for and tenderly and wisely educating their children, paying their debts, imitating their good example, preserving their memories privately, and publicly keeping their memorials, and desiring of God, with hearty and constant prayer, that God would give them a joyful resurrection and a merciful judgment; for so St. Paul prayed in behalf of Onesiphorus, that God would show him mercy on that day,' that fearful and yet much to be desired day, in which the most righteous person hath need of much mercy and pity, and shall find it."*

Popery has dared to take from the hands of the Lord the keys of Death and Hades, and, as if the resurrection had past already, break up His mediatorial kingdom; and, mistaking the ancient prayers of those who prayed that their departed brethren might be partakers of the first resurrection, (the morning star of the thousand years' day of the Lord's judgment,) and not be left until the last, Rome canonises some of the departed saints into what she calls Heaven, and leaves the others suffering a fire in what she calls Purgatory. And ultra-Protestantism follows her in her first daring assertion; she too dismisses her favoured followers to "Heaven," and will not have them in one expectation of change with the Church on earth. But the Catholic practice of prayer for the whole Church in one hope was and is the true witness of the true position of the Church in the intermediate, or rather invisible, state; and as now here on earth our conversation or citizenship is in the heavens, so most

Bishop Jeremy Taylor's Sermon on the Death of Lady Carbery,

assuredly is the conversation of those, who are present with the Lord, without one mist of the world or of the flesh, in the heavens also: although with us, who are militant, they all unite in one hope of the day of God and of our resurrection unto life everlasting.

Romanists with great horror* find the names of the Virgin Mary, and of the Apostles and other Saints, whose praise was in all the Church, remembered in the prayers for the departed; but this very comprehensiveness, "that God would remember all those that slept in the hope of the resurrection of everlasting life,"† so inexplicable to all perverters of the Catholic practice, bears witness to important truths. Among these truths the most important is the honour given to our Lord Jesus Christ alone, that he was set apart the first-fruits from the dead, "the first-born from the dead, that in all things He might have the pre-eminence." All others were still with their bodies not yet risen from the dead, and were objects of prayer: He alone was perfected. And this great truth Epiphanius uses against the heretic Arius, who, like modern Romanists, could not see why prayers should be used for those who were at rest. "We offer for the just (both the Fathers and Patriarchs, the Prophets and Apostles and Evangelists and Martyrs and Confessors, Bishops also and Anachoretoi, and the whole order) that

* The ancient" form of praying for the Apostles, Martyrs and the rest of the Saints is deservedly laid aside (merito per desuetudinem exolevit)," says A. Mendoza, Controvers. Theolog. Quæst. 6, Sect. 7. + Greek Litany: St. Basil and St. Chrysos.

Coloss. i. 18.

we may set apart our Lord Jesus Christ by this honour paid to Him, and yield to Him worship.

Another Truth is the subjective value of prayer; for the things which God has surely promised and faithfully performs He will be inquired of in prayer, that the suppliants may enjoy the blessed improvement of themselves by holy prayer. "What," asks Epiphanius of the same heretic, "can be better or more commodious or more admirable than to name the names of the departed? that all present may believe that the departed still live and are not in annihilation, but are and live near the Lord; and that this most solemn proclamation may hereby be published, that it is with hope we pray for our brethren as for sojourners in another country." By these commemorations and eucharistic prayers for the departed, the witness was kept up of the promise of God; and, as the ancient writer of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy explains, such blessings are interpreted and set before the Church always in the body, that they may see the gifts that shall befal such as are holy."+

It is the Romish corruption of prayer for the dead from the ancient and Catholic pleading of God's promise for their happy resurrection into a base petition for helping them out of Purgatory, which is so properly denounced in our 19th Homily. The writer faithfully points out

* Epiph. Hæret. 75.

+ Ibid.

See A. Usher "Of Prayer for the Dead;" whose Treatises on Purgatory, Prayer for the Dead and Limbus Patrum, exhaust the subject, and destroy every attempt made by Romanists to defend Purgatory.

and proves from the Fathers as well as from Holy Writ that no change from evil to good can be wrought out of the body; where the tree falls, there it lieth; that the only Purgatory is the death and blood of Christ. It must be admitted that this Homily, in pointing out the corruptions of Purgatory, discountenances prayer for the dead, and requires all prayers for the living. So fearful an abuse seemed at the Reformation to call for the disuse "of prayer and good wishes for the Saints departed, namely, for their public acquittal and consummation at the day of resurrection, which, had it continued in the just and original meeting, could not be disliked."* We cannot pray for the resurrection and the perfect consummation and bliss both in body and soul,—we cannot hasten on the day of Christ, without including the departed (as we have seen) in one petition; and thus, instead of any dreary separation, the communion of all the Saints is kept glowing in one hope. Praise and thanksgiving for the departed faithful is heard in our Liturgy, and also is heard the prayer that we with them may be partakers of the everlasting kingdom of the Father, which prayer in the service of Holy Communion is explained by that in the service for Burial. More direct prayer having been misinterpreted and made fuel for the fire of Purgatory, indirect prayer, with praise and thanksgiving, is only retained; and they who use it aright will find it open truths of the kingdom of God and of the communion of Saints, which will show more clearly the vileness and the falsehood of Purgatory.

* See Mede, quoted p. 41, Part 3, of this Inquiry.

*

There is an ancient opinion, which is as much corrupted by this Romish dogma of Purgatory as is the ancient practice of praying for the departed, the opinion, viz., that there would be a fire in the day of judgment to purge any remaining impurity in the risen. This opinion, published by Origen, was partially adopted by succeeding writers; but the truth it contains should rather be sought in the immunity of the raised and spiritual bodies of the Saints from all earthly trials, and their capacity of enjoying the fiery glory of the day of God. The opinion itself of such purgatorial fire is moreover fatal to the Purgatory of the disembodied spirits of Rome. "The soul cannot suffer by fire but in the body, and the body cannot be with it till the resurrection."†

There is one truth of which we may be reminded by this Romish corruption, and that is, that the souls of the faithful are capable of suffering the pleasure of joy and felicity; and, though awaiting the resurrection of the body, have doubtless that spiritual sensorium, that building of God and house not made with hands, with which their new creation in Christ Jesus and His all glorious presence endow them. We know not whether St. Paul's rapture into paradise explained to him the truths which he teaches in the first verses of 2 Cor. v. ; but the intimations in Holy Scripture of Hades or the invisible state supply food for the happiest meditations to the faithful;

* Lactantius's Divin. Institut. lib. 7, c. 21; St. Hilar. in St. Matt. and Ps. 118; St. Ambrose in Ps. 36.

+ Greg. Nyss., quoted by A. Laud.