Popery condemned by scripture and the fathers - End Time Deception

SCRIPTURE AND THE FATHERS. 309
simple in that community, which styles itself
*^ the pillar and ground of the truth.'* Leaving
the R., then, to contrast them with his boasts of
the purity of the Romish Church, I will proceed
to show him, that the Popish doctrine of
purgatory is
without foundation either in revelation
or the Fathers.
Were this article of the Romish creed trtfe, it
must be allowed to be of considerable importance
in religion. We might therefore expect to find
it mentioned in that system of principles which
are laid down in scripture, for directing the faith
and practice of the Church.
show, why heaven is
incite men«to duty,
Can the R., then,,
so often exhibited there to
and hell to deter them from
vice ; without the most distant hint of a period
and place of reformation beyond the precincts
of the grave Indeed, the scriptures oppose
very plainly the doctrine of purgatory. They
represent death to the Christian as followed by
a cessation from all suifering, and an entrance
into eternal happiness ; " Blessed are the dead
" who die in the Lord from henceforth : yea,
*'
saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their
*'
labours * ;" and the apostle Paul assures us,
that the Christian who is absent from the body
is present with the Lord \,
The doctrine of purgatory originates in the
unscriptural notion, that some sins, though they
N 5
ought
* Rev. xlv. 13.
f
2 Cor. v. 8.