Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/96

8 Bathildis, Queen of France, and p. 25, concerning the departure of Godfrey, Earl of Cappenberg, who is said there to have appeared unto a certain abbess, called Gerbergis, and to have acquainted her,

And the monk, that writ the legend, addeth, that she presently, thereupon

Which, how fabulous soever it may be for the matter of the vision, yet doth it strongly prove, that within these five-hundred years, (for no longer since is it that this is accounted to have been done,) the use of offering for the souls of those that were believed to be in heaven, was still retained in the Church. The letters of Charles the Great, unto Offa, King of Mercia, are yet extant; wherein he wisheth, that "intercession" should be made "for the soul of" Pope Adrian, then lately deceased:

Where the two ends of this kind of intercession are to be observed; the one, to show their love to their friend; the other, to get profit to themselves thereby, rather than to the party deceased.

Lastly, Pope Innocent the Third, or the Second rather, being inquired of by the Bishop of Cremona, concerning the state of a certain priest, that died without baptism, resolveth him out of St. Augustine, and St. Ambrose, that

Upon which ground, at last, he maketh this conclusion;