A14227:268
An answer to a challenge madeAn ansvver to a challenge made
An answer to a challenge made by a Jesuit in Ireland Wherein the judgement of antiquity in the points questioned is truly delivered, and the novelty of the now romish doctrine plainly discovered. By James Usher Bishop of Meath.An ansvver to a challenge made by a Iesuite in Ireland Wherein the iudgement of antiquity in the points questioned is truely delivered, and the noveltie of the now romish doctrine plainly discovered. By Iames Vssher Bishop of Meath.
Dublin: printed by the Society of Stationers and Eliot's Court Press, 1624Dublin: printed by the Societie of Stationers and Eliot's Court Press, 1624
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
That barbarous impostor (as dMolanus rightly styleth him) who counterfeited a letter, as written by S. Cyril Bishop of Jerusalem unto S. Augustin, touching the miracles of S. Hierome, taketh upon him to lay down the precise time of the first arising of this sect ⟨p. 223⟩among the Grecians in this manner. eAfter the death of most glorious Hierome, a certain heresy or sect arose amongst the Grecians, and came to the Latins also, which went about with their wicked reasons to prove: that the souls of the blessed until the day of the general Judgment, wherein they were to be joined again unto their bodies, are deprived of the sight and knowledge of God, in which the whole blessedness of the Saints doth consist; and that the souls of the damned in like manner until that day are tormented with no pains. Whose reason was this: that as the soul did merit or sin with the body; so with the body was it to receive rewards or pains. Those wicked sectaries also did maintain, that there was no place of Purgatory wherein the souls, which had not done full penance for their sins in this world, might be purged. Which pestilent sect getting head, so great sorrow fell upon us, that we were even weary of our life. Then he telleth a wise tale, how S. Hierome, being at that time with God, for the confutation of this new-sprung heresy, raised up three men from the dead (after that he had first fled their souls into Paradise, Purgatory, and Hell; to the end they might make known unto all men the things that were done there:) but had not the wit to consider, that S. Cyril himself had need to be raised up, to make the fourth man among them. for how otherwise should he, who dyed thirty years before S. Hierome (as is known to every one that knoweth the history of those ⟨p. 224⟩times) have heard and written the news which those three good fellows, that were raised by S. Hierome after his death, did relate concerning Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory? Yet is it nothing so strange to me (I confess) that such idle dreams as these should be devised in the times of darkness, to delude the world withal: as that now in the broad day light,