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ment upon purgatory of the most esteemed among our ancient theologians. He found in his authorities certain obscure and undefined speculations upon the subject, and he contented himself with dismissing these, as earlier divines had also done, by declaring them to involve no violation of probability. What would have been said of Bede, had he spoken of the Trinity or Incarnation in a similar tone of brief, indifferent scepticism? What else, than that his creed bound him to profess no such doctrines as articles of faith?

The speculations, however, to which Bede adverts were deeply rooted in pagan prepossessions, and hence they maintained their ground throughout the regions of western Europe. That religious authorities, notwithstanding, forbore to regard them as entitled to implicit confidence is attested by numerous remains of antiquity. Among these may be mentioned the conclusion to that remonstrance, cited in the last discourse, in which a Frankish council affirms, that God allows no sin to pass unpunished. Three descriptions of penalty are then enumerated, two relating to this world, and one to the next. Under the first heads we find penances voluntarily undergone, and judicial visitations of an angry Providence. Under the second

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head is placed alone the horrible fate reserved for obstinate iniquity on the great and awful day of account". Of any postmundane penalty, besides this final consignment of reprobate spirits to the realms of eternal misery, the fathers give not even the slightest intimation. How comes it that they abstained from mentioning a second scene of dreadful retribution after death? Was it not politic, was it not indeed incumbent urgently upon God's appointed servants, to provide a barrier against that torrent of sacrilegious avarice which they sought to stem, by stating every punishment in store for the offenders? The remonstrating prelates might have said, "Men vainly reckon upon impunity, because evil deeds are often long attended by prosperity and peace. The sinner, notwithstanding, may be seized, eventually, with remorse of conscience, and hence driven to inflict upon himself a galling course of penitential discipline. Or the fearful judgments of a righteous God may overtake him when he least expects it. Or obstinate impenitence may consign him to everlasting misery. Or, if late contrition happily avert this intolerable doom, he may still bitterly deplore, on leaving human life, in agonies terminable indeed, yet protracted and intense, the wretched infatua

tion of his wicked acts." What other inference can reasonably be drawn from the total omission of such a topic as this last, than that an intermediate state of suffering for the soul was no recognized article of the Frankish creed early in the ninth century? Nor, therefore, we may reasonably conclude, did England, then, admit any such member into the "faith once delivered unto the saints." Of her continuance in such exclusion, the following admonition to a penitent, after confession, but little anterior, probably, to the Conquest, is no doubtful evidence. "Thou shalt reflect upon the day of judgment, and ever entertain a fear of eternal torments. For eternal life thou shalt strive most earnestly; and every day thou shalt think of death "." Why was the voice of exhortation thus restricted? Did the monitor never hear of an intermediate state of punishment and purgation between death and judgment? Assuredly, with such an expectation he was far from unacquainted. But in holy Scripture he could not find it certainly confirmed; ecclesiastical antiquity refused it any decided sanction. His theological authorities, accordingly, though favourable to it, would not venture upon its positive approval. He therefore abstained from introducing, among the more solemn of reli

gious exhortations, any reference to that which he knew might eventually be found no better than an ingenious theory.

A like disregard of the purgatorial hypothesis appears in most of the Saxon homilies. One of these venerable sermons teaches, that ❝he can never be clean who will not cease from sin ere his dying day"." Another of them asserts, that no opportunities of compensating for iniquities await men beyond the grave, but that "every one will fare hereafter according to his deserts here, be they good or be they evil"." A third warns the people against any expectations of pardon for sin in a future state. Repentance in this world, it teaches, must be accomplished by all who would find forgiveness on reaching the world of spirits". And were those to whom we owe such declarations firmly persuaded that a purgatorial fire would cleanse the disembodied soul from every defilement of carnality? Could such writers also have esteemed bare attrition adequate for conducting eventually the children of disobedience to those heavenly joys for which no relish had been acquired in their whole mortal course?

Besides thus extinguishing the hope of obstinate iniquity by their views of the disembodied soul's condition, our early homilists so

represent it likewise as powerfully to encourage virtue. Good men, they teach, are transferred immediately from earth to paradise. Human life is compared, accordingly, to the passage of ancient Israel through the wilderness. If mortals, it is said, travel through that difficult and often painful portion of their whole existence in obedience to God's commands, the heavenly Canaan awaits them at its end". Another homily paints the pious soul, on escaping from the body, as rendered seven times brighter than the sun, and as led by angels to the destined abode of happiness 22. Again, the prevailing belief in the Limbus Patrum affords occasion for exhorting men to consider thankfully the privilege of those who live under the Gospel. These more favoured of God's children, it is represented, at once attain that state of fruition, to which the fathers were not admitted, until after a wearisome delay23.

The view, indeed, of a future cleansing fire, apparently most popular in ancient England, was that which Alcuin adopted. This venerated scholar had followed those theorists of earlier date, by whom the final conflagration was expected to prove purgatorial in its nature and effects. A homilist, accordingly, affirms unhesitatingly, that all men would have

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