Non tamen omne malum miseris, nec funditus omnes PITT'S Translation. Their souls at first from high Olympus came; And, if not blunted by the mortal frame, Thus are her splendors dimm 'd, and crusted o'er Some cleanse their stains beneath the gushing streams, And some rise glorious from the searching flames. Thus all must suffer; and, those sufferings past, The clouded minds are purified at last. But when the circling seasons, as they roll, Have cleans'd the dross long gather'd round the soul; When the celestial fire divinely bright, Breaks forth victorious in her native light: Then we, the chosen few, Elysium gain, And here expatiate on the blissful plain. My argument from the facts now exhibited is very simple. Blanco White and his abettors would insinuate that the doctrine of Purgatory was not known for several centuries after the establishment of Christianity and thus lay the foundation for asserting that it was an invention of what they call Popery. I have met it by producing the early Fathers of the Church to show that it was one of the ancient and original doctrines of the Christian body: I have produced the ancient liturgies; I have produced the ancient separatists; I have thus shown that it was a tenet of the early Church, and not an invention of a later period. I went farther when I showed that it was a doctrine of the Jewish Church previous to the arrival of the Saviour, and I now show that it was a doctrine of Plato, of Cicero, of Virgil, and of other Greeks and Romans before the same epoch. Suppose the tenet to be as gross an error as the worship of the leeks of Egypt. I have at all events proved that it was no invention of the Popes or of their adherents. And yet those persons who claim to be more learned than we are, and who affect to pity us for the overshadowing of our intellect; those good gentlemen who bellow against our religion in the cities, and the towns, and the villages, and the courts, and the woods of this continent, most wise and learned antiquarians, most erudite and critical historians as they are, perpetually tell their hearers that the doctrine of Purgatory is one of the inventions of Popery. I have known clergymen in this city of Charleston, who really have, I believe, good claims to be considered scholars, recommend this same work of Blanco White to their friends and congregations, as being amongst other things a very accurate and good description of the origin of Roman Catholic errors: now what must be our opinion of the information of those gentlemen, upon their own professional subjects, if, as we are in charity bound to suppose, they believe what they stated? Before I leave this topic, I shall show you what I conceive to be abundant reason to lead to the conclusion that the Gentile as well as the Jew derived the knowledge of the doctrine from those to whom it was revealed by God in the earliest ages of the world. I remain, yours, and so forth, B. C. LETTER XLVI. CHARLESTON, S. C., Nov. 12, 1827. To the Roman Catholics of the United States of America. My Friends,-We have seen that before the days of our Saviour, the doctrine of the existence of Purgatory was a tenet of the true Jewish Church, and of some of the most enlightened Gentiles. A question presents itself to us, "Were they in error on this subject?" Though it is not exactly within the range of my task, I shall meet this question by stating, that they were not in error. In my last letter, I laid down a few principles which I request you still to bear in mind, and at the proper period apply to what I shall now adduce: we shall thus obtain the rule for ascertaining what is error and what is truth in those early doctrines. I assume the single origin of the human family; I assume that God made revelations to Adam, which were the foundation of the correct religious practices, and the substance of the faith of the true believers; I assume an object of the Almighty to be, that the preservation of the knowledge thus communicated by him to Adam, was to be one of the first and most important religious obligations of mankind; I assume that neither Adam nor any of his descendants was acquainted with the future state of mortals, by any power of natural reasoning. In fact, we know nothing of a future state, save what we have learned from revelation; nor could we, nor could our earliest predecessors know with certainty that there was such a state, nor any of its circumstances, by the light of our natural reason: hence, every thing which was so known, had been revealed by him who knew what he saw and declared. After the deluge, Noah and his family had a knowledge of those revelations, one of the most important of which regarded the testimony of man: it was the most simple, the most interesting, the most easily recollected, and that which would most naturally arrest frequently and powerfully the attention of every person. If men had been originally told that there were but two states, one of eternal happiness, and one of eternal misery, they would scarcely think of imagining a third state of transient endurance and ultimate happiness against the plain, positive, and universal testimony; or if several did, there would be some at least found who would have rejected the novelty, and adhered to the ancient evidence. Let us even abandon this ground, and say that they all erred, and that in their delusion, they framed a notion of such a Purgatory: still we must be certain, that when God gave a new revelation, he would have corrected this error, and the people to whom such revelation had been given would be rescued from the delusion: we would then find truth amongst the newly-instructed people, and error amongst the others. The patriarchs received a revelation; and its evidences were continued to their descendants, the Israelites, who had their knowledge extended by still more ample communications; and yet we find a perfect coincidence in the substantial belief, as to the number and nature of the states in another