I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me: Write; Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, THAT THEY MAY REST FROM THEIR LABOURS; and their works do follow them. [25]
If, as the Romish Clergy teach, even those, who die in the Lord, pass into Purgatory, where they suffer pains equal to those of Hell in intensity and inferior to them only in duration: certainly, such souls can with no truth be said henceforth to rest from their labours.
3. In reality, the very notion of a Purgatory stands irreconcileably opposed to the whole scheme and analogy of Scripture.
For the doctrine of a Purgatory holds out the speculation: that, By penal suffering, we both may be purified from our sins, and likewise may make personal meritorious satisfaction to God for them.
Whereas Scripture teaches us: that We are justified from our sins by the sole merits of the Son, and that We are sanctified from our pollutions by the exclusive ordinary operation of the Spirit.
On the present point, then, are we to believe the Bible, or the Council of Trent and the Latin Priesthood?
4. Finding it impossible to establish the existence of a Purgatory from the genuine written word of God, the Romish Clergy attempt to substantiate it from a text in the Apocrypha.
When Judas had made a gathering throughout the company to the sum of two thousand drachms of silver, he sent it to Jerusalem, to offer a sin-offering; doing therein well and honestly, in that he was mindful of the resurrection (for, if he had not hoped that they that were slain should have risen again, it had been superfluous and vain to pray for the dead), and also in that he perceived that there was great favour laid up for those that died godly. It was a holy and good thought. Whereupon, he made a reconciliation for the dead, that they might be delivered from sin. [26a]
Now this text, even if we could admit the canonical authority of a book which praises self-murder, and which apologises for its own defects, [26b] would stand the Latin Priesthood in small stead: for it never once mentions any Purgatory; and the persons, moreover, for whom Judas attempted to make reconciliation, were actually men who had died in the mortal sin of idolatry unrepented of, and consequently were men who (by the determination of the Council of Trent) had passed not into Purgatory but into Hell. [26c]
In truth, however, for the too evident purpose of serving a turn, the doctors of the Council of Trent, in defiance of the universal testimony of the early Church as expressed most distinctly by Melito and Cyril and Ruffinus and Jerome and Epiphanius and Athanasius, have foisted into the genuine canon of inspired Scripture, those mere unauthoritative human compositions, which are commonly styled apocryphal, and for the simple quoting of which about the close of the sixth century, Pope Gregory the great absolutely makes a regular formal apology. [26d]