listens to any new nos- 
 trum with as much eagerness as though he had hith- 
 erto done nothing towards obtaining heaven. King 
 Indrti-doomnu, by performing austerities, offering sac- 
 rifices, and presenting gifts to bramhuus, obtained the 
 power of going to heaven whenever he chose. ' ' * 
 
 Of course many ceremonies for the dying and the 
 departed are performed to ease and shorten the passage 
 to the better land. So the dying one on the banks of 
 the Ganges, if he has not delayed preparation till mind 
 and body fail, orders the gift of a black cow to a bram- 
 hun, that he may not be scalded at the boiling lakes in 
 the middle land. Other and varied preparations are 
 prescribed in the Hindoo Ritual for the dying, and 
 they are attended to with great carefulness. 
 
 After death there follow many studied rites and 
 costly offerings for the repose of the soul. "The offer- 
 ings made in a person's name after his decease, and 
 the ceremonies which take place on the occasion, are 
 called his shraddhu, which the Hindoos are very anx- 
 ious to perform in a becoming manner. The son who 
 performs these rites obtains great merit ; and the de- 
 ceased is hereby satisfied, and, by gifts to the bram- 
 huus in his name, obtains heaven, "f 
 
 We invite particular attention to these rites and 
 
 * Ward's View, vol. III. pp. 380, 381. t Ibid., p. 355. 
 
 Puigatai?. Ii^ 
 
148 PURGATORY. 
 
 offerings for the repose of a departed soul, and their 
 comparison with the Romish ritual for the same end. 
 The similarity is striking in the processes to relieve 
 the departed of suffering and hasten the soul in its sad 
 purgatorial journey to the land of rest. 
 
 At death the soul becomes a ghost and assumes a 
 diminutive body, not larger than one's thumb, and so 
 enters the realms and custody of the god of the 
 dead. Here for a season punishment is inflicted, and 
 the body is enlarged for capacity to receive it. If 
 the ritual for the repose of the soul be properly per- 
 formed for a year, the person passes into another body 
 and on to the heaven of the forefathers; but if ne- 
 glected, the poor sufferer is doomed to long delays 
 and wanderings, in his miserable little ghost-body. * 
 
 In the presence of an assembly, large or small, 
 according to the rank of the deceased, the son or near 
 relative produces sixteen gifts, and sprinkling them 
 with holy water and repeating prayers, he offers them 
 in the names of the deceased, that the departed may 
 obtain heaven. Presents are then made to the priests, 
 the sixteen gifts and other marked ones, are bestowed 
 on the head brahmins, and so the first ceremonies 
 
 * We are tracing in this volupie the pedigree, or transmission of ideas. 
 An illustrative case comes in here incidentally. The dying Hindoo could 
 not start off speedily and happily for his heaven, if deprived of the rites 
 of burial. A thousand years later Virgil reproduces the same theory. 
 
 Portitor ille, Charon: hi, quos vehit unda sepulti. 
 Nee ripas datur horrendas, n^c rauca fluenta 
 Transportare priiis quum sedibus ossa quierunt. 
 Centum errant annos volitantque ha;c littora circum. 
 
 ^n. Lib. VI. 325 et seq. See also, Odes of Horace. Lib. i :28. 
 
THE HINDOO SYSTEM. 
 
 149 
 
 are passed. Then follows the offering of five calves, 
 with incantations frequently to keep off evil spirits, 
 and a great variety of eatables, flowers, cloth, paint, 
 lamps, etc. These all eventually go to the priests. 
 The whole concludes with a feast to the multitude 
 and presents all round. Sometimes elegant and costly 
 bedsteads, gold or silver pitchers and dishes, bowls, 
 cups, jugs, and lamp-stands, are among the gifts, up 
 to an immense value. The head servant of Mr. Has- 
 tings expended one million two hundred thousand 
 rupees, six hundred thousand dollars, in the ceremo- 
 nials for the repose of the soul of his mother. Many 
 beggar themselves in these provisions for their de- 
 parted friends; and so priestly is the Hindoo law, and 
 so interwoven into society this system of purgatorial 
 relief, that "a person cannot inherit an estate who 
 has not performed shraddhu." For if these rites are 
 not properly and duly performed, intense and pro- 
 tracted misery attends the departed, and purgatory is 
 prolonged indefinitely. A new body, birth, promo- 
 tion or upward grade is denied to the soul in its 
 little ghost-body, and it wanders and sorrows forages.* 
 If we consider what departing sinners are led to 
 expect, by the Hindoo creed, on their way to the 
 court of the dead, and during their enforced residence 
 there, we shall see why the sympathies and fortunes 
 of the living would be engrossed to the utmost to 
 hasten their deliverance. "They have to travel six 
 hundred and eighty-eight thousand miles to the court 
 
 * Ward's View, VoL III. p. 354-362- 
 
ISO PURGATORY. 
 
 of Yama [the judge of the dead]. In some places 
 the road consists of stones, mud and sand, burning 
 hot showers of sharp instruments, burning cinders, 
 and scalding water fall upon them. They fall into 
 concealed wells, grope their way through darkness, 
 and meet tigers and other dreaded animals, ' ' as we have 
 already shown. "At length they arrive at the court of 
 Yama, whose appearance is terrible; his height is 
 two hundred and forty miles, the hairs of his body are 
 as long as a palm-tree, his voice is as loud as thun- 
 der, his eyes send out flames of fire, and the noise of 
 his breathing is like a roaring tempest. His conduct 
 towards them corresponds to his terrible appear- 
 ance."* No wonder the Hindoo dreaded death, and 
 went through such strange and ineflFable sufferings 
 and tortures, and received so much aid, when de- 
 parted, from living friends, that this purgatorial region 
 might be wholly avoided, or the journey through it 
 be hastened and shortened ! 
 
 In scanning this religious system of old India we 
 find many points in their eschatology agreeing stri- 
 kingly with those in the Papal System. In the stage 
 immediately following death we find purifying and 
 punitive and restorative suffering; the physical struc- 
 ture and furnishings of that intermediate region, with 
 all the attendant horrors and dangers and agonies, would 
 answer equally for the popular purgatory of the tenth 
 century after Christ as for that in the tenth before. 
 In passing backward from Rome into India we have 
 
 * Allen's India, pp. 410, 411. 
 
THE HINDOO SYSTEM. 151 
 
 become familiar with pavements of fire, boiling oil 
 and water, and red hot iron and copper machines of 
 torture. Then we find coming in at the proper place, 
 works of merit and atonement by the guilty to avoid 
 all this, or gain at least an easier and earlier entrance 
 to heaven. Friends interpose by offerings and pray- 
 ers and pains to be put to the account and relief of 
 the departed, and so gain repose to their souls; all 
 which is with great expense to the relatives, and to 
 the enriching of the priests. Does it not look as if 
 the Vatican had infringed on the spiritual patent 
 of the pagoda for passing souls along to glory? 
 
 14* 
 
IS2 PURGATORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE PURGATORY OF ZOROASTER AKD THE PARSI. 
 
 In tracing the development and growth of this 
 doctrine along the centuries to its completion in the 
 papacy, we pass from India, in order, to the Persia of 
 the ancients. In this we, to a degree, retrace our 
 steps from Hindostan to those Asiatic highlands where 
 we found the emigrating germs of the Hindoo peoples 
 and religion. Prior to that emigrating, and while yet 
 the coming nations of Eastern and Southern and West- 
 ern Asia were in one family stock, called the Aryan, 
 a common religion underlay the whole, and from it 
 there started off, as sects or growths, the religious sys- 
 tems that have characterized Asia from the earliest 
 historic periods to the present time. Rawlinson says 
 we may go back to " a time when the Aryan race was 
 not yet separated into two branches, and the Easterns 
 and Westerns, the Indians and Iranians, had not yet 
 adopted the conflicting creeds of ^oroastrianism and 
 Brahminism. ' ' * 
 
 * Ancient Monarchies, vol. III., p. 94. John Murray. London, 
 1865. 
 
 "There are some circumstances which might dispose us to believe that 
 the ancient religions of Persia and of India were connected in their ori- 
 gin." Malcolm's Persia, I. p. 493. 
 
 "We are able, by the aid of the Indian Veda, to trace out with some 
 distinctness the form of the original Aryan faith held before the separa- 
 tion of the Indian and Persian nations." The Avesta, etc. By William 
 D. Whitney. Journal of the American Oriental Societ}', V. p. 378. 
 
THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 153 
 
 It is, of course, impossible to date the beginning of 
 the system, Iranic, Median, or Persian, now called 
 Zoroastrianism ; for any religious system of human 
 origin has a growth only and no birth, an era but no 
 epoch. Zoroaster discovered, systematized, and aug- 
 mented preexisting materials, and so gave a name to 
 the system. In ages following others modified the 
 system. 
 
 Scholars have been much divided as to the age in 
 which Zoroaster flourished. Sir William Ouseley, in 
 his travels in Persia, places him about five hundred 
 years before Christ. A learned Parsi of Bombay, Mr. 
 Furdoonjee, with great show of authorities, assigns 
 him to the sixth century. To this agree such English 
 scholars as Prideaux, Thomas Hyde, and Sir John 
 Malcolm. Guizot places him in the seventh century, 
 while the learned Dr. Martin Haug, who is much 
 at home in this province of literature, thinks that 
 Zoroaster must have lived at least fifteen hundred 
 years before Christ. Rawlinson would not shorten 
 this period by more than a century. This would 
 place the life of Zoroaster almost parallel with that 
 of Moses, or closely following, Moses having died, 
 according to the common chronology, B. C. 1451. 
 
 But be this as it may, a few centuries either way 
 among scholars, this system of religion, variously 
 called Iranian, Median, Assyrian, Chaldean, Parsi, 
 and Zoroastrian, flourished in the days of Solomon, 
 Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and was a temptation to 
 the Jews, before and after the captivity, that they 
 
IS4 PURGATORY. 
 
 did not wholly withstand. The sacred writings of 
 this religion once embraced twenty-one books, many 
 of which are now lost. Those extant are called The 
 Avesta. No one man is supposed to have written 
 them all, and their composition is regarded as an ac- 
 cumulation of many years, perhaps centuries, much 
 after the manner of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 We pass to the doctrine of the Avesta concerning 
 the future life. The souls of men were created in the 
 long ages past and retained in the realms of light. 
 
 The ancient Persian and the Oriental religions 
 generally are replete with this notion of a happy state 
 of the soul, preceding the present, in which it aposta- 
 tized; and of one succeeding the present, in which it 
 will go through an expiatory and redemptive process. 
 Pletho, in his commentaries on the Chaldean oracles, 
 says that "the Magi, Zoroaster's followers, with many 
 others, believe in the immortality of the human soul, 
 and that she descended from on high, to serve a mor- 
 tal body, to labor with it for some time, to animate 
 and adorn it as much as she can, and then return 
 again. The soul, when above, has several abodes, 
 one luminous, another dark, and some filled with an 
 equal mixture of light and darkness. Sometimes she 
 sinks into the body from the luminous abode, and after 
 a virtuous behavior returns again to the same place; 
 but if evil, she retires to a worse place, in proportion 
 to her conduct in life. ' ' * 
 
 But it is their destiny at length to assume human 
 
 * The Chevalier Ramsay, vol. II. pp. 419, 420. 
 
THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 155 
 
 bodies, and to go over the path of probation, called 
 The Way of the Two Destinies. The good and the 
 virtuous of this life, as well as the bad and the vic- 
 ious, pass on together through death to a tribunal, 
 where Ormazd, the righteous judge, separates them 
 for due reward and punishment. 
 
 Of that double world beyond we have a graphic 
 and glowing account in the fiction of a tour through 
 it and journal, an artifice so common in mythology. 
 We have illustrious examples of this, where Homer 
 passes Ulyss.es through the under world, in his Elev- 
 enth Book of the Odyssey, and Virgil, igneas, in his 
 Sixth of the ^neid. Dante's Inferno and St. Pat- 
 rick's Purgatory come in with the same class of wri- 
 tings, and have the same general design. These 
 fancies, with many other similar and minor ones, 
 mirror the prevalent religious sentiments of the age, 
 embellished more or less by the poetic imaginations 
 and liberties of the authors. 
 
 The old Avestan or Parsi faith has not failed to 
 avail itself of this expedient and commentary, and 
 some quotatious from the Revelations of Ardai Viraf 
 will serve as a good foundation for us on which to 
 place the framework of the purgatory of Zoroaster. 
 
 About 202 A. D. Ardeshir Babegan obtained the 
 Persian monarchy, after putting to death ninety petty 
 kings or princes in the opposition. As the ancient 
 religion of the empire had been much weakened, and 
 specially by the conquest of Alexander, 330 B. C, 
 and its consequences, and the ancient creeds and ritu- 
 
iS6 PURGATORY. 
 
 als quite obscured, the king set himself to their resto- 
 ration. He convoked an assembly of forty thousand 
 of the sacred scholars of the realm, and unfolded to 
 them his purpose. Then, by successive reductions 
 and elections, to four thousand, and then to four hun- 
 dred, and then to forty, and finally to seven, a choice 
 commission was obtained to execute the royal purpose. 
 These seven scholars, doctors and priests, undertook 
 the restoration of the doctrines of Zoroaster and the 
 Magian faith in its truth and purity and sanctity. 
 The work was accomplished by sending the soul of 
 one of their number on the tour of the spirit land 
 through its two great compartments of joy and sorrow. 
 With much Oriental ceremonial his departure is pre- 
 pared, and his return anxiously and awfully awaited, 
 while the six companions watch his soulless body — 
 the king's court and the forty thousand standing an 
 outside guard at reverent distance from the temple of 
 ceremony. At the close of the seventh night Ardai 
 Viraf returns to his forsaken body and to conscious- 
 ness, and his report of the spiritual pilgrimage of the 
 under world constitutes The Revelations of Ardai 
 Viraf* 
 
 His declared purpose in the revelation is " that all 
 people might know the rewards for the good, and the 
 punishments that attended the wicked doer," in both 
 heaven and hell, ' ' in order that heresy and schism be 
 
 * The Ardai Viraf Nameh : Translated from the Persian and Guze- 
 ratee Versions. With Notes and Illustrations. By J. A. Pope. Lon- 
 don, 1816. 
 
THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 157 
 
 banished from the earth, and that the worship of the 
 true God be restored to its wonted purity. ' ' 
 
 In the first entrance of Ardai Viraf into the spirit 
 land, he passes Chinvat — "the bridge of the gather- 
 ing" — over which all the dead must pass immediately 
 after leaving the body. It is narrow as the edge of a 
 knife-blade, very high over awful chasms and torrents, 
 and exceedingly difiicult and dangerous in the pas- 
 sage. Only the righteous succeed in the going over, 
 while the wicked fall into the lower depths. 
 
