An answer to a challenge madeAn ansvver to a challenge made

The objection of Aërius was this. The Commemorations and prayers used in the Church bring no profit to the dead: therefore as an unprofitable thing they are to be rejected. To this doth Epiphanius thus frame his answer. ^yAs for the reciting of the names of ⟨p. 240⟩those that are deceased; what can be better then this? what more commodious, and more admirable? that such as are present do believe, that they who are departed do live, and are not extinguished, but are still being and living with the Lord: and that this most pious preaching might be declared; that they who pray for their brethren have hope of them as being in a peregrination. Which is as much in effect, as if he had denied Aërius his consequence: and answered him, that although the dead were not profited by this action, yet it did not therefore follow that it should be condemned as altogether unprofitable. because it had a singular use otherwise: namely to testify the faith and the hope of the living, concerning the dead. the faith: in ^zdeclaring them to be alive, (for so doth Dionysius also expound the Churches intention in her public nomination of the dead) and as Divinity teacheth, not mortified but translated from death unto a most divine life. the hope: in that they signified hereby, that they accounted their brethren to have departed from them no otherwise than as if they had been in a journey, with expectation to meet them afterward; and by this means made a difference betwixt themselves, and ^aothers which had no hope. Then doth Epiphanius proceed further in answering the same objection, after this manner. ^bThe prayer also which is made for them doth profit, although it do not cut off all their sins: yet forasmuch as whilst we are in the world, we oftentimes slip both unwillingly and with our will; it serveth to signify that which is more perfect. For ⟨p. 241⟩we make a memorial, both for the just and for sinners: for sinners, entreating the mercy of God; for the just, (both the Fathers and Patriarchs, the Prophets, and Apostles, and Evangelists, and Martyrs and Confessors, Bishops also and Anchorites, and the whole order) that we may sever our Lord Jesus Christ from the rank of all other men by the honour that we do unto him, and that we may yield worship unto him. Which, as far as I apprehend him, is no more then if he had thus replied unto Aërius.