Part IV, Chapter XLIV, 2

A similar incantation in place of consecration is used in the sacrament of baptism. There the misuse of God’s name in each distinct person and in the whole Trinity, accompanied by the sign of the cross at each name, completes the charm. First, when making holy water, the priest says, “I conjure you, creature of water, in the name of God the Father Almighty, and in the name of Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, and by the power of the Holy Ghost, that you become conjured water, to drive away all the powers of the enemy, and to root out and displace the enemy, etc.” Likewise, in the blessing of the salt to be mixed with it: “That you become conjured salt, that all phantoms and the knavery of the devil’s fraud may flee and depart from the place where you are sprinkled; and that every unclean spirit be conjured by Him who shall come to judge the living and the dead.” Likewise in the blessing of the oil: “That all the power of the enemy, all the host of the devil, all the assaults and phantoms of Satan, may be driven away by this creature of oil.” The infant to be baptized is subjected to many charms. First, at the church door the priest blows three times in the child’s face and says, “Come out of him, unclean spirit, and make room for the Holy Ghost the Comforter.” As though every child were possessed by demons until a priest had breathed on it! Again, before the child enters the church, he says as before, “I conjure you, etc., to come out and depart from this servant of God.” And the same exorcism is repeated once more before baptism. These are among the incantations and consecrations used in administering the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in which everything serving those holy men, except the priest’s unconsecrated spittle, has its own prescribed form of exorcism.

Nor are other rites, such as marriage, extreme unction, visiting the sick, and consecrating churches and churchyards, free of charms. In them too enchanted oil and water are used, together with the misuse of the cross and David’s holy words “Asperges me Domine Hyssopo,” as though these had power to drive away phantoms and imaginary spirits.

Another general error comes from misinterpreting the words eternal life, everlasting death, and the second death. Holy Scripture plainly tells us that God created Adam capable of living forever, on condition that he did not disobey God’s command. This was not an essential property of human nature but a consequence of the power of the tree of life, from which he was free to eat so long as he had not sinned. After he sinned he was driven out of Paradise lest he eat from it and live forever. Scripture also tells us that Christ’s Passion releases from sin all who believe in him and consequently restores eternal life to all the faithful, and to them alone. Yet the doctrine now, and for a long time, has been quite different: that every man has eternal life by nature because his soul is immortal. Thus the flaming sword at the entrance to Paradise, though it prevents a man from reaching the tree of life, does not prevent him from retaining the immortality God took from him for his sin, nor leave him needing Christ’s sacrifice to recover it. Consequently, not only the faithful and righteous but the wicked and heathen too will enjoy eternal life without any death at all, much less a second and everlasting death. To mend this contradiction, it is said that a second and everlasting death means a second and everlasting life, but in torments—a figure of speech never used except in this very case.

This whole doctrine rests solely on some of the more obscure passages of the New Testament, which, when the whole scope of Scripture is considered, are clear enough in a different sense and are not necessary to Christian faith. Suppose that when a man dies nothing remains of him but his corpse. Cannot God, who by his word raised lifeless dust and clay into a living creature, just as easily raise a dead corpse to life again and keep him alive forever, or by another word make him die again? In Scripture, soul always signifies either life or a living creature, and body and soul together signify a living body. On the fifth day of creation God said, “Let the water produce Reptile Animae Viventis,” a creeping thing with a living soul; the English renders this “that has life.” Again, God created whales “& omnem animam viventem,” rendered in English “every living creature.” Likewise, God made man from the dust of the earth and breathed the breath of life into his face, “& factus est Homo in animam viventem,” that is, “and man became a living creature.” After Noah came out of the ark, God said he would no longer strike down “omnem animam viventem,” that is, “every living creature.” And Deut. 12.23. says, “Do not eat the blood, for the blood is the soul,” that is, “the life.” If soul in these passages meant an incorporeal substance existing apart from the body, that conclusion could be drawn as readily about every other living creature as about man. But I think I have already proved sufficiently from Scripture, in the 38. Chapter, that the souls of the faithful will remain in their bodies from the Resurrection to eternity, not by their own nature but by God’s special grace. And when passages of the New Testament say that a man will be cast body and soul into hellfire, they mean no more than body and life: he will be cast alive into the perpetual fire of Gehenna.

Through this opening enters the dark doctrine, first, of eternal torments and, afterwards, of purgatory. With these come the belief that the ghosts of dead men roam abroad, especially in consecrated, solitary, or dark places; the claims of exorcising and conjuring phantoms; the invocation of the dead; and the doctrine of indulgences, or exemption for a time or forever from the fire of purgatory, where these incorporeal substances are supposedly purified by burning and made fit for heaven. Long before our Savior’s time, men were generally infected by Greek demonology with the belief that human souls were substances distinct from their bodies. They therefore supposed that after the body died, every soul, godly or wicked, must continue to exist somewhere through its own nature, without any supernatural gift of God. The doctors of the Church long disputed where such souls should dwell until reunited with their bodies at the Resurrection; for a while they supposed them to lie under the altars. Later the Church of Rome found it more profitable to build purgatory as their dwelling place, though some other churches have demolished it in this later age.

