their evil admitted of a still higher degree of sublimation.

The bishop of Aire, himself a most respectable ecclesiastic, has no hesitation in pronouncing, with or without the consent of his church, that the validity of indulgences, like the validity of absolutions, entirely depends upon the dispositions of the sinner. This, no doubt, is making the best of the. matter: but a lamentable story yet remains to be told.

*

His lordship treads lightly over ground, which he is too good and too sensible a man to deem hallowed. What was the crying abomination, which first roused the indignant spirit of the great and much-calumniated Luther? The pope actually drove a gainful pecuniary traffic in ecclesiastical indulgences! Instruments of this description, by which the labour of making a fancied meritorious satisfaction to God by penance or by good works was pared down to the dwarfish standard that best suited the purse of a wealthy offender, were sold in the lump, to a tribe of monastic vagabonds, by the prelate, who claimed to be upon earth the divinely-appointed vicar of Christ. These men purchased them of the pope, by as good a bargain as they could make; and then, after the mode of travelling pedlars, they disposed of them in retail to those who affected such articles of commerce, each indulgence of course bearing an adequate premium. The madness of superstition could be strained no higher: the Reformation burst forth like a torrent; and Luther, with the Bible in his hand, has merited and obtained the eternal hatred of an incorrigible church.

III. It is worthy of observation, that the bishop is wholly silent as to the imaginary fund, whence the inexhaustible stock of papal indulgences is supplied. Whether he was himself ashamed of the doctrine of supererogation, or whether he thought it imprudent

* Discuss. Amic. vol. ii. p. 229,

to exhibit such a phantasy before the eyes of his English correspondent, I shall not pretend to determine. From whatever motive, the bishop omits it altogether. His lordship's defect, however, is abundantly supplied by the authoritative declaration of the reigning pontiff.

66

"We have resolved," says pope Leo in the year 1824, by virtue of the authority given to us from heaven, fully to unlock that sacred treasure, com'posed of the merits, sufferings, and virtues, of Christ 'our Lord, and of his virgin mother, and of all the C saints, which the author of human salvation has 'intrusted to our dispensation-To you, therefore, ' venerable brethren, patriarchs, primates, arch-bishops, bishops, it belongs to explain with perspicuity the power of indulgences: what is their efficacy in the remission, not only of the canonical penance, but also of the temporal punishment due to the 'divine justice for past sin; and what succour is 'afforded out of this heavenly treasure, from the 'merits of Christ and his saints, to such as have 'departed real penitents in God's love, yet before 'they had duly satisfied by fruits worthy of penance for sins of commission and omission, and are now 'purifying in the fire of purgatory, that an entrance may be opened for them into their eternal country where nothing defiled is admitted."

From a stock of merits, which the pope claims to have at his disposal, indulgences are issued, which shall not only remit the canonical penance imposed by the church, but which shall also liberate the fortunate possessors from the temporal punishment due for past sin to the divine justice, and which shall open the doors of purgatory to those suffering spirits who departed without having made full satisfaction for their iniquities by fruits worthy of penance.

These then, it seems, are the avowed doctrines

* Bull for the observance of the Jubilee, A. d. 1825.

and practices of the Latin church, not merely during the dark ages of barbarous credulity, but in the full light of the nineteenth century: these are the high behests of that church, which, according to the explicit declaration of its visible head to every protestant community, is the mother and mistress of all other churches, and out of which there is no salvation.*

*Bull for the observance of the Jubilee, A. d. 1825.

CHAPTER XII.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF ROMANISM IN RESPECT TO PURGATORY.

FOR his mode of treating the subject of purgatory, I feel it impossible not to honour the bishop of Aire.*

Instead of vainly labouring to establish the doctrine on some one or two misinterpreted texts of the New Testament, he fairly and honestly confesses, that we have received no revelation concerning it from Jesus Christ. Hence he judiciously wastes not his time in adducing passages of Holy Writ which are altogether irrelevant.

"Had it been necessary for us," says he, "to be 'instructed in such questions, Jesus would doubtless 'have revealed the knowledge of them. He has not 'done so. We can, therefore, only form conjectures on the subject more or less probable."+

The doctrine, then, of purgatory is confessedly NOT a matter of revelation: whether it be true or false, we confessedly CANNOT ascertain from any thing that Christ has said on the subject.

This difficulty would have startled an ordinary theologian: but, though Christ himself has not revealed the doctrine, the bishop of Aire can clearly demonstrate its truth by an easy and simple inductive process.

1. We must make, argues his lordship, an expiatory satisfaction to the divine justice, either in this world or in the next. Few men, however, make a full expiatory satisfaction in this world: therefore they

* Discuss. Amic. Lett. xiii. † Discuss. Amic. vol. ii. p. 242.

must make it in the next. Now, in the next world, they can no longer pursue good works, no longer distribute alms, no longer offer any compensatory reparations to heaven. One only method of making satisfaction remains to them: that, to wit of suffering. But, if suffering be the sole method of making satisfaction which remains to them hereafter, then, indisputably, there must be a place where this suffering is undergone. Now the place, which has been thus proved to exist, is, by the Councils of Florence and Trent, conventionally denominated purgatory.

*

very

With the name appropriated to this scripturally unknown land, I am no way disposed to quarrel : for any thing that I can see to the contrary, it is appropriate and expressive. The name is unexceptionable; but the demonstration is faulty. As Demosthenes says, the war itself will discover the weak points of Philip.

The whole demonstration of the existence of purgatory, as set forth by the bishop of Aire, rests upon the primary position, that we must make an expiatory satisfaction to the divine justice, either in this world or in the next. If that position fail, the demonstration fails with it. Now I have already shewn, on the fullest evidence, that the doctrine of an expiatory meritorious satisfaction, to be made by man to the divine justice, through the medium either of good works or of penal sufferings: I have already shewn, that this doctrine is altogether false and

* Discuss. Amic. vol. ii. p. 242-244. The bishop attempts to perplex the English layman by reminding him of the separate abode of departed spirits, during the interval which elapses between death and judgment.

"You believe," says he, "the existence of such a place, though ' its local position is unknown to you. Rest then assured of the 'existence of purgatory, though we may not be able to define its strict local position." Discuss. Amic. vol. ii. p. 242, 243. Note.

If any English layman be perplexed by such an argument, he must certainly have forgotten, that the point at issue is not THE LOCALITY, but THE EXISTENCE, of purgatory.