 After passing, Ardai Viraf came to the throne of 
 the righteous judge, on the one side of whom the 
 golden scales of justice were hung aloft, and on the 
 left were five thousand reporting angels, all whose 
 words the judge could hear at the same time, and all 
 whose written reports he could read at one glance. 
 Here among the justified he meets all those of his own 
 family who had died in the true faith. But not to 
 follow the pilgrim from place to place, through each 
 consecutive hour, let points of observation here and 
 there suffice. 
 
 Here is a group in neutral apathy; they have 
 neither joy nor sorrow, since in this life their good and 
 evil deeds balanced each other. They can go neither 
 to the good nor the bad, and their punishment, if it 
 may be so called, is to realize the stupidity and degra- 
 dation of neutrality. In the second heaven, for there 
 are seven in an ascending grade, he found certain 
 happy to that second degree, for a good use of wealth 
 in life; but they could never go up higher, because 
 
iS8 PURGATORY. 
 
 for indolence here they had done no better. So those 
 who have been sluggish in their devotions never rise 
 above the third hea,ven ; and those who had carelessly 
 used wet and green wood for the sacred fire were 
 found detained in the fourth heaven, whereas they 
 should have kept a supply of dry wood twelve months 
 ahead. The practical turn that this Revelation takes, 
 at points now and then, is quite refreshing. The lone 
 soul is even led to a river made up of the sap and 
 water from the green and wet wood of lazy janitors at 
 the fire temples. * 
 
 The sixth heaven showed philanthropists, the 
 friends of the widow and orphan, and good legislators 
 and rulers, and the devout ministers in holy things, 
 and heroes who died for the right, and faithful wives. 
 All these were in the surpassing splendor of thrones 
 and palaces, and pearls, and jewels, and most extrava- 
 gent vestments, and charming landscapes, and the 
 music of birds, and an atmosphere loaded with the 
 richest and sweetest odors. 
 
 After witnessing the yet more surpassing glories of 
 the seventh heaven, Ardai Viraf is desired by his two 
 conductors to prepare himself to see the abodes of the 
 wicked and their torments. He soon arrives at a 
 river nine lances deep,t of most offensive odors, and 
 
 * The Piirsi have such a reh'gious veneration for fire that no impure 
 substances are ever thrown into it, as hair, the trimmings of finger-nails, 
 and the floor-dust. In the religious fire, green, decayed or wormy wood, 
 and wood of offensive odor is forbidden, while sandal-wood with camphor, 
 amber, and other gums of pleasant odor, are much sought. 
 
 t For so the Persians are wont to reckon, a lance being regarded as 
 about seven feet. 
 
THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 159 
 
 abounding with most noxious reptiles, in which very 
 many souls are floating. This river is made of the 
 rebellious tears of mortals, wept stubbornly for the loss 
 of departed friends. The conductors explain by say- 
 ing, ' ' To pray for the souls of the deceased is a duty 
 we owe them, and is pleasing to God; but to cry and 
 mourn is sinful in his sight. ' ' Soon after, our pilgrim 
 perceives a soul just arrived, and fallen into the fright- 
 ful chasms under the Bridge, and the prey of horrid 
 demons. Near by a man is seen hanging from a tree 
 by one leg, while fiends slice off his living flesh. 
 This man had tortured and murdered the faithful of 
 God. Another is dying of hunger and thirst, who 
 revelled in all good things in this life, «nd neither 
 gave thanks to God nor charity to the needy. A 
 woman is seen suspended by the breasts who had been 
 an unfaithful wife. Men are urged by demons, and 
 with blows and stripes, to drink excessive measures of 
 most noxious and offensive mixtures. They were 
 traders who had bought by large measures, and sold 
 by false and smaller ones, and had mixed water with 
 the milk for their customers. One manacled victim 
 is tossed about by seventy devils, and flogged with 
 serpents for having been a tyrant to his subjects, while 
 the tongue of another, much protruding, is covered 
 with noxious insects, scorpions, and centipedes. 
 "This man," said the interpreting conductor, "was 
 a great sinner, a fomenter of disputes, a liar, a slan- 
 derer, and of the most evil disposition. ' ' 
 
 In one department of these horrible regions Ardai 
 
i6o PURGATORY, 
 
 Viraf finds another unfortunate whom many devils 
 were cutting to pieces, regardless of his painful and 
 piteous cries. The explanation is given : ' ' This man 
 was a wanton destroyer of animals, a man who never 
 reflected that though animals were given by God for 
 the use of man, yet he was not permitted to kill or 
 torture them wantonly. ' ' This poor sufferer had been 
 no member of a society for the protection of our dumb 
 animals. The body of another is found totally im- 
 mersed in suffering, with the exception of one foot. 
 He had lived the life of a sluggard, in indolence and 
 in ill-temper over the least useful act ; yet once he 
 pushed with that foot the feed within reach of a tired 
 and starving sheep, and so it is exempt. A group is 
 found with their flesh dropping, in diseases, from their 
 bones. They had delighted in turning men away from 
 integrity in business, and from the virtues and reli- 
 gion. One is pressed down and crushed under a moun- 
 tain weight. He had forced collections from the poor, 
 and foreclosed mortgages and taken exhorbitant rents 
 and usury. A multitude of fiends surround a poor 
 wretch, while they flog him with snakes, and force 
 him to rake granite chips in a quarry with his finger- 
 nails. 
 
 The explanation is significant, while it contains 
 the key to the continuance of these purgatorial pains. 
 "This man possessed himself of his neighbor's land 
 under false pretences, and has left it to his son ; and 
 as long as it remains in his family, so long will this 
 punishment endure." Here is the very fulcrum of 
 
THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. i6i 
 
 power in the papal theory of purgatory. The amount 
 and the continuance of those under- world pains are in 
 the hands of the living. 
 
 Yet this admonition is sent back by Ardai Viraf to 
 the living: "I^et them not believe that punishments 
 will be remitted at the intercession of those they leave 
 behind ; nor will the prayers of priests avail them ; as 
 they sow, so they will reap ; neither reward nor pun- 
 ishment will be omitted. Proclaim this to the world, 
 and let the dreams of carelessness and negligence be 
 banished for ever. ' ' 
 
 In this old Avestan theology sin had a measure of 
 due punishment that must be meted out to the guilty 
 one, and then he could go free. It was for a later age 
 to found and fund an ecclesiastical bank of merit, hav- 
 ing for its capital the extra good works of apostles, 
 martyrs, and saints. The idea was yet to come that 
 by a kind of spiritual brokerage in cash or prayers, or 
 the mass, this merit could be checked out and applied 
 to the relief and even instant restoration of those suf- 
 fering souls. 
 
 With extended and varied observations our spirit- 
 pilgrim traversed these gloomy and sorrowful regions ; 
 but we need not follow him farther. We have ob- 
 tained from him the theory and practice of the purga- 
 tory of Zoroaster. 
 
 He returns to the bridge, Chinvat, and finds there 
 a great multitude who cannot pass it. Their lamen- 
 tation is, ' ' For want of heirs, to hand our name to pos- 
 terity, we cannot pass the bridge, but wander up and 
 
i62 PURGATORY. 
 
 down in an uncomfortable manner, without enjoy- 
 ment. We are in sight of heaven Report to 
 
 our families, O Ardai Viraf, our miserable situation, 
 that sons may be adopted in our names, that we may 
 be enabled to pass the bridge; and let it be known that 
 to hand our names to posterity is one of the highest 
 duties we owe our Creator." And so soon as this 
 adoption takes place and is known at Chinvat the 
 childless one passes over. This theory of the neces- 
 sity of heirs, natural or adopted, is common to the 
 Zoroastrian, the Hindoo, and the Mohammedan, and 
 is compactly stated in the Institutes of Menu, that ' ' a 
 man is perfect when he consists of three — his wife, 
 himself, and his son."* 
 
 Ardai Viraf found others at the bridge awaiting 
 the arrival, through death, of those whom they had 
 injured, and whose forgiveness was indispensable be- 
 fore they could pass over into bliss. As the restora- 
 tion and happy progress of the former depended on 
 adoption, so these awaited the pardon of those whom 
 they had offended. In each case human hands could 
 pass them along heavenward. 
 
 At the end of the seventh night Ardai Viraf reas- 
 cended to the upper air and made his report. 
 
 "Immediately after death," says Rawlinson, "the 
 souls of men, both good and bad, proceed together 
 along an appointed path to ' the bridge of the gather- 
 ing, ' Chinvat. This was a narrow road conducting to 
 heaven, or paradise, over which the souls of the pious 
 
 * Institutes of Menu, vol. IX. p. 45. 
 
THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 163 
 
 alone could pass, while the wicked fell from it into the 
 gulf below, where they found themselves in the place 
 of punishment. ' ' * 
 
 An Avestan fragment thus describes this tribunal : 
 ' ' On the soaring bridge the soul meets Rashne-rast, 
 the angel of justice, who tries those that present them- 
 selves before him. If the merits prevail, a figure of 
 dazzling substance, radiating glory and fragrance, ad- 
 vances and accosts the justified soul, saying, ' I am thy 
 good angel; I was pure at the first, but thy good deeds 
 have made me purer ;' and the happy one is straight- 
 way led to paradise. But when the vices outweight 
 the virtues, a dark and frightful image, featured with 
 ugliness, and exhaling a noisome smell, meets the con- 
 demned soul, and cries, ' I am thy evil spirit; bad my- 
 self, thy crimes have made me worse. ' Then the cul- 
 prit staggers on his uncertain foothold, is hurled from 
 the dizzy causeway, and precipitated into the gulf 
 which yawns horribly below, "t 
 
 Of this bridge the Avesta thus speaks: " Creator! 
 Where are those tribunes, where do they assemble, 
 where do they come together, at which a man of the 
 corporeal world gives account for his soul ? . . . . To 
 the bridge Chinvat, the created by Ahura-Mazda, 
 where they interrogate the consciousness and the soul 
 regarding the conduct. "J 
 
 * Ancient Monarchies, vol. III. pp. 115, 116. 
 
 t History of the Doctrine of a Future Life. By W. R. Alger, pp. 
 136, 137. G. W. Childs, Philadelphia, 1864. 
 
 X Spiegel's Avesta : Bleeck's translation, Vendidad - Fargard, vol. 
 XIX. vv. 89, 96. Hertford, Eng., 1864. 
 
 15* 
 
i64 PURGATORY. 
 
 Elsewhere the departing soul is represented as say- 
 ing, ' ' I enter on the shining way ; may the fearful 
 terror of hell not overcome me ! May I step over the 
 bridge Chinvat, may I attain paradise with much per- 
 fume and all enjoyments and all brightness. " * "I 
 praise the mid-world, the self-created, and the bridge 
 Chinvat, created by Ahura-Mazda."! 
 
 The "mid- world" here is Mi^vana, "the world 
 in which the souls are placed whose good and bad 
 deeds are equally balanced. Mi§vana is between 
 heaven and earth, and the souls in it have to suffer 
 both cold and heat."| 
 
 An intermediate state for the dead, and punish- 
 ments and sufferings of a purifying and restoring char- 
 acter, were essentials in the Parsi faith. The duration 
 of suffering is fixed arbitrarily by Ormazd and by the 
 necessities of the case, in the demerits and wants of 
 the individual. But as to the length of time, it is 
 stated with an affluent. Oriental indefiniteness. It is 
 run off into symbolic days and nights, with poetic 
 license, and herein corresponds to the thousands and 
 hundreds of thousands of years that papal indulgences 
 cover. In some cases the pangs of a day and a night 
 are made equal to the agonies of three thousand years. 
 
 The good, as the bad, are represented as making 
 progress by stages of space or time, or both. 
 
 "When a pure man dies, where does his soul 
 
 * Spiegel's Khordah-Avesta, vol. XIV. v. 6. 
 t Il)icl., Vendidad-Fargard, vol. XIX. v. 122. 
 X Spiegel's Note to Veiididad-Faigaid, vol. XIX. v. 122. 
 
THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 165 
 
 dwell during this night? Then answered Ahura- 
 Mazda: Near his head it sets itself down, reciting the 
 Githd Ustavaiti, praying happiness for itself. On 
 this night the soul sees as much joyfulness as the 
 whole living world possesses." So during three 
 nights the soul goes through the same experiences. 
 "The soul of the pure man goes the iirst step and 
 arrives in Humata; the soul of the pure man takes 
 the second step and arrives at Hukhta; it goes the 
 third step and arrives at Havarsta; the soul of the 
 pure man takes the fourth step, and arrives at the 
 Eternal I^ights." Then that soul passes into the 
 fourth and final Paradise. ' ' When a wicked one dies 
 where does the soul dwell throughout this night? 
 Then answered Ahura-Mazda: There, O pure Zara- 
 thustra, near the head it runs about, while it utters 
 the prayer Ke-Manm. ... In this night the soul 
 sees as much unjoyfulness as the whole living world. ' ' 
 The guilty one, as the innocent, has the three nights 
 or stages. "The fourth step takes the soul of the 
 wicked man and arrives at the darkness without be- 
 ginning. . . . Bring hither food, poison and mixed 
 with poison, for that is the food for a youth who 
 thinks, speaks, and does evil — belongs to the wicked 
 land after his death. ' ' * 
 
 In tracing this P^rsi doctrine only so far, we dis- 
 cover strong resemblances or prototypes of the corre- 
 sponding papal one ; but a more marked likeness 
 
 * Spiegel's Avesta, Bleek's Translation; Khordah-Avesta, vol. 
 
 xxxviir. 
 
i66 PURGATORY. 
 
 appears in the Zoroastrian theory and practice of 
 prayers for the dead. Says Rawlinson, ' ' The prayers 
 of his friends in this world were of much avail to the 
 deceased, and greatly helped him on his journey. ' ' * 
 
 ' ' The duration of the punishment is fixed by Or- 
 mazd, and some are redeemed earlier by means of the 
 prayers and intercessions of their friends, but many 
 must remain till the resurrection of the dead. ' ' t 
 
 For the systematic ministration of such relief by 
 living saints ' ' there was a yearly solemnity, called 
 The Festival for the Dead, still observed by the Par- 
 sees, held at the season when it was thought that that 
 portion of the sinful departed who had ended their 
 penance were raised from Dutsakh to earth, from earth 
 to Garotman. Du Perron says that this took place 
 only during the last five days of the year, when the 
 souls of all the deceased sinners who were undergoing 
 punishment had permission to leave their confinement 
 and visit their relatives; after which, those not yet 
 purified were to return, but those for whom a sufficient 
 atonement had been made were to proceed to Para- 
 dise."! 
 
 In this Festival for the Dead we find an outline 
 and the substantial elements of the All Souls' Day of 
 the Romanist. The similarity of condition of the 
 souls to be relieved, the theory of relief, and the meth- 
 ods of aid, have a remarkable agreement. All Souls' 
 
 * Ancient Monarchies, vol. III. p. Ii6. 
 
 t Ten Great Religions, by James Freeman Clarke, p. 200. 
 
 } The Doctrine of a Future Life, by W. R. Alger, p. 137. 
 