world, between the Israelites and the Gentiles. Thus we arrive at the conclusion, that the doctrine so found to exist was that which was originally given, and therefore the early revelation of God testified the existence of Heaven, of Hell, and of Purgatory. Let us take another supposition, that it was a doctrine which the Gentiles did not receive from the original traditions derived from Adam and Noe, but that Plato who is supposed to have derived much of his knowledge from the sacred writings and from the Jews, drew his theory from this people, and that from this philosopher it spread through the Gentiles; in this case, we should have to attribute its origin to the Jews, who were the chosen people of God; and shall we say that a nation selected by the peculiar providence of heaven, in the midst of revelation and of miracles, to preserve the great truths of pure religion, taught error even to the philosophers of Greece? But the difficulty becomes greater, when we survey other and earlier nations, to whom Plato could not have taught what he had learned from the Mosaic code, or from the Hebrew people; thus the circumstance of its being found in those other nations, destroys the foundation sought to be laid, and we are driven to that inevitable conclusion, that it was one of the earliest religious doctrines of the world. We next come to review facts, and they are all easily explained, by admitting what we state as their foundation. Several nations held the doctrine of the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls. Let us, for a moment, view the foundation of truth and the superstructure of error. The ancient tenets gave a knowledge of Heaven, of Hell, and of a state of Purgation; but it was easily imagined by some that this purgation consisted in transmigration, in order that the sins and imperfections of one life might be punished by endurance in another: thus the very superadded error bore testimony to the original truth. Prayer was from the earliest ages offered for the dead, by those who held the doctrines of pure and undefiled religion, and those prayers and obsequies were special accompaniments of the funeral: here also the tenet was preserved, that the troubled spirit was brought to repose by the due obsequies and the proper prayer, although the Gentile preserved only an indistinct idea, and used a superstitious rite of obsequy. The Jew did not take from the Gentile, nor the Gentile from the Jew, but both followed the custom, as they preserved the principle of their common ancestor, to whom God had made the revelation. I before remarked, that the errors and superstitions of Paganism were but a corruption. of the primitive truths taught by God to man; and I have in this case given an exhibition hastily and imperfectly, it is true, but with sufficient distinctness to show that Purgatory and the efficacy of prayer for the dead, were some of the original doctrines of the earliest revelation, long before the days of Moses; previous, I would say, to the deluge, and derived from the days of Adam, of Seth, and of Enos, which were centuries upon centuries before the time insinuated and suggested by Blanco White and the erudite antiquarians who recommended his book to the Protestants of America. I have done with the proofs of the doctrine; and, although I have been tedious and desultory, I have by no means exhausted my store of facts or topics of argument. I have neither the leisure nor the opportunity for arranging my arguments or correcting my style. A variety of heavy cares and perplexing duties, together with the want of a sufficient library, are difficulties which must necessarily cause these crude letters to be only the collection of some materials, from which a bulwark for our faith might be constructed. The imperfections of my mode will not therefore, I trust, be injurious to the excellence of my cause; yet, even with these disadvantages, I believe it has been made plain, that the proposition of White is one of the most unfounded assertions that has ever been put forward by a man pretending to any knowledge of theology or of history. I shall therefore conclude this letter and this subject by showing that, amongst Protestants themselves, we are by no means without supporters of our tenets regarding Purgatory and prayers for the dead. But as I have been so far back as the antediluvian age, I shall not be blamed, if, in my rapid descent, I stop to remark that in the Koran, which was chiefly compiled from an observation of Jewish and Christian customs, the doctrine of Purgatory is taught. Thus this doctrine was a portion of the true faith of the ancient line of patriarchs, of the Jewish Church, and of the Christian Church; was received amongst the Gentiles but disfigured, and its nature mistaken; was also retained by the Mahometans, and is found amongst several of the Pagan nations of the present day, to whom it has come as a portion of the primitive religion which God gave to our great progenitors; but the Pagan having derived his knowledge of heaven and of hell from the same source, exhibits to us in his profession of the belief of each state a degree of vague and chaotic knowledge in which, though the great substantial truth is preserved, there exists much of error; so it is in his belief concerning Purgatory; he testifies to the fact of its existence, but he errs in the circumstances which regard it. Its existence was first denied in the fourth century, by Aorius and his few adherents; their sect was speedily extinct. In the twelfth century, the Waldenses and others, especially the Petrobrussians and the Albigenses, renewed the denial. Luther, in his disputation at Leipsic, stated that he "firmly believed, nay, he would dare to say, that he knew there was a Purgatory, and was easily persuaded that mention thereof was made in the Scriptures. He next stated, that no mention was found of Purgatory in the Scriptures; next, that the souls therein were not certain of being saved; that |