XXII. punishment, which he must expiate by acts of penance ART. and sorrow in this world, together with such other sufferings as God shall think fit to lay upon him: but if he does not expiate these in this life, there is a state of suffering and misery in the next world, where the soul is to bear the temporal punishment of its sins; which may continue longer or shorter, till the day of judgment. And in order to the shortening this, the prayers and supererogations of men here on earth, or the intercession of the saints in heaven, but above all things, the sacrifice of the mass, are of great efficacy. This is the doctrine of the Church of Rome, asserted in the Councils of Florence and Trent. What has been taught among them concerning the nature and the degrees of those torments, though supported by many pretended apparitions and revelations, is not to be imputed to the whole body; and is indeed only the doctrine of schoolmen, though it is generally preached and infused into the consciences of the people. Therefore I shall only examine that which is the established doctrine of the whole Roman Church. And first as to the foundation of it, that sins are only pardoned, as to their eternal punishment, to those who being justified by faith have peace Rom. v. 1. with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: there is not a colour for it in the Scriptures. Remission of sins is in general that with which the preaching of the Gospel ought always to begin; and this is so often repeated, without any such reserve, that it is a high assuming upon God, and his attributes of goodness and mercy, to limit these when he has not limited them; but has expressly said, that this is a main part of the new covenant, that he will Jer. xxxi. remember our sins and iniquities no more. Now it seems to 34. be a maxim, not only of the law of nations, but of nature, 12. that all offers of pardon are to be understood in the full extent of the words, without any secret reserves or limitations; unless they are plainly expressed. An indemnity being offered by a prince to persuade his subjects to return to their obedience, in the fullest words possible, without any reserves made in it, it would be looked on as a very perfidious thing, if when the subjects come in upon it, trusting to it, they should be told that they were to be secured by it against capital punishments; but that, as to all inferior punishments, they were still at mercy. We do not dispute whether God, if he had thought fit so to do, might not have made this distinction; nor do we deny that the grace of the Gospel had been infinitely valuable, if it had offered us only the pardon of sin with relation to its eternal punishment, and had left the temporal punish Heb. viii. 8. ART. ment on us, to be expiated by ourselves. But then we say, this ought to have been expressed: the distinction. ought to have been made between temporal and eternal: and we ought not to have been drawn into a covenant with God, by words that do plainly import an entire pardon and oblivion, upon which there lay a limited sense, that was not to be told the world till it was once well engaged in the Christian religion. Upon these reasons it is that we conclude, that this doctrine not being contained in the Scriptures, is not only without any warrant in them, but that it is contrary to those full offers of mercy, peace, and oblivion, that are made in the Gospel; it is contrary to the truth and veracity, and to the justice and goodness of God, to affirm that there are reserves to be understood for punishments, when the offers and promises are made to us in such large and unlimited expressions. Thus we lay our foundation in this matter, which does very fully overthrow theirs. We do not deny but that God does in this world punish good men for those sins, which yet are forgiven them through Christ, according to Psalm xcix. those words in the Psalm, Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions: but this is a consideration quite of another nature. God, in the government of this world, thinks fit, by his Providence, sometimes to interpose in visible blessings, as well as judgments, to shew how he protects and favours the good, and punishes the bad; and that the bad actions of good men are odious to him, even though he has received their persons into his favour. He has also in the Gospel plainly excepted the government of this world, and the secret methods of his Providence, out of the mercy that he has promised, by the warnings that are given to all Christians to prepare for crosses and afflictions in this life. He has made faith and patience in adversities a main condition of this New Covenant; he has declared, that these are not the punishments of an angry God, but the chastisements of a kind and merciful Father, who designs by them both to shew to the world the impartiality of his justice in punishing some crying sins in a very signal manner, and to give good men deep impressions of their odiousness, to oblige them to a severer repentance for them, and to a greater watchfulness against them; as also to give the world such examples of resignation and patience under them, that they may edify others by that, as much as by their sins they may have offended them. So that, upon all these accounts, it seems abundantly clear, that no argument can be drawn from the temporal ART. punishments of good men for their sins in this world, to a XXII. reserve of others in another state. The one are clearly mentioned and reserved in the offers of mercy that are made in the Gospel, whereas the others are not. This being the most plausible thing that they say for this distinction of those twofold punishments, it is plain that there is no foundation for it. As for those words of Christ's, ye shall not come out till ye Matth. v. have paid the uttermost farthing; from which they would in- 26. fer, that there is a state in which, after we shall be cast into prison, we are paying off our debts; this, if an argument at all, will prove too much; that in hell the damned are clearing scores; and that they shall be delivered when all is paid off. For by prison there, that only can be meant, as appears by the whole contexture of the discourse, and by other parables of the like nature. It is a figure taken from a man imprisoned for a great debt; and the continuance of it, till the last farthing is paid, does imply their perpetual continuance in that state, since the debt is too great to be ever paid off. From a phrase in a parable, no consequence is to be drawn, beyond that which is the true scope of the parable, which in this particular is only intended by