“Not handling the word of God deceitfully, but by the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”

—2 Cor. iv. 2.

The Scriptural doctrine of the Intermediate Life, as I have tried, so far, to set it forth, is a very different thing from what our Twenty-second Article calls “The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory.” The word “purgatory” simply means the sphere or life of cleansing. The Intermediate State, therefore, during which the soul is being purified and fitted for the vision of God in Heaven may be legitimately called “a purgatory.” But “The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory” means much more than this. It is a belief which, originating in what was true and Scriptural, gradually became so overlaid with subsequent additions, that the original truth was at length buried and lost sight of. What the Twenty-second Article condemns is not any and every conceivable doctrine concerning Purgatory, but the Romish doctrine only. And here it is well to note that all false beliefs which have had for any length of time a wide currency among men have been founded upon and have retained in them some element of truth. This it is which enabled them to survive: this and nothing else gives to error its vitality. These false beliefs are not mere error, but contain truth and error mixed together. The error perverts and makes void the truth; but without the truth the error could not live.

In the case of the doctrine of Purgatory, the true and Scriptural doctrine of the progressive purification of the soul in the Intermediate State is the element of truth on which has been based the Romish Doctrine of Purgatory. Wherein then lies the error of it?

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 what was called “a Common Mass.” The practice, therefore, of offering “private Masses” for souls in Purgatory, as it was very lucrative, so it became very prevalent. Thus spiritual things were used for the purpose of bringing large money gains to the Chantry Priests, and what should be, and we may surely affirm was meant to be, for the common benefit of all became the narrow privilege of the few. For rich men could provide Masses for their dead friends and for themselves after death, which it was quite out of the power of the poor to provide. [88]

4. But a word also must be said about “Indulgences.” An Indulgence was an abatement or remission granted by the Church’s authority of some part of the temporal penance imposed by that authority upon an evil doer. If the guilty person should show sincere proofs of penitence, or by liberal giving of alms made satisfactory recompense for wrongs done, his penance might be eased, or the term of his excommunication shortened, and his Church privileges partly or wholly restored. It may well be understood how all this might be very wisely and fitly done. The authority which inflicted the penance may rightly have been entrusted with the power also of mitigating or removing it. But gradually this remission of the temporal punishment for sins done in the past became applicable, not seldom, to future sin also: and it soon was no uncommon thing to grant Indulgences for 500, or 10,000, and even for 50,000 years. And, since these long periods of years would, of course, extend beyond any man’s term of life on earth, it was obvious that they were intended to secure the remission, not indeed of the guilt of the sin, but of the temporal punishment of sin during all these years in Purgatory. Thus it was supposed that the best possible provision was made whereby the duration of the long years of torments due for sin in Purgatory might be curtailed. But worse remained. The Papal Court needed treasure. And in an evil moment permission was given that these Indulgences might be sold for money. Thus grew up an unholy traffic, which, as we all know, first roused in Germany the storm of the Reformation. Subsequently, the Papal authorities so far yielded as to forbid all taking of money for these Indulgences. But the system itself had meantime taken deep root. It continued, and continues to this day. It was, however, at its worst when the Twenty-second Article was drawn up. Can we be surprised that it sternly condemned it? It is all a pitiful history. But it was necessary to refer to it in order both to show how the growth of the Romish Doctrine of Purgatory gradually gathered round it mischievous accretions, and also to prove how little the belief, that in the Intermediate State there is a progressive advance of the soul in holiness towards perfection, is like the Romish teaching and practice.

But it would be an act of disloyalty to the truth, and of cowardice into the bargain, if we should abandon or minimize a truth because it has been by some corrupted and perverted. Many a truth which has come down to us may have lost some of the fresh lustre of its early purity. But all the same, if it is the truth we cannot let it go. And that truth which tells us something of the land, now beyond our sight, to which our dear ones have already passed, which we shall each of us ourselves soon enter—the truth which God has made known to us in Holy Scripture about this land, we cannot afford to ignore and disregard. Nothing is easier than to discredit such a truth by raising the cry of Popery. It is one of the penalties which those have to pay who seek to disentangle the truth which He has in His Church revealed from the untruth which has wrapped it round.

But we must not shrink from this duty. In days when principles are questioned, and almost all truths disputed, we must, at all hazards, learn to keep our sight clear and our footing steady. For the Lord is our Light and our Salvation. Whom then shall we fear? The Lord is the strength of our life: of whom then shall we be afraid? [92]