As an example of the ordinary teaching we may quote the words of Mgr. de Segur: "Purgatory is that formidable future in which we are destined to pay all that we owe to Divine justice. Purgatory presents the darkness and the desolation, the grief and the remorse of Hell. There is the same terrible fire, there are the same torments; everything is the same save despair and eternity. The same fire torments the lost souls in Hell and the penitent souls in Purgatory ... These souls are in outer darkness, like the souls of the lost. They know not the time when their expiation will be ended. ... Perhaps not for twenty years a hundred years! perhaps not until the end of the world! ... Terrible perhaps !"1

II. As to material fire.—St. Thomas Aquinas and almost all theologians teach that there is a corporeal, material fire, the same as that of Hell, in which the souls in Purgatory are tortured. Bellarmine says: "It is the general judgment of theologians that the fire [of Purgatory] is truly and properly such, and of the same species, with our elementary fire (verum et proprium esse ignem, et ejusdem speciei cum nostro elementari).” Schouppe, a modern Jesuit theologian whose Elements of Dogmatic Theology is much used in seminaries, writes: "As regards the pain of sense the constant opinion of the Latins is to be retained, that the fire in Purgatory is material fire (ignem materialem) like that in Hell." Another Jesuit writer of the present day

1 Familiar Instructions, vol. i. p. 98.

expatiates with great minuteness upon the tortures of Purgatory, and condemns those who dislike pictures of the souls "to be found abroad, representing the souls in Purgatory in burning flames, under excruciating torments, which are sometimes administered by demons as the executioners of the justice of God. Such pictures," he says, " are frequently used in missions to the people, or are to be found in popular books of devotion about Purgatory." Of the greatness of the pain of sense in Purgatory this writer says: "We need only say that it is clear from the language of Scripture, from reason, and from the sense of the Church, which is in full harmony with the general tone of the revelations contained in the lives of the Saints, that the pain of sense in Purgatory is something so severe and intense that we can form of it no adequate conception in this life." He goes on to say that the opinion that the fire in Purgatory is metaphorical "can hardly approve itself to a Catholic mind," and tells the story of the vision of St. Christina, "who was called back to this world after having seen the sufferings of the next, and who spent the rest of her life in the most severe penances for the relief of the holy souls. She stated that immediately on her soul leaving her body she was taken by the angels to a dark and horrible place, full of the souls of men; the torments that she

1 This sort of thing was condemned by the Council of Trent, which forbade things "uncertain to be taught in "popular discourses before the uneducated multitude" who form the bulk of those who attend "Missions,"

there witnessed were so terrible that no tongue could express them; she saw there the souls of many she had known in this life, and was moved to intense compassion for them. She asked what the place was, thinking it must be Hell, but she was told that it was Purgatory, and that the souls whose sufferings moved her compassion so much had been sinners who had repented of their sins, but not done sufficient penance for them." Father Coleridge adds: "But, in truth, there is but one tone about all these revelations: they uniformly represent the torments of Purgatory as severe in the utmost degree.” 1 We have only to remember that according to Roman theology the souls in Purgatory are all "Holy Souls," are at the worst only detained there for the guilt of venial sins 2— that is, for sins so slight that they do not even need to be confessed; we have only to remember that it is these righteous souls who are tormented in this awful manner, to see how the Romish teaching contradicts the plain statements of the Bible. There we are distinctly told, in the Wisdom of Solomon-a book that the Roman Church holds to be canonicalthat instead of being in "a dark and horrible place," and in "torments so terrible that no tongue can express them"-" the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them." It may be

1 The Prisoners of the King, p. 199.

2 There is also the supposed "temporal punishment" due to all sin to be paid in Purgatory.

safely said that the belief in the merely penal torments of the souls of the righteous in Purgatory is not only "repugnant to the Word of God," but to the whole witness of the primitive Church, and to every instinct of justice and mercy. It is not to be wondered at that this Romish doctrine has driven men to the opposite extreme, and hindered them from realising that there is any growth in holiness possible hereafter. If the Protestant bodies have lost sight of the value of prayer for the departed, the blame must be laid at the door of the Roman Church for everywhere encouraging the unscriptural doctrine of her theologians that souls, after the guilt of their sins has been taken away, have yet to "satisfy the justice of God" by enduring torments so great that no language can describe them.

III. Indulgences.-The Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory is closely associated with the granting of Indulgences. The theory of Indulgences in the Church of Rome is a corruption of the belief that the Church has a right to inflict penance upon her children, and power to remit this penance either wholly or in part. In our Commination Service we are told that " In the primitive Church there was a godly discipline that such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance, and punished in this world that their souls might be saved in the day. of the Lord; and that others, admonished by their example, might be the more afraid to offend." Some

times this penance lasted for many years, and occasionally it seemed good to the Church to abridge it, and admit the penitent to absolution. Such a remission of canonical penance was then considered to be an instance of the indulgence or tenderness of the Church towards one truly penitent, but still unabsolved and shut out from the Holy Communion. Occasionally her indulgence was shown at the petition of one who was about to undergo martyrdom, and desired, as a favour, that the Church would abridge the penance of some penitent. The Church found it difficult to refuse anything to her martyrs. The remission of penance, for whatever reason it was granted, had of course no reference to what was due to the justice of God: it was a remission of a punishment that the Church herself had inflicted. This is made clear in the writings of St. Cyprian, who is often quoted by the Romish theologians in support of their novel doctrine, whereas St. Cyprian's words tell in quite the opposite direction. The Church, he argues, may remit what she has inflicted, but, "Let no man deceive or beguile himself. The Lord only can have mercy. He alone can grant pardon for sins which against Himself have been committed, Who bare our sins, Who grieved for us, Whom God delivered for our offences. Man cannot be greater than God; it is not for the servant to yield his grace and indulgence, when the offence is mainly against the Lord; for then the lapsed will be committing a fresh crime by ignorance of that which