Arminius

So that the annual revenues of the Roman curia might be the richer, the Pontiff put his Indulgences up for sale (which Bellarmine nevertheless denies, with what face I know not, against the most certain experience of some centuries past). The Pontifician doctors commonly define them thus: that they are judicial absolutions from the liability of temporal punishment owed to God after the guilt has been remitted, by the application of the satisfactions which are contained in the treasury of the Church. In this definition we note three things as foundations, on which that whole heap of Indulgences rests. The first is some Treasury of the Church. II. A need, in the Christian people, of the goods contained in that treasury. III. Some power lodged with the Church of dispensing that treasury and applying it to those who have need. When these foundations are removed, Indulgences will fall of their own accord; and this, God granting, we shall briefly do in this disputation.

The first foundation of the Pontifical Indulgences, then, is the Treasury of the Church, which they say consists partly of the infinite satisfactions of Christ and partly also of the satisfactions of the other Saints; a treasury which can never be exhausted, so that the Pontiff always has a store from which he can draw out Indulgences plenary, more plenary, most plenary. As far as the satisfactions of Christ are concerned: just as we readily grant that they are of infinite price, so we deny that they have been cast into the treasure-chest of the Roman Church to be applied to the faithful through Indulgences; since God has placed this treasury not in the Church but in Christ himself, its head. For it pleased God that in him should all fulness dwell; who is full of grace and truth; and of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.

With the satisfactions of the Saints the case is different. For I. we deny that they are to be found anywhere. The opinion of one's own satisfaction, by which a man may satisfy God, is an insult to the mediatorial office of Christ, for it brings in other Mediators between God and men than the man Jesus Christ. II. We deny that they can be applied to others. For the Saints receive, for their sufferings, a reward beyond the condign in the other life. Next, because every man shall receive his own, not another's, reward according to his own, not another's, labour; since God will render to every man according to his deeds, not according to the deeds of another applied to another through Indulgences. III. We deny that there is any need for the satisfactions of the Saints to be joined to the satisfactions of Christ, since these are infinite.

Nor do we delay over the quibble of the Pontificians, who say that the satisfactions of the Saints are joined to the satisfactions of Christ not as though these were insufficient, but because it is fitting that those sufferings should not be void before God. So, while they fear that the sufferings of the Saints may be void, they make the Cross of Christ void. But to free them from this fear, we deny that the sufferings of the Saints will be void unless, mixed with the satisfactions of Christ, they are applied to others through Indulgences; since the momentary lightness of their affliction worketh for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

The second foundation of the Pontifical Indulgences is the Need of that treasury in the faithful. There is none; since the faithful, by the very fact that they are joined fast to Christ by true faith and cleave to him as members to their head through the communication of his Spirit, are made partakers of all his goods by the benefit of that most close bond. But to secure this opinion against objections they have been forced to pull apart the remission of guilt and the remission of punishment. For they say that when the guilt is remitted the eternal punishment is indeed remitted, but the temporal punishment is retained, so that something may be left to the Righteousness of God in the punishing of which it may exercise itself, unless satisfaction is made by us to God for that punishment. This temporal punishment they hold to be twofold: one to be paid in this life, the other after this life. The former belongs to the whole compound; the latter to the soul separated from the body, suffering the punishments of Gehenna both of loss and of sense, with only their eternity taken away; and this they call the punishment of Purgatory. But this distinction alone is not enough to establish that opinion. Three things are incumbent on them to prove: 1. that temporal punishment remains to be paid after the guilt has been remitted; 2. that we can satisfy God for it by laborious works, whether voluntarily undertaken or imposed by another; 3. that we can be freed from that necessity of satisfaction through Indulgences. If only one of these is weakened, the structure of Indulgences totters.

Marg. gloss: "In which places, observe Bellarmine's contradiction."