Let us now consider the texts of Scripture that seem to offer the strongest support for the three general errors I have discussed. I have already answered the passages Cardinal Bellarmine cites in favor of a present Kingdom of God administered by the Pope—no passages offer a better appearance of proof—and shown clearly that the Kingdom of God instituted by Moses ended with Saul’s election. After that the priest never deposed a king by his own authority. What the high priest did to Athaliah, he did not in his own right but in the right of the young King Joash her Son. Solomon, on the other hand, deposed the high priest Abiathar in his own right and installed another in his place. The most difficult passage that can be brought to prove Christ’s Kingdom already exists in this world is cited not by Bellarmine or anyone else in the Church of Rome, but by Beza, who would have it begin with Christ’s Resurrection. I do not know, however, whether he means thereby to invest the presbytery with supreme ecclesiastical power in the Commonwealth of Geneva, and consequently every presbytery in every other Commonwealth, or to give it to princes and other civil sovereigns. For wherever they have that form of church government, presbyteries have claimed the power to excommunicate their own kings and to serve as supreme authorities in religion, no less than the Pope claims that power everywhere.

That Christ’s Kingdom Began at the Resurrection. The words are (Marke 9.1.): “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death until they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power.” Taken grammatically, these words make it certain either that some of those standing beside Christ then are still alive or that the Kingdom of God must exist now in the present world. And there is another, more difficult passage. When, after our Savior’s Resurrection and immediately before his Ascension, the Apostles asked him (Acts.1.6.), “Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” he answered, “It is not for you to know the times and the seasons that the Father has placed in his own power. But you shall receive power when the Holy Ghost comes upon you, and you shall be my (martyrs) witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judaea, in Samaria, and to the farthest part of the earth.” In effect he said: My kingdom has not yet come, nor will you know in advance when it will come, for it will come like a thief in the night. But I will send you the Holy Ghost, and through him you will have power, by preaching, to bear witness to the whole world of my Resurrection, the works I have done, and the doctrine I have taught, so that people may believe in me and expect eternal life when I come again. How can this agree with Christ’s kingdom coming at the Resurrection? And St. Paul says (1 Thessal. 1.9, 10.) that “they turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven.” To wait for his Son from heaven is to wait for his coming to reign in power; there would be no need to wait if that kingdom were already present. Again, if the Kingdom of God began at the Resurrection, as Beza would have it in his reading of Mark 9.1., why have Christians since the Resurrection continued to pray, “Let your kingdom come”? Clearly, then, St. Mark’s words must not be interpreted this way. “There are some standing here,” says our Savior, “who shall not taste death until they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power.” If this kingdom were to come at Christ’s Resurrection, why say “some of them” instead of all? All lived until after Christ had risen.

But let those who demand an exact interpretation of this passage first interpret our Savior’s similar words to St. Peter about St. John (chap. 21.22.): “If I wish him to remain until I come, what is that to you?” These words gave rise to a report that John would not die; yet that report was neither confirmed as well founded nor refuted as ill founded upon the words, but left as a saying not understood. The passage in St. Mark presents the same difficulty. If we may conjecture its meaning from what follows immediately, both here and in St. Luke, where it is repeated, it is not unlikely that the words refer to the Transfiguration, described in the verses immediately following: “After six days Jesus takes Peter, James, and John with him”—some of his disciples, not all—“and leads them up a high mountain apart, by themselves, and is transfigured before them. His clothes became shining, whiter than snow, beyond what any fuller on earth could whiten. And Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were speaking with Jesus, etc.” Thus they saw Christ in the glory and majesty in which he is to come, so much so that “they were deeply afraid.” Our Savior’s promise was thus fulfilled by means of a vision. That it was a vision may be reasonably inferred from St. Luke, who tells the same story (ch. 9. ve. 28.) and says Peter and his companions were heavy with sleep; it is established most certainly by Matth. 17.9., where the story is again told, for our Savior instructed them, “Tell no one the vision until the Son of man has risen from the dead.” However this may be, nothing in the passage can serve as an argument that the Kingdom of God begins before the day of Judgment.

As for other texts offered as proof of the Pope’s power over civil sovereigns, besides Bellarmine’s—as when Christ and his Apostles’ two swords are taken to mean the spiritual and temporal swords, supposedly given to St. Peter by Christ; or when the greater of the two lights is said to signify the Pope and the lesser the king—one could as readily infer from the Bible’s first verse that heaven signifies the Pope and earth the king. This is not reasoning from Scripture but a wanton insult to princes, fashionable once the Popes felt so secure in their greatness that they could despise every Christian king; and, treading on emperors’ necks, mock both them and Scripture with the words of the 91. Psalm: “You shall tread upon the lion and the adder; the young lion and the dragon you shall trample under your feet.”