THE ZOROASTER SYSTEM. 167 
 
 Day " is a day instituted by the church in memory of 
 all the faithful departed, that by the prayers and suf- 
 frages of the living they may be freed out of their 
 purgatory pains and come to everlasting rest."* 
 
 In this Zoroastrian purgatory we find gross phys- 
 ical qualities, as foul and loathsome places, cold, 
 heat, and other intense bodily pains, fiendish tor- 
 menting companions, cycles of time in purifying suf- 
 fering, and slow stages of growth in purity to a full 
 redemption, towards which the prayers and offerings 
 of the living do much hasten the guilty and agonized 
 ones. In perusing this scheme of the ancient Per- 
 sians, the thoughtful reader will find it quite impossi- 
 ble to suppress suggestions and comparisons concern- 
 ing the later and more detailed scheme of the modern 
 Romanists for the same purpose. This is the Zoroas- 
 trian, Pdrsi, or Avestan religion in the department of 
 the future life. 
 
 We shall not give full credit to the system of Zoro- 
 aster as a power to modify the coming Christian faith 
 unless we regard its wide geographical sweep. Persia 
 proper, that gave the name of P^rsi to the system, 
 was not a large country, being less than five hundred 
 miles in length and two hundred or so in width. 
 But the doctrines of Zoroaster travelled with the Per- 
 sian kings to the limits of their wide domain, an ex- 
 tent of country little less than three thousand miles 
 from east to west, with a width varying from five hun- 
 dred to fifteen hundred miles. It went up the valley 
 
 * Douay Catechism. 
 
i68 PURGATORY. 
 
 of the Indus from its mouth to the northern and east- 
 ern boundaries of Turkestan; thence westward by the 
 Caspian and Black Seas to Constantinople; thence 
 following the shores of the Mediterranean and sweep- 
 ing up the valley of the Nile, it took in Egypt and 
 then Arabia, and so returned by the Persian Gulf to 
 the starting point. These were the limits of the Per- 
 sian Empire at the height of its glory, from about 
 B. C. 506 to B. C. 479. Speaking generally, its 
 grandeur covered the times of Ezra, Nehemiah, Hag- 
 gai, and Zechariah. Under Cyrus, Cambyses, Smer- 
 dis the Impostor, Darius, and Xerxes, the religious 
 system of Zoroaster was carried beyond the narrow 
 bounds of old Persia to the imperial limits that we 
 have indicated — an area larger than the Roman 
 Empire in its greatest extent by four hundred thou- 
 sand square miles. 
 
THE GREEK SYSTEM. 169 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE GREEK PURaATORY. 
 
 The Christian Church of the first centuries was 
 trained much in the Grecian school. This will not 
 seem strange to one who considers the wonderful lan- 
 guage and varied literature and masterly authors in 
 that school. It led the thinking world, and gave 
 many leading fathers to the church. These, first edu- 
 cated in their own Grecian theology, naturally carried 
 many of their views with them into their new theol- 
 ogy. But of such results we shall give more full no- 
 tice by-and-by. Now we propose to notice the theory, 
 teachings, and literature of the Greeks concerning pur- 
 gatory. 
 
 In showing the prevalence of the purgatorial sys- 
 tem in the various sects and shades of the Grecian 
 schools of philosophy, a reference here and there will 
 be sufficient. These references, however, can be prop- 
 erly introduced only by certain poetic photographs of 
 that middle kingdom, taken by Homer centuries be- 
 fore Greece could boast of a philosopher. * 
 
 When Ulysses had gained his prayer to leave the 
 hated island of Circe for Ithaca, his home, the en- 
 chanting goddess said to him, 
 
 * The quotations from Homer are from Bryant's Translation. 
 
I70 PURGATORY. 
 
 " But ye have yet to make 
 Another voyage, and must visit first 
 The abode of Pluto, and of Proserpine, 
 His dreaded queen, and there consult (he soul 
 Of the blind seer, Tiresias." 
 " There into Acheron are poured the streams 
 Of Pyriphlegethon, and of that arm 
 Of Styx, Cocytus. 
 
 " Offer there thy prayer 
 Fervently to that troop of airy forms, 
 And make the vow that thou wilt sacrifice 
 When thou at last shalt come to Ithaca." 
 
 Ulysses and his company departed with sorrow and 
 forebodings on their voyage and visit to the under 
 world. They at length arrive at a land and people of 
 
 "Eternal cloud 
 And darkness. Never does the glorious sun 
 Look on them with his rays when he goes up 
 Into the starry sky, nor when again 
 He sinks from heaven to earth. Unwholesome night 
 O'erhangs the wretched race." 
 
 When they had landed, Ulysses offered the sacri- 
 fices prescribed by Circe. 
 
 " When I had worshipped thus with prayer and vows 
 The nations of the dead, I took the sheep 
 And pierced their throats above the hollow trench. 
 The blood flowed dark; and thronging round me came 
 Souls of the dead from Erebus — young wives, 
 And maids unwedded, men worn out with years 
 And toil, and virgins of a tender age 
 In their new grief, and many a warrior slain 
 In battle, mangled by the spear, and clad 
 In bloody armor, who about the trench 
 Flitted on every side, now here, now there. 
 With gibbering cries, and I grew pale with fear." 
 
 Homer was the first photographer who traversed 
 that horrid region and took pictures from the grim 
 
THE GREEK SYSTEM. 171 
 
 walls of its Tartarian caverns, or caught originals from 
 the living as the shadowy ones glided about over the 
 plains of asphodel. 
 
 Let us open this Homeric portfolio of pictures from 
 the original purgatory, glancing at single faces or 
 groups of figures as they happen to come to us. 
 
 When Ulysses left the Isle of Circe, in the hurry 
 of the early morning, one of his friends, heavy with 
 wine and half awake, fell headlong from the flat roof 
 of the palace and broke his neck, and so was lost from 
 the company when they embarked. Surprised to meet 
 him there in the realm of Pluto, Ulysses said, 
 
 " How earnest thou, 
 Elpenor, hither into these abodes 
 Of night and darltness ? Thou hast made more speed, 
 Although on foot, than I in my good ship. 
 I spake ; the phantom sobbed, and answered me, 
 
 ' Son of Laertes, nobly born and wise 
 
 Ulysses, 'twas the evil doom decreed 
 
 By some divinity, and too much wine. 
 
 That wrought my death.' " 
 
 The type of purgatory, and specially the cause of 
 entrance here brought out, are not exclusively pagan 
 or papal. 
 
 "And then the soul of Anticleia came — 
 My own dead mother, daughter of the King 
 Autolycus, large-minded. Her I left 
 Alive what time I sailed for Troy, and now 
 I wept to see her there, and pitied her. 
 
 She knew me suddenly, 
 
 And said in piteous tones these winged words: 
 ' How didst thou come, my child, a living man, 
 Into this place of darkness ? Difficult 
 It is for those who breathe the breath of life 
 
 Purgatory. I^ 
 
172 PURGATORY. 
 
 To visit these abodes, through which are rolled 
 
 Great rivers, fearful floods.' 
 
 . . . . I longed to take into my arms 
 The soul of my dead mother. Thrice I tried, 
 Moved by a strong desire, and thrice the form 
 Passed through them, like a shadow or a dream." 
 
 We give samples from the portfolio in variety, so 
 that the impression may be average of that strange 
 abode. 
 
 "Then saw I Leda, wife of Tyndarus, 
 Who bore to Tyndarus two noble sons — 
 Castor, the horseman ; Pollux, skilled to wield 
 The cestus. Both of them have still a place 
 Upon the fruitful earth ; for Jupiter 
 Gave them such honor that they live by turns 
 Each one a day, and then are with the dead 
 
 Each one by turns 
 
 And Masra I beheld, and Clymene 
 And Eriphyle, hateful in her guilt. 
 Who sold her husband for a price in gold." 
 
 But the catalogue of Ulysses, culled from the cen- 
 sus-tables of Pluto's kingdom, is a long one, and he 
 wearies, as the hours go by, in his minstrel story. 
 
 " But vainly might I think to name them all — 
 The wives and daughters of heroic men 
 Whom I beheld — for first the ambrosial night 
 Would wear away." 
 
 His audience, however, will not be denied. 
 
 "Now say, and frankly, didst thou also see 
 Any of those heroic men who went 
 With thee to Troy, and in that region met 
 Their fate ? A night immeasurably long 
 Is yet before us. Let us have thy tale 
 Of wonders. I could listen till the break 
 Of hallowed morning, if thou canst endure 
 So long to speak of hardships thou hast borne." 
 
THE GREEK SYSTEM. 173 
 
 Thus encouraged and urged, Ulysses continues his 
 personal narrative of the tour of purgatory. It would 
 seem that souls of women had crowded most about 
 him, as curious and importunate. Now the scene 
 changes. 
 
 "When chaste Proserpina had made the ghosts 
 Of women scatter right and left, there came 
 The soul of Agamemnon, Atreus' son. 
 
 He knew me at a look. 
 
 And wailed aloud, and, bursting into tears. 
 Stretched out his hands to touch me ; but no power 
 Was there of grasp or pressure, such as once 
 Dwelt in those active limbs. I could not help 
 But weep at sight of him." 
 
 Agamemnon had been slain at a banquet, by the 
 treachery of his wife Clytemnestra; and when Ulysses 
 asks for the cause of his death, he states the fact most 
 practically. The Roman purgatory is famed for its 
 good preaching by some of its sad inmates ; but for 
 force and beauty few of them exceed the old Greek 
 warrior in this : 
 
 " I heard Cassandra's piteous cry, 
 The cry of Priam's daughter, stricken down 
 By treacherous Clytemnestra at my side. 
 And there I lay, and, dying, raised my hands 
 To grasp my sword. The shameless woman went 
 Her way, nor stayed to close my eyes, nor press 
 My mouth into its place, although my soul 
 Was on its way to Hades. There is naught 
 That lives more horrible, more lost to shame. 
 Than is the woman who has brought her mind 
 To compass deeds like these — the wretch who plans 
 So foul a crime — the murder of the man 
 Whom she a virgin wedded. . . . 
 
174 PURGATORY. 
 
 Therefore be not compliant to thy wife, 
 Nor let her hear from thee whatever lies 
 Within thy knowledge. Tell her but a part, 
 And keep the rest concealed." 
 
 The ghost of Achilles is met by our under- world 
 wanderer, and Ulysses congratulates him upon the fact 
 that he is ruler over those vast regions of the dead. 
 But this sad reply is made from his phantom lips : 
 
 " I would be 
 A laborer on earth, and serve for hire 
 Some man of mean estate, who makes scant cheer, 
 Rather than reign o'er all who have gone down 
 To death." 
 
 Ambition has no ends to gain in that dark land ; 
 the business rather is to make amends for sins and 
 errors here, and so pass on to a better estate. Yet the 
 great warrior is comforted with what is told him of the 
 prowess and victories and wide fame of his son. 
 
 " The soul of swift Eacides 
 Over the meadows thick with asphodel 
 Departed with long strides, well pleased to hear 
 From me the story of his son's renown." 
 
 It was an unfortunate interview when Ulysses and 
 Ajax met ; for they had not come together face to face 
 since their mighty struggle for the arms of the dead 
 Achilles. In that contest Ajax was defeated, and in 
 the delirium of his disappointment he slew the sheep 
 about the camp, supposing they were the partisans of 
 his successful rival. When recovered from the frenzy 
 he saw his mistake, his mortification was intolerable, 
 and he ended it with his life in suicide, and so has- 
 tened to Hades. But his anger died not in the grave. 
 
THE GREEK SYSTEM. 175 
 
 The old pagan theology was orthodox in that a man 
 takes his character with him to the nether world. 
 
 " The other ghosts of those who lay in death 
 Stood sorrowing by, and each one told his griefs j 
 But that of Ajax, son of Telemon, 
 
 Kept far aloof, displeased 
 
 . . . . Then I spalce in soothing words, 
 
 ' O king, draw near. 
 
 And hear our voice and words, and checlc, I pray, 
 The anger rising in thy generous breast.' 
 
 I spake ; he answered not, but moved away 
 To Erebus, among the other souls 
 Of the departed." 
 
 Some cases of terrible retribution are sketched, as 
 when a master, with a few lines, puts on the canvas a 
 face that speaks. 
 
 "And Tityus there I saw — the mighty earth 
 His mother — overspreading, as he lay. 
 Nine acres, with two vultures at his side, 
 That, plucking at his liver, plunged their beaks 
 Into his flesh ; nor did his hands avail 
 To drive them off, for he had offered force 
 To Jove's proud wife, Latona 
 
 And next I looked on Tantalus, a prey 
 To grievous torments, standing in a lake 
 That reached his chin. Though painfully athirst, 
 He could not drink ; as often as he bowed 
 His aged head to take into his lips 
 The water, it was drawn away, and sank 
 Into the earth, and the dark soil appeared 
 Around his feet ; a god had dried it up. 
 And lofty trees drooped o'er him, hung with fruit — 
 Pears and pomegranates, apples fair to sight. 
 And luscious figs, and olives green of hue. 
 And when that ancient man put forth his hands 
 To pluck them from their stems, the wind arose 
 And whirled them far among the shadowy clouds, 
 16* 
 
176 PURGATORY. 
 
 Then I beheld the shade of Sisyphus 
 Amid his sufferings. With both hands he rolled 
 A huge stone up a hill. To force it up, 
 He leaned against the mass with hands and feet ; 
 But, ere it crossed the summit of the hill, 
 A power was felt that sent it rolling back. 
 And downward plunged the unmanageable rock 
 Before him to the plain. Again he toiled 
 To heave it upward, while the sweat in streams 
 Ran down his limbs, and dust begrimed his brow." 
 
 It is not needful to follow our Ulysses farther — the 
 Gregory the Great of the Greeks — through these dark 
 and doleful and ghostly regions. We have seen 
 enough to recognize the original purgatory, though it 
 be as simple and bald and barren compared with that 
 of the papist, as is Faust's printing press when com- 
 pared with Hoe's. Let us leave the region with 
 Ulysses for the upper air. 
 
 " Now there flocked 
 Already round me, with a mighty noise, 
 The innumerable nations of the dead; 
 And I grew pale with fear. .... 
 
 Hastening to my ship, I bade 
 
 The crew embark, and cast the hawsers loose." 
 
 And SO the first tour of Purgatory, whose record is 
 extant, was made and ended. 
 
 The doctrines and teachings of Pythagoras, on the 
 theory of preexistence and purgatory, had their influ- 
 ence, direct and indirect, on all the religious and 
 philosophical systems immediately surrounding Chris- 
 tianity at its introduction. His long residence in 
 Egypt made him familiar with the theories of that 
 primitive land concerning an anterior existence. 
 
