S. 7.
A third there is which I did never positively maintaine or practise,
but have often wished it had been consonant to truth, and not
offensive to my religion, and that is, the prayer for the dead, &c.
Our church with her characteristic Christian prudence does not enjoin prayer for the dead, but neither does she prohibit it. In its own nature it belongs to a private aspiration; and being conditional, like all religious acts not expressed in Scripture, and therefore not combinable with a perfect faith, it is something between prayer and wish,—an act of natural piety sublimed by Christian hope, that shares in the light, and meets the diverging rays, of faith, though it be not contained in the focus.