Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/138

50 And therefore St. Jerome doth conclude, that

Other doctors were of another judgment, that the dead received special profit by the prayers and oblations of the living, either for the remission of their sins or the easing of their punishment. But whether this were restrained to smaller offences only, or such as lived and died in great sins might be made partakers of the same benefit; and whether these men's torments might be lessened only thereby, or in tract of time quite extinguished, they did not agree upon. Stephanus Gobarus, whom before I alleged, made a collection of the different sentences of the Fathers, whereof some contained the received doctrine of the Church, others the unallowable opinions of certain of the ancient that varied therefrom. Of this latter kind he maketh this sentence to be one:

If that were the true sentence of the Church, that none of those who suffered punishment in the other world were ever freed from the same, then the applying of prayers to the helping of men's souls out of any such punishments must be referred to the erroneous apprehension of some particular men, and not to the general intention of the ancient Church; from which in this point, as in many others beside, the latter Church of Rome hath swerved and quite gone astray. The ancient writer of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, handling this matter of praying for the dead professedly, doth by way of objection move this doubt:

seeing by such prayers he can be brought to no other rest but that which is fitting for him, and answerable unto the life which be hath here led. If our Romish divinity had been then ac-