THE GREEK SYSTEM. i>ji 
 
 That he afterwards, spent some years among the Magi 
 admits of doubts, though Prideaux is very confident: 
 ' ' That Pythagoras was in Egypt, and from thence 
 went to Babylon, and learnt there a great part of that 
 knowledge which he was afterwards so famous for, is 
 agreed by all. ' ' * 
 
 With a mixture of Egyptian, Indian, and Zoroas- 
 trian philosophy, he brought back to Greece, as its 
 leading teacher there, the theory of preexistence, and 
 an eternal transmigration of the soul from body to 
 body. He even declared that he retained a clear 
 remembrance of that former state through which his 
 soul had come into the present one. His system was 
 pioneer to the Stoic and Platonic, though Plato carried 
 it out more into details, and shows its power in the 
 Christianity of the new Platonists and Schoolmen, f 
 
 Plato in his Phaedrus says that if a soul in the 
 society of the gods delights itself in nectar and ambrosia 
 more than in the contemplation of truth, it grows 
 sluggish and heavy, and falls to the earth, and takes 
 to itself an earthly body, more or less gross, according 
 to its previous grade. In his Politicus he advances 
 the idea that after ten thousand years of degradation 
 in the body, then souls will be restored to their primi- 
 tive state among the celestials. He also quotes, in 
 Cratylus, the saying of Orpheus, that "the human 
 soul is here in punishment for sins committed in a 
 preexistent state." The body is a prison where the 
 
 * Connexion, sub anno, 4S6. 
 
 t Morell, His. Pliilos. Introd., p. 28. 
 
178 PURGATORY. 
 
 soul is kept in custody till it has suffered sufficiently 
 for its faults. 
 
 Empedocles, the Pythagorean, also held, like his 
 Samian master, that souls are here in wandering and 
 exile from God, because they sinned in heaven and 
 were cast out to occupy mortal bodies. And Plutarch 
 in his Isis and Osiris, makes Heraclitus say, "My 
 soul anticipates her departure from this prison, and 
 beholding, as it were, an outside world through the 
 windows of the body, it seems to recall that region 
 from whence it came down to be enclosed in this 
 mortal body of ilesh and bones and blood and nerves. ' ' 
 
 Plato also, in his Phsedo, speaking of that home of 
 unfallen souls, says they there breathed light as we do 
 air, and drank a water purer than air. Being now 
 fallen, he says in his Phsedrus, those least debased and 
 sinful are found in the bodies of philosophers, but the 
 more thoroughly apostate in the bodies of despots and 
 very degraded men. 
 
 In his Phsedo Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates 
 a description of the world of purgation, sufficiently 
 like to be the original of that of the papist. Indeed 
 it will be seen, after reading our summary from Plato, 
 that some of the Roman-catholic authors whom we 
 have quoted are well nigh open to the charge of 
 plagiarism of language as well as ideas. 
 
 The interior of the earth, he says, is full of caverns, 
 communicating with each other by underground pas- 
 sages. Among these are hot and cold springs and 
 great rivers. Some of these rivers are of water and 
 
THE GREEK SYSTEM. 179 
 
 some of fire; some are pure aud others dirty and 
 muddy. These all have their confluence into Tar- 
 tarus, and then flow out of it again in their own 
 channels. 
 
 Their influx and efflux is as respiration in the 
 living creature. Among them three are conspicuous. 
 One of these is Acheron, which, flowing under ground 
 for a long distance, enters, at length, the Acherusian 
 Marsh. Here vast multitudes of departed souls are 
 congregated, and having been detained a longer or 
 shorter time, according to their deserts and sentences, 
 they depart to live an earthly life over again in the 
 race of animals. 
 
 Another of these rivers is the Phlegethon, or the 
 Burning River. It is a river of many branches, that 
 burst through in different places, wherever they can 
 find or force a way. Its main stream flows into a fiery 
 lake that boils constantly with water and mud ; thence, 
 by long compass under ground, it empties itself into 
 the deepest parts of Tartarus. The third river is the 
 Cocy tus, the River of Sorrow. This in its course makes 
 first the Stygian lake, the dismal abode of hate and 
 fear and grief. After many additions, in its long and 
 circling wanderings under ground, it also empties 
 itself into Tartarus. 
 
 This being the arrangement of the middle regions 
 for the departed, Plato goes on to say, that when 
 spirits arrive, they are first examined, and then sen- 
 tenced. Those who have lived a life of tolerable 
 uprightness go to the Acherusian Marsh, where they 
 
i8o PURGATORY. 
 
 remain long enough to suffer the punishments ap- 
 pointed for their expiation and expurgation. After 
 their sins are expiated they are absolved and released 
 for happier regions. *'' 
 
 If any in sudden passion have done violence to 
 father or mother, or have taken human life in exces- 
 sive anger, or have committed any other great yet 
 expiable or ' ' venial ' ' sins, and then truly repented 
 during the rest of their lives, they are sent down into 
 the lower abodes of Tartarus. When they have been 
 in its circling and tormenting waters and fires for a 
 twelvemonth, they are thrown into the Acherusian 
 Marsh, where in the mixed assemblage of souls they 
 find those whom they have injured. These they 
 entreat to be content with the suflFerings they have 
 endured, and permit them to leave the dismal and 
 sorrowful place. If the prayer is granted, they escape 
 their miseries at once. Otherwise they take the 
 circuit and sufferings of Tartarus again, and again try 
 the clemency of those whom they wronged. And so 
 on and on, and with some for painfully long cycles, 
 till indulgence and absolution are perfected, when 
 they take joyful and retumless departure. 
 
 If, however, any are found burdened with very 
 great sins, as unjust homicide or sacrilege, and have 
 exercised no repentance, their sins are unpardonable 
 or ' ' mortal, ' ' and under stem decision they are thrust 
 down into the lowest, deepest Tartarus, never to 
 come up and out again. 
 
 To this account of the purgatory of the Greeks, 
 
THE GREEK SYSTEM. i8i 
 
 Plato adds, "It is not for a wise man to declare that 
 the description I here furnish of the region and condi- 
 tions of souls after death is true. But it must be be- 
 lieved that something like this is true concerning 
 them." 
 
 In another connection, though in the Phsedo, he 
 says that souls going to the regions of the dead carry 
 nothing with them but the education, manners and 
 character of this life, and that these predetermine the 
 the state there. If the soul be impure from the 
 vices and crimes loved here, good souls will flee from 
 it, and leave it lonely and unguided. So it is necessa- 
 rily abandoned to wanderings and sorrows that will 
 both punish and purify it. At its appointed time, 
 when its purgation is completed, it escapes. 
 
 In his Republic Plato unfolds the same theory of 
 purgatory in his story of Ems, a Pamphylian. He 
 was slain in battle, and when about to be buried, on 
 the twelfth day he revived and gave an account of 
 a wonderful tour that he had made through the 
 lower regions. He witnessed the judgment day of 
 the gods, and the division of the multitude of souls 
 as they came in at death. The good were admitted 
 at once to the abodes of the blessed, while the bad 
 were sent downward, doomed to the long and sorrow- 
 ful wandering of a thousand years. Then there was 
 a regathering of the two divisions, the whole assembly 
 were instructed and exhorted, and each soul was left 
 to its own choice of its future life and state. * 
 » Plato's Republic, Book X. 
 
i82 PURGATORY. 
 
 We have here, from the Grecian system of escha- 
 tology, all the elements of the papal purgatory, if we 
 except certain amplified details. Here is the middle 
 region in the earth; the tormenting fire and water; 
 here the multitude of souls, recently from the regions 
 of the living, awaiting their primitive and purgating 
 cycle of suffering; their times are limited by their 
 deserts and by the facility with which pardons may 
 be earned and obtained; here are constant indulgen- 
 ces, absolutions, and departures for the happy land; 
 here are sins ' ' venial ' ' and ' ' mortal ' ' and the hell of 
 the hopeless; and here, in the Pamphylian, the system 
 of tours to and from that doleful region. We need 
 only the thousand years between Plato and Gregory 
 the Great, to perfect, from pagan mythology, the grand 
 papal system of purgatory. It can all be accomplished 
 without aid from the Apocrypha, or the distortion of 
 the canonical Scriptures. The Grecian material is 
 so abundant and apt, and the pagan structure so 
 complete, that originality of thought and plan must 
 be denied to Gregory for the huge imposition. 
 
THE R OMAN S YSTEM. 1 83 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE ROMAN PURGATORY. 
 
 W:e shall naturally look for the antitype of the 
 Romanist's purgatory in the theology and mythology 
 and under-world of the pagan Romans. Christianity 
 but slowly at first, and only in part finally, supplanted 
 paganism at Rome and in the empire of the lyatins. 
 
 Singularly and dangerously the apocryphal chair 
 of St. Peter was placed in the beginning at the very 
 gateway of a half-obsolete purgatory, and the jingling 
 of his keys was a sound not unfamiliar on those old 
 hills of the Caesars. Christianity found that under- 
 world as one discovers an old mine with its shafts and 
 tunnels and chambers and crumbling machinery, and 
 skeletons now and then. 
 
 With a church through whose membership there 
 were largely infused pagans Christianized and Chris- 
 tians paganized, how natural and easy to revive and 
 adopt the classic theory of the spirit land, and renew 
 the machinery and working of the inherited mine in 
 those caverns of retribution. Moreover there was at 
 the same time and place, as the popular poem of the 
 age, the ^neid of Virgil, the traveller's guide to 
 these lower regions, the hand-book of judgment for 
 the world to come. 
 
 As we open this volume here and there, for our 
 
 Purgatory. -1 / 
 
i84 PURGATORY. 
 
 historical purpose, the reader will note that the pur- 
 gatory of the Romans has not been more enlarged and 
 improved and perfected under nominally Christian 
 hands, than their arts or sciences or agriculture. In- 
 deed the purgatory of Virgil has changed less than 
 his plough under the hand of his improving suc- 
 cessors. 
 
 ^neas asks permission of the Sibyl to visit his 
 father Anchises in the spirit land. 
 
 " One thing I ask of thee. Since here 't is said 
 The gateway opens to the lower world, 
 And that dim, shadowy lake, the o'erflowing tide 
 Of Acheron, that I may, face to face, 
 Meet my dear father." 
 
 The Sibyl marvels that he should desire to float 
 twice over the Stygian lake, and twice see the gloomy 
 realms of Tartarus, once now alive, and hereafter 
 again when dead. But she grants the request, with 
 the solemn lesson of all religions and ages: 
 
 "Easy the way 
 Down the Avernus ; night and the gates 
 Of Dis stand open. But to retrace thy steps 
 And reach the upper air, here lies the task, 
 The difficulty here." 
 
 With rites and sacrifices duly observed, ^neas, 
 under the guide of the Sibyl, seeks the descent to 
 Hades. 
 
 "Through shadows, through the lonely night they went, 
 Through the blank halls and empty realms of Dis. 
 
 Suffering and Death 
 
 Inhabit here, and Deatli's own brother. Sleep ; 
 And the mind's evil Lusts, and deadly War, 
 
THE ROMAN SYSTEM. 185 
 
 Lie at the threshold, and the iron beds 
 Of the Eumenides ; and Discord wild, 
 Her viper-locks with bloody fillets bound. 
 
 Hence downward leads the way to Tartarus 
 And Acheron." 
 
 By-and-by they come to Cocytus, the horrid 
 stream, and to the Stygian lake, over which Charon, 
 the squalid and grim boatman, is to ferry them and 
 all the dead. Here a strange sight meets our hero. 
 
 " Down to the banks 
 Comes rushing the whole crowd, matrons and men. 
 Great heroes, boys, unwedded girls, and youths. 
 Their parents saw stretched on their funeral pile." 
 
 Only a part of them the stern ferryman will admit 
 to his boat, because they have not had burial rites. 
 
 " No one may pass 
 Those dreadful waves, until his bones repose 
 Within a quiet grave. A hundred years 
 They wander, flitting all around these shores. 
 Until at last they cross the wished-for lake." 
 
 It is with much difficulty that ^neas, because a 
 living man, can be passed over. But the Sibyl is 
 with him, and he bears a golden bough as a charm, 
 and Charon consents and sets them across the lake, 
 and on the confines of the spirit land proper. 
 
 " Then, as they entered, voices wild were heard. 
 Shrieking and wailing — souls of infants robbed 
 Of all their share of life, snatched from the breast^. 
 And sunk by cruel fate in gloomy death. 
 Then next were those by accusations false 
 
 Condemned to suffer death 
 
 Next come 
 
 The places where the sad and guiltless souls 
 Were seen, who, hating the warm light of day. 
 Wrought their own death, and threw away their lives. 
 
i86 PURGATORY. 
 
 How willingly they now, in the upper air, 
 Their poverty and sufferings would endure ! 
 
 Here those whom tyrannous love with cruel blight 
 Has wasted, in secluded paths are hid, 
 And sheltered round about by myrtle groves, 
 Not even in death their cares are left behind." 
 
 And so ^neas wanders about in those ghostly 
 realms, meeting now the injured Dido, who justly 
 refuses to speak to him, ' ' with defiance in her mien, ' ' 
 and now meeting old and famous Grecian warriors 
 and others. 
 
 " To right and left 
 The spirits crowd about him, not content 
 Merely to see him, but they needs must wait 
 And hover round his steps, and know what cause 
 Has brought him hither. But the Grecian chiefs 
 And hosts of Agamemnon, when they see 
 The hero and his glittering arms that flash 
 Across the shadows, tremble with great fear. 
 Some turn and fly, as to their ships of old 
 They fled ; some raise their voices, and their shouts 
 Die without sound within their gasping throats." 
 
 Farther on our two travellers come to the inner 
 Tartarus, but do not enter, though the Sibyl ex- 
 plains it. 
 
 " Groans from within were heard ; the cruel lash, 
 The clank of iron, and of dragging chains. 
 
 Here those who cherished hatred during life 
 
 Towards their brothers, or who lifted hands 
 
 Of violence against their parents; those 
 
 Who 'gainst their clients schemed and practised fraud; 
 
 Or those who brooded o'er their hoarded wealth. 
 
 Selfish and solitary, nor dispensed 
 
 A portion to their kin — the largest crowd 
 
THE ROMAN SYSTEM. 187 
 
 These formed ; or those who for adulterous crimes 
 
 Were slain 
 
 Here one is seen, who for a golden bribe 
 His country sold, and fixed a despot's throne; 
 And for a price made laws, and then unmade. 
 
 All had dared 
 
 Some dreadful crime, succeeding where they dared. 
 Nor if I had a hundred tongues, a voice 
 Of iron, could I tell thee all the forms 
 Of guilt, or number all their penalties." 
 
 I,eaving this region of punishment and agony and 
 despair on their left, they turn to the Elysian plains, 
 
 "The pleasant realms 
 Of verdant green, the blessed groves of peace. 
 
 Here the bands are seen 
 
 Of those who for their country fought and bled ; 
 The chaste and holy priests; the reverent bards 
 Whose words were worthy of Apollo; those 
 Who enriched life with fine inventive arts; 
 And all who by deserving deeds had made 
 Their names remembered." 
 
