Tract No. 79
The extract from Archbishop Ussher’s Answer to a Jesuit, contained in Tract 72, on the subject of the ancient Commemorations for the Dead in Christ, may fitly be succeeded by an inquiry as to what degree and sort of proof remains for the Roman tenet of Purgatory, after deducting from the evidence those usages or statements of the early Church, which are commonly supposed, but, as Ussher shows, improperly, to countenance it. Ussher’s explanations have had the effect, it is presumed, of cutting away the primâ facie evidence, on which the doctrine is usually rested; and it now remains to see what is left when it is withdrawn. With this view it is proposed in the following pages to draw out in detail the evidence alleged by the Romanists in behalf of their belief, with such remarks as may be necessary, in order to form a fair estimate of it. A plain statement of the doctrine itself, and of its rise, shall be also attempted, as not unseasonable at a time when the strength of Romanism rests in no small degree in its opponents mistaking the points in debate, and making or refuting propositions which but indirectly or partially bear upon the errors which they desire to combat.
Before commencing, it is necessary to warn the reader against estimating the magnitude or quality of any of those errors by its apparent dimensions in the theory. What seems to be a small deviation from correctness in the abstract system, becomes considerable and serious when it assumes a substantive form. This is especially the case with all doctrinal discussions, in which the undeveloped germs of many diversities of practice and moral character lie thick together and in small compass, and as if promiscuously and without essential differences. The highest truths differ from the most miserable delusions by what appears to be a few words or letters. The discriminating mark of orthodoxy, the Homoousion, has before now been ridiculed, however irrationally, as being identical, all but the letter i, with the heretical symbol of the Homoiousion. What is acknowledged in the Arian controversy, must be endured without surprise in the Roman, in whatever degree it occurs. We may be taunted as differing from the Romanists only in phrases and modes of expression; and we may be taunted, or despised, according to the fate of our Divines for three centuries past, as taking a middle, timid, unsatisfactory ground, neither quite agreeing nor quite disagreeing with our opponents. We may be charged with dwelling on trifles and niceties, in a way inconsistent with plain, manly good sense; but in truth it is not we who are the speculatists, and unpractical controversialists, but they who forget that hæ nugæ seria ducunt in mala.
But again there is another reason, peculiar to the Roman controversy, which occasions a want of correspondence between the appearance presented by the Roman theology in theory, and its appearance in practice. The separate doctrines of Romanism are very different, in position, importance, and mutual relation, in the abstract, and when developed, applied, and practised. Anatomists tell us that the skeletons of the most various animals are formed on the same type; yet the animals are dissimilar and distinct, in consequence of the respective differences of their developed proportions. No one would confuse between a lion and a bear; yet many of us at first sight would be unable to discriminate between their respective skeletons. Romanism in the theory may differ little from our own creed; nay, in the abstract type, it might even be identical, and yet in the actual framework, and still further in the living and breathing form, it might differ essentially. For instance, the doctrine of Indulgences is in the theory entirely connected with the doctrine of Penance; that is, it has relation solely to this world, so much so that Roman apologists sometimes speak of it without even an allusion to its bearings elsewhere: but we know that in practice it is mainly, if not altogether, concerned with the next world,—with the alleviation of sufferings in Purgatory.
And further still, as regards the doctrine of Purgatorial suffering, there have been for many ages in the Roman Church gross corruptions of its own doctrine, untenable as that doctrine is even by itself. The decree of the Council of Trent, which will presently be introduced, acknowledges the fact. Now we believe that those corruptions still continue; that Rome has never really set herself in earnest to eradicate them. The pictures of Purgatory so commonly seen in countries in communion with Rome, the existence of Purgatorian societies, the means of subsistence accruing to the clergy from belief in it, afford a strange contrast to the simple wording and apparent innocence of the decree by which it is made an article of faith. It is the contrast between a drug in its lifeless seed, and the same developed, thriving, and rankly luxuriant in the actual plant.
And lastly, since we are in no danger of becoming Romanists, and may bear to be dispassionate, and (I may say) philosophical in our treatment of their errors, some passages in the following account of Purgatory are more calmly written than would satisfy those who were engaged with a victorious enemy at their doors. Yet, whoever be our opponent, Papist or Latitudinarian, it does not seem to be wrong to be as candid and conceding as justice and charity allow us. Nor is it unprofitable to weigh accurately how much the Romanists have committed themselves in their formal determinations of doctrine, and how far, by God’s merciful providence, they had been restrained and overruled; and again how far they must retract, in order to make amends to Catholic truth and unity.
§ 1. Statement of the Roman Doctrine concerning Purgatory
§ 2. Proof of the Roman Doctrine concerning Purgatory
§ 3. History of the Rise of the Doctrine of Purgatory, and Opinions in the Early Church concerning it
§ 4. The Council of Florence
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