Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/139

Rh knowledged by the Church, there had been no place left to such questions and doubts as these. The matter might easily have been answered, that though a man did die in a state of grace, yet was he not presently to be admitted unto the place of rest, but must first be reckoned withal, both for the committal of those smaller faults unto which, through human frailty, he was daily subject, and for the not performance of full penance and satisfaction for the greater sins, into which in this life he had fallen; and Purgatory being the place wherein he must be cleansed from the one, and make up the just payment of the other, these prayers were directed unto God for the delivery of the poor soul, which was not now in case to help itself out of that place of torment.

But this author, taking upon him the person of St. Paul's scholar, and professing to deliver

saith no such thing, but giveth in this for his answer:

The Bishop at that time belike did not know so much as our popish Bishops do now, that God's servants must dearly smart in Purgatory for the sins wherewith they were overtaken through human infirmity; he believed that God of his merciful goodness would pass by those slips, and that such after-reckonings as these should give no stoppage to the present bestowing of those holy rewards upon the children of the promise.

He further also addeth, that