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Although the prayer that is made for the dead do not cut off all their sins (which is the only thing that thou goest about to prove) yet doth it profit notwithstanding for another purpose: namely to signify the supereminent perfection of our Saviour Christ above the rest of the sons of men, who are subject to manifold slips and falls as long as they live in this world.

Although the prayer that is made for the dead doe not cut off all their sinnes (which is the onely thing that thou goest about to prove) yet doth it profite notwithstanding for another purpose: namely to signifie the supereminent perfection of our Saviour Christ above the rest of the sonnes of men, who are subiect to manifold slipps and falls as long as they live in this world.

For aswell the righteous, with their involuntary slips, as sinners, with their voluntary falls, do come within the compass of these Commemorations: wherein prayers are made, both for ^csinners that repent, and for righteous persons that have no such need of repentance. For sinners; that being by their repentance recovered out of the snare of the Devil, they may find mercy of the Lord at the last day, and be freed from the fire prepared for the Devil and his angels: For the righteous; that they may be recompensed in the resurrection of the just, and received into the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Which kind of prayer being made for the best men that ever lived (even the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Evangelists, and Martyrs themselves) Christ only excepted; showeth that the profit which the Church intended should be reaped therefrom, was not ⟨p. 242⟩the taking away of the sins of the parties that were prayed for, but the honouring of their Lord above them: it being hereby declared, ^dthat our Lord is not to be compared unto any man; though a man live in righteousness a thousand times and more. for how should that be possible? considering that the one is God, the other man, (as the praying to the one, and for the other, doth discover) and the one is in heaven, the other in earth by reason of the remains of the body yet resting in the earth, until the day of the Resurrection, unto which all these prayers had special reference. This do I conceive to be the right meaning of Epiphanius his answer: as suiting best both with the general intention of the Church, which he taketh upon him to vindicate from the misconstruction of Aërius, & with the application thereof unto his objection, & with the known doctrine of Epiphanius, delivered by him elsewhere in these terms.