The Life of the Waiting Soul in the Intermediate StateSanderson, R. E. (Robert Edward)
Religion
The Life of the Waiting Soul in the Intermediate State
Sanderson, R. E. (Robert Edward)
Intermediate state
2. Further, the pains which are felt in the process of purification, as
has been shown, spring from within the soul itself, and are not
necessarily or for all inflicted as a torment or punishment from without.
Rather they arise from the soul's own action upon itself, from its own
pangs of shame and self-abasement, all deepened and made more poignant by
the ever increasing sense of the love of Jesus Christ, then as never
before apprehended, and by the holy vision of His perfections. Thereby,
as they gaze on Him, they are changed by the influence of the sight of
Him, into greater likeness to Him. On the other hand, contrast with
these the nature of the pains which the Romish Doctrine assigns to the
souls in Purgatory. They are held in all cases to be penal, that is to
say, inflicted by GOD as punishment. The souls are said to suffer
torments! {84} Moreover these torments, as is taught in Roman Catholic
treatises on the subject, are caused by literal and material flames, by
actual fires which would feed on and consume corporeal substances such as
the human body. But what enters the Intermediate State is the soul only,
not the body: and, in the nature of things, the sufferings of the
incorporeal part of our being can only be themselves incorporeal. The
pains of the spirit can only be spiritual pains.
3. Again, the "Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory" is closely bound up
with what are called in the Thirty-first Article "the Sacrifices of
Masses," and with the sale of "Pardons" or Indulgences, named in the
Twenty-second Article. The character of the Romish doctrine, as of every
other doctrine, must be tested by what has grown with its growth. It was
held that by these "Sacrifices of Masses" and "Indulgences" souls, one by
one, were released from Purgatorial fires sooner than, without their aid,
they could be delivered, and thus were at once admitted to Paradise or
Heaven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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