Edward Bouverie Pusey · 9 of 21

Main Body · Part 9

“Under these circumstances (as far as I can see), you must direct your mind, and strive, with all the effort you can by the help of God, together with the fathers of the Society of Jesus, that the Catholic faith should by the gift of God be more and more established in that sense in which it was excellently declared and established in the Council of Trent, and that it should take deeper root in men’s hearts, that, according to the Apostle, we may have ‘faith working by love’ to life eternal; but you must abstain, at least for the present, from forming new articles of faith, and so leave the question of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin in that state, in which the Catholic Church has hitherto kept it. There is still found in Europe a sufficient number of Catholics; but, alas! perhaps the greater part of them do not from the heart believe even the articles of faith necessary, necessitate medii, to salvation. What avails it to establish that the most Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without spot, when it is not believed that Jesus is the Son of God?”

vii. b. The same distinction between the popular system, and that which is laid

down as de fide, recurs as to the doctrine of Purgatory. The Council of Trent states a minimum as to the doctrine of the Western Church: “There is a Purgatory, and the souls detained there are helped by the prayers of the faithful and the acceptable sacrifice of the Altar.” It is stated, moreover, that the Roman Church does not require “any belief of the opinion that the souls there are punished by material fire.”

On the other hand, what the popular mind in England objects to, is clearly expressed by Hooker, whom our friend quoted. “The other punishment, which hath in it not only loss of joy, but also sense of grief, vexation, and woe, is that whereunto they gave the names of purgatory pains, in nothing different from those very infernal torments, which the souls of castaways, together with damned spirits, do endure, save only in this, that there is an appointed term to the one, to the other, none; but for the time they last they are equal.” Hooker must mean, as his context implies, that the physical sufferings are equal; for the sufferings, as a whole, could not but be different, according as there should be hope or knowledge, that those sufferings should, at some time, end in the beatific vision of God (for it was held by some, that some souls shall not be certain of their salvation until the Day of Judgment), or knowledge that the suffering is eternal.

On our side, to thoughtful minds, whom the grace of God has taught something of what sin is, and of the holiness and love of God and of Jesus, it is absolutely inconceivable that,—when the soul shall first behold Jesus, and, in His sight, with its powers quickened by Him, shall behold its past life as a whole; when, in His countenance, it shall behold all which it never before saw of His goodness, and, in contrast with this, all its own ingratitude, baseness, rebellion, negligence, discontent, murmurings, not to speak of deadly, forgiven sin,—it should not have intense pain, pain so intense, that one should think that, in this life, soul and body would be severed by its intensity. There seems also to be an instinctive feeling, that a-soul, which here has had no longings for God, even if the man himself should die in a state of grace, would not be at once, and might not for some long period be, admitted to the sight of God. It is a common saying, that a number of souls “seem to be fit neither for heaven nor hell,” and that purgatory seems to meet the case of this class of souls. This cannot mean, necessarily so. For this would be to limit the Omnipotence of God. The ordinary belief in England must be, that God, in one act at the particular judgment, at once frees the soul, which dies in His grace, from all sinfulness which clung to it while yet in the body, and fits it for its abode in Paradise. The Roman doctrine of purgatory presupposes, that exactly the same number of souls will be saved, viz. those, and those only who die in a state of grace, and that the capacity of loving God will receive no accession there. The time of gaining grace, in the belief of the Roman Church equally with our own, is over with this life, and

the place of the soul in bliss is then fixed for ever. Suffering and preparation for the sight of God, which, here, would have been the channel of large grace, would, there, be without any increase of grace. Yet many of us, for our misdeserts, may be unfit for the immediate presence of God; or, in the great words of S. Irenseus, “capere Deum,” “to contain God,” who yet, for the Merits of Jesus, may, we trust, in His mercy be saved. God can, “in a short time, fulfil a long time.” Publicans and harlots shall enter into the kingdom of God before the self-righteous. We know not what God may do, in one agony of loving penitence, for one who accepts His last grace in that almost sacrament of death. The question, however, is not about individuals. As a class, we could not affirm that those, who bring forth no worthy fruits of repentance, with whom, after a long period of deadly sin, repentance has been but a superficial work, may not, after death, be in a state of privation of the sight of God (the “pœna damni”), not being admitted at once to the sight of Him, Whom on earth they little cared to think of or speak to, and Whom they served with a cold and grudging service. And the absence of the sight of God, Whom the soul in grace knows to be its only Good, would, when the distractions of this world no longer dazzled it, be an intense suffering above all the sufferings of this life, while the knowledge that it was saved, and that it belonged to Jesus, and that it would, in all eternity, behold God and be the object of His infinite love, would be “joy and felicity” above all the spiritual joys in this life, even apart from all those consolations which God might bestow on the soul which He had made His own for ever.

