"received those honours that did befit a new created soul, which the Spirit had reformed by water,"

(for he had been but lately baptized, before his departure out of this life,) doth, notwithstanding, pray that the Lord will be pleased to receive him.

Divers instances of the like practice in the ages following, I have produced in another place; to which I will add some few more, to the end that the reader may, from thence, observe how long the primitive institution of the Church did hold up head among the tares that grew up with it, and in the end did quite choke and extinguish it. Our English Saxons had learned of Gregory, to pray for relief of those souls that were supposed to suffer pain in Purgatory; and yet the introducing of that novelty was not able to justle out the ancient usage of making prayers and oblations for them, which were not doubted to have been at rest in God's kingdom. And, therefore, the brethren of the Church of Hexham, in the anniversary commemoration of the obit of Oswald, King of Northumberland, used

"to keep their vigils, for the health of his soul;"

and having spent the night in praising of GoD with Psalms, "to offer for him, in the morning, the sacrifice of the sacred oblation," as Bede writeth; who telleth us yet withal, that he "reigned with God, in heaven," and by his prayers procured many miracles to be wrought on earth. So likewise doth the same Bede report, that when it was discovered, by two several visions, that Hilda, the Abbess of Streamsheale, or Whitby, in Yorkshire, was carried up by the angels into heaven, they, which heard thereof, presently caused prayers to be said for her soul. And Osberne relateth the like of Dunstan; that being at Bath, and beholding in such another vision, the soul of one that had been his scholar, at Glastonbury, to be carried up into "the palace of heaven," he

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'straightway commended the same into the hands of the divine piety,"

and entreated the lords of the place, where he was, to do so likewise.

Other narrations, of the same kind, may be found among them that have written of the saints' lives; and particularly in the tome published by Mosander, p. 69, touching the decease of

Bathildis, Queen of France, and p. 25, concerning the departure of Godfrey, Earl of Cappenberg, who is said there to have appeared unto a certain abbess, called Gerbergis, and to have acquainted her,

"that he was now, without all delay, and without all danger of any more severe trial, gone unto the palace of the highest King; and as the son of the immortal King, was clothed with blessed immortality."

And the monk, that writ the legend, addeth, that she presently, thereupon

"caused the sacrifice of the Mass to be offered for him."

Which, how fabulous soever it may be for the matter of the vision, yet doth it strongly prove, that within these five-hundred years, (for no longer since is it that this is accounted to have been done,) the use of offering for the souls of those that were believed to be in heaven, was still retained in the Church. The letters of Charles the Great, unto Offa, King of Mercia, are yet extant; wherein he wisheth, that “intercession" should be made "for the soul of" Pope Adrian, then lately deceased:

"not having any doubt at all," saith he, "that his blessed soul is at rest: but, that we may show faithfulness and love unto our most dear friend. Even as St. Augustine also giveth directions, that intercessions ought to be made for all men of ecclesiastical piety; affirming, that to intercede for a good man, doth profit him that doeth it."

Where the two ends of this kind of intercession are to be observed; the one, to show their love to their friend; the other, to get profit to themselves thereby, rather than to the party deceased.

Lastly, Pope Innocent the Third, or the Second rather, being inquired of by the Bishop of Cremona, concerning the state of a certain priest, that died without baptism, resolveth him out of St. Augustine, and St. Ambrose, that

"because he continued in the faith of the holy mother of the Church, and the confession of the name of Christ, he was assoiled from original sin, and had attained the joy of the heavenly country."

Upon which ground, at last, he maketh this conclusion;

"Ceasing, therefore, all questions, hold the sentences of the learned Fathers; and command continual prayers, and sacrifices, to be offered unto God, in thy Church for the foresaid priest."

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§ 2. Of the primary intention of Prayers for the Dead.

Now, having thus declared, unto what kind of persons the Commemorations ordained by the ancient Church did extend, the next thing that cometh to consideration is, what we are to conceive of the primary intention of those prayers, that were appointed to be made therein. And here we are to understand, that first, prayers of praise and thanksgiving were presented unto God, for the blessed estate that the party deceased was now entered upon : whereunto were afterwards added, prayers of deprecation and petition, that God would be pleased to forgive him his sins, to keep him from hell, and to place him in the kingdom of heaven. Which kind of intercessions, however at first they were well meant, as we shall hear, yet, in process of time, they proved an occasion of confirming men in divers errors; especially when they began once to be applied, not only to the good, but to evil livers also, unto whom, by the first institution, they never were intended.

