Purgatory: Doctrinal, Historical, and Poetical

by Mrs. J. Sadlier

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He states, that he spent March 22, 1753, in prayers and tears in the morning; and in the evening prayed for the soul of his deceased wife, "conditionally, if it be lawful." The following is his customary prayer for his dead wife: "And, O Lord, so far as it may be lawful in me, I commend to Thy fatherly goodness the soul of my departed wife; beseeching Thee to grant her whatever is best in her present state, and finally to receive her into eternal happiness."—Boswell's "Life of Johnson," Pages 169, 188.

THE DOCTRINE OF PURGATORY.

BURNETT [1]

[Footnote 1: From his work, "The Path which Led a Protestant Lawyer to the Catholic Church," p. 637.]

The Council of Trent declared, as the faith of the Catholic Church, "that there is a Purgatory, and that the souls there detained are helped by the suffrages of the faithful, but principally by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar."

This is all that is required to be believed. As to the kind and measure of the purifying punishment, the Church defines nothing. This doctrine has been very much misrepresented, and has most generally been attacked by sarcasm and denunciation. But is this a satisfactory method to treat a grave matter of faith, coming down to us from the olden times? The doctrine of Purgatory is most intimately connected with the doctrine of sacramental absolution and satisfaction, and legitimately springs from it. That there is a distinction in the guilt of different sins, must be conceded. All our criminal laws, and those of all nations, are founded upon this idea. To say that the smallest transgression, the result of inadvertence, is equal in enormity to the greatest and most deliberate crime, is utterly opposed to the plain nature of all law, and to the word of God, which assures us that men shall be punished or rewarded according to their works (Rom. ii. 6), as not to require any refutation. Our Lord assures us that men must give an account in the day of judgment for every idle word they speak (Matt, xii. 36), and St. John tells us that nothing denied shall enter heaven (Rev. xxi. 27). Then St. John says there is a sin unto death, and there is a sin which is not unto death (I John, v. 16), and he also tells us that "all unrighteousness is sin; and there is a sin not unto death." So we are told by the same apostle, that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us (I John, i. 9). Now we must put all these texts together, and give them their full, harmonious, and consistent force. We must carry out the principles laid down to their fair and logical results. Suppose, then, a man speak an idle word, and die suddenly, before he has time to repent and confess his sin, will he be lost everlastingly? Must there not, in the very nature of Christ's system, be a middle state, wherein souls can be purged from their lesser sins?

MALLOCK ON PURGATORY. [1]

[Footnote 1: William Hurrell Mallock, the author of "Is Life Worth Living," from which this extract is given, and of several other recent works, was, at the time when the above was written, as he says himself in his dedication, "an outsider in philosophy, literature, and theology," and not, as might be supposed, a Catholic. It has been positively asserted, and as positively denied, that he has since entered the Church. But it is certain that he has not done so. Mallock is not a Catholic.—COMPILER'S NOTE.]

To those who believe in Purgatory, to pray for the dead is as natural and rational as to pray for the living. Next, as to this doctrine of Purgatory itself—which has so long been a stumbling-block to the whole Protestant world—time goes on, and the view men take of it is changing. It is becoming fast recognized on all sides that it is the only doctrine that can bring a belief in future rewards and punishments into anything like accordance with our notions of what is just or reasonable. So far from its being a superfluous superstition, it is seen to be just what is demanded at once by reason and morality, and a belief in it to be not an intellectual assent, but a partial harmonizing of the whole moral ideal.—W. H. Mattock, "Is Life Worth Living," Page 297.