Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/147

Rh or shortly after, it appears to have been customary in all parts of the Church. The first person who objected to such prayers was Aerius, who lived in the fourth century, but his arguments were answered by various writers, and did not produce any effect in altering the immemorial practice of praying for those that rest. Accordingly, from that time all the Liturgies in the world contained such prayers. These facts being certain, it becomes a matter of some interest and importance to ascertain the reasons which justified the omission of these Prayers in the Liturgy of the English Church for the first time in the reign of King Edward VI. Some persons will perhaps say that this sort of prayer is unscriptural; that it infers either the Romish doctrine of Purgatory, or something else which is contrary to the revealed will of God, or the nature of things. But when we reflect that the great divines of the English Church have not taken this ground, and that the Church of England herself has never formally condemned Prayers for the Dead, but only omitted them in her Liturgy, we may perhaps think that there are some other reasons to justify that omission.

"The true justification of the Church of England is to be found in her zeal for the purity of the Christian faith, and for the welfare of all her members. It is too well known that the erroneous doctrine of Purgatory had crept into the Western Church, and was held by many of the clergy and people. Prayers for the departed were represented as an absolute proof that the Church had always held the doctrine of Purgatory. The deceitfulness of this argument can only be estimated by the fact, that many persons at this day, who deny the doctrine of Purgatory, assert positively that the custom of praying for the departed infers a belief in Purgatory. If persons of education are deceived by this argument, which has been a hundred times refuted, how is it possible that the uneducated classes could ever have got rid of the persuasion that their Church held the doctrine of Purgatory, if prayers for the departed had been continued in the Liturgy? Would not this custom, in fact, have rooted the error of Purgatory in their minds? If then the Church of England omitted public Prayer for the departed Saints, it was