“The mind is composed with quietness to hear the living; the apparitions of dead men, beside the suspicion of delusion, would fill us with gastly horror, and it were impossible we should be fit scholars to learn if such strong perturbation of fear should be upon us. How much better hath God ordained for our security, and tranquillity, _that the priest's lips should preserve knowledge_? I know, if God shall see it fit to have us disciplined by such means, he can stir up the spirits of the faithful departed to come among us: So, after Christ's resurrection many dead bodies of the Saints which slept arose, and came out of their graves, and went into the Holy City, and appeared unto many. This was not upon a small matter, but upon a brave and renowned occasion: But for the Spirits of damnation, that are tied in chains of darkness, there is no repassage for them, and it makes more to strengthen our belief that never any did return from hell to tell us their woeful tale, than if any should return. It is among the severe penalties of damnation that there is no indulgence for the smallest respite to come out of it. The heathen put that truth into this fable. The Lion asked the Fox, why he never came to visit him when he was sick: Says the Fox, because I can trace many beasts by the print of their foot that have gone toward your den, Sir Lion, but I cannot see the print of one foot that ever came back: _Quia me vestigia terrent Omnia te advorsum spectantia, nulla retrorsum._ So there is a beaten, and a broad road that leads the reprobate to hell, but you do not find the print of one hoof that ever came back. When I have given you my judgment about apparitions of the dead in their descending from Heaven, or ascending from hell, I must tell you in the third place, I have met with a thousand stories in Pontifician writings concerning some that have had repassage from Purgatory to their familiars upon earth. Notwithstanding the reverence I bear to Gregory the Great, I cannot refrain to say; He was much to blame to begin such fictions upon his credulity; others have been more to blame that have invented such Legends; and they are most to be derided that believe them. _O miserable Theology!_ if, thy tenets must be confirmed by sick men's dreams, and dead men's phantastical apparitions!” BP. HACKETT. * * * * * “It is a morose humour in some, even ministers, that they will not give a due commendation to the deceased: whereby they not only offer a seeming unkindness to the dead, but do a real injury to the living, by discouraging virtue, and depriving us of the great instruments of piety, good examples: which usually are far more effective methods of instruction, than any precepts: These commonly urging only the necessity of those duties, while the other shew the possibility and manner of performing.