CHAPTER XXVIII.
Matter of Expiation — The Remains of Mortal Sin — Lord Stourton — Sins of Lust not fully Expiated upon Earth — Saint Lidwina.
We have said that the total amount of the debt of suffering for Purgatory comes from all the faults not atoned for upon earth, but especially from mortal sins remitted to their guilt. Now men who pass their whole lives in a habitual state of mortal sin, and who delay their conversion until death, supposing that God grants them that rare grace, will have to undergo the most frightful punishment. The example of Lord Stourton gives them good cause for reflection. Lord Stourton, an English nobleman, was at heart a Catholic, although, to retain his position at court, he regularly attended the Protestant service. He kept a Catholic priest concealed in his house, at the risk of great danger, promising himself to make good use of his ministry by being reconciled with God at the hour of his death. But he met with a sudden accident, and, as often happens in such cases, by a just decree of God, he had not the time to realise his desire of tardy conversion. Nevertheless Divine Mercy, taking into consideration what he had done for the persecuted Catholic Church in England, vouchsafed him the grace of perfect contrition, and consequently secured his salvation. But he had to pay dearly for his culpable negligence.
Years passed by. His widow married again and had children. It was one of her daughters, Lady Arundel, who relates this fact as an eye-witness: —
" One day my mother asked F. Cornelius, a Jesuit of much merit, and who, later, died a martyr,[1] to say Mass
- ↑ He was betrayed by a servant of the Arundel family, and was executed at Dorchester in 1594.
