ADVERTISEMENT.

THE reasons which have induced the publication of the present book can be given in a few words. Prayer for the departed, and a loving communion with the saints and angels, are portions of Catholic faith and practice which by a kind of Christian instinct are largely made use of by pious persons in the English Church; but the want of books of devotion in which they are systematically treated has led to the use of Roman Catholic manuals, which the reader has either to "adapt " for himself, or to use with the serious drawbacks of continual references to the material fires of purgatory in connection with the former, and of language as to the latter which goes far beyond the simple ora pro nobis of Christian antiquity. To "adapt' a book of devotions while in the act of using it, is an inconvenient process: to get rid of its necessity by using phrases which the heart does not fully

B

accept, a most mischievous one. Indeed not a few of the least satisfactory "conversions" to Rome might probably be traced to the blunting of the theological, if not of the moral, sense, consequent on using forms of devotion foreign to the instincts of those who employ them.

When the Editor first conceived the idea of supplying this want by the publication of a manual which should treat more systematically than as yet of prayers for the departed, and of brotherly converse with the saints and angels, he intended merely to adapt the second and a portion of the seventh parts of "The Paradise for the Christian Soul," on the same principle as the rest of that very beautiful manual had been adapted. The compiler is aware that it may be urged that the Editor of the "Paradise "-one infinitely more able to judge of the needs of English Churchmen than himself-saw fit to leave these very parts unsupplied, and has justified his course in the preface to his translation of the book. This consideration would have prevented the issue of the present volume were it not for two facts; one, the different circumstances of 1868 and 1846; the other, the fact that these altered circumstances have been so fully recognised and accepted by the venerable Editor of the "Paradise," who, hesitating in 1846 to "venture even upon the outskirts of so vast a system " as the

Invocation of Saints in continental theology, in 1865 is enabled to accept and suggest to others the Tridentine decrees, on this as on other matters, as a basis of re-union between the separated Churches. Without wishing to question-as indeed he is not in a position to do-the wisdom of the course adopted by him when supplying devotional food to English Churchmen in 1846, the present writer is happy to be able to record his entire acceptance both of the general principle of the "Eirenicon" and of its arguments in detail, whether as endorsing the moderate and carefully worded decrees of the Council of Trent, or as protesting against the rash and extravagant language in which devotional writers in the Latin communion have clothed for popular use the old Catholic dogma of the Communion of, and intercourse with, the saints.

The present book, which it will be seen so far differs from the original plan as to be based upon, instead of consisting wholly of, the portions of the "Paradise" alluded to above, is not a controversial but a devotional manual. If to any into whose hands it may fall, its prayers and exercises may seem strange and startling, the Editor would rather counsel him to pass them by, than try to "convert" him to them by controversial arguments. Nevertheless, a few words may be useful on the two doctrines here deal!

with, Prayer for the Departed, and the Invocation of Saints.

As the decrees of the Council of Trent have been spoken of as expressing the ancient doctrine of Christendom on these points, as distinct from practical extravagances, it may be as well to take them for the basis of our remarks. On the subject of Prayer for the Departed, the decrees, as summed up in the so-called Creed of Pius IV., ran as follows:

"I constantly hold that there is a 'purgatorium,' and that the souls detained there are helped by the suffrages of the faithful."

On that of the Invocation of Saints:

66

Likewise, that the saints reigning together with Christ are to be honoured and invocated with Christ, and that they offer prayers to God for us."

The word "purgatorium" is advisedly retained in its original language because its English equivalent "purgatory" has acquired a new and misleading meaning. Purgatory in English has come to mean a place of temporary torment, a hell in all but the loss of hope and in duration; whereas "purgatorium" is of necessity only a place of purgation, a quarantine, in which persons or things are put for the purpose of being cleansed by any available process. A washingtub is a purgatorium in which linen is purged

from dirt by the process of washing; a penitentiary is a purgatorium in which the process of purgation is wholly mental or disciplinary; a school, a purgatorium wherein the mind is purged from ignorance by the process of learning. The article then merely affirms that there is a middle state of purgation, in which, as in a quarantine, souls that depart hence in an imperfect degree of charity are detained, and that to this quarantine the Communion of Saints reaches, so that those detained there by their imperfections are helped by the suffrages of the faithful.

The idea of "fire," of " 'suffering," of "tears,' "torments," "agony "-inseparable from the notion of hell, the place not of discipline but of punishment is by no means bound up in that of a middle state of progression, which is all that "purgatorium" really involves, as Roman Catholic writers have admitted; as for instance, the author of the "Poor Man's Catechism," who asking "What do you mean by Purgatory?" replies, "A middle state of departed souls, who being not entirely purified from their sins here by penance and good works, are there purified by means appointed by God, but unknown to us." (Ed. Dolman, 1843, p. 238).

In the prayers here given all allusion to a purgatorial fire, to torments and pain, is omitted, as contrary alike to the teaching of our own and