A14227:286
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.
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. eAfter death there is no help to be gotten, either by godliness, or by repentance. For Lazarus doth not go there unto the rich man, nor the rich man unto Lazarus: neither doth Abraham send any of his spoils, that the poor may be afterward made rich thereby; neither doth the rich man obtain that which he asketh, although he entreat merciful Abraham •ith instant supplication.