our Saviour, to shew the severe punishment of those who hate implacably, which is a sin that does certainly deserve Hell, and not Purgatory. Our Saviour's words concerning the sin against the Holy Ghost, that it is neither forgiven in this life, nor in that Matt. xii. which is to come; is also urged to prove, that some sins are 32. pardoned in the next life, which are not pardoned in this. But still this will seem a stronger argument against the eternity of Hell-torments, than for Purgatory; and will rather import, that the damned may at last be pardoned their sins, since these are the only persons whose sins are not pardoned in this world; for of those who are justified, it cannot be said, that their sins are not forgiven them, and such only go to Purgatory: therefore, either this is only a general way of speaking, to exclude all hopes of pardon, and to imply that God's judgments will pursue such blasphemers, both in this life, and in the next; or, if we will understand them more critically, by this life, or this age, and the next, according to a common opinion and phrase of the Jews, which is founded on the prophecies, are to be understood the dispensation of the Law, and the dispensation of the Messias; the age to come being a common phrase for the times of the Messias; according to XXII. Heb. ii. 5. ART, those words in the Epistle to the Hebrews, He hath not put in subjection to angels the world to come. By the Mosaical Law, sacrifices were only received, and by consequence pardon was offered for sins of a less heinous nature; but those that were more heinous were to be punished by death, or by cutting off without mercy; whereas a full promise of the pardon of all sins is offered in the Gospel: so that the meaning of these words of Christ's is, that such a blasphemy was a sin not only beyond the pardon offered in the Law of Moses, which was the age that then was; but that it was a sin beyond that pardon which was to be offered by the Messias in the age to come, that is, in the kingdom of heaven, that was then at hand. But these words can by no means be urged to prove this distinction of temporal and eternal Luke xxiv. punishment; therefore we must conclude, that since repentance and remission of sins are joined together in the first commission to preach the Gospel; and since life, peace, and salvation, are promised to such as believe, that all this is to be understood simply and plainly, without any other limitation or exception than that which is expressed, which is only of such chastisements as God thinks fit to exercise good men with in this life. 47. In the next place, we shall consider what reason we have to reject the doctrine of Purgatory; as we have already seen how weak the foundation is upon which it is built. The Scripture speaks to us of two states after this life, of happiness, and misery; and as it divides all mankind into good and bad, into those that do good and those that do evil into believers and unbelievers, righteous and sinners; so it proposes always the end of the one to be everlasting happiness, and the end of the other to be everlasting punishment, without the least hint of any middle state after death. So that it is very plain there is nothing said in Scripture of men too good to be damned, but not so good as to be immediately saved. Now, if there had been yet a great deal to be suffered after death, and that there were many very effectual ways to prevent and avoid, or at least to shorten those sufferings; and if the Apostles knew this, and yet said not a word of it, neither in their first sermons, nor in their Epistles; here was a great treachery in the discharge of their function, and that to the souls of men, not to warn them of their danger, nor to direct them to the proper methods of avoiding it; but on the contrary, to speak and write to them, just as we can suppose impostors would have done, to terrify those who would not receive their Gospel, with eternal XXII. damnation, but not to say a word to those who received ART. it, of their danger, in case they lived not up to that exactness that their religion required, and yet upon the main adhered to it, and followed it. This is a method that does not agree with common honesty, not to say inspiration. A fair way of proceeding, is to make men sensible of dangers of all sorts, and to shew them how to avoid them: the Apostles told their converts, that through Acts xiv. much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom of heaven; 22. they assured them, that their present sufferings were not 18. worthy to be compared to the glory that was to be revealed : 2 Cor. iv. and that those light afflictions, which are for a moment, 17. wrought for them a more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Here, if they knew any thing of Purgatory, a powerful consideration was passed over in silence, that by these afflictions they should be delivered from those tor ments. This argument goes further than mere silence; though that is very strong. The Scriptures speak always as if the one did immediately follow the other; and that the saints, or true Christians, pass from the miseries of this state, to the glories of the next. So does our Saviour re Rom. viii. 8. present the matter in the parable of Lazarus and the rich Glutton; whose souls were presently carried to their different abodes; the one to be comforted, as the other was tormented. He promised also to the repenting Thief, To- Luke xxiii. day thou shalt be with me in Paradise. St. Paul comforts 43. himself in the apprehension of his dissolution that was approaching, with the prospect of the crown of righteousness 2 Tim. iv. that should be given him after death; and so he states these Phil. i. 23. two as certain consequents one of another, to be dissolved 2 Cor. v. 6, and to be with Christ, to be absent from the body, and present 8. with the Lord: and he makes it appear that it was no peculiar privilege that he promised to himself, but that which all Christians had a right to expect; for he says in general, this we know, that if our earthly house of this taber- v. 1, 2. nacle be dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the patriarchs under the Old Dispensation are represented as looking for that city whose builder and Heb. xi. 10. founder is God: though in that state the manifestations of another life were more imperfect than in this; in which life and immortality are brought to light; they being veiled and darkened in that state. And finally, St. John heard a voice commanding him to write, Blessed are the dead who Rev. xiv. lie in the Lord (that is, being true Christians) from hence- 13. |