The Greek Church, too, while it states that such souls as have departed with faith, but without having had time to “bring forth fruits worthy of repentance,” “may be aided towards the attainment of a blessed resurrection by prayers offered in their behalf,” still holds that “the souls of (all) the righteous are in light and rest, with a foretaste of eternal happiness.”

A modern approved German Catholic writer on Dogma excludes from Purgatory the idea of physical fire, or of any other than mental sufferings. “About any, or the, place of purifying, nothing has been decided as matter of doctrine. So neither as to the mode of purifying. About the last, the fathers have expressed themselves only problematically and hypothetically, and Doctors and believers have only assumed a fire as matter of opinion; in which mention ignorance only or malice (in order to make room for irony) can find occasion to think of our common fire. Purifying, as the sloughing-off of the imperfection ingrown as it were with the soul; the straining of the soul to become free from all earthliness on her; the longing for the vision of God, from which the unbefittingness, yet cleaving to her, still excludes her; her struggle towards the full death of the evil in her, and towards the full life of the good in her; this up-stirring of her

deepest and inmost self implies fire, fiery pain enough.”

Tetzel, on the contrary, preached, “Ye hear not your parents and other deceased crying, Have mercy, have mercy on me, &c., for the hand of God hath touched me. For we are in the severest pains and torment, from which ye could free us by a slight alms. And ye will not. Ye permit us to lie in the flames, deferring the glory promised to us.” And, “let them observe that, seeing that mortal sins in the whole period of life are almost infinite, they have to endure an infinite punishment in the burning pains of purgatory.” In England, when private masses were being discontinued, Sir Thomas More appealed in behalf of the souls in purgatory, speaking of “pains, which else [unless the masses should be purchased] will hold them here with us in fire and torments intolerable, only God knoweth how long.” He wrote of them as “never resting.”

The Catechism of the Council of Trent (which, I suppose, comes as near to a binding authority as any writing which has not absolute authority) supports the received practical teaching of a material fire—“There is a Purgatorial fire, in which the souls of the pious are tormented for a certain time, and expiated, in order that an entrance may be open to them into their eternal home, where nothing defiled can enter.” Besides this, the system as to the Blessed Virgin reappears here, rested upon I know not what, yet taught as absolutely certain, that Purgatory is especially her kingdom. Liguori mentions no writer, except S. P. Damien (A.D. 1057), earlier than the latter half of the fourteenth century, who speaks of the Blessed Virgin in relation to Purgatory. The opinion gained its chief impulse from two writers, who seem to have been the chief authors of the modern theories as to her authority, the two S. Bernardines. Yet recent devotional books speak with as much certainty of “S. Michael as Prince of Purgatory and our Lady’s regent,” “The moonlight of Mary’s throne lighting up their land of pain,” as if this had been revealed in God’s Word.

There is then here again, if the Church of Rome were so minded, scope for proposing to us a doctrine which our Church in no way intends to contradict, and which (strangely enough) commends itself even to minds the most alien from Catholic truth. There is no ground for thinking that, in rejecting the popular “Romish doctrine of purgatory,” the Church of England meant to reject all suffering after this life, since the Day of Judgment is, in Holy Scripture, so plainly spoken of as “a great and terrible day.” But Cardinal Wiseman, when consulted by one who related the fact to me, after taking a day to reflect, stated that the belief that there would be suffering in the Day of Judgment,

would satisfy the doctrine of Purgatory. The Greeks formally rejected the doctrine of material fire, and hold only that there is spiritual pain for some souls. The fact, that, after that rejection, the Roman Church did not, at the Council of Trent, introduce any mention of the fire of Purgatory, has been noticed as an acquiescence in its exclusion from matters of faith. Still it is as much the popular belief as if it had been so decreed; devotional writers keep up that belief as about a thing certainly true; and it might, like the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, be affirmed as a matter of faith at any future time.