A similar incantation is used instead of consecration in baptism. Here the charm combines the misuse of God's name in each person of the Trinity and in the whole Trinity with the sign of the cross at every name. First, when making holy water, the priest says, “I command you, creature of water, in the name of God the almighty Father, in the name of Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, and by the power of the Holy Ghost, to become water under this command, to drive off all the enemy's powers and root out and overthrow the enemy, etc.” Likewise, when blessing the salt to be mixed with it, he says, “Become salt under this command, so that all apparitions and the tricks of the devil's fraud may flee and leave the place where you are sprinkled; and let every unclean spirit be commanded by him who will come to judge the living and the dead.” When blessing the oil he says, “Let all the enemy's power, all the devil's forces, and all Satan's attacks and apparitions be driven off by this creature of oil.” The infant to be baptized also undergoes many charms. First, at the church door the priest blows three times in the child's face and says, “Leave him, unclean spirit, and make room for the Holy Ghost the Comforter.” This treats every child as demon-possessed until a priest blows on it. Before the child enters the church, the priest again says, “I command you, etc., to leave this servant of God.” The same exorcism is repeated once more before baptism. These and other incantations and consecrations are used in administering baptism and the Lord's Supper. Almost everything these holy men use has its prescribed exorcism, except the priest's unholy spit.

Nor are marriage, extreme unction, visiting the sick, consecrating churches and churchyards, and similar rites free of charms. They use enchanted oil and water, and misuse the cross and David's sacred words “Asperges me Domine Hyssopo” as though these had the power to drive away apparitions and imaginary spirits.

Another widespread error comes from misunderstanding “eternal life,” “everlasting death,” and “the second death.” Scripture plainly says God created Adam with the conditional prospect of living forever, if he did not disobey God's command. This was not an essential feature of human nature; it came from the power of the tree of life, which Adam could eat from until he sinned. After his sin he was driven out of Paradise so he could not eat from it and live forever. Christ's suffering cancels sin for all who believe in him and thus restores eternal life to all the faithful, and to them alone. Despite this, people have long taught a very different doctrine: every person naturally has eternal life because the soul is immortal. On that account, the flaming sword at Paradise's entrance keeps people from the tree of life, yet cannot keep them from the immortality God took from Adam for his sin. Nor would Christ's sacrifice be needed to restore that immortality. It follows that not just the faithful and righteous but the wicked and pagans too will have eternal life, without any death at all, much less a second, everlasting death. To get around this problem, people say that “second and everlasting death” means a second and everlasting life, but in torment. Such a figure of speech is never used except in this one case.

That whole doctrine rests solely on some obscure New Testament passages. Read in light of Scripture as a whole, these passages are clear enough in a different sense, and the doctrine is not necessary to Christian faith. Suppose that when a person dies, only the corpse remains. God raised lifeless dust and clay into a living creature by his word. Could he not just as easily bring a corpse back to life and keep that person alive forever, or make that person die again, with another word? In Scripture “soul” always means either life or a living creature. Body and soul together mean a living body. On the fifth day of creation, God said, “Let the water produce Reptile Animae Viventis,” a creeping thing with a living soul. The English version says “that has life.” Again, God created whales “& omnem animam viventem,” rendered in English as “every living creature.” Likewise, God made man from the earth's dust and breathed into his face the breath of life: “& factus est Homo in animam viventem,” meaning “and man became a living creature.” After Noah left the ark, God said he would no longer strike “omnem animam viventem,” or “every living creature.” And Deut. 12.23. says, “Do not eat the blood, for the blood is the soul,” meaning “the life.” If “soul” in these passages meant a bodiless substance existing apart from a body, we could draw that conclusion as readily about any other living creature as about humans. As for faithful people's souls remaining in their bodies from the resurrection through eternity, not by their own nature but through God's special grace, I believe I have proved that sufficiently from Scripture in Chapter 38. New Testament passages saying someone will be thrown body and soul into hellfire mean simply body and life: they will be thrown alive into Gehenna's perpetual fire.

This opening admits the dark doctrine first of eternal torments, then of purgatory. It also admits stories of dead people's ghosts walking about, especially in consecrated, lonely, or dark places; claims to exorcise and command apparitions; appeals to dead people; and the doctrine of indulgences. Indulgences supposedly exempt someone for a time or forever from purgatory's fire, which is said to burn and cleanse these bodiless substances so they are fit for heaven. Before our Savior's time, most people had absorbed from Greek demonology the belief that human souls were substances separate from bodies. They believed that after bodily death every soul, whether its owner was godly or wicked, must exist somewhere by its own nature, without any special gift from God. Church teachers therefore spent a long time wondering where these souls remained until reunion with their bodies at the resurrection. For a while they supposed the souls lay beneath altars. But later the Roman Church found it more profitable to construct purgatory for them, a place that some other churches have demolished in recent times.