On the First. Even though, after the guilt has been remitted, calamity is often sent by God upon the godly which would not have been sent had they been free of that guilt, they must nevertheless confess either that its penal character has been taken from it, if it has no relation to the guilt; or, if a penal character clings to it, that the guilt, in so far as it merits temporal punishment, has not been remitted.

On the second. We deny that we can make satisfaction to God for that punishment by any works, whether undertaken of our own accord or enjoined by a Priest. Not by works undertaken of our own accord: for works by which satisfaction is to be made to God require two conditions, 1. that they be our own, 2. that they be not owed. But Prayers, Alms and fasts (the three which they call satisfactory works) are neither our own nor unowed works. Not our own, for whatever good is in us is not from us but from God. Not unowed, for we are bound by express command to prayers, to alms, and to fasts. We do not deny, however, that by these works the wrath of God can sometimes be turned away; but then those works have the character not of a satisfaction but of a condition graciously required by God in the one against whom God had threatened his wrath, and without the performance of which he had not determined to have mercy, as is plain from the Example of the Ninevites. Not by works enjoined by a Priest: for either they are those very works of which the preceding thesis spoke, and by them we cannot make satisfaction; or they are other than those, such as pilgrimage, made with feet and head bare, to certain statues of the saints, tombs, churches, basilicas; creeping up the steps of a church on bared knees; walking upon peas; and other things of the same meal, which are so far from being satisfactory works that they are rather an abomination before God.

On the Third. Suppose that satisfaction can be made by us to God for temporal punishment by penal works: can we be freed from those works through Indulgences? That is, do Indulgences absolve us from the necessity of praying, giving alms and fasting? Not even the Pontificians themselves would say so. But perhaps they free us from the penal works enjoined by a Priest in the Sacrament of Penance, as Bellarmine contends. This, to be sure, is to bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne (δυσβάστακτα), and lay them on men's shoulders, which they not only will not themselves touch with so much as the tip of a finger, but from which, on the intervention of money, they afterwards free those same men. The Pharisees had not yet advanced so far in impiety.

Of the other temporal punishment, which is to be paid after this life, we shall treat a little later. Let us come now to the third foundation of Indulgences, which is the power of the Pontiff to apply the treasury of the Church to those who have need of it; this application of the treasury they also call a judicial absolution. But since whatever power the Pontiff arrogates to himself he claims was left to him by Peter, it follows that the Pontiff has no greater authority than Peter had. Now the whole power of Peter, which is called by the name of the keys, consists in the ministry of the word, by the preaching of which repentant sinners are absolved and unbelievers are bound. For nowhere do we read that Peter sold Pontifical Indulgences, or absolved anyone judicially from any guilt or punishment; but only that he ministerially announced the Indulgence of sins in the name of Christ, an example of which stands in Acts 13:38: Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. Nor was the power given to Peter of binding and loosing men from temporal punishments remaining after the remission of guilt, but from sins as to guilt and punishment, as is plain from the saying of Christ, Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, etc. The Pontiff, however, attributes to himself only the power of binding and loosing men from temporal punishments. Nor does the Pontiff on that account lower himself below Peter; for it is a greater thing to absolve judicially from punishments than ministerially from sins and punishments. And yet this too may deservedly be doubted: whether to absolve from all and each crimes, excesses, offences and sins, however grave and enormous (as the forms of the old pontifical diplomas have it), in the style of the Roman curia, means to absolve from temporal punishments alone. To us, at least, that does not seem likely.

ON PURGATORY.

The Pontificians lay down a threefold Purgatory. The first is the blood of Christ, which cleanseth us from all sin; by whose spirit also, as by a consuming fire, our vices are burned out within us. The Second is the afflictions of the godly which they suffer in this life, of which Jeremiah 3 says: Thou hast sent fire into our bones; and again, we went through fire and through water. Whence afflictions are also said to be a proving and trying by fire. The Third they define as some subterranean place in which, as in a prison, the souls are purged after this life which were not fully purged in this life; so that, being thus purged, they may be able to enter heaven, into which nothing defiled shall enter. We acknowledge the first and the second; but the third we deny outright, moved by these reasons.

