The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

S50OF PURGATORY.mous offence against the laws of thiscountry, and that theLord Lieutenant said, it shall not be forgiven, neither inthis country nor in England ;would any one be so irrationalas to argue that the Lord Lieutenant meant to insinuatefrom this mode of expression that there was a middle placewhere the crime might be forgiven f* That our Lord meantsimply to indicate the unpardonable character of the sinagainst the Holy Ghost, and not to teach the doctrine ofpurgatory, is incontrovertible, from the parallel passage inLuke, where it is said, " Whosoever shall speak a wordagainst the Son of Man it shall be forgiven him ; but untohim that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost, it shall notbe forgiven.^f Other passages have been adduced, whichyield, if possible, a still more doubtful support to purgatory,and on which it were a waste of time here to dwell. Thepractice of thefathers, some of whom prayed for the dead,has been pled in argument, as if the unwarrantable customsof men lapsing into superstition could support a doctrinestill more gross and superstitious. And, still farther to fortifyan opinion which stands in need of all the aid it canobtain from every quarter, and finds all too little, the visionof Perpetua, a young lady of twenty-two, has been employedto silence those who refuse on this head to listen to thefathers.But if there be indeed a purgatory, and if the beliefof it be so indispensable, that all are damned who doubtit, as Papists teach, why was it not clearly revealed ? andwhy is the argument in its favour nought but a miserablepatch-work of perverted texts, visions of young ladies, andthe dotard practices of men whose Christianity had becomeemasculated by a nascent superstition? We can trace apurgatory nowhere but in the writings of the pagan philosophersand poets. The great father of poetry makes somenot very obscure allusions to such a place :Plato believedin a middle state : it formed one of the compartments of* Pamphlet by the Rev. L. J. Nolan, third ed. 1S33, p. 52.+ Luke, xii. 1.