Now too, in the face of those express words of God, “I exhort therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, Who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth,” it is taught, that it is more acceptable to God to pray for souls in Purgatory, than for the conversion of sinners, that they fall not into Hell; and to pray exclusively for them, as far as relates to prayers at a priest’s own disposal.

vii. c. “Pardons,” or “indulgences” are in principle, it is agreed, only “relaxations of Canonical Penance,” i. e., of a portion of that severity, which the Ancient Church thought good to impose on those who had greatly sinned; that “being punished in this world, their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord.” The Church, at times, shortened the period of public penance, restoring the offender sooner to Communion, in view of his penitence or the necessity of the case; as when the lapsed were restored under the prospect of renewed persecution, or to other penitents death seemed near, that they might be fortified by the Body and Blood of Christ: or the Canonical punishment was exchanged for some other, in consideration of infirmity either of body or will. This was done either by Synods or by the single Bishop, by virtue of our Lord’s words, “Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” And so (the sincerity of the penitent being presupposed) the Church hoped that her acts would be ratified by Him Who gave her this power. Writers cite, as instances, St. Paul’s forgiveness and restoration of the incestuous Corinthian at the prayers of the faithful, or that of the lapsed in S. Cyprian’s time, at the intercession of the Confessors, who were expecting martyrdom for the testimony of Jesus. The term “indulgence “occurs only in these passages of S. Cyprian, until the eleventh century. The thing continued, as being, in fact, inseparable from any system of canonical penance. The general rule of the Church had to be adapted to the case of individuals. Thus, the Council of Neo-Cæsarea, A.D. 314, enacted that the period of penitence for those who had fallen into the sin of polygamy,

should be abridged on account of “the faith and penitence of individuals.” Or when fervour and discipline were weakened, the Church permitted lighter penances, sooner than that the offender should refuse all acts of penitence, and so risk the loss of his soul. “Such,” Amort also agrees, “were the chief instances of Indulgences for the first thousand years after our Lord.” In the latter part of the thirteenth century “the Bishop could still give Indulgences in his own diocese as much as he willed, unless he were limited by the Pope. But the limitation, as seems to me (he adds), is reasonable, according to the excessive abuse of indulgences which now are given; whence it seems well that several Bishops together should not give (indulgences) beyond forty days.”

The “modern indulgences” (as Amort too and others call them) were of two sorts;

(1) a plenary forgiveness of all guilt as well as punishment, chiefly in connexion with Crusades. These being holy wars, death, incurred in them, was a sort of martyrdom, which was accounted to be “a baptism of blood,” and so to carry with it remission of sins. The abuse of these Indulgences, and the exceeding wickedness incident thereon, was probably one cause of the failure of the Crusades. The other sorts were founded upon precedents which were, unhappily, by mistake or fraud, attributed to earlier Bishops of Rome. Yet Amort says, that “until A.D. 1391 no plenary indulgence was granted to all the faithful, which should exempt them from all obligation of making fitting amends.”

The indulgences, in their modern form, were condemned at the time in terms much stronger than those used by the Church of England. Berthold, a fervent Franciscan preacher at the close of the thirteenth century, a man “of holy life and great learning, who, by word and example, converted countless sinners to the Lord, whose memory was blessed, and was still most fresh among men “half a century after his departure, said of the sellers of them, “They arose but of late. Whe n I was yet a little child, there was not one of them anywhere. They are called ‘Penny Preachers,’ and are among the favourite servants of the Devil. He goes forth among the simple people, preaches and calls out, so that all present weep. And he says he has power from the Pope to take away all thy sins for a halfpenny. And he lies, that men are for this free before God; and he crowns the devil daily with many thousand souls. Ye must give them nothing; then must they cease

from this cheating. While ye give to them, ye sell yourselves to eternal death. And they murder you, and turn you from the right repentance which God has hallowed, that ye should repent no longer.” And another celebrated, though peculiar, preacher of the 15th century says, “Theologians have made little or no mention of indulgences. But hypocrites only have preached them with infinite lies to deceive the people. Thou must go to the great indulgence, which is contrition. Do this, and I promise to thee what was promised to Magdalene. Go to the tears of the heart; shed them abundantly. God said not to her, that she should put five shillings in the chest, but He said to her, ‘Thy faith hath saved thee.’”

The difficulty as to indulgences, apart from the special abuses before the Reformation, relates to this: “In what way can they be thought, consistently with the previous acts of the Church, to avail for the departed?” It is now conceded, that “until the end of the fifteenth Century, there was scarcely any, or anyhow very rare use of indulgences for the departed.” Those who defend indulgences, see that the modern discipline of the Church cannot in any way be reconciled to the ancient, except on the supposition, that indulgences ava il only by way of prayer to God, which prayer God would hear, or not hear, according to His Infinite Wisdom, and His knowledge of the condition of souls.

