I do not want to dwell at tedious length upon this matter, for I think that everybody can easily see from the meaning of religion that hired prayers and psalms are of as little use as if you should agree for a reward to be righteous for somebody else. And even those pray, I think, who when holding the ploughhandle feel admiration and reverence for the power of Almighty God in the very soil, and in the seed, and who are grateful for His bounty, even though they never utter a word; for it is the heart that prays. And as to the Christians constantly praying, and praying together, in the early times, it ean be done in church today also, only let it be praying and not the wanton tickling of the fancy with chanting. Let us, then, pronounce the collects plainly in the language understood by the congregation, that all may pray together following the words of him who is leading. Yet, let every church have its own custom; for the same thing is not adapted to all, but everything, as far as its source is concerned, should proceed from the same piety, and what does not proceed therefrom should be quietly abolished. See now what merit amounts to. We owe blamelessness to the Lord, and even if we could offer it (which is impossible), we should still be unprofitable servants [cf. Lk. 17:10]. We are sons and heirs [cf. Rom. 8: 17], not servants; we do not, therefore, serve for reward.
PuncaTORY
Holy Seripture knows nothing of the fire of purgatory in ΚΖ the sense used by the theologians, but the mind of man knows it well, for by means of this false notion of the fire of purgatory, such wealth has been heaped up that the riches of Croesus and the Hyperboreans and the gems of India are cheap in comparison. For this is what the mind of man thought up, That is, the local language instead of Latin.
as you may see somewhere in Origen: Some men go hence who are not utterly bad; why, then, should they be thrust into everlasting punishment? Others go hence who are not wholly good; why, then, should they be admitted at once into the company of the blessed? This argument has some appearance of soundness and, according to Paul’s words, Col. 2: 23, some show of wisdom, but in ἐϑελοϑρησκεία [will-worship], i. e., the religion which is the product of the human will. But if you confront it with the word of God, it will vanish like dust before the face of the wind [ef. Wisdom of Solomon 5: 15]. If we do not do this, we shall be abandoned by the Lord just as the people of Israel were once left to their own devices and perished in them, as in Psalm 81:12-13 David indicates, speaking in the character of God: “But my people heard not my voice, and Israel hearkened not to me. So I let them go according to the desires of their heart: they shall walk in their own inventions.” But what greater presumption can there be than to declare that in the other world things are just as you have happened to picture them to yourself? We should listen to what the Lord God says within us, not to what presumptuous reason invents within us, which, as soon as it has cunningly produeed anything that it hopes will seem probable to everybody, immediately sallies forth to win glory. This state of mind we ought to leave to the Gentiles, as Paul has finely taught, Eph. 4: 17, in this fashion: “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind.” See how he calls our devices the vanity of the mind. There follows: “Being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart,” ete. We should not, therefore, walk in the way of our minds and devices.
Since, then, a purgatory (for the custom has long prevailed of so naming this illusory expiation in fire) can nowhere be affirmed from the Word of God, how is it that we are so stupid as to believe in such vapid and suspicious nonsense, when we see, forsooth, that those who affirm a purgatory teach in what ways its fires can be quenched, and in the same breath offer their aid for hire? They bid you give gold, for by this
especially is the flame weakened if the man who receives the gold devoutly celebrates mass, prays, and sings psalms; and at the same time he holds out his hand for the gold. Why are we not as shrewd as Lucian’s Timon, who in such fine style used his spade upon some philosopher or other who advised him to throw the gold he had found into the sea, but not too far from the shore, since he doubtless had the scheme of gathering it up from there at night and carrying it off? Purgatory is very much like certain quack medicines that are carried about by peddlers. They mount a platform in the midst of the marketplace, and tell about some sickness or disease that is committing ravages all about, and say they have themselves suffered from it but by the blessing of the gods have recovered in spite of the malady, thanks to the medicine exhibited before the eyes of all. They add that the disease is not far off; that, in fact, it is already raging in neighboring places. See how, first of all, they produce here expectation and fear of the disease, and then promise a remedy. So those who affirmed a purgatory—what bonds, good God! what snakes, fires, what rivers running fire, sulphur, naphtha, or glowing iron, did they not bellow about! What tales of the poets did they not outdo! And the minds of the stupid were just as much dumfounded by this as when an unexpected and cruel enemy is reported to be before the city walls, firing the farms, killing the farmers, and destroying everything. The blockheads stood thunderstruck at this nonsense, just as if they thought they already felt the woe. But a remedy was at hand, marked at an exorbitant price in the beginning (for that was most necessary), in order to make a raid first upon the pocket-books of the rich. “Do you want to free a soul? You can do it for a piece of gold.” But when for the wealthy souls had been set free from their prison-cells, they turned to the paltry souls of the humble, but under a pretence that should prevent the rich from suspecting that they were being made sport of. They pretended that the merey of God ought not to be denied to anybody; that, consequently, the poor, quite as well as the rich, might free souls from purgatory (that is, their bit of eoin from their purse), but on condition that no one should say he was poor, so as to be able to get so great a boon cheaper