of the authorized judges of the land: if he sought to know the remedy for any particular disorder, he would rest upon the united decision of the Faculty: if he would investigate the meaning of some abstruse passage in an ancient author, he would receive the consentient opinion of the most approved scholars or divines: and if he wished to learn the nature of the laws by which the heavenly bodies are governed, he would seek his instruction from those to whose competency the voice of public opinion, or the sanction of competent authority, had given the most unequivocal testimony. In short, the authorized and acknowledged standard of truth would be his guide in each or either instance: and so it must be in an endeavor to develop the nature and the accidents of Purgatory. They must be procured from those who believe in it, and teach it. They must be sought in those writings which have not only not been disapproved and condemned by superiors in authority, but which have been appealed to for ages by almost every controversialist of the Romish Church: and when such writings are ushered into the world cum permissu Superiorum, tacitly or openly expressed, surely it is not unfair to conclude that they contain doctrines of the Romish Church, and not merely opinions of private men.
It is upon this principle that the present volume has been written. Since the doctrine of Purgatory, as stated by the Council of Trent, is most indefinitely proposed, the Author has felt justified in appealing to the acknowledged and authorized teachers of the Romish communion for its true import; and in doing so he has endeavored to adopt the sentiment of the Roman orator, Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat ;1 at the same time hoping for the suffrage of every conscientious Romanist to the maxim that Veritas nihil veretur, nisi abscondi.2