The term of εὐχαριστήριος εὐχὴ, a thanksgiving prayer, I borrow from the writer of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; who, in the description of the funeral observances, used of old in the Church, informeth us, first, that the friends of the dead

"accounted him to be, as he was, blessed, because that, according to his wish, he had obtained a victorious end," and thereupon, "sent forth hymns of thanksgiving to the Author of that victory; desiring withal that they, themselves, might come unto the like end."

And then that the Bishop likewise offered up a prayer of thanksgiving unto God, when the dead was afterward brought unto him, to receive, as it were, at his hands a sacred coronation. Thus at the funeral of Fabiola, the praising of God by singing of Psalms and resounding of Hallelujah, is specially mentioned by St. Jerome; and the general practice and intention of the Church therein is expressed and earnestly urged by St. Chrysostom in this manner :

"Do not we praise GOD and give thanks unto him, for that he hath now crowned him that is departed, for that he hath freed him from his labours, for that quitting him from fear, he keepeth him with himself? Are not the hymns for this end? Is not the singing of Psalms for this purpose? All these be tokens of rejoicing."

Whereupon he thus presseth them that used immoderate mourning for the dead:

"Thou sayest, Return, O my soul, unto thy rest, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee; and dost thou weep? is not this a stage play? is it not mere simulation? For if thou dost indeed believe the things that thou sayest, thou lamentest idly; but if thou playest, and dissemblest, and thinkest these things to be fables, why dost thou then sing? why dost thou suffer those things that are done? Wherefore dost thou not drive away them that sing?" And in the end he concludeth somewhat prophetically, that he very much feared lest by this means some grievous disease should creep in upon the Church."

Whether the doctrine now maintained in the Church of Rome, that the children of GOD, presently after their departure out of this life, are cast into a lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, be not a spice of this disease, and whether their practice in chanting of Psalms, appointed for the expression of joy and thankfulness, over them whom they esteem to be tormented in so lamentable a fashion, be not a part of that scene and pageant at which St. Chrysostom dost so take on, I leave it unto others to judge. That his fear was not altogether vain, the event itself doth show. For howsoever in his days the fire of the Romish purgatory was not yet kindled, yet were there certain sticks then a-gathering, which ministered fuel afterwards unto that flame. Good St. Augustine, who was then alive, and lived three and twenty years after St. Chrysostom's death, declared himself to be of this mind; that the oblations and alms usually offered in the Church

"for all the dead that received baptism, were thanksgivings for such as were very good, propitiations for such as were not very bad; but as for such as were very evil, although they were no helps of the dead, yet were they some kind of consolations of the living."

Which, although it were but a private exposition of the Church's meaning in her prayers and oblations for the dead, and the opinion of a doctor too that did not hold purgatory to be any article of his creed, yet did the Romanists in times following

greedily take hold thereof, and make it the main foundation upon which they laid the hay and stubble of their devised Purgatory.

A private exposition I call this; not only because it is not to be found in the writings of the former Fathers, but also because it suiteth not well with the general practice of the Church, which it intendeth to interpret. It may indeed fit in some sort

that part of the Church service, wherein there was made a several commemoration, first of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, after one manner; and then of the other dead, after another; which together with the conceit, that

66 an injury was offered to a martyr, by praying for him,"

was it that first occasioned St. Augustine to think of the former distinction. But in the

"supplications for the spirits of the dead, which the Church, under a general commemoration, was accustomed to make for all that were deceased in the Christian and Catholic communion,"

to imagine that one and the same act of praying should be a petition for some, and for others a thanksgiving only, is somewhat too harsh an interpretation: especially where we find it propounded by way of petition, and the intention thereof directly expressed, as in the Greek Liturgy attributed to St. James, the brother of our Lord :

"Be mindful, O Lord GOD, of the spirits and of all flesh, of such as we have remembered, and of such as we have not remembered, being of right belief, from Abel the just, until this present day. Do thou cause them to rest in the land of the living, in thy kingdom, in the delight of paradise, in the bosoms of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, our holy fathers; whence grief, and sorrow, and sighing, are fled; where the light of thy countenance doth visit them, and shine for ever."

And in the offices compiled by Alcuinus :

"O Lord, holy Father, Almighty and everlasting GOD, we humbly make request unto thee for the spirits of thy servants and handmaids, which from the beginning of this world thou hast called unto thee; that thou wouldest vouchsafe, O Lord, to give unto them a lightsome place, a place of refreshing and ease, and that they may pass by the gates of hell and the ways of darkness, and may abide in the mansions of the saints, and in the holy light which thou didst promise of old unto Abraham and his seed."

So the " commemoration of the faithful departed," retained as yet in the Roman missal, is begun with this orison :

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let everlasting light shine unto them."