 .^neas is now in the • department of his venerated 
 father, Anchises, to meet whom he has taken this 
 long and perilous under-world tour. On inquiry for 
 him, they are led to a hilltop whence there is a broad 
 outlook over the shining fields of the blessed. 
 
 " Anchises there, 
 Down in a valley green, was noting all 
 The souls shut in, destined one day to pass 
 
 Into the upper light 
 
 He, when he saw ^neas, o'er the grass 
 Coming to meet him, stretched his eager hands. 
 His cheeks bedewed with tears, and from his lips 
 These accents fell, ' And art thou come at last ? 
 That filial love I counted on so long, 
 Has it now overcome the arduous road? 
 My son, is't granted me to see thy face, 
 17- 
 
i88 PURGATORY. 
 
 And hear thy well-known voice, and answer thee? 
 Thus ill ray mind I hoped and guessed, indeed, 
 And numbered o'er the intervening times. 
 Nor have my anxious wishes been deceived.' " 
 
 -iBneas is greatly moved to see and hear his aged 
 father, and responds, 
 
 " ' Grasp now my hand, my father, grasp my hand 
 In thine ; witlrdraw not from thy son's embrace 1' 
 
 Thrice round his neck he strove to throw his arm 
 And thrice the shadow flitted from his grasp, 
 And vanished like a winged dream away." 
 
 While ^neas and Anchises are conversing and 
 strolling they come to the river Lethe, and see an in- 
 numerable number of souls about its banks, ^neas 
 inquires who they are and what their future may be, 
 and is informed that they are destined for other bod- 
 ies, are in a transition state, and by-and-by will ap- 
 pear among mortals again. This is a great surprise to 
 ^neas. 
 
 " ' O father, can we think that from this place 
 Any exalted souls to upper skies 
 Return to enter sluggish frames again ? 
 Why so intensely do these hapless ones 
 Long for the light?'" 
 
 These questions lead Anchises to explain the ori- 
 gin of the soul and its entrance into bodies of differ- 
 ent grades, human and animal. By these it is more 
 or less tainted. 
 
 " Nor e'en when life's last ray 
 Has fled, does every ill depart, nor all 
 Corporeal taints quite leave their unhappy fratnes, 
 And needs must be that many a hardened fault 
 Inheres in wondrous ways. Therefore the pains 
 Of punishment they undergo for sins 
 
THE ROMAN SYSTEM. 189 
 
 Of former times. Some in the winds are hung, 
 
 Suspended and exposed. Others beneath 
 
 A waste of waters from tlieir guilt are cleansed, 
 
 Or purified by fire. We all endure 
 
 Our ghostly retribution. Thence a few 
 
 Attain the free Elysium's happy fields, 
 
 Till Time's great cycle of long years complete. 
 
 Clears the fixed taint, and leaves the etherial sense 
 
 Pure, a bright flame of unmixed heavenly air. 
 
 All these, when for a thousand years the wheel 
 
 Of fate has turned, the Deity calls forth 
 
 To Lethe's stream, a mighty multitude ; 
 
 That they, forgetful of the past, may see 
 
 Once more the vaulted sky, and may begin 
 
 To wish return into corporeal frames.' 
 
 Anchises, having thus addressed his son. 
 Together with the Sibyl, leads them on. 
 And through the ivory gate dismisses them. 
 Back to his ships the chief pursues his way; 
 Again beholds his comrades ; then sets sail 
 Towards Caieta's port. The anchors now 
 Hang from the prows ; the sterns stand on the beach." 
 
 How very like all this to the authors and purgato- 
 rial itineraries of the tenth, fifteenth, and even nine- 
 teenth centuries ! With a few changes from classic 
 to saintly names, one could be easily pardoned the 
 mistake in supposing he was reading a papal instead 
 of pagan Roman poet. For there is more than paral- 
 lelism and suggested likeness; there is approximate 
 identity of idea and theory, and method and results. 
 Further historical developments will show parental 
 relations between the old pagan and the coming papal 
 purgatory. 
 
igo PURGATORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE GNOSTIC PRESSURE OH THE CHURCH. 
 
 In the growth of philosophical thought, which in 
 ruder ages runs naturally and mostly on the spiritual 
 or religious line, the Zoroastrian system, at the advent 
 of Christianity and before, showed such decadence as 
 always suggests death or renovation. As the two sys- 
 tems of Zoroaster and of Christ, therefore, met on com- 
 mon ground, there were naturally some mutual ten- 
 dencies to afl&liate, as also rivalries to supplant. Hence 
 two schools or systems of philosophical religion arose, 
 the Gnostic and the Manichsean, the former being the 
 elder. As to times and places, it is sufficient for our 
 purpose to say, generally, that Gnosticism flourished 
 in all Christian communities in the second century, 
 showed weakness in the third and prostration in the 
 fourth, and disappeared, as a system or sect, in the 
 sixth. The system itself was eclectic, and of three 
 parts mainly : the old Parsism of Zoroaster, Platonic 
 philosophy, and Jewish theology ; and the system had 
 its sects as these elements were combined in diflferent 
 proportions, or as some minor one came in with a local 
 prominence. It was more intellectual than spiritual, 
 and more speculative than practical. 
 
 The Pars: and the Greek systems have been given 
 
GNOSTIC INFLUENCE. 191 
 
 in outline, and the Jewish may be here briefly stated, 
 so far as our question of eschatology is concerned. 
 
 The doctrine of preexistence was no tenet foreign 
 to apocryphal Judaism when the pure form of that re- 
 vealed religion was supplanted by the Christian. In 
 the Book of Wisdom, Solomon is represented as say- 
 ing, " I was a witty child, and had a good spirit; yea, 
 rather, being good, I came into a body imdefiled."* 
 Here Solomon is made to teach that he received in 
 this life a body of peculiar excellence, because in a 
 preexistent state he had been peculiarly good, f 
 
 The Essenes held this doctrine in very distinct out- 
 line. Josephus says that according to this sect, souls 
 come out of the most subtile air and of a celestial ori- 
 gin, and enter mortal bodies as prison-houses. Some 
 natural enticement attracts them to these bodies, where 
 they remain for a time enforced, as in some loathsome 
 dungeon. When released from this by death, they 
 depart, as from a prison, to a life immortal, yet of a 
 grade befitting their moral character. As to that fu- 
 ture, Josephus says their opinion coincides with that 
 of the Greeks, who send their brave and good at death 
 to the islands of the blessed, while they allot to bad 
 souls dark and tempestuous regions full of punish- 
 ments. X 
 
 * Wisdom, VIII. pp. 19, 20. 
 
 t The Douay and the Septuagint add clearness to the idea: "I was a 
 witty child, and had received a good soul. And whereas I was more good, 
 I came to a body undefiled." Ila/f 6e tjioiv tvipvfit, fvx^c: te ilaxov ayaSfic 
 Ma/lXov 6s dyadb; uv fjMov «f aCi/ui ufuavTov. 
 
 t Josephus, De Bell. Jud., B. II. Ch. VIII. § 11. Neander, I. p. 47. 
 Mosh. Com., I. p. 69. 
 
192 PURGATORY. 
 
 In the book of Maccabees we are informed that 
 after a battle in which many Jews were slain, Judas, 
 making a collection, "sent twelve thousand drachms 
 of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice, to be offered for the 
 sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously of the 
 resurrection ; for if he had not hoped that they that 
 were slain would rise again, it would have seemed 
 superfluous and vain to pray for the dead, and because 
 he considered that they who had fallen asleep with 
 godliness had great grace laid up for them. It is 
 therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for 
 the dead, that they may be loosed from sins. ' ' * 
 
 The apocryphal character of this authority does not 
 affect the strength of the quotation for our use, since 
 it is conceded that the book of Maccabees was writ- 
 ten not later than A. D. 70, and possibly as early as 
 B. C. 124. The quotation is proof, therefore, that the 
 theory of a purgatory, and the utility of prayers for the 
 dead therein, were ideas prevalent with some of the 
 Jews at that writing. 
 
 It is, however, unfortunate for the papist that this 
 passage is found in an apocryphal Scripture, since it 
 is their usual proof-text for prayers for the dead, and 
 the only one they cite that has pertinency or force. 
 
 The Gnostic School had its sects, as these three, 
 the Parsi, the Greek, and the Judaic, combined in dif- 
 ferent proportions, or as some minor one came in with 
 a local prominence. It was more intellectual than 
 spiritual, and more speculative than practical, as the 
 
 * 2 Mace. 2:43-46. Douay Trans. 
 
GNOSTIC INFLUENCE. 193 
 
 name of its advocates shows — the Gnostics, the know- 
 ing ones. Some of these Gnostics recognized a kind 
 of authority in the Old Testament, and so affiliated 
 with the Jews, and introduced Parsism and Platonism 
 into the Jewish theological schools in Syria and at 
 Alexandria. Others held the New Testament in great 
 respect, and as eclectics had affinity for its intellectual 
 and theoretic qualities, and so became Christians in a 
 sense, and came within the church ; for many early 
 Christian teachers were more zealous than discrimi- 
 nating in their preaching, and garnered much unsifted 
 wheat. The Christian doctrine was favorably met by 
 a high intellectual interest on the part of the Gnostics, 
 and in their ambition to gain truth they adopted the 
 Christian scheme, but with an indiflFerence to the spir- 
 itual import and practical uses of it. And Neander 
 says they ' ' were not at all disposed to separate them- 
 selves from the rest of the church and establish dis- 
 tinct communities of their own. ' ' * Yet of their rela- 
 tive force Guericke says "it is rare to find that the 
 Gnostic club is superior in numbers and strength to 
 the local church, "f 
 
 Of Gnosticism, then, we note three things for those 
 earlier centuries of Christianity: it was in the church; 
 it embraced the intellectual and speculative and phil- 
 osophical class in the church; and it was coextensive 
 with it. The latter fact is significant, since, besides 
 its European and African conquests, Christianity had, 
 
 * Neander, Ch. Hist., I. p. 3S9. 
 
 t Ancient Church, Shedd's Trans, p. 164. 
 
194 PURGATORY. 
 
 by the middle of the second century, planted itself ia 
 Media, Persia, Parthia, and Bactria, and in the third 
 century in Armenia. When we consider how much 
 Gnosticism had borrowed from Zoroaster and Plato, 
 and how mythological and pagan its eschatology was, 
 we may presume that it was making a severe and dan- 
 gerous pressure on the juvenile church and on a sim- 
 ple, spiritual, and practical gospel. Gnosticism pre- 
 tended to scholarship and philosophy and originality- 
 Such pretentious claims in the pulpit have usually 
 gained an unwise admiration, a barren church, and a 
 deteriorated creed. It was painfully so in the present 
 instance, as was illustrated in Rome herself For in 
 that germinant centre of the coming papacy the cen- 
 tral force of Gnosticism carried sway by its scholarly 
 bearing. "The Valentinians, the most influential 
 and important division of the Gnostics, continued to 
 exist, under various modifications of their system, till 
 into the fourth century, and later; their principal seat 
 being the city of Rome. ' ' * 
 
 In this infusion of Gnosticism into Christianity 
 there came, as essential parts of it, the notions of pre- 
 existence and a future purgatorial state. For proof 
 of this we will cite a few illustrative and influential 
 cases from among the Gnostic Christian teachers. 
 
 Basilides, who stood prominent in the church in 
 the first half of the second century, had had previous 
 culture in the Judsean and Egyptian schools. He 
 taught that the soul, having sinned in a former life, 
 
 » Guericke, Shcdd's Translation, p. 171. 
 
GNOSTIC INFLUENCE. 195 
 
 was sent hither for punishment and purification. If 
 it failed of a perfect recovery here, it was doomed at 
 death to enter another body, human or brutal, for 
 another experiment and struggle for restoration. This 
 was his idea of ' ' visiting the iniquity of the fathers 
 upon the children unto the third and fourth genera- 
 tion." And on the same theory of serial existences 
 he explained the words of St. Paul, "I was alive 
 without the law once, " in a former state of existence, 
 before the law was given. Basilides had a deep and 
 painful consciousness of this inherited corruption, and 
 great humility under it, with a devout and intense 
 longing for freedom from it. With this tone of piety, 
 his teaching had all the more weight in carrying 
 his errors into the young and uneducated church of 
 Christ* 
 
 Carpocrates was a Gnostic and Christian philoso- 
 pher of Alexandria, and flourished in the first half of 
 the second century. In his theology he was semi- 
 pagan. On the doctrine of preexistence he drew 
 largely from the Phsedrus of Plato. He taught that 
 souls which properly remember their former and bet- 
 ter state, with earnest struggles to regain it, will suc- 
 ceed, though only by painful labors. Others, less 
 active, will fail, and so fall back into second bodies 
 for another trial. 
 
 Valentine, another Gnostic, led large parties in 
 the Eastern and Western Churches, about the middle 
 of the second century. He held that souls had their 
 
 * Mosheim's Commentary, I. pp. 4:6-427. Neander, L pp. 404-417. 
 
 rm';ifttory, lo 
 
196 rURGATORY. 
 
 beginning in the third heavens, where they were 
 divine and pure. But under transgression they were 
 driven out to take on themselves earthly bodies — the 
 ' ' coats of skins ' ' that God gave to our sinning pa- 
 rents. After a sufEcient number of purifying changes 
 and much redemptive suffering they will be restored 
 to their celestial estate and abode. 
 
 Justin Martyr, of Grecian and pagan parentage, in 
 the first half of the second century had for teachers 
 Stoic, Pythagorean, and Platonic, and came under the 
 Great Teacher when about twenty-three years of age. 
 He is the first scholar and doctor in the church who 
 puts the Platonic theories into the gospel, and at the 
 same time under its modifying power. He speaks of 
 the soul as appearing more than once in human em- 
 bodiment; and if, when about to depart in death, it is 
 not fit for heaven, it assumes some animal form, and 
 so passes onward and upward by a degrading and 
 purifying process. 
 
 Origen, who took the martyr's crown practically 
 under his persecutions, though not really, A. D. 254, 
 in the sixty-ninth year of his age, was the first scholar 
 of his times, and had much power in shaping the the- 
 ology of the church. * He believed and taught that 
 human souls lived, sinned, and fell in a preexistent 
 state, and were sent hither in punishment. Indeed, 
 the world was created specially as their prison-house, 
 
 * "The Adamantine Origen, tVie Living Personification of Oriental 
 Learning, Eagerness, and Speculation." Prof. H. B. Smith, D. D. Ad- 
 dress for the Promotion of Education. 1857. 
 
GXOSTIC INFL UENCE. 197 
 
 and human bodies were created for them, that they 
 might here go through a punitive and purifying dis- 
 pensation. Modifying while adopting the ideas of 
 his Egyptian and Platonic teachers, he taught that 
 many material worlds had existed and perished, and 
 that many others will yet come and go, as abodes for 
 the punishment and restoration of revolted souls. 
 When their redemption is complete, the last mate- 
 rial world will be destroyed, as the stagings and scaf- 
 foldings are all taken down when the building is com- 
 plete. * 
 
 In concluding this collection of historical rays of 
 light on the Gnostic purgatory as the preface to the 
 Roman, it may serve well our purpose to quote one 
 scholar and author who stood openly on the pagan 
 side of a rather obscure line. 
 
