1. In the first place, whereas the Bible
teaches, as we have seen, that every soul at death enters the Intermediate State, the souls of the greatest saints as well as the souls of the greatest sinners, “the Romish Doctrine” teaches that the souls of very many never enter the Intermediate State at all. The souls of the holy patriarchs of old, of Christian martyrs, and of canonized Saints, it is held, pass straight to heaven. On the other hand, the souls of those who die in mortal sin, and of excommunicated persons are believed to go straight to hell. Thus practically the Intermediate State is cancelled for these two classes. There remains, therefore, only one class which is supposed to enter the Intermediate State, those namely, who have died in venial sin. And since it is part of the Romish doctrine to regard Paradise as the same thing as Heaven, and to hold that the souls which alone enter Purgatory, after suffering due torments, pass direct out of Purgatory into Paradise or Heaven, it follows that in the
Intermediate State are only those who are actually undergoing, for the time appointed, the pains of Purgatory. For all, therefore, eventually the Intermediate State is terminated at some time on this side of the Day of Judgment. Hence it came about that those who rejected the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory rejected along with it the doctrine of the Intermediate State, since, virtually, Purgatory and the Intermediate State had been regarded as practically one and the same thing, as indeed they were in duration conterminous. In rejecting the one therefore, men unhappily but almost naturally rejected the other also.
2. Further, the pains which are felt in the process of purification, as has been shown, spring from within the soul itself, and are not necessarily or for all inflicted as a torment or punishment from without. Rather they arise from the soul’s own action upon itself, from its own pangs of shame and self-abasement, all deepened
and made more poignant by the ever increasing sense of the love of Jesus Christ, then as never before apprehended, and by the holy vision of His perfections. Thereby, as they gaze on Him, they are changed by the influence of the sight of Him, into greater likeness to Him. On the other hand, contrast with these the nature of the pains which the Romish Doctrine assigns to the souls in Purgatory. They are held in all cases to be penal, that is to say, inflicted by God as punishment. The souls are said to suffer torments! [84] Moreover these torments, as is taught in Roman Catholic treatises on the subject, are caused by literal and material flames, by actual fires which would feed on and consume corporeal substances such as the human body. But what enters the Intermediate State is the soul only, not the body: and, in the nature of things, the sufferings of the incorporeal part of our being can only
be themselves incorporeal. The pains of the spirit can only be spiritual pains.
3. Again, the “Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory” is closely bound up with what are called in the Thirty-first Article “the Sacrifices of Masses,” and with the sale of “Pardons” or Indulgences, named in the Twenty-second Article. The character of the Romish doctrine, as of every other doctrine, must be tested by what has grown with its growth. It was held that by these “Sacrifices of Masses” and “Indulgences” souls, one by one, were released from Purgatorial fires sooner than, without their aid, they could be delivered, and thus were at once admitted to Paradise or Heaven.
What, however, does the Thirty-first Article precisely mean by “Sacrifices of Masses”? The expression is peculiar, and appears to have been designedly so shaped in order to be clearly distinguished from what is meant by the Sacrifice in the Mass, or Holy Communion. For that
the Holy Communion has been held and taught by our chief English Divines to be a Sacrifice cannot well be disputed. [86] But the term “Sacrifices of Masses” was intended to signify what were called, at the time when the Article was drawn up, “Private Masses,” which were offered chiefly for souls in Purgatory, and in return for money payment. The Article refers to modes of speaking prevalent on the lips of men at the time. It condemns that which was “commonly said.” And what was it that was “commonly said”? It was commonly said that, while Christ’s death on
the Cross was indeed a propitiation for original or birth sin, on the other hand for daily sins, committed after Baptism, another propitiatory sacrifice was needed, viz., the “Sacrifice of the Mass.” Thus the Sacrifice of the Mass, which is not the same thing as the Sacrifice in the Mass, was regarded as an addition to and distinct from the Sacrifice on the Cross, as indeed a repetition of it, having a propitiatory value of its own, which the Sacrifice on the Cross had not; just as though it were what Bishop Gardiner, in repudiating it, described as “a new Redemption.” [87] Hence it came about that the belief arose that Masses offered for specific purposes had more virtue for those purposes than