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
"that tradition which he had received from his divine Master,"
saith no such thing, but giveth in this for his answer:
"The divine Bishop, as the Scriptures witness, is the interpreter of the divine judgments; for he is the angel of the Lord God Almighty. He hath learned, therefore, out of the oracles delivered by God, that a most glorious and divine life is by his just judgment worthily awarded to them that have lived holily, his divine goodness and kindness passing over those blots which by human frailty he had contracted; for as much as no man, as the Scriptures speak, is free from pollution. The Bishop, therefore, knowing these things to be promised by the true oracles, prayeth that they may accordingly come to pass, and those sacred rewards may be bestowed upon them that have lived holily."
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.
"Therefore the divine Bishop," saith our author, "asketh those things which were promised by God, and are grateful to him, and without doubt will be granted; thereby as well manifesting his own good disposition unto God, who is a lover of the good, as declaring like an interpreter unto them that be present the gifts that shall befall to such as are holy."
He further also addeth, that
