"in the division of a line at last we must come unto that which is not sensible, considering that a sensible body cannot be divided infinitely. And so it would follow that after many suffrages the pain remaining should not be sensible, and consequently should be no pain at all."
Neither is to be forgotten, that the invention of All-Souls' Day, (of which you may read, if you please, Polydore Virgil, in his sixth book of the Inventors of Things, and the ninth chapter,) that solemn day, I say, wherein our Romanists most devoutly perform all their superstitious observances for the dead, was occasioned at the first by the apprehension of this same erroneous conceit, that the souls of the damned might not only be eased, but fully also delivered by the alms and prayers of the living. The whole narration of the business is thus laid down by Sigebertus Gemblacensis in his Chronicle at the year of our Lord 998.
"This time," saith he, "a certain religious man returning from Jerusalem, being entertained for awhile in Sicily by the courtesy of a certain anchoret, learned from him among other matters, that there were places near unto them that used to cast up burning flames, which by the inhabitants were called the Pots of Vulcan, wherein the souls of the reprobates, according to the quality of their deserts, did suffer divers punishments, the devils being there deputed for the execution thereof; whose voices, angers, and terrors, and sometimes howlings also, he said he often heard, as, lamenting that the souls of the damned were taken out of their hands by the alms and prayers of the faithful, and more at this time by the prayers of the Monks of Cluny, who prayed without ceasing for the rest of those that were deceased. The Abbot Odilo having understood this by him, appointed throughout all the monasteries under his subjection, that as upon the first day of November the solemnity of all the saints is observed, so upon the day following the memorial of all that rested in Christ should be celebrated. Which rite passing into many other churches, made the memory of the faithful deceased to be solemnized."
For the elect, this form of prayer was wont to be used in the Romish Church:
"O God, unto whom alone is known the number of the elect that are to be placed in the supernal bliss, grant, we beseech thee, that the book of blessed predestination may retain the names of all those whom we have undertaken to recommend in our prayer; or of all the faithful that are written therein."
And to pray, that the names of all those that are written in the book of God's election should still be retained therein, may be somewhat tolerable; considering as the divines of that side have informed
