is a transgression of the divine law, 1 John iii. 4. and contrary to the holiness of God, as it is either immediately in itself voluntary, or the effect of what was so.

66

When men have embraced or fabricated errors, on purpose to gratify their pride, or serve their own worldly interest, which is evidently the case of the Papists, they bring themselves under a kind of necessity of departing from the true sense of Scripture. We have clear and satisfactory evidence in the Holy Scriptures, that heaven alone is the only place of abode for the souls of the righteous after death, and that at death they immediately. enter into it. The souls of the faithful, under the Old Testament dispensation, at death, went direct to heaven. Our Saviour, before he suffered on the cross, said, Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." Thus we have an intimation, that the souls of those patriarchs were in heaven, at the time our Saviour spake these words. This passage is directly against the popish error of a Limbus Patrum. The translation of Enoch and Elijah into heaven, is another proof in point. Though their being taken to heaven in their entire nature, soul and body, was peculiar to themselves; yet the translation of their souls thither, was common to them with the rest of the faithful. This extraordinary dispensation seems designed to establish mankind in the faith of the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, a glorious reward to be enjoyed by the soul immediately after death, as well as by the body after the resurrection, and that heaven alone is the place where this reward is to be enjoyed.

Under the New Testament dispensation, this point is fully stated and settled. Our Saviour says most explicitly, that the soul of Lazarus went immediately to

L

"Abraham's bosom ;" and he said to the penitent thief on the cross, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;" by which phrase is meant the "third heaven,” or the "Paradise" into which St. Paul was "caught up," though the Romanists understand it of their Limbus Patrum; while at the same time they acknowledge Paradise to be the seat of the blessed. a Now if there was a purgation necessary for sinners, he that believed and repented not till the last moments of his life, might well be supposed to need it, and should have been sent rather to purgatory than Paradise. St. Paul asserts, "There is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." "Whom he justified, them he also glorified.” "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect ?” He also says, "We are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord :—we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." The apostles knew assuredly, that as soon as their souls were absent from their bodies, or separated from them by death, they should be present with the Lord, that is, that they should be in the very same place with him. And we are sure that he is in heaven. ascended up far above all inferior "heavens ;" where he will remain till he come from thence to judge the world.

He

"Whom the heaven must receive until the time of the restitution of all things." St. Paul expresses his lively gratitude for possessing a full preparation for heaven, "Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." If men, while in this world, must be made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light, we have

a Bellarm. de Sanct. Beat. 1. 1. c. 3. Testim. 4.

sufficient reason to explode the popish doctrine of purgatory. Since it is urged as a duty, in various parts of the Scripture, that men, in a diligent use of the means of grace, are to be made ready for heaven; and since an habitual readiness consists in the implantation of saving grace in the soul, and the actual meetness in the right exercise of that principle of divine life; it will follow, that there is no intermediate state, where we must stop by the way: no, when the soul leaves the body, it immediately returns to God who gave it, and if it be found, at the moment of its separation from the mortal body, meet for heaven, justified through faith in the blood of Christ, and sanctified by the Spirit of holiness, it will enter at once into the joy of its Lord; but if not, it will be doomed to hell, where it shall be in unquenchable fire, but never be purified.

The purgatory of the Church of Rome is a mere bugbear, the creation of the imagination, and is contrary not only to Scripture, but also to antiquity. Gregory Nazianzen-" After the night of this life there is no purgation; and it is better to be corrected and purged now, than to be sent to the torment there, where the time of punishing is, and not of purging." a St. Cyprian

-“ The end of this life being completed, we are divided into the habitations of everlasting either death or immortality St. Jerom-" While we are in this world, we may be able to help one another, either by our prayers, or by our counsels: but when we shall come before the judgment-seat of Christ, neither Job, nor Daniel, nor Noah, can intreat for any one, but every one must bear his own burden." c "What shall be to all in the day of

a Orat. 15 in plag.

b Ad Demetr. sec. 16.

Lib. 3. Com. in Galat. c. 6.

judgment, this is accomplished to every one at the day of death." a

Notwithstanding the absurdity of this article of faith, the priests still avail themselves of it, to serve certain purposes, imposing on the credulity of the people. The following circumstance, having recently happened in France, was stated by a minister worthy of the fullest confidence. A Roman Catholic lady, anxious to be happy after death, when dying, was visited by a priest ; after he had secured her property to himself and the church, as a remuneration, he promised her a place in the heavenly world; and to be explicit in such a momentous business, he told her, that, when she had entered through the gates of Paradise, her mansion was at number seven on the left hand! This transpiring, her surviving relatives, applying to the proper authorities, recovered the property, and the odious transaction, meeting with public censure, has been recorded, and can be appealed to.

The Roman Catholics offer worship to saints. In the early part of the third century, the respect paid to the memory of saints and martyrs was decent and pious; but, on the visible decay of vital godliness in the church, the institution of annual festivals to their honour, the praying at their sepulchres, the translation of their corpse into churches, led, in course of time, to the attributing of miracles to their dead bodies, bones, and other relics, and so contributed towards the support of this superstition. Pope Pius V. says, "I do believe, that the saints reigning together with Christ are to be worshipped and prayed to; and that they do offer prayers to God for us; and that their relics are to be had in veneration."

a In Joel. c. 2.

a

The Romanists pray to the saints as their intercessors, make confessions to them; offer incense, and make vows to them; venerate their images and relics: that by their help they may obtain benefits from God, who does confer many favours on mankind, by their merit, and grace, and intercession. They have those forms in their missals, breviaries, and common books of devotion, which are particularly and immediately applied to the saints for obtaining what they want. In a missal printed at Paris, An. 1520, fol. 51, there is this prayer to St. Agnes, "O Agnes, woman of the Lamb, do thou enlighten us within. Destroy the roots of sin, O excellent lady; after the grievances of this world, do thou translate us to the company of the blessed."

b

d

The Church of Rome teaches, that angels are to be worshipped, invoked, and prayed to. And they have litanies and prayers composed for this purpose. Apprehending the Virgin Mary to be in glory superior to all created beings, they offer a service to her, beyond what they give either to angels or saints. According to some missals, they ask her to command her Son, by the right and authority of a mother; or, as it is in the breviaries used at this day, "Show thyself a mother." They pray to her, that she would loose the bands of the guilty, bring light to the blind, would make them mild

e

f

a Concil. Trid. Sess. 25. de invocat. Catech. Rom. par. 3. c. 2. Sec.

12. Missal. Rom. proprium Missarum de sanctis.

b Catech. Rom. par. 3. c. 2. n. 8, 9, venerari, adorare, colere.

c Ibid. n. 10.

Litanæ Angolorum, vid. Horologium Tutelaris Angeli a Drexelio, p. 84. Cuac 1623.

• Missal. Paris Anno 1520. Folio 65.

Brev. Rom. Test. Assum.