Wherefore sith holy scriptures, as the Fathers vnderstand and interpret them, teache that the soules of men, as soone as they departe from the bodies, do ascende vp into heauen if they were godly, descende into hell if they were wicked and faithlesse, and that their is no thirde place in which soules should be deliuered, as it were out of prison, & that soules can neither be reclaimed out of heauen or hel. Hereby it is made euident, that they cannot wander on the earth, and desire aide of men. For first the soules of the blessed néed no aid or help that men cā giue them: & on the other side, the damned sort can no way be reléeued: the which S. =Ciprian= the martir in his oration against =Demetrian=, doth plainly witnesse in these words: when we be once departed out of this world, there is afterward no place left for repentance, no way to make satisfactiō: here life is either woon or lost, & so forth. Albeit the testimonies alredy alleged on this point of doctrine, may well suffise those that loue the truth, and are desirous to come to the knowledge thereof: yet to increase the number, I wil recite other testimonies also out of yͤ fathers, to proue manifestly, yͭ the soules departed, do not againe return & wander on the earth, so that all they which haue not yet stopped their eares that the truth might not pierce & enter into them, may euidently perceiue, that those anciēt times taught a far better doctrine of those spirits and ghosts, than other latter times vnder poperie haue cōmended and allowed. =Tertullian= a very auncient writer, in the end of his booke =De anima=, saith, the soules do not any longer abide on the earth, after they be once loosed from their bodies: & that neither by their owne accord, nor other mens cōmandement, they do wander at all after they haue descended into hell, but he saith, that euil spirits do vse this kinde of deceyt, to faine themselues to be the soules of suche as are deceased. And that Hell is not open to any soule, that it should afterward at any time depart thence, Christ our Lorde in the parable of the poore man that was in rest, and the rich glutton that was in torment, doth plainely ratifie vnder the person of =Abraham=, that there can be no man sent backe to shewe or tel ought of the state of hel. And albeit the fathers haue noted certaine errours and scapes in =Tertullian=, yet there was neuer any that reproued him for this opinion. =Athanasius= in his booke of questions, the xiii. questiō, doth giue a reason wherfore God will not suffer that any soule deceased, shuld returne vnto vs, and declare what the state of things is in hel, and what great misery is there: hereby (saith he) many errors wold easily spring vp among vs: for many diuels might so take on thē the shape of men, and be transformed into yͤ likenesse of the dead, and say, that they arose frō the dead, and so publish many lying tales, and false opinions of things there don, therby to seduce and hurt vs.