fication; and that, at some time between the present time and the Judgment, or at the Judgment. And accordingly, without perhaps having any definite or consistent meaning in what they said, or being able to say whether they spoke literally or figuratively, and with an indefinite reference to this life, as well as to the Intermediate State, they sometimes named fire as the instrument of recovering those who had sinned after their baptism. That this is the origin of the notion of a Purgatorial fire, I gather from these circumstances: first, that they do frequently insist on the texts in question; next, that they do not agree in the particular sense they put upon them. That they quote them shows thatthey rest upon them; that they vary in explaining them; that they had no Catholic sense to guide them. Nothing can be clearer, if these facts be so, than that the doctrine of the Purgatorial fire in all its senses, as far as it was more than a surmise, and was rested on argument, was the result of private judgment exerted, in defect of tradition, upon the text of Scripture.

"As the doctrine, thus suggested by certain striking texts, grew in popularity and definiteness, and verged towards its present Roman form, it seemed a key to many others. Great portions of the books of Psalms, Job, and the Lamentations, which express the feelings of religious men under suffering, would powerfully recommend it by the forcible and most affecting and awful meaning which they received from it. When this was once suggested, all other meanings would seem tame and inadequate.

"To these may be added various passages from the Prophets, as that in the beginning of the third chapter of Malachi, which speaks of fire as the instrument of judgment and purification, when Christ comes to visit His Church.

"Moreover, there were other texts of obscure and

indeterminate bearing, which seemed on this hypothesis to receive a profitable meaning; such as our Lord's words in the Sermon on the Mount, Verily,

I

say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing;' and St. John's expression in the Apocalypse, that 'no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book.'

"Further, the very circumstance that no second instrument of a plenary and entire cleansing from sin was given after Baptism, such as Baptism, led Christians to expect that that unknown means, when accorded, would be of a more painful nature than that which they had received so freely and instantaneously in infancy; and confirmed, not only the text already cited, He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire,' but also St. Paul's announcement of the 'judgment and fiery indignation' which await those who sin after having been once 'enlightened,' and by Christ's warning to the impotent man to sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto him.

Lastly, the universal and apparently Apostolical custom of praying for the dead in Christ, called for some explanation, the reason for it not having come down to posterity with it. Various reasons may be supposed quite clear of this distressing doctrine; but it supplied an adequate and a most constraining motive for its observance, to those who were not content to practise it in ignorance."

The doctrine of post-baptismal sin, especially when realized in the doctrine of Purgatory, leads the recipient to fresh developments beyond itself. Its effect is to convert a Scripture statement, which might seem only of temporary application, into a universal and perpetual truth. When St. Paul and St. Barnabas would "confirm the souls of the disciples," they taught them "that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." It is 'Proph. Office, pp. 213-220.

obvious what very practical results would follow on such an announcement, in the instance of those who simply accepted the Apostolic decision; and in like manner a conviction that sin must have its punishment, here or hereafter, and that we all must suffer, how overpowering will be its effect, what a new light does it cast on the history of the soul, what a change does it make in our judgment of the external world, what a reversal of our natural wishes and aims for the future! Is a doctrine conceivable which would so elevate the mind above this present state, and teach it so successfully to dare difficult things, and to be reckless of danger and pain? Infidels, nay writers of our own, have enlarged upon the influence which will attend upon it; and though they express it in the terms of their own philosophy, we may make much of their testimony. "The Ascetics," says Gibbon, "who obeyed and abused the rigid precepts of the gospel, were inspired by the savage enthusiasm which represents man as a criminal and God as a tyrant. They seriously renounced the business and the pleasures of the age, abjured the use of wine, of flesh, and of marriage, chastised their body, mortified their affections, and embraced a life of misery as the price of eternal happiness. In the reign of Constantine, the Ascetics fled from a profane and degenerate world to perpetual solitude or religious society. The monks might contend with Stoics in the contempt of fortune, of pain, and of death; the Pythagorean silence and submission were revived in their servile discipline; and they disdained, as firmly as the Cynics themselves, all the forms and decencies of civil society." What is this but to say, that he who believes that suffer he must, and that delayed punishment may be the greater, will be above the world, will admire nothing, fear nothing, desire nothing? He has within his breast a source of greatness, self-denial, heroism. This is the secret spring of 'Hist. ch. 37. init.

strenuous efforts and persevering toil, of the sacrifice of fortune, friends, ease, reputation, happiness. There is, it is true, a higher class of motives which will be felt by the Saint; who will do from love what all Christians, who act acceptably, do from faith. And, moreover, the ordinary measures of charity which Christians possess, suffice for securing such respectable attention to religious duties as the routine necessities of the Church require. But if we would raise an army of devoted men to resist the world, to oppose sin and error, to relieve misery, or to propagate the truth, we must be provided with motives which keenly affect the many. Christian love is too rare a gift, philanthropy is too weak a material, for the occasion. Nor is an influence to be found to suit our purpose, besides this solemn conviction, which arises out of the very rudiments of Christian theology, and is taught by its most primitive masters, this sense of the awfulness of post-baptismal sin. It is in vain to look out for missionaries for China or Africa, or evangelists for our great towns, or Christian attendants on the sick, or

teachers of the ignorant, on such a scale of numbers hat about

as the need requires, without the doctrine of Purgatory. For thus the sins of youth are turned to account by the profitable penance of manhood; and terrors, which the philosopher scorns in the individual, become the benefactors and earn the gratitude of nations.

3. But there is one form of Penance which has been more prevalent and uniform than any other, out of which the forms just noticed have grown, or on which they have been engrafted, the Monastic Rule. In the first ages, the doctrine of the punishments of sin, whether in this world or in the next, was little called for. The rigid discipline of the infant Church was the preventative of greater offences and its persecutions the penance of their com

I Corinthians

mission; but when the Canons were relaxed and confessorship ceased, then some substitute was needed, and such was Monachism, being at once a sort of continuation of primeval innocence, and a school of self-chastisement. And, as it is a great principle in economical and political science that everything should be turned to account, and there should be no waste, so, in the instance of Christianity, the penitential observances of individuals, which were necessarily on a large scale as its professors increased, took the form of works, whether for the defence of the Church, or the spiritual and temporal good of mankind. In no aspect of the Divine system do we see more striking developments than in the successive fortunes of Monachism.

Little did the youth Antony foresee, when he set off to fight the evil one in the wilderness, what a sublime and various history he was opening, a history which had its first developments even in his own lifetime. He was himself a hermit in the desert; but when others followed his example, he was obliged to give them guidance, and thus he found himself, by degrees, at the head of a large family of solitaries, five thousand of whom were scattered in the district of Nitria alone. He lived to see a second stage in the development; the huts in which they lived were brought together, sometimes round a church, and a sort of subordinate community, or college, formed among certain individuals of their number. St. Pachomius was the first who imposed a general rule of discipline upon the brethren, gave them a common dress, and set before them the objects to which the religious life was dedicated. Manual labour, study, devotion, bodily mortification, were now their peculiarities; and the institution, thus defined, spread and established through Eastern and Western Christendom.

The penitential character of Monachism is not