This, in fact, is the very source of the superstitions by which the worship of God has been corrupted in the Church of Rome. There is no better illustration of this danger than is afforded by those abuses in connection with the belief in Purgatory, which the Archbishop so severely denounces. The Roman system of Prayers for the Dead did not originally rise from the doctrine of Purgatory, though in their extreme form they were based on that doctrine. But, historically, the doctrine of Purgatory was developed out of an undue and unscriptural indulgence of Prayers for the Dead; and in so far as natural instincts are allowed at the present day to dictate any such unscriptural indulgence, a tendency will again be encouraged towards a belief in some form of Purgatory. The Archbishop asks whether we need be afraid of the abuses of four centuries ago. But it is not a question of the circumstances of four centuries ago; it is a question of the dangers of human nature in every century, and not least in a century like the present, when there prevails in the Church an avowed drift towards the errors against which, as the Archbishop says, even Laud and Andrewes thought it necessary to be on their guard. The condition of the departed is a matter on which nature can tell us nothing. Our whole knowledge respecting it, all our hopes respecting it, are derived from the revelations of our Lord and His Apostles in the New Testament; and if we wish our prayers in relation to the dead to be in accordance with truth, and to be acceptable to God, we have more reason on this subject than on any other “to rely in our public offices upon that alone which can be proved by Holy Scripture.”