Note 49 — SERMON III. PURGATORY.

How miserable is the confidence of a poor dying Roman Catholic! He trembles at the thought of purgatorial fire, and leaves money to the priest that masses may be said for his release. If the priest happen to forget him, in purgatory he must remain. Nay, more! If the masses are offered they may be worthless, for the Church of Rome declares the intention of the priest to be necessary to a sacrament. Trent, Sess. vii., Can. 11. “If any man shall say that the intention of doing that which the church does is not required in ministers while they perform and confer the sacrament, let him be accursed.” The priest, therefore, may perform all the masses, and get all the money, and yet if his intention happen to be wanting the poor soul would profit nothing. This places the soul in purgatory at the absolute mercy of the priest on earth. The Rev. James Page, in his “Letters to a Priest of the Church of Rome,” gives the following passage from the “Master Key of Popery,” written by D. Antonio Gavin, in which he, who was himself a priest, gives an extract from the private confession of a priest, being at the point of death, in 1710. “The necessary intention of a priest, in the administration of baptism and consecration, without which the sacraments are of none effect, I confess I had it not several times, as you shall see in the parish books; and observe there, that all those marked with a star, the baptism was not valid, for I had no intention; and for this I can give no other reason than my malice and wickedness; many of them are dead, for which I am heartily sorry. As for the times I have consecrated without intention, we must leave it to God Almighty’s mercy for the wrong done by it to the souls of my parishioners, and those in purgatory cannot be helped.” Oh! that we could persuade our poor Roman Catholic brethren to trust at once to the great High Priest, who blotteth out all sin by his own most precious blood!