greedily take hold thereof, and make it the main foundation upon which they laid the hay and stubble of their devised Purgatory.
A private exposition I call this; not only because it is not to be found in the writings of the former Fathers, but also because it suiteth not well with the general practice of the Church, which it intendeth to interpret. It may indeed fit in some sort that part of the Church service, wherein there was made a several commemoration, first of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, after one manner; and then of the other dead, after another; which together with the conceit, that
"an injury was offered to a martyr, by praying for him,"
was it that first occasioned St. Augustine to think of the former distinction. But in the
"supplications for the spirits of the dead, which the Church, under a general commemoration, was accustomed to make for all that were deceased in the Christian and Catholic communion,"
to imagine that one and the same act of praying should be a petition for some, and for others a thanksgiving only, is somewhat too harsh an interpretation: especially where we find it propounded by way of petition, and the intention thereof directly expressed, as in the Greek Liturgy attributed to St. James, the brother of our Lord:
"Be mindful, O Lord God, of the spirits and of all flesh, of such as we have remembered, and of such as we have not remembered, being of right belief, from Abel the just, until this present day. Do thou cause them to rest in the land of the living, in thy kingdom, in the delight of paradise, in the bosoms of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, our holy fathers; whence grief, and sorrow, and sighing, are fled; where the light of thy countenance doth visit them, and shine for ever."
And in the offices compiled by Alcuinus:
{{fine block|"O Lord, holy Father, Almighty and everlasting God, we humbly make request unto thee for the spirits of thy servants and handmaids, which from the beginning of this world thou hast called unto thee; that thou wouldest vouchsafe, O Lord, to give unto them a lightsome place, a place of refreshing and ease, and that they may pass by the gates of hell and the ways of darkness, and may abide in the mansions of the saints, and in the holy light which thou didst promise of old unto Abraham and his seed."
So the "commemoration of the faithful departed," retained as yet in the Roman missal, is begun with this orison:
"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let everlasting light shine unto them."
