III. Purgatory was a part of the Anglo-Saxon creed. This, indeed, was established on authority. Drithelme, a famous saint (as he proved) of Northumbria, died and was buried; but he was born to refute the apophthegm that dead men tell no tales, for he returned to life, and gave an account of his travels.[44] He had been conducted by an angel in white raiment towards the sunrising to a valley of vast depth and interminable extent; the one side of it glowing with fire, the other pelted by fierce and incessant storms of snow and hail. Between these two conflicting elements he beheld the souls of miserable mortals bandied to and fro, anxious to escape from the intolerable anguish of the moment, and thus perpetually leaping from side to side in this unhappy valley. Such was Purgatory. But though Drithelme made these matters known to one Hæmgils, an Irishman, and through Hæmgils they were communicated to Bede, the doctrine does not appear to have been universally held in the Saxon church, or, at least, to have held a very prominent place in its articles of faith. Certain it is, that in some Anglo-Saxon sermons and confessions yet extant, no mention is made of it, where mention of it might be expected.[45] Still, the doctrine was clearly abroad; and in the form it had assumed the Platonic purgatory was improved upon, and the poets, from Cædmon[46] downwards, availed themselves of these fearful images, conjured up by the morbid imagination of the early monks, and consigned, in their turn, ----“the delighted spirit To bathe in _fiery_ floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice.”[47] IV. Purgatory, of course, brought other doctrines in its train--penance for the living, that they might never come into it;[48] confession, that penance might be enjoined and adjusted;[49] masses for the dead, that they might be delivered from it.[50] These acts were not, perhaps, for a while, considered obligatory. The abuses of the Roman catholic church did not come of observation, but crept into the world by stealth, till, having at length established themselves _de facto_, they were confirmed by the decrees of some general council, and thenceforth became _de jure_ a part and parcel of the catholic creed. Thus the use of images by degrees prevailed, till it was eventually authorised by a decree of a council at Nice in the year 787. The doctrine of transubstantiation gained a footing in credulous times, and was encouraged from interested motives, (for who should set bounds to the authority of a priest who had power to produce the Deity himself at his bidding?)[51] till it was pronounced orthodox at the council of Placentia in 1095. The communion, in one kind only, had become customary (from whatever cause,) and the practice received the placet of the church in 1415, at the council of Constance. V. The Virgin appears to have been held in great, perhaps in idolatrous, honour by the Anglo-Saxon church. It is true that--