9
§ 2. Of the primary intention of Prayers for the Dead.
Now, having thus declared, unto what kind of persons the Commemorations ordained by the ancient Church did extend, the next thing that cometh to consideration is, what we are to conceive of the primary intention of those prayers, that were appointed to be made therein. And here we are to understand, that first, prayers of praise and thanksgiving were presented unto God, for the blessed estate that the party deceased was now entered upon: whereunto were afterwards added, prayers of deprecation and petition, that God would be pleased to forgive him his sins, to keep him from hell, and to place him in the kingdom of heaven. Which kind of intercessions, however at first they were well meant, as we shall hear, yet, in process of time, they proved an occasion of confirming men in divers errors; especially when they began once to be applied, not only to the good, but to evil livers also, unto whom, by the first institution, they never were intended.
The term of εὐχαριστήριος ὲυχὴ, a thanksgiving prayer, I borrow from the writer of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; who, in the description of the funeral observances, used of old in the Church, informeth us, first, that the friends of the dead
"accounted him to be, as he was, blessed, because that, according to his wish, he had obtained a victorious end," and thereupon, "sent forth hymns of thanksgiving to the Author of that victory; desiring withal that they, themselves, might come unto the like end."
And then that the Bishop likewise offered up a prayer of thanksgiving unto God, when the dead was afterward brought unto him, to receive, as it were, at his hands a sacred coronation. Thus at the funeral of Fabiola, the praising of God by singing of Psalms and resounding of Hallelujah, is specially mentioned by St. Jerome; and the general practice and intention of the Church therein is expressed and earnestly urged by St. Chrysostom in this manner:
