1829. J The Greek Church. 639 



The Greek priesthood insist on the importance of this deluding and 

 vitiating privilege, as holding the very first rank among moral and ritual 

 obligations. In their point of view, they are perfectly right ; for of all 

 the inventions of man to subjugate a national mind, and fill a priestly 

 treasury, the rite of absolution is the most effectual. A slight apology 

 for the practice is set up in their declaring that the confession is made, 

 not to the priest, but to the listening angel. But as the priest is a listener 

 too, and has the efficient part of the business, the penalty and the absolu- 

 tion in his own hands, the angel seems a superfluous person, and his office 

 a sinecure. The whole is a hideous corruption of scripture, leading to a 

 hideous corruption of moral principle. But the Greeks have the merit of 

 rejecting the doctrine of Indulgences, thus escaping a flood of abomina- 

 tion ; and of utterly denying the Romish tenet of purgatory. They 

 beheve in the life of the soul in the grave, as a condition of peace to the 

 forgiven, and of anguish to the undone, yet imperfect in both instances, 

 and awaiting the general resurrection for the entrance into the more 

 decided states of both. But the doctrine that there is a place of purify- 

 ing fire, from which man can be delivered by the influence of masses, or 

 the human importunity of prayer, they reckon among the deepest follies 

 or crimes of heresy. 



Yet, with that propensity of human weakness to be presumptuous, and 

 go beyond what is wTitten — the Greek offers up prayers for the dead, for- 

 getting or neglecting the inspired declaration, that the future fate of man 

 is fully decided by liis conduct here, and, " that where the tree falleth it 

 shall lie." He equally omits the remembrance, that though we have 

 sufficient instances in scripture of the practice and efficacy of prayer for 

 the living, we have no instance whatever of prayer for the dead ; the 

 single passage in the 2nd of ^laccabees, being in a book of doubtful 

 authority, and even of scarcely applicable meaning. He overlooks, too, 

 the strong tendency of such a practice, to create anew the whole of the 

 superstitious observances of heathenism at the grave, and the actual 

 fact that they were so created by Rome. 



To say that the practice is natural, is not enough in matters that relate 

 to the invisible world. There are many things congenial to our human 

 habits that must be totally inconsistent with the laws of spiritual being. 

 Nothing can be more natural than that we should pray to the spirits of 

 the parent or the friend that we loved and depended upon in life, or to 

 those eminent examples of virtue whom we may justly believe to be 

 peculiarly accepted by Heaven. Yet this becomes the worship of saints 

 and angels ! 



Nothing is more natural, than that we should turn to the female soft- 

 ness and human nature of the Blessed Vii'gin, in preference to coming at 

 once before the terrible majesty of that Judge whose wrath is a consum- 

 ing fire. 



The whole Romish church has reasoned, that this, being natural here, 

 must l)e natural in the world beyond the grave. Yet this is the sin of 

 which St. Paul openly accuses the apostates, an uncommanded Immilia- 

 tion before beings of their own race, the " worship of angels, and prying 

 into those things of which they can Iiave no knowledge," presuming that 

 they could penetrate those barriers which it is the will of infinite wisdom 

 to raise between this world and eternity — barriers whicli undoubtedly 

 would not have been raised, but for either of the reasons, that our human 

 faculties were incapable of comprehending the knowledge thus con- 