Amort says, “there are four opinions, as to the value of indulgences to the departed.” The first, “rejected by almost all Theologians, that the Pope has jurisdiction in Purgatory.” This (most remark) is contrary to our Lord’s limitation, “Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth.” “The second, of some older writers, that they only avail in the way of deprecation, in that the Church undertakes to pray God for the soul of a certain departed. The gain then is, that the Pope specially prays God in the name of the whole Church, together with him who gains the indulgence. The third, and most common among Theologians, is that they avail by way of payment, in that the Church takes the satisfactory merits of Christ and the Saints, and pays them to God for the soul which is being purified, and that God is bound to release that soul.” The fourth, “that they avail by way of payment, but that God is not so bound.”

Amort’s own opinion is, that “the indulgence for the dead is a solemn deprecation, with a pleading before the Throne of the merits of Christ and of His saints, but that it does not involve the success of the deprecation.” Scavini adds to this, “Most think that indulgences benefit the departed more or less, according as they, in their lifetime, deserved by their own acts that the indulgences should be applied to them.”

Thus reduced, indulgences differ from other prayers for the departed, only in that

they are more solemn deprecations in the name of the whole Church. The Council of Trent, being about to disperse, did not explain what indulgences are, only affirming that they “ought to be retained in the Church.” It condemns those only “who assert that they are useless, or deny that the Church has any power to grant them.” There is then ample scope for explanation on this subject also; the more so, since the Council of Trent condemned that sale of them which had so large a share in bringing about the Reformation.

“In granting indulgences the Synod wishes moderation to be used according to the old and approved custom in the Church, lest ecclesiastical discipline should be enervated by excessive easiness.” If the Roman Church wishes to go back to the ancient custom, then the British, which expresses the same wish, is so far at one with her. It proceeded,—

“But abuses, which have crept in here, on occasion of which this eminent name ‘Indulgences’ is blasphemed by heretics, the Synod, wishing to see corrected, enacts generally by this present decree, that all perverse gains for obtaining the same, from which a very large occasion of abuses flowed among the Christian people, should be altogether abolished. But as to other abuses, which have arisen from superstition, ignorance, irreverence, or any other cause whatsoever, since, on account of the multiplicity of places and provinces where they are committed, they cannot be specially prohibited, the Synod commands all Bishops, each diligently to bring together such abuses in his own Church, and to relate them in a Provincial Synod, in order that, the judgment of other bishops too being ascertained, it may be forthwith brought before the Supreme Roman Pontiff, by whose authority and prudence that may be enacted which shall be expedient to the Universal Church, that so the gift of holy indulgences may be dispensed piously, holily, and uncorruptly to all the faithful.”

In regard to “indulgences” we are at one with the Greek Church, which never heard of them in the sense in which they, and very chiefly, caused the Reformation. I mean, the Greek Church abridged Canonical Penance in this life, according to the earnestness or necessities of penitence, but never thought of such abridgments or Indulgences to penitents, with reference to the intermediate state.

vii. d. The veneration of images and relics as condemned by our Article, need not detain us long. Our friend has illustrated, from the homilies, what was probably the meaning of the Article. The writers of that homily had had before their eyes what the writers of the Articles desired to reject. The Council of Trent, as he observed, condemned in part the self-same things,—

“All superstition also in invocation of saints, veneration of relics, and sacred use of images, be put away; all filthy lucre be cast out of doors; and all wantonness be avoided; so that images be not painted or adorned with an immodest beauty; or the celebration of saints and attendance on relics be abused to revelries and drunkennesses; as though festival-days were kept in honour of saints by luxury and lasciviousness.”

Dr. Milner also referred to their first Catechism for the instruction of children. “Qu. May we pray to relics or images? Ans. No, by no means; for they have no life or sense to hear or to help us;” and to the Anathema of Gother and Challoner, “Cursed is he that commits idolatry; that prays to images or relics, or worships them for God. Amen.” The Council of Trent requires only that “due honour and veneration should be paid them; not that we believe there is any divinity or power in them, for which we respect them, or that any thing is to be asked of them, or that trust is to be placed in them, as the heathen of old trusted in their idols.” On the other hand, we know that, in kissing the outside of the material Bible, we mean only to express reverence for the Word of God; in the traditional custom of bowing to the Altar (when the Holy Sacrament is not there), we mean only reverence to it, as having been “the Throne of God,” (as Peers bow before the Throne in respect for the absent Sovereign). So also, if any should kiss the feet of the Crucifix, it would be in reverence to the Crucified. Even Dr. Arnold “rather envied “the simple faith of a child who did so.

