These words are so forcible that no comment of mine could render them clearer. The passage proved a great stumbling-block to the Reformers. Finding that they could not by any evasion weaken the force of the text, they impiously threw overboard the Books of Machabees, like a man who assassinates a hostile witness, or like the Jews who sought to kill Lazarus, lest his resurrection should be a testimony in favor of Christ, and pretended that the two books of Machabees were apocryphal. And yet they have precisely the same authority as the Gospel of St. Matthew or any other portion of the Bible, for the canonicity of the Holy Scriptures rests solely on the authority of the Catholic Church, which proclaimed them inspired. But even admitting, for the sake of argument, that the Books of Machabees were not entitled to be ranked among the canonical Books of Holy Scripture, no one, at least, has ever denied that they are truthful historical monuments, and as such that they serve to demonstrate that it was a prevailing practice among the Hebrew people, as it is with us, to offer up prayers and sacrifices for the dead. Second—When our Savior, the Founder of the New Law, appeared on earth, He came to lop off those excrescences which had grown on the body of the Jewish ecclesiastical code, and to purify the Jewish Church from those human traditions which, in the course of time, became like tares mixed with the wheat of sound doctrine. For instance, He condemns the Pharisees for prohibiting the performance of works of charity on the Sabbath day, and in the twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew He cites against them a long catalogue of innovations in doctrine and discipline. But did our Lord, at any time, reprove the Jews for their belief in a middle state, or for praying for the dead, a practice which, to His knowledge, prevailed among the people? Never. On the contrary, more than once both He and the Apostle of the Gentiles insinuate the doctrine of purgatory. Our Savior says: “Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man it shall be forgiven him. But he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in the world to come.”(283) When our Savior declares that a sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven in the next life, He evidently leaves us to infer that there are some sins which will be pardoned in the life to come. Now in the next life, sins cannot be forgiven in heaven, for, nothing defiled can enter there; nor can they be forgiven in hell, for, out of hell there is no redemption. They must, therefore, be pardoned in the intermediate state of Purgatory.