for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins' [2 Maccabees 12: 46]."

Roman Catholic theologians, though agreed as to the existence of purgatory, differ as to its situation and the nature of its punishments. Cardinal Bellarmin reckoned 8 variations of opinion in respect to this. The schoolmen of the middle ages maintained and this appears to be the prevalent opinionthat the vast cavity in the central region of the earth is divided into 4 apartments, namely: (1.) hell; (2.) purgatory; (3.) the limbo of infants who died unbaptized, and who endure the eternal punishment of loss, but not of sense; (4.) the limbo of the fathers, now untenanted, since Christ liberated the Old Testament saints who had occupied it till his descent into it. The pains of purification in purgatory have been represented as so horribly severe that no sufferings ever borne in this world can be compared with them. How long they continue is unknown; but the process of cleansing is thought to be very gradual, and, in some cases, not to be completed till the day of judgment. Rev. T. S. Preston, chancellor of the archdiocese of New York, is reported to have said in a recent discourse:

"The pains which souls suffer in purgatory I believe to be a bitter feeling of loss and separation from God, and a pain of fire, somewhat akin to the fire of hell, but with a purifying power."

Bishop Challoner, in his "Catholic Christian Instructed,"

says:

"We have the strongest grounds imaginable from all kinds of arguments, from scripture, from perpetual tradition, from the authority and declaration of the Church of God, and from reason."

A Protestant naturally believes that this bold declaration was intended to make up in positiveness of assertion what it lacks in weight of argument. The Scriptural argument which is given above, is certainly of no weight whatever. The free

and full salvation of the Gospel of Christ is consistent alike with the just punishment of unbelievers, with the narrow escape of some believers from destruction, and with different degrees of eternal glory or reward proportioned to the manifested love' and devotedness of different believers, and the invention of a purgatory is sanctioned by no accredited revelation of God. The 2d book of the Maccabees, on which reliance is placed, has no claim to be regarded as an inspired book; was never a part of the Hebrew Old Testament; was pronounced apocryphal by Jerome (one of the great fathers of the Church, and the translator of the Bible into Latin; see Chap. XIII.), by popes Gregory the Great and Sixtus V., by cardinals Hugo, Ximenes, Cajetan, &c.; and owes all its authority among Roman Catholics to the hasty and peremptory decree of the council of Trent in 1546, at a session when only about 53 were present. The doctrine of purgatory is a human invention (see Chapter II.); it is unscriptural and dangerous; it represents the atonement of Christ and the influence of the Holy Spirit as insufficient for the salvation of ordinary Christians; it encourages the commission of sin and the delay of repentance with the hope of purification after death; with its connected doctrines of confession and absolution, of offenses and penalties, it places the penitent in the power of the confessor, and makes the priest the ruler of heaven and earth and hell. Let it be remembered that the priest is the sole judge of offenses and penalties at the tribunal of penance; that he will decide a particular theft or breach of chastity or act of treason to be venial, and the reading of the Bible or a doubt about the immaculate conception

1" Faith which worketh by love" (Gal. 5: 6).

2 Cases like this are well authenticated. A poor girl, perhaps living in a Protestant family, hears the Bible read, and reads a few verses in the Gospel of John; she is delighted to hear and to read of Jesus and of his salvation; but she goes to confession and tells the priest what she has done; he in a rage calls the book she has read "a wicked book," "an accursed book; " she must never dare to read it again; she must never dare to be present at Protestant worship in the family or elsewhere; she must fast many times and say many Puter-nosters; hell and purgatory are before her; let her do penance and beware!

or the eating of a mouthful of meat on Friday to be a mortal sin; that while he claims the power to grant absolution for all sins, both venial and mortal, and teaches that there is no salvation out of the Church, he threatens with excommunication and purgatory and hell those who do not confess to him all their sins or do not accept the penances which he prescribes. Surely here is machinery that may and does enslave and crush and ruin souls.

CHAPTER XIX.

INDULGENCES.

The Council of Trent passed the following decree in respect to indulgences:

"Since the power of bestowing indulgences was granted by Christ to the church, and the power of this sort, divinely given her, she has used even from the most ancient times; the holy synod teaches and enjoins that the use of indulgences, especially salutary to Christian people, and approved by the authority of holy councils, is to be retained in the church; and it anathematizes those, who either assert that they are useless, or deny that the power of granting them is in the church. Nevertheless, it desires that moderation, according to the old and approved custom in the church, be shown in granting them, lest by too great facility ecclesiastical discipline be weakened. But desiring the amendment and correction of the abuses which have crept in among them, and by reason of which this honorable name of indulgences is blasphemed by heretics, it determines generally by the present decree that all improper gains for obtaining these, whence has flowed the principal cause of abuses among Christian people, are to be altogether abolished. But since the other abuses, which have arisen from superstition, ignorance, irreverence, or other source in any way whatever, cannot conveniently, on account of the multiplied corruptions of the places and provinces in which these are committed, be specially prohibited; it commands all bishops, that each diligently collect the abuses of this sort belonging to his own church, and report them in the first provincial synod: that after they are examined and the opinion of other bishops is obtained, they may be at once referred to the supreme Roman pontiff, by whose authority and prudence may be determined what is expedient for the whole church; that thus the gift of holy in

dulgences may be dispensed to the faithful piously, solemnly, and uncorruptly."

It will be noticed that the Council of Trent does not define the nature, or the benefit, or the proper use of indulgences; nor does it specify any improper use; though it curses those who pronounce them useless, or dispute the right to grant them.

Pope Leo X. had explained the doctrine of indulgences thus, as translated by Mr. Cramp:

1

"The Roman church, whom other churches are bound to follow as their mother, hath taught that the Roman pontiff, the successor of Peter in regard to the keys, and the vicar of Jesus Christ upon earth possessing the power of the keys, by which power all hindrances are removed out of the way of the faithful, that is to say, the guilt of actual sins by the sacrament of penance-and the temporal punishment due for those sins, according to the divine justice, by ecclesia-tical indulgence; that the Roman pontiff may, for reasonable causes, by his apostolic authority grant indulgences, out of the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints, to the faithful who are united to Christ by charity, as well for the living as for the dead; and that in thus dispensing the treasure of the merits of Jesus Christ and the saints, he either confers the indulgence by the method of absolution, or transfers it by the method of suffrage. Wherefore all persons, whether living or dead, who really obtain any indulgences of this kind, are delivered from so much temporal punishment, due according to divine justice for their actual sins, as is equivalent to the value of the indulgence bestowed and received."

Bishop Challoner, in his "Catholic Christian Instructed," defines an indulgence thus:

"An indulgence is simply a remission, or mitigation, of those temporal punishments, which the sinner still owes to the eternal justice, even after the forgiveness of the guilt of his offense."

Archbishop Butler's Catechism says of an indulgence—

"It releases from canonical penances, enjoined by the church on

1 Sec, on this power of the keys, &c., Chapters II., XVII., and XVIII.