PURGATORY

A place appointed for the satisfaction of temporal punishments, which, according to the Roman Catholic church, are distinguished from the eternal, of which the latter only are remitted to us by the death of Christ. There is none perhaps of the peculiar articles of the Romish faith in favour of which so little can be advanced from the language of scripture; and it may be safely averred that it was not from that source that the opinion ever gained po e ion of men's minds. It seems to be a natural but too strict an inference from the imperfectly disclosed economy of the divine judgments, which we find to admit of every degree of severity in this life, and are liable to conclude from analogy must be subject to some equivalent adjustment in the next. Accordingly, we discover some imperfect recognitions of the idea in individual writers several centuries before it can be proved that it formed aa established article of faith. August in is considered the earliest of these; and lie. speaks vaguely and inconsistently. It was first inculcated as a doctrine by Gregory the Great, who Bcems to have connected it with the then popular belief that the world was closely approaching to its' end. It was much discu ed between the Greeks and Latins at the council of Ferrara, UiJS. The present Roman Catholic belief is thus expre ed in the creed of Pope Pius IV.: — " Constanter tenropurgatoriume e, animascjucibi detent as suffragio fidcltum juvari," To which it may be 1000 PURSUIVANTS. added, that the sins punished in Purgatory are of two kinds,— mortal, repented of; and venial. This article of the creed is derived from the canon of the council of Trent on the subject, se . 25. The " Romish doctrine " of Purgatory is condemned by Art. 22. of our church. The reader will find the general argument for Purgatory well stated (among Protestants) by Hooker in his 3d Sermon: the latter part, in which he replied to it, is lost. It is also set forth with much learning and moderation in Tracts for the Times, No. 79. [s. 1013]