On Sacrificing and Praying for the Dead
What is the main dispute here?
The main dispute here is whether one should pray for the dead, make sacrifices, say Mass and the like. The Popes say yes, we say no.
For what reasons?
1. It is evident that in all holy, divine, prophetic, and apostolic Scripture there is not one word, or even one letter, which commands us to do this, which the Holy Spirit would not have omitted if he had known that it was so necessary. Therefore, if we do not want to suspect the Holy Spirit of not letting us record this in the Scriptures, either out of envy or through oversight, we must certainly believe that there is