“In the crypt is a Calvary and figures as large as life, representing the burying of our Lord. The woman who showed in the crypt had her little girl with her, and she lifted up the child, about three years old, to kiss the feet of our Lord. Is this idolatry 1 Nay, verily, it may be so; but it need not be, and assuredly is in itself right and natural. I confess I rather envied the child.”

There is then nothing in this respect which might not easily be reconciled; the more, since Petavius says, “we must lay down in the first instance, that images are to be reckoned among the ‘adiaphora,’ which do not belong to the substance of religion, and which the Church may retain or take away, as she judges best.”

viii. The earlier explanations of the Articles I set down, in order to show that the Articles in no way contradict any Catholic truth, as was alleged by Dr. Manning. In these last I have had the further object of showing that the breach between us and Rome is not so wide as is commonly thought, or as, in the period of my youth, the Articles were unconsciously strained to make out. Plainly, on the surface, by the force of the terms, “the Romish doctrine,” as to these subjects, cannot include any doctrine upon them which is not “the Roman doctrine.” Without entering into any details, or any discussion of its claims, it cannot include any doctrine of “the Greek Church,” e. g. as to Purgatory, which is not Roman, nor any “opinions” floating in the Early Church. Else it would have run, “all believe in Purgatory,” &c. But while any opinion, held in the Ancient Undivided Church or by the Greek Church upon any of these subjects, cannot, on the ground of the language itself, be intended by the Article, which speaks of “the Romish doctrine;” neither is there any ground to assume that the Article was directed against the canons of the Council of Trent. For, on the one hand, upon some of the subjects there is very little

to be found in those canons; on the other hand, the entire practical system floating in the Roman communion was all around the writers of the Articles. They had themselves been familiar with it before the Council of Trent. Yet any one would, à priori, suppose that a protest published in the language of the people would relate to what was known and familiar, what was the subject of controversy, not to what was unknown and recondite, and would have to be put together out of a foreign document. Men protest against what they have before them, what presses upon them. The Twenty-second Article was not drawn up with reference to the Council of Trent, having been framed before it. The only change, after the Council of Trent, was the substitution of the terms “the Romish doctrine” for “the doctrine of the Schoolmen.” The body of the Article did not refer to formal decrees before; there is nothing to make it refer to formal decrees afterwards. It does not contain a single hint as to the special character of the doctrines which it rejects. It assumes that doctrine to be popularly known. English controversialists afterwards, as well as before, wrote about the popular doctrine. Indeed, so far from the doctrine of the Council of Trent being the subject of controversy, it has happened that Roman controversialists have pared down the popular statements of English writers, because they alleged what was beside or against Tridentine doctrine. I am not aware that Jewell, although he makes his statements against the authority of the Council of Trent, anywhere animadverts upon formal expositions of doctrine. He continued his charges, as before, against the popular system.

This system, going beyond the letter of the Council of Trent, remained as it did before. The Council of Trent gave an indirect sanction to it, in that, while a large portion of Europe was complaining of it, the Council removed certain practical abuses (such as the trade in Indulgences), but, else, left the whole practical doctrine unexplained and unlimited, while it lay down as de fide, certain statements which lay at the root of that practical system. On the other hand, it tacitly allowed that this system was not de fide, in that, after the objections had been raised against it, it did not erect any portion of it into Articles of Faith. In like way, it has been observed that the opinion as to a material fire of Purgatory was the more left an open question, in that, after the Greeks at the Council of Florence had denied it, the Latins did not define it. So long, however, as the Church of Rome places no restriction upon this practical system, she remains responsible for it. For it is taught by her priests, put forth as certain truth, and as her teaching, in books which have the sanction of her Bishops, and by writers who have been canonized. Yet Rome need not make such doctrines terms of communion, nor need she insist that the Church of England, if united with her, should receive them, but provision might be formally made on both sides that she need not.

This has been often said to individuals, although it seems to me to be a psychological impossibility for one who has already exchanged one system for another to make those distinctions. One who by his own act places himself under authority, cannot make conditions about his submission. But definite explanatio ns of our Articles have, before now, been at least tentatively offered to us, on the Roman and the Greek side, as

sufficient to restore communion; and the Roman explanations too were, in most cases, mere supplements to our Articles, on points upon which our Church had not spoken.

The proposal for union with the Gallican Church in Archbishop Wake’s time, came in the first instance from Du Pin and three other Doctors of the Sorbonne. “They wished for an union with the Church of England, as the most effectual means to unite all the Western Churches.”