Let us now examine the Scripture passages that seem to offer the strongest support for these three widespread errors. I have already answered Cardinal Bellarmine's passages in support of a present kingdom of God administered by the Pope. None offer a better apparent case. I showed that God's kingdom established by Moses ended when Saul was chosen. Afterward a priest never removed a king on his own authority. The high priest's action against Athaliah was taken not in his own right but in the right of her son, the young King Joash. Solomon, by contrast, removed the high priest Abiathar on his own authority and appointed another. The hardest passage of all to answer as evidence that God's kingdom under Christ is already in this world is cited not by Bellarmine or anyone else in the Roman Church but by Beza, who says the kingdom began at Christ's resurrection. I do not know whether Beza intends to give supreme ecclesiastical power to the presbytery in the Commonwealth of Geneva, and so to every presbytery in every other Commonwealth, or to princes and other civil sovereigns. In places with that form of church government, presbyteries have claimed the power to excommunicate their own kings and to be the highest authorities in religion, just as the Pope claims that power everywhere.

The claim that Christ's kingdom began at the resurrection rests on these words (Mark 9.1.): “Truly, I tell you, some of those standing here will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come with power.” Taken strictly according to grammar, they mean either that some people who were standing near Christ then are still alive, or that God's kingdom must already exist in this world. Another passage is harder still. After our Savior's resurrection, immediately before his ascension, the apostles asked him (Acts.1.6.), “Will you restore the kingdom to Israel at this time?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times and seasons that the Father has placed under his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Ghost comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses (martyrs) in Jerusalem, in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the farthest part of the earth.” In other words: “My kingdom has not yet come, and you will not know in advance when it will come, for it will come like a thief in the night. But I will send you the Holy Ghost. Through him you will have the power to tell the whole world, through your preaching, of my resurrection, the deeds I have done, and the teaching I have given. Then people may believe in me and expect eternal life when I return.” How does this agree with the idea that Christ's kingdom came at his resurrection? St. Paul also says (1 Thessal. 1.9, 10.) that people “turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven.” Waiting for his Son from heaven means waiting for him to come and rule as king in power. That would be unnecessary if his kingdom already existed. Again, if God's kingdom began at the resurrection, as Beza says about Mark 9.1., why have Christians prayed ever since then, “Let your kingdom come”? Clearly St. Mark's words cannot be read that way. Our Savior says that some of those standing there will not taste death before seeing God's kingdom come in power. If the kingdom was to come at Christ's resurrection, why say “some” rather than “all”? They all lived until after he rose.

Those demanding an exact explanation of this passage should first explain our Savior's similar words to St. Peter about St. John (chap. 21.22.): “If I want him to stay until I come, what is that to you?” Those words led to a report that John would not die. But the report was neither confirmed as well founded nor rejected as ill founded on the basis of those words; the saying was left unexplained. St. Mark's passage presents the same difficulty. If we may guess at its meaning from what comes next, both here and in St. Luke's repetition, it could well refer to the transfiguration described in the next verses. They say, “After six days Jesus takes Peter, James, and John”—some, not all, of his disciples—“up a high mountain by themselves, and is transfigured before them. His clothing becomes shining, whiter than snow, so white no launderer on earth could make it. Elijah and Moses appear to them and talk with Jesus, etc.” They thus saw Christ in the glory and majesty in which he will come, and “they were very afraid.” In this way our Savior's promise came true in a vision. That it was a vision may be inferred from St. Luke's account (ch. 9. ve. 28.), which says Peter and the others were weighed down with sleep. It is certain from Matth. 17.9., where our Savior says, “Tell no one of the vision until the Son of man has risen from the dead.” Whatever the explanation, the passage supplies no argument that God's kingdom begins before the day of judgment.

There are other passages used to argue that the Pope has power over civil sovereigns, besides those Bellarmine cites. Some say the two swords Christ and his apostles had were the spiritual and the temporal swords, and that Christ gave both to St. Peter. They also say that of the two lights in the sky, the greater stands for the Pope and the lesser for the king. By that reasoning one could just as well conclude from the Bible's first verse that heaven stands for the Pope and earth for the king. This is not an argument from Scripture. It is an arrogant insult to princes, which became fashionable when the Popes felt secure enough in their power to scorn all Christian kings. They even trampled on emperors' necks and mocked both the emperors and Scripture with the words of Psalm 91: “You shall tread on the lion and the adder; you shall trample the young lion and the dragon beneath your feet.”