1. Because it cannot be either expressly proved from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments or drawn out of them by legitimate consequence. What the Pontificians bring forward in its defence we reserve for discussion in the disputation itself. II. Scripture divides all men into two kinds, the faithful and the unfaithful: of whom the former are carried straight after this life to heavenly blessedness, the latter are thrust down to hell. No place, therefore, is left for Purgatory. About the Unfaithful the Pontificians agree; about believers we prove it. 1. John 5: He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life. But Purgatory is a place of judgment. Therefore they do not come into Purgatory. 2. 1 John 3: Beloved, now are we the Sons of God: if Sons now, then heirs now. It remains, therefore, only that the soul, loosed from the bonds of this body, should enter on the possession of the heavenly inheritance; whence the Apostle too says, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ. 3. Rev. 14:13: Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them. But all believers die in the Lord; therefore all rest from their labours, and consequently they are not tormented in the fire of Purgatory.

III. All time is divided into a time of work and of reward, of labour and of rest, of sowing and of harvest, of sufferings and of glory, of warfare and of the crown. But the time of working, of labouring, of sowing, of suffering and of warring is enclosed within the bounds of this life; after this life begins the time of receiving the reward, of resting, of reaping, of taking hold of glory, of receiving the crown. No time is left, then, for being purged by an infernal fire. IV. Paul, treating expressly of the state of the faithful departed, and counselling and consoling the godly who survive concerning the death of their brethren, makes no mention of Purgatory, none of prayers, alms, fasts, masses, Indulgences, and other suffrages by which the souls of the departed are to be freed from those cruel flames. V. Nothing prevents those faithful who shall be left at the coming of the Lord from being caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, with no fire of Purgatory coming between. Since, then, the condition of all the faithful of Christ is the same, it follows that neither are those faithful who die today scorched in the crackling flames of Purgatory.

VI. When the wicked man hath turned away from his wickedness, ‹all› his iniquities I will not remember, saith the Lord in Ezekiel chapter 18. But how does he not remember them, if he punishes them with the most savage torments of Purgatory, or, what is the same thing in Bellarmine, with the temporal punishments of Gehenna? VII. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. Therefore there is no need of a purgatorial fire after this life. When he says that all sin is cleansed by the blood of Christ, he refutes the figment of the Pontificians, who say that venial sins are purged in the furnace of Purgatory. VIII. To this point is the example of the thief crucified with Christ. He, if anyone, was a debtor bound to pay temporal punishment; yet Christ declared that on that very day on which he was dying he would be with him in Paradise, with Purgatory passed over. Unless perhaps we would call Paradise that place, like a meadow most flowery, most bright, fragrant and pleasant, which Bellarmine, following the venerable Bede, places among those below and judges to be referred to Purgatory.

Lastly, it can be established from the opinion of the Pontificians that there is nothing from which we could be purged by that fire. Not venial sin; for we cannot make satisfaction to God for it. Nor are we said to be purged from punishment, for punishment does not beget a stain but makes a man a debtor. So says Bellarmine, book 2 on Purgatory, chapter 4. Nay more, according to the same men, the souls in Purgatory cannot bear that punishment without sin, seeing that it is the same as the punishment of the damned, with only its eternity taken away. But the punishment of the damned, according to Bellarmine, essentially includes despair.

But if what the Pontificians say is true, namely that the Pontiff can snatch those wretched little souls out of the burning cave of Purgatory, and with so easy a labour that he need not even come down from his Pontifical throne, it seems it may not undeservedly be asked whether he has so much as a crumb of Christian charity, who draws not the least bit out of the inexhaustible treasury of infinite satisfactions, by which the souls of the godly might be released from those torments, and so, set free, fly up into the open heaven. Especially since he professes that the care of feeding the sheep (that is, according to the interpretation of the Roman Church, also of the souls to be freed from Purgatory) has been committed to him by a special command of Christ, as the supreme Pastor on earth.