 Hierocles, not the governor of Alexandria in the 
 fourth century, who persecuted the Christians with 
 pen and sword, but Hierocles, the new Platonist, who 
 flourished at Alexandria in the fifth century, speaks 
 quite definitely of the nature and design of the purga- 
 torial sufierings in his Commentary on the Golden 
 Verses of Pythagoras: "The judges of the infernal 
 regions correct and cure the soul by prescribing pun- 
 ishments for the health of nature, just as physicians 
 heal the most inveterate ulcers by incisions. They 
 punish the crime in order to extirpate it. They do 
 not annihilate the essence of the soul, but bring it 
 
 * Mosheim's Commentary, II. pp. 150-153; Neander, I. pp. 624-627 ; 
 Biblica Sacra, XII. pp. 161-165. 
 
igS PURGATORY. 
 
 back to its true existence by purifying it from all tlie 
 passions that corrupt it. " * 
 
 But it is not necessary to proceed farther in show- 
 ing that the pagan theories of preexistence infected 
 largely the prominent teachers of the church in the 
 early centuries. The bold outburst of Jerome may be 
 taken as a synopsis of many pages that could be here 
 added: "This impious and wicked doctrine was an- 
 ciently diffused through Egypt and the East, and now 
 prevails in secret, as in vipers' nests, among most, and 
 pollutes the purity of those regions; and as by an he- 
 reditary disease, glides in the few to pervade the 
 many. ' ' 
 
 Of this doctrine, the doctrine of a second probation 
 would be an inevitable if not logical sequence, and, as 
 a matter of fact, it did come in as actual and practical. 
 
 Gregory the Great, sometimes called the first pope, 
 bom about A. D. 544, and dying A. D. 604, organ- 
 ized and matured the purgatorial system that we have 
 under consideration. How near to his day and chair 
 the philosophic and mystic elements of the Oriental 
 purgatory may have been brought by these Gnostic 
 scholars is now obvious. Those were not our hasty, tele- 
 graphic days, when a new German theory is obsoles- 
 cent in ten years and fossil antique in twenty-five. 
 For practical effect, systems two centuries apart were 
 well nigh as contemporaneous then as those of two 
 decades are to-day. 
 
 * The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion. By 
 the Chevalier Ramsay. Vol. II. p. 363. Glasgow, 1749. 
 
THE MANICH^AN SYSTEM. 199 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE MAHICHAEAN PRESSURE ON THE CHURCH. 
 
 As Gnosticism was disappearing, a new, more 
 scholarly, insinuating, and dangerous enemy to Chris- 
 tianity came slowly to view in Manichseism. It 
 difiered from the former mainly in seeming to come 
 nearer to Christianity, and in simulating it by adopt- 
 ing, in symbol, its theories and aims and terms. 
 Mani himself, of Persian origin, was a Pdrsi and a 
 Christian, but which first is not agreed. He was a 
 pervert from one, but not a total convert to the other, 
 and his system was therefore a hybrid. Neander calls 
 it "the Buddhaist-Zoroastrian-Christian system;" 
 ' ' a strange compound, ' ' says Mosheim, ' ' of the ancient 
 Persian philosophy and Christianity." The Mani- 
 chseans "transmute Christianity into a Persian phi- 
 losophy and theosophy. Of all the Christian heretical 
 sects, the Manichseans certainly are least deserving of 
 the epithet Christian; for Manichseism is at bottom a 
 purely heathen scheme, invested in a symbolical 
 drapery borrowed from Christianity. Yet there is 
 sufficient of this drapery to justify its being treated as 
 a sect having connections with Christianity, and run- 
 ning parallel with Gnosticism."* 
 
 Of the Bible they received as authority only parts of 
 
 » Guericke, Shedd's Trans., p. 183. 
 IS* 
 
200 "j^IiGATORY. 
 
 the New Testament. Yet they applied to these parts 
 so destructive a criticism, to separate the genuine 
 from the corrupt, and such an interpretation of it and 
 enforced discovery of symbols, to make all correspond 
 with the doctrines of Mani, that no Scripture was left, 
 as divine and authoritative. They so used Christian 
 titles and names and phrases as to give an appearance 
 of a Christian sect. ' ' Agapius, a shrewd and crafty 
 Manichsean, for the sake of concealment used the 
 common words and phrases of Christians, but affixed 
 to them meanings accordant with the opinions of his 
 master."* This was a common practice with the 
 learned disciples of Mani. One person, in their theol- 
 ogy, they called Christ, and another the Holy Ghost; 
 and they spoke of the advent and crucifixion of Christ, 
 and of the salvation of men by him as the only Saviour. 
 They urged repentance, observed the Sabbath, and 
 celebrated the sacrament of the Supper in their way. 
 Mani opens his Epistola Fundamenti, their Bible in 
 reality, with the words, ' ' Mani, called to be an apostle 
 of Jesus Christ, through the election of God the 
 Father;" yet the later Manichseans taught that Mani, 
 Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ, and the Sun, are one and 
 the same person. 
 
 It was in the latter half of the third century that 
 Mani originated and introduced this system. The 
 Magi were laboring to restore the waning school of 
 Zoroaster, when Mani discovered that certain funda- 
 mental elements in Christianity, as a redemptive 
 
 * Mosheim's Commentary, II. p. 374. 
 
THE MANICH^AN SYSTEM. 201 
 
 system, could be forced to combine, in appearance, 
 with Parsism. He set himself, therefore, to infuse the 
 young blood of the new religion into the enfeebled 
 body of the old Pdrst system. It was a bold attempt 
 to work over the religions of old Asia, and the now 
 wide-spreading Christianity, into a new spiritual phi- 
 losophy and popular religious creed. In the combina- 
 tion the teachings of Christ must be accommodated to 
 those of Zoroaster. The aim was openly declared, 
 and the end publicly contested, and so widely carried 
 that at the close of the third century this sect had 
 become prominent in the East, and in Northern Africa, 
 and in Europe to the limits of the Roman Empire. 
 
 It will be necessary to our purpose to outline this 
 system only far enough to show its eschatology, and 
 the relations of that part of it to our general topic. 
 
 Mani held the theory of two kingdoms, good and 
 evil, and that they are co-eternal, co-extensive, and 
 co-potent. I/ight and darkness represent these powers 
 or parties, as persons called God and the Demon. 
 Far back in the ages the two parties mixed in struggle, 
 spiritual and physical, and the demon so far succeeded 
 that a third realm resulted. Itself was spiritual and 
 material, composed of the mixed good and evil of the 
 two parties. This third realm consisted of earthy 
 matter, which is of the demon and wholly evil, in this 
 instance and universally, and of a portion of the celes- 
 tial elements, and of the divine and animated light, 
 the inorganic material of which rational souls could 
 be made. In the struggle the demon and his leaders 
 
202 PURGATORY. 
 
 had also absorbed or devoured a large number of celes- 
 tial souls, and they became changed in their nature, 
 and assimilated to the powers of darkness. 
 
 The kingdom of light now moved another cam- 
 paign on the kingdom of darkness to recover the 
 souls and the particles of celestial light, held in bond- 
 age in that third realm. To prevent the recapture 
 the Demon secured as many births as would embody 
 all those souls and utilize all those particles of light, 
 and then devoured all this new progeny. Thus he 
 absorbed into himself the spiritual treasures plundered 
 from the celestial kingdom, and afterward procreated 
 Adam, the first man, and conveyed to him the same. 
 So those souls and particles of divine light, stolen and 
 debased, were thought to be safe from recovery, as 
 being forced into the soul of Adam, in whom the 
 whole future race of mortals was now compacted. 
 Then they were made ready for propagation by the 
 generation of Eve, and so the suffering and sinful race 
 of mortals began. The body of each is of depraved 
 matter, wholly hostile to God. In each there are two 
 souls, one rational, made of one of those celestial souls 
 and particles of celestial light, and the other an 
 offspring of the Demon and fully his child in character. 
 After Adam was thus procreated by the Demon, and 
 all these stolen souls and particles of celestial light had 
 been consolidated into his one soul, it was the purpose 
 of God to prevent the extension of the kingdom of 
 darkness by compelling Adam to a bachelor life. 
 The Demon, however, having an eye to his own future 
 
THE MANICH^AN SYSTEM. 203 
 
 and populous kingdom, generated Eve, and with only 
 a base and evil soul, since her father had imparted all 
 celestial souls and light to Adam. As Eve had only 
 the baser soul of the Demon, passion ruled, and the 
 human race began; and that was the fall of Adam. 
 In the propagation of the race, body generates body, 
 and soul generates soul. So each child of Adam is 
 threefold, having a body wholly evil, one soul wholly 
 evil, and one soul wholly good. The origin of the 
 human race, therefore, is not of God, but of the 
 Demon, and our heavenly part is stolen material from 
 the kingdom of light. It then became the divine 
 problem to recover, separate, purify and take back 
 again what the Prince of darkness had captured. 
 
 God therefore constructed the universe, the earth 
 and the heavenly bodies surrounding as a domicile 
 where he could handle the coming human race and 
 work out their salvation. Of material perfectly pure 
 he first made the sun and moon, of pure fire and light 
 the sun, and of pure water the moon; and of what 
 was slightly contaminated he next made the stars, 
 and the ether in which they are set; and finally, of 
 gross matter totally corrupted and depraved, he made 
 the earth. This took place after the procreation of 
 Adam and Eve by the Prince of darkness, but before 
 the generation of their race. To keep the coming 
 race as free as possible from Satanic interference, the 
 princes of evil were confined in the stars, yet could 
 throw maligin influences more or less on the earth. 
 To them the Manichsean system attributes tempests, 
 
204 PURGATORY. 
 
 thunder storms, pestilences, droughts and other blights, 
 and many personal and private evils. The Prince of 
 darkness, in his rage, drops bile on the earth, whence 
 come the grapevine and wine. These are born 
 under an ' ' evil star, ' ' and so foredoomed. 
 
 The Son of God and many celestial beings fixed 
 their residence in the sun and moon. In making the 
 world, masses of totally bad fire, water, air, and wind 
 were walled out, to be let in when the time comes 
 for the absolute destruction of our earth. This uni- 
 verse was thought to be a most cumbrous afiair and 
 in danger of falling apart, and so was braced up by 
 two giants. When they weary and tremble we have 
 earthquakes, and at times God sends down his Son to 
 strengthen them, and then it is that he "preaches 
 to the spirits in prison. ' ' 
 
 The world being thus prepared, as a stage for 
 action, and the human race coming on it, God wrought 
 variously for their recovery. He sent his Son, who 
 feigned a body, and taught the Jews a way of escape, 
 and confirmed his teachings by miracles. The Prince 
 of evil feared the results, and moved the Jews to put 
 him to death. Christ seemed to suffer and to be cruci- 
 fied, and so by example taught that the escape of a soul 
 is by sorrow and torture. Christ did not reveal fully 
 the plan of salvation, but promised the Paraclete, who 
 came in the person of Mani and completed the revela- 
 tion. Of the causes of the advent of Christ and of his 
 teachings, sufierings, and death, the Manichasan so 
 spoke, and in such Scriptural and Christian phrases, 
 
THE MANICH^AN SYSTEM. 205 
 
 that the uncritical would note little if any diflFerence 
 between them and Christians. The sufferings of 
 Christ were not vicarious, but only exemplary. For 
 these souls were perfect and could not sin, or need 
 repentance or atonement. They were only unfortu- 
 nate captives imprisoned in a vile body, and he taught 
 them by example that to escape they must deny, 
 macerate, and torture that body as he had done. 
 
 The souls that received Christ as the Son of God 
 and their Saviour, and struggled for obedience to him, 
 forsaking the Prince and works of darkness, slowly 
 made escape from their corruptions and thraldom. In 
 this they were much aided by the Holy Spirit. Repen- 
 tance was urged, meaning thereby sorrow for yielding 
 to the low instincts of their second soul; for the 
 divine soul could not sin, being simply a particle of 
 the perfect God. 
 
 No soul is perfectly pure, when at death it leaves 
 this dark and corrupt body, and much painful purga- 
 tion yet remains. When liberated by death from the 
 body, souls are quite luminou§, and pass by way of 
 the twelve constellations to the moon. Their shining, 
 radiant character it is that imparts the brightness 
 and glow to the zodiac. Their first station is the 
 moon. This is an ocean of pure water, and the abode 
 of celestial spirits, and well adapted to wash away all 
 external or tangible stains that may attach to them. 
 For fifteen days they swim and bathe and are washed 
 in these celestial waters. In so long time the moon 
 becomes filled with well- washed ones, and then empties 
 
2o6 PURGATORY. 
 
 them into the sun. So do souls, those particles of light, 
 swell that ocean orb with brightness, and it becomes a 
 full moon of souls. In the pale, lean emptiness of 
 her first quarter she is commencing another monthly 
 deportation of immortals in their weary and painful 
 progress of purgation. The sun receives them 
 from the moon. The sun is a divine mass of the 
 purest fire, the abode of Christ and of many celes- 
 tial beings. All stain, filth of soul, or moral taint of 
 any kind, is intolerable and impossible here, and so 
 the newly-arrived enter on the severest purification, 
 as ore in the crucible. This continues without speci- 
 fied or tabled time, but the end is perfection, as abso- 
 lute as divinity, when the souls pass on to their native 
 country, the world of ineffable and eternal light. 
 First washed, and then roasted and burned into purity, 
 their purgatory is ended. It is the more tolerable since 
 Christ and the angelic have home in the moon and 
 sun, and furnish blessed society and special aids to 
 those in purification. As Christ assists them in all the 
 sorrowful stages, he is their Saviour. The sufferings of 
 this class are not punitive, for they are not sinners, but 
 remedial for them as unfortunates. Pain comes on 
 them as on patients in the hospital under surgery. 
 
 In the spirit world Manichaeism has three classes 
 of souls: the perfect, whom we have now considered; 
 the totally wicked ; and a medium class. This medium 
 class consists of those who may have known their duty 
 but imperfectly, or attended to it carelessly, or who 
 may have been negligent of the means of purification 
 
THE MANICH^AN SYSTEM. 207 
 
 while ill tlie body. A second probation is assigned to 
 these by another worldly life in some animal, tree, 
 plant, or herb; for this system of Mani fills all nature, 
 animate and inanimate, with souls. This second life in 
 a body is graded of God to the demerits of the person. 
 In cases of the most worthy, souls are so embodied that 
 the next death passes them on at once to the world of 
 light by the moon and sun. There is, moreover, a 
 poetic justice shown in the kind of punishment. If one 
 killed a sacred animal, his next and purgatorial life 
 would be in that animal ; the dying miser is passed over 
 to become a tramp and a beggar; he of the lordly 
 mansion would be as a poor tenant, changing his 
 room monthly; the homicide would be doomed to a 
 leprous body, and so on in endless variations and 
 adaptations. The reader will readily recall the same 
 theory and practice, as we have delineated it, under 
 the papal system. The Manichsean and Papal pic- 
 tures could not be much nearer alike, if electrotyped 
 from the same original. Yet these purgatorial visi- 
 tations of Mani in other bodies were paternal and sal- 
 utary rather than judicial and punitive. 
 
