CHAPTER IX

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE

ONE of the points of attack in the present controversy is the ancient custom of prayers for the dead, which is assumed to be included in the Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory' condemned in the Twenty-second Article. I am obliged to admit that some of the younger clergy of the advanced school among us do hold the Romish doctrine of purgatory-though I believe without its worst accompaniments-under the honest belief that it is the doctrine of the primitive Church, and likewise of the present Oriental Churches and of the Church of England; in fact, of Christendom, with the exception of the Tractarian party, whom it has become the fashion among our neo-Catholics to regard as theologians out of date. I made this amazing discovery about three years ago; and when I challenged one of the representatives of this party to the proof he referred me, as his prime authority, to the Prælectiones' of the Jesuit Father Perrone of the Collegio Romano, the standard theologian of modern Ultramontanism.

Some of our younger clergy, I fear, instead of

reading the ancient Fathers and the great divines of our own Church, with their massive learning, have got into the habit of reading modern Roman books, like Perrone's elaborate work, and are thus led to the fallacious conclusion that the theology they find there is the Catholic faith-the faith of Christendom'-as one of them has said-barring some out-of-date Anglicans. The simple fact is that Perrone's doctrine of the Intermediate State is not only directly contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England, but equally so to the doctrine of the ancient Church, of all Oriental Christendom at the present day, and even of the Roman Church before the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century. And neither the Council of Florence, nor the subsequent Council of Trent, sanctions the more recent developments of the doctrine of purgatory in the Roman Church. The Council of Trent, indeed, commits itself to very little. It merely says: There is a purgatory, and the souls there detained are helped by prayer, and chiefly by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar.' The Catechism of the Council, however, is more definite. It says: There is a purgatorial fire, where the souls of the righteous are for a time purified by torture (quo piorum animæ ad definitum tempus cruciata expiantur), that entrance may be opened for them into the eternal home, into which nothing that is defiled can enter.' And pastors are bidden to be more diligent and frequent in the declaration of this doctrine, 'because we are fallen on times in which men will not endure sound doctrine.'

This is a considerable innovation on the doctrine of undivided Christendom; but it is far short of the teaching of Perrone, which is now the dominant doctrine of the Church of Rome, as we shall see presently. Meanwhile our first concern is with the limits within which the doctrine of prayers for the dead may be held and taught in the Church of England.

The first formal exposition of doctrine put forth by the Reformers was the Ten Articles of 1536, which were expanded a few years later into 'The Institution of a Christian Man.' This careful and elaborate summary of Christian doctrine was, with a few additions, published by authority of Convocation in the year 1543, under the title of The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man,' and was the work of a commission consisting of all the bishops of the English Church, eight archdeacons, and seventeen doctors of divinity, making forty-six in all. The head of the commission was, of course, Archbishop Cranmer. Hugh Latimer, then Bishop of Worcester, was one of the number. On the subject of Prayer for Souls Departed' the Necessary Doctrine and Erudition' says:

Forasmuch as due order of charity requireth, and the Book of Maccabees and divers ancient doctors plainly show, that it is a very good and charitable deed to pray for souls departed; and forasmuch as such usage hath continued in the Church for so many years, even from the beginning, men ought to judge and think the same to be well done. And truly it standeth with the very order of charity, a Christian man to pray for another, both quick and dead,

and to commend one another in their prayers to God's mercy; and to cause others to pray for them also, as well in masses and exequies, as at other times, and to give alms for them, according to the usage of the Church and ancient opinion of old fathers; trusting that these things do not only profit and avail them, but also declare us to be charitable folk, because we have mind and desire to profit them which, notwithstanding they be departed this present life, yet remain they still members of the same mystical body of Christ whereunto we pertain.

And here is specially to be noted, that it is not in the power or knowledge of any man to limit and dispense how much, and in what space of time, or to what person particularly the said masses, exequies, and suffrages do profit and avail; therefore charity requireth that whosoever causeth any such masses, exequies, or suffrages to be done should yet (though their interest be more for one than for another) cause them also to be done for the universal congregation of Christian people, quick and dead; for that power and knowledge afore rehearsed pertaineth only unto God, which alone knoweth the measures and times of His own judgment and mercies.

Furthermore, because the place where the souls remain, the name thereof, the state and condition which they be in, be to us uncertain, therefore these, with all other such things, must also be left to Almighty God, unto whose mercy it is meet and convenient for us to commend them, trusting that God accepteth our prayers for them; reserving the rest wholly to God, unto whom is known their estate and condition; and not we to take upon us, neither in the one part nor yet in the other, to give any fond and temerarious judgment in so high things so far passing our knowledge.

Finally, it is much necessary that all such abuses as heretofore have been brought in by supporters and main

tainers of the Papacy of Rome, and their complices, concerning this matter, be clearly put away; and that we therefore abstain from the name purgatory, and no more dispute or reason thereof. Under colour of which have been advanced many fond and great abuses, to make men believe that through the Bishop of Rome's pardons souls might clearly be delivered out of it, and released out of the bondage of sin; and the masses said at Scala Cœli and other prescribed places, phantasied by men, did there in those places more profit more souls than another; and also that a prescribed number of prayers sooner than other (though as devoutly said) should further their petition. sooner, yea specially if they were said before one image more than another which they phantasied. All these, and such like abuses, be necessary utterly to be abolished and extinguished.

This is a remarkable statement from a commission including not only Cranmer (its President) and Hugh Latimer, but all the rest of the bishops on the bench as well as the most eminent of the clergy. It was afterwards sanctioned by Convocation without a dissentient voice. Thus we see that the whole clergy of England in the reign of Henry VIII. condemned 'the Romish doctrine of purgatory,' with its mercenary 'pardons,' and also the name on account of the 'abuses' attached to it, but retained the doctrine in so far as it was held by 'the ancient doctors' and 'old fathers.' And let it be remembered that The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man' has never been withdrawn or repudiated by the Church of England, and that no formulary of doctrine as Palmer has reminded us in a passage