 The third class were those who sinned enormously, 
 despised God, added malignity to the neglect of duty, 
 and were totally negligent of their purification. These 
 were assigned to the Manichsean hell. This is a place 
 made up of masses of evil fire, remnants of the van- 
 quished realm of darkness, where the Demon and his 
 princes bear rule. Here they suffer all that fiend and 
 fire can inflict ; yet while the tortures seem to come 
 
 Pnrgatory. IQ 
 
2oS PURGATORY. 
 
 only from a Satanic joy in tormenting, the process is 
 restorative, the corrupt is agonized out of them, and 
 they finally follow those who, earlier and more de- 
 vout, have passed into eternal light. 
 
 The coincidence is so striking between the Papal 
 and the Manichsean policy in one point, that we note 
 it here in its separateness. Manichseans who died 
 without penitence or formal confession of their sins, 
 were committed at once to this realm of anguish. The 
 papist has the same doom for the same neglect, and 
 from that doom confession and absolution saved equally 
 the Manichsean and the Romanist. Of the Romanist 
 dying unconfessed and unabsolved, it may be said, as 
 it was said of the Manichsean who died impenitent, 
 ' ' Non punitur quia peccavit, sed quia de peccato non 
 doluit." 
 
 We have now, by condensed statement and author- 
 itative quotations, shown the Manichaean system in 
 the matter of the sinful dead, and of their purgation 
 after death into a state of perfect blessedness. How 
 far it served to foreshadow, preface, and found the fol- 
 lowing purgatorial system of Romanism is a matter for 
 just judgment from an historical and theological basis 
 as now given. It remains only to add a few consider- 
 ations that are indispensable to the formation of this 
 just judgment. 
 
 It was no purpose of the Gnostics to supplant or 
 even reconstruct the Christian Church. They wished 
 only to infuse Gnosticism into the church, and this not 
 by new creeds or forms, but by new interpretations and 
 
THE MANICH^AN SYSTEM. 209 
 
 uses of the old, with such inner, second, and spiritual 
 senses as only those of the higher spiritual life could 
 receive. It was quite otherwise with Mani. He de- 
 clared himself as commissioned of God to reform radi- 
 cally and quite extensively the church. Judaism he 
 regarded as of the Demon, and, so far as it stood con- 
 nected with Christianity, only a source of corruption. 
 Hence the church was exceedingly degenerated ; and 
 as he understood his divine mission, so he declared 
 openly his purpose to modify and adjust Christianity 
 to his system and found one true and mostly new 
 church. On this plan, open and bold, he and his 
 followers struck out into the fields that the religion of 
 Christ had begun to occupy, and started their churches, 
 with their bishops and presbyters and deacons. In 
 Bulgaria and Slavonia they had even their separate 
 pontiff, and as late as the fifteenth century. Of course 
 with the unthinking masses this verisimilitude, this 
 counterfeit of Christianity, had great power. 
 
 The extent to which Manichseism prevailed, and 
 the general growth of the system, is a point worthy 
 of careful thought. How broad an impress, and how 
 firm a hold this system had on Christianity, may be 
 judged from the words of Mosheim : ' ' Although the 
 greatest and wisest men withstood it, both in oral dis- 
 cussions and in books, yet they could not prevent its 
 spreading with surprising rapidity almost throughout 
 Christendom, and captivating a vast number of per- 
 sons of moderate talents and judgment. " * 
 
 * Mos. Com., II. p. 251. 
 
210 PURGATORY. 
 
 Mani died in or about 278 A. D. At that time his 
 system prevailed in Media, Persia, Parthia, Bactria, 
 Northern Africa, and in the Buropean portions of the 
 Roman Empire. It will be noticed that the founder, 
 during his life, had thus pressed his purpose to supplant 
 Christianity, and had kept pace with its growth in most 
 of the regions where the early Christians had plant- 
 ed it. In the following or fourth century ' ' the Mani- 
 chaean sect beyond others, and by its very turpitude, 
 ensnared many, and often persons of good talents also, 
 as appears by the example of Augustine. This wide- 
 spreading pestilence the most respectable doctors of 
 the age, and among them Augustine, when recovered 
 from his infatuation, made efforts to arrest, some 
 indeed with more learning and discrimination, and 
 others with less, but none of them without some suc- 
 cess. But the disease could not be wholly extirpated 
 either by books or severe laws, but after remaining 
 latent for a time, and when most people supposed it 
 extinct, it would break out again with fresh vio- 
 lence ; for the Manichseans, to avoid the severity of 
 the laws, assumed successively various names, and 
 under these names they often lay concealed for a 
 time."* 
 
 In the fifth century Manichseism produced a nu- 
 merous progeny under these assumed names, various 
 and convenient ; and their boldness and success in the 
 sixth century are seen in the fact that they made a 
 convert of the son of the Persian monarch. This, 
 * Mosheim's Eccl. Hist, Murdock's Trans., I. p. 282. 
 
THE MANICH^EAN S YSTEM. 2 1 1 
 
 however, was avenged by a fearful persecution and 
 slaughter. The persecution of the followers of Mani 
 began as early as the reign of Valentinian I., who 
 came to the throne 364 A. D. Of course it only in- 
 creased their fanaticism, while they made the point, 
 so popular and effective, that they were poor, perse- 
 cuted Christians. This greatly multiplied them. 
 
 In the following century the Greek Empire and 
 Church came into civil conflict with these heretics, 
 under the name of Paulicians, in Armenia and prov- 
 inces adjoining; and in this and the eighth century 
 the disciples of Mani, under one name and another, 
 increased much their strength through the whole East. 
 This entire century was lighted Up by the persecuting 
 fires of the Greek Church against the Paulicians, and 
 the fierce struggle was protracted past the middle of 
 the ninth by Theodora, the Greek Empress, who de- 
 creed that the sect should be won back to the Greek 
 Church, or be exterminated by fire and sword. About 
 one hundred thousand Manichseans thus perished in 
 Armenia alone, where the Pirsi ancestors of this reli- 
 gion had laid its foundation a thousand years before. 
 In the eighth century Constantine V. had removed a 
 large body of this people to Thrace, that the East 
 might not be so vexed with them. Yet in the tenth 
 century they were still so abundant and powerful in 
 Syria and the adjoining regions, that the bishop of 
 Antioch, Theodorus, secured the deportation of an- 
 other large colony to Thrace. Thence they migrated, 
 carrying their doctrines as household gods to Bulgaria, 
 
 19* 
 
212 PURGATORY. 
 
 Slavonia, Italy, and Southern Europe generally. This 
 relief of the Greek Church was to the annoyance and 
 corruption of the Roman, and the papal pontiffs were 
 thus put to great trouble. 
 
 In the next century, the eleventh, the Greek Em- 
 peror, Alexius Comnenus, seeing that persecution 
 worked to their increase, tried argument in public dis- 
 cussions at Philippopolis, after which the converts 
 were rewarded with honors, gifts of lands and houses, 
 and other rich presents, and the obstinate were com- 
 pelled to perpetual imprisonment. Then and after- 
 wards they wandered off as apostles of their faith into 
 L/Ombardy and Insubria, and made Milan strong head- 
 quarters, reaching out into France and Germany in 
 their following of Christian footsteps. 
 
 It is needless to follow these Manichseans farther 
 into the dark ages under their various names. In 
 their titles as heretics there were many changes, but 
 in their tenets great constancy. The whole monkish 
 system, which has had so much to do in the construc- 
 tion of the papal theology, is a Manichsean child. 
 With Mani matter is of the devil, and wholly evil, 
 and our bodies are the product of the Demon, as the 
 prisons of divine souls. Hence the struggle of the 
 Christian life should be to abuse, abase, mutilate, and 
 macerate the body, and bring it under, that the prison 
 may be broken down and the prisoner go free. Hence 
 monks and hermits, herb diet, pebbled shoes, hair 
 shirts, spiked bedsteads, and all those saintly and 
 nameless inventions to agonize human flesh. 
 
THE MANICH^AN SYSTEM. 213 
 
 We here close our survey of the ancient religions, 
 preceding the Christian, on the point of eschatology, 
 and turn our closing thoughts towards their formative 
 and reconstructive influences on the system of One 
 who spoke as "having authority" when He "brought 
 life and immortality to light." 
 
214 PURGATORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 RETROSPECT AND SUMMARY. 
 
 Evidently tlie young Christian creed and churcli 
 stand in an exposed foreground ; for in the back- 
 ground, though in a sense dim with age and distance, 
 were the Egyptian and Hindoo systems of future res- 
 toration as we have unfolded them. They were far 
 from extinct systems, and not lacking in such scholar- 
 ship as those times produced, while their devout fol- 
 lowers embraced the dense masses of Northern Africa 
 and Western and Southern Asia. And what of lim- 
 ited death these systems may have suffered had been 
 more than replaced by the vital forces of the creed of 
 Zoroaster. His purgatory was theirs, revised and 
 adapted to newer ages and stages of philosophical and 
 religious thought; and it held sway inclusive from 
 the mouth of the Indus up and around by the Aral, 
 Caspian, and Black Seas, along the Mediterranean 
 from Constantinople to the Nile and upward, and 
 thence by the Arabian Sea to the Indus again. In all 
 the wide realms thus included purgatorial fires had 
 been lighted by the priesthood, and the people were 
 forecasting the spirit land with vivid and painful dis- 
 tinctness. 
 
 From the sixth century before Christ to the se^-- 
 enth in the Christian era, when Romanism had adopt- 
 
RETROSPECT AND SUMMAR V. 215 
 
 ed purgatory as an organised power, this area was the 
 thought-field of the world, where latent and germi- 
 nant and systematizing religious ideas were in prepar- 
 ation to recast the coming Christian system. Over 
 such a range of country and through so long a range 
 of centuries was this pressure maturing, and approach- 
 ing like a glacial progress across a continent. When 
 we consider the character of this system of Zoroaster, 
 it will not surprise us that it had such a moulding and 
 modifying influence on the Christian creed. * 
 
 With all this theory of Zoroaster, Grecian and 
 Roman eschatology, on the punitive and remedial 
 side, was in substantial accord. ' ' Through the great 
 Aryan religious systems, Brahminism, Zarthustrism, 
 Buddhism, and onward into the range of Islam and of 
 Christianity, subterranean hells of purgatory or pun- 
 ishment made the doleful contrast to heavens of light 
 and glory, "t 
 
 The popular presentations of purgatory, as set 
 forth by Homer and Virgil, were but local openings or 
 sectional views of that universal under-world which 
 extended from the Indus, past the Nile, to the German 
 Ocean. The Grecian and Roman theories are import- 
 ant in our consideration of this topic, not only as well 
 
 * "Of all the religions of Indo European origin, of all the religions of 
 the ancient Gentile world, it may fairly claim to have been the most noble 
 and worthy of admiration for the depth of its philosophy, the spirituality 
 of its views and doctrines, and the purity of its morality." The Avesta, 
 etc. By Wm. D. Whitney. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 
 
 V. p. 378. 
 
 t Primitive Culture. By Edward B. Taylor. P. 68. Henry Holt & 
 Co.: New York, 1874. 
 
2i6 PURGATORY. 
 
 outlined and powerful, but as then embedded in the 
 popular letters of the world and in the hand-books of 
 those very regions where Christianity was to make 
 its first popular conquests and organize itself. The 
 thinking world, as it was then bounded and known 
 by its writers and lecturers, its philosophers and poets, 
 was permeated by these theories and visions and itin- 
 eraries of the spirit land. 
 
 Nearer still to the Christians, among them, and 
 more or less of them, were the Gnostics and the Ma- 
 nichceans. They were Romans and Greeks, Parsi, 
 Brahmins, and Egyptians, reedited, if we may so say, 
 with interlinear commentary and foot-notes. They 
 had but little that was radically new, only those natu- 
 ral increments or growths of thought that the ages 
 add inevitably to human systems. Their structures 
 were, substantially, old bricks in new mortar. 
 
 The religious world was ' ' without form and void, 
 and darkness was upon the face" of it. There was 
 painful need that it be said authoritatively, ' ' L,et 
 there be light. ' ' Human philosophies and hopes and 
 uncertainties and anxieties held our race in drift and 
 commotion as to the after world. Evidently with 
 great peril to itself, and only in a divine impulse and 
 boldness, the Christian system came to the front, say- 
 ing, ' ' On earth, peace. ' ' The attendant dangers were 
 manifold and enveloping. They lay in a " series of 
 phenomena peculiar to this period, originating in the 
 vast interchange among nations which this age wit- 
 nessed, the contact of the East with the West, and 
 
RETROSPECT AND S UMMAR Y. 217 
 
 the intermingling of the Eastern and Western spirit — 
 such a series of events as occurs in history only at rare 
 intervals."* 
 
 This emigration of ideas multitudinous from the 
 old Asiatic East, overrunning Southern and Western 
 Europe, finds no better parallel or illustration than 
 in those great tidal waves of the Aryan people with 
 which Asia flooded Europe in prehistoric times. 
 Those Aryans, of whom there are said to have been 
 three distinct migrations westward in vast bodies, 
 reconstructed radically the civil and social status of 
 Europe, and furnish really the first authentic chapter, 
 in European history. For they dashed and broke up 
 as waves on the natural boundaries between the two 
 continents, and so planted out the several races and 
 nations of historic Europe. 
 
 Much after this manner those old religions of Asia 
 and of Egypt, reconstructed and reappearing in vari- 
 ous forms, moved westward on the fields that youthful 
 Christianity was beginning to occupy, and mingled 
 their human notions with divine certainties. These 
 old tides of religious creed met the young and swell- 
 ing Christian tide. Meanwhile the Church of God, 
 unanchored in the Word of God, afloat on philosophy 
 and policy, and sailed by a human compass on a 
 human chart, was caught, like St. Paul's ship in 
 Adria, ' ' where two seas met. ' ' 
 
 It is not, therefore, so wonderful as it is painful 
 that a pagan and classic purgatory crowded itself into 
 
 * Neander, Church History, I. p. 365. 
 
2i8 PURGATORY. 
 
 the young and rival religion. Far less spiritual than 
 it might have been, courting popularity and ambitious 
 of power, Christianity bid for hereditary places of 
 honor by compromises with the ancient religions. 
 With the Scriptures sparsely diffused, and in the frag- 
 mentary manuscripts of their different authors, the 
 text-books of the older world and their honored and 
 august teachers were able to gain a front rank over 
 the Word of God, and dictate creeds to the Christian 
 fathers at the doors of the church. 
 
 Hence the doctrine of purgatory is an inherited 
 dogma from the pagan world, and forced into the 
 papal Church in those days of juvenile weakness. 
 The historical gleanings here made leave no doubt 
 over this statement. While Gregory felt the pressure 
 of this doctrine on the church from without, he no 
 doubt foresaw its power as an element of government 
 within the church. That power remains to-day, 
 amplified, systematized, and consolidated, and, when 
 necessary, concentrated on the individual church 
 member. It pervades the entire literature of Roman- 
 ism, from the alphabetical catechism to the creed of 
 the Council of Trent. It is the one all-pervading and 
 inexorable power in her discipline; and as the incul- 
 cation of it is begun in infancy, and never remitted in 
 the progress of years, it is inwrought into the very 
 framework of beliefs and mental furniture. Hence, 
 with the commonalty of the Romish communion, 
 Protestant argument is like an attack on axioms; and 
 hence, too, the rarity of conversions from that faith 
 
RE TR OSPECT AND S UMMAR Y. 219 
 
 as compared with labor expended. We dip at the 
 reservoir to exhaust it of deadly waters, while they 
 control all the head-springs that fill it. 
 
 Therefore, in dealing with Romanism, an addi- 
 tional policy may be needed and serviceable. If a 
 deep and tender sympathy were shown to the masses 
 in that communion, and the unscriptural, unscientific, 
 and the pagano-historic character of this central doc- 
 trine were candidly and kindly made known, a Chris- 
 tian advance could be started all round. Allowance 
 must be made for not only great but honest errors in 
 papal faith and life, and approaches for improvement 
 should be made to the body of that church as to sin- 
 cfere and candid people. Instead of denouncing dark- 
 ness, it was divine wisdom and kindness to say, ' ' Let 
 there be light. ' ' If there has not been in this treatise 
 an entire misapprehension of this doctrine of Purga- 
 tory and of its uses, it is the central power in the 
 administration of the Roman-catholic Church. There- 
 fore the enlightenment, improvement, and increased 
 usefulness of that body, and its adaptation to the ad- 
 vanced condition of the nineteenth century, must begin 
 in that doctrine. " And he went forth unto the spring 
 of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, 
 Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters." 
 
 20 
 
220 PURGATORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 COHCLUSIOH. 
 
 Here we close this historical disquisition on the 
 cardinal doctrine of power in the Roman-catholic 
 Church. In an authoritative statement of the doc- 
 trine and its uses we have used the most popular and 
 accredited text-books and treatises of that branch of 
 the church. If there has been any failure in fairness 
 or candor or fulness in this statement, it has not been 
 consciously so, and will be recognized with regret. It 
 has been no purpose of the author to treat the subject 
 argumentatively or controversially ; and if any quoted 
 statements of the doctrine, or cases cited illustrative of 
 its use, beget a controversial spirit in the mind of the 
 reader, this must be credited to the quotations them- 
 selves, and not to the intention of their collector. 
 
 As to the origin of the embodied ideas that consti- 
 tute this doctrine of purgatory, the field is a fair one 
 for historical antiquaries. The genealogy of a theory, 
 the pedigree of a notion, the genetic exposition of a 
 theological dogma, may lead one back over curious 
 and rare traits of human thought, and in the end may 
 prove as humiliating as when one traces back his fam- 
 ily genealogy too far. Pedigree, the stairway of the 
 fathers, whether of families or of notions, is nothing 
 very brilliant or honorable, often, in its lower steps. 
 
CONCLUSION. 221 
 
 If, therefore, we have gone from the Tiber to the In- 
 dus, and from the Indus to the Nile, in running back 
 the ancestry of this doctrine of Christian Rome, and 
 have found it well developed and energetically en- 
 forced before an Old Testament made the record that 
 " Terah begat Abram," we should not be regarded as 
 assaulting a popular and modem church doctrine. 
 We are simply led, historically, to show it to be ven- 
 erable and hoary with antiquity. History is not po- 
 lemic, and never makes assault on posterity. 
 
 The Protestant faith concerning the condition of 
 souls after death is nothing earlier or later or wiser 
 than the revealed will and word of God. This close- 
 ness of limits shuts one off from speculative philoso- 
 phy, and theories of divine government, and sympa- 
 thetic possibilities, and from premature endeavors to 
 vindicate the ways of God. Assuming that nothing 
 is known of the condition of the dead except what is 
 revealed, both query and faith on the subject are closely 
 shut up within the limits of Scriptural interpretation. 
 
 Every one is credited at birth, by the Scriptures, 
 with the gift of endless being. To be, or not to be, at 
 any possible time in the indefinite future, is a question 
 foreclosed by simply beginning to be. The obvious 
 Scripture gives no encouragement to moot that ques- 
 tion of terminable existence, either by exhaustion or 
 by annihilation. The conviction of endless being has 
 always had its place among the axioms of the human 
 race, with only apparent denials enough, now and 
 then, to manifest its universality. Herein the Scrip- 
 
222 PURGATORY. 
 
 tures do not so much reveal as endorse an article in 
 the universal creed. 
 
 As one in Christian land carries with him the ele- 
 ments and material of good or ill and joy or sorrow to 
 the grave, so, according to revelation, he carries it 
 over, and reaps as he has sowed. The Scriptures, 
 when they speak without note or comment, say but 
 one thing on this point. Indeed, up to this point, it 
 may be said, the Protestant and Catholic Churches say 
 but one and the same thing. 
 
 A division arises when we come to speak of the 
 divine pardon of the penitent believer in Christ that 
 remits all penalty, and of the divine grace that breaks 
 the power of sin and passes one at death perfectly 
 sanctified into instant and perfect blessedness. On 
 the one theory, men eminent for honor and usefulness, 
 and for godliness, too, are introduced at death to suf- 
 ferings inefiable and amid surroundings indescribably 
 dreadful, though they have ceased from sin and are 
 fully assured of heaven at last. On the other theory, 
 the dying saint has instant and ineffable glory among 
 the spirits of just men made perfect. These two theo- 
 ries place two dying saints wide asunder on their en- 
 trance to the next world, and literally toto coelo from 
 each other. 
 
 The idea is wholly foreign to the Word of God that 
 any punishment or suffering awaits him who, by re- 
 pentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, has come into the state of justification, and 
 thus passed to the better land. That justification is 
 
CONCLUSION. 223 
 
 total and absolute. The blood of Christ has cleansed 
 him from all sin, and there is therefore no condemna- 
 tion to him, no remnant of demerit for purgatorial suf- 
 fering. The bloody sweat and agony of our L,ord need 
 no atoning supplement. Nor can we think of God as 
 both pardoning and punishing the same sins — forgiv- 
 ing us our debts and collecting them too. 
 
 The Scriptures, as read by the Protestant Church, 
 allow for no remedial, amendatory, or supplemental 
 suffering for a child of God between the dying-bed 
 and the gates of glory. Such an idea suggests two 
 painful and repulsive thoughts: that the atonement is 
 incomplete, and that man can bear, in part, his own 
 sins in his own body, and so work out his own redemp- 
 tion jointly with Christ. The evangelical pulpit of 
 Protestant Christendom says, with great constancy 
 and unity, that there are no acts of pardon passed be- 
 yond the grave. As constantly and unitedly it says, 
 that it is not by works of righteousness, but by mercy 
 and grace in Christ alone, that sinful ones are saved. 
 
 Hence the Protestant, dying in the sweet peace of a 
 child of God, departs fully conscious that he is going 
 out of the circle of all human aid, and beyond all need 
 of it. What sympathies may follow him he can ima- 
 gine, but that any helpful ones will ever reach him he 
 has no remotest expectation, as he has no remotest an- 
 ticipation of ever needing them. It is enough that 
 there comes to him the assurance, from the infinite 
 Author of a completed salvation, ' ' To-day shalt thou 
 be with me in Paradise." It seems presumptuous in 
 
 20* 
 
224 PURGATORY. 
 
 us to volunteer aid for one who has departed this life 
 under such a promise, and is in the actual enjoyment 
 of such company on the other side. 
 
 It is a matter of literary curiosity, as well as of the- 
 ological and religious interest, to notice on how solitary 
 and frail a Scriptural thread this whole vast and fearful 
 purgatorial system is suspended. Really there is but 
 one passage that has any apparent or even exegetical 
 pertinence; for what is said of the preaching of Christ 
 to imprisoned souls of the times of Noah has no perti- 
 nence, even on the papal theory. If those souls were 
 in purgatory, they were penitent and pardoned and 
 assured of heaven, and were only awaiting the end of 
 the due amount of suffering. They were only subjects 
 of suffering, and not at all candidates for repentance 
 and the acceptance of the gospel. They had accepted 
 Christ, and were as truly his friends as any in heaven. 
 On the purgatorial theory, this must have been their 
 character, condition, and expectation. The bottom 
 fact of this passage is, that those antediluvians had 
 had the offer of Christ by Noah, that "preacher of 
 righteousness, ' ' but were ' ' disobedient, ' ' and were 
 now in the prison of spirits, when St. Peter wrote, 
 having failed of salvation. 
 
 A passage in Maccabees is the main and only 
 pointed and obvious Scriptural support of this doc- 
 trine. Some exegetical and adroit uses are made of 
 Matt. 5 : 25, 26; 12 : 32; i Cor. 3 : 10-15; i Pet. 3 : 19; 
 and Rev. 21 :27. But 2 Maccabees 12 : 32-46, is usu- 
 ally the main dependence. The case stands thus : 
 
CONCLUSION. 225 
 
 Judas Maccabeus engaged in battle with the Idume- 
 ans, and several Jews were killed. When they came 
 to inter these, idolatrous votive offerings were found 
 concealed on their persons, which they had taken as 
 plunder in a previous victory over the Jamnites. This 
 was a heinous sin under the Jewish law, Deut. 7 : 25, 
 or, as the Romanist would say, a mortal sin. To pu- 
 rify the living from all contamination by this sin, and 
 to appease the God of Israel, Judas made a collection 
 of two thousand drachms of silver, and "sent it to Je- 
 rusalem to offer a sin-offering. ' ' * 
 
 On this phrase the Douay version places the words, 
 "a sacrifice for the sins of the dead," which is no 
 translation of those two Greek words, nor yet a para- 
 phrase, or even a gloss. It is an insertion or addi- 
 tion to the text of so much as refers to the dead. 
 Moreover, the sin of those dead men was punishable 
 with death. It was "mortal" to the Romanist, under 
 which, unpardoned, one goes past purgatory to hell, 
 from which there is no relief by " a sacrifice for the 
 sins of the dead. ' ' 
 
 In the authorized version the final verse in this ac- 
 count reads thus: "And also in that he perceived that 
 there was great favor laid up for those that died godly, 
 it was a holy and good thought [to make the offering]. 
 Wherefore he made a reconciliation for the dead, that 
 they [the living] might be delivered from sin." In 
 the Douay it is made to read thus : ' ' And he consid- 
 ered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness 
 
 * Septuagint, iiiapnas Ovaiav. 
 
226 PURGATORY. 
 
 had great grace laid up for them. It is therefore a 
 holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that 
 they may be loosed from sins. ' ' Here, again, the sin- 
 oflFering made for all the living, that they might not 
 suffer for the transgressions of others, is turned into a 
 sacrifice for the benefit of the dead, and the ' ' holy and 
 wholesome thought to pray for the dead ' ' is introduced 
 as new matter, not in the original Greek, but foreign 
 to the text. 
 
 But, not to extend minute criticisms, it remains 
 only to be said that this passage, so enlarged beyond 
 the original, and so interpreted, is not from the ac- 
 cepted Bible, but from the Apocrypha. The Jews did 
 not admit this book of Maccabees to the sacred canon ; 
 and among the early Christians it was rejected by Eu- 
 sebius, Athanasius, Cyril, Hilary, Epiphanius, Greg- 
 ory, and Gregory the Great, Jerome, Augustine, Ruffi- 
 nus. Cardinal Ximenes, Cajetan, Erasmus, and prom- 
 inent councils. 
 
 Dr. S chaff says of the Apocryphal books: "They 
 did not belong to the Hebrew canon; they were writ- 
 ten after the extinction of prophecy ; they are not 
 quoted in the New Testament; they contain some Jew- 
 ish superstitions, and furnish the Roman -catholics 
 proof-texts for their doctrines of purgatory, prayers for 
 the dead, and the meritoriousness of good works. ' ' * 
 
 And Dr. Bissell, in his General Introduction to the 
 Apocrypha, says: "The apostles used a version of the 
 Old Testament which contained the Apocrypha, but 
 
 * Preface to the Apocrypha. By Edwin Cone Bissell, D. D. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 227 
 
 with so careful an avoidance of the latter that it can- 
 not with certainty be affirmed that in all their writings 
 they made a single direct allusion to them."* 
 
 In his Notes on this passage in Maccabees, he also 
 says, emphatically, ' ' There is not, as a matter of fact, 
 the slightest evidence that any such doctrine as that 
 of the Romanists relating to purgatory had any exist- 
 ence among the Jews at this time." 
 
 Here, therefore, is our latest scholarship on the 
 true reading of this famous text in Maccabees, that 
 will leave it destitute of all reference to prayers for 
 the dead. 
 
 This discussion has nothing to do, directly, with 
 questions concerning the punishment of the lost, since 
 purgatory contains only saints, who will all finally 
 depart and leave it vacant. Yet, in tracing these lines 
 of thought, side views have been constantly calling 
 our attention to the predominant sentiments of the 
 world on the condition and prospects of the unsaintly 
 or impenitent dead. 
 
 One incidental and unsought issue, furnished by 
 the investigation, is, that the great unrevealed reli- 
 gions of the world teach the final restoration of all 
 men to happiness. It is left to Christianity alone to 
 teach otherwise. Till a comparatively late period in 
 the history of our race, the vote of the great religions 
 of mankind has left the Christian sect in an almost 
 imperceptible minority. L,atterly our revealed reli- 
 gion has been tested to hold its ground, in the matter 
 
 * General Introduction to the Apocrypha, p. 51. 
 
2 28 PURGATORY. 
 
 of future punishment, against aifiliation with the older 
 systems on the one side, and the new theories of schol- 
 ars on the other. 
 
 A first probation for salvation by Christ, beyond 
 the grave, for those who failed to receive it here ; a 
 second probation, for those whose chances were most 
 adverse under the first; the sinful soul wasted and 
 dwarfed unto extinction of being under penal sufier- 
 ing; abrupt and punitive annihilation — these are 
 points more or less sharp and warm in recent theo- 
 logical discussions. These theories solicit Christian 
 adoption and baptism by an exegetical handling of 
 the Scriptures. 
 
 In handling the questions of sin and salvation as 
 practical and personal ones, we have, this side the 
 door of death, all needed divine aid to enter, just be- 
 yond, the gates of glory. It is wholly without re- 
 vealed warrant to expect that aid beyond death; and 
 for one to look for and lean on the human aid of the 
 living when he may come into the regions beyond, 
 and where the divine has ceased, is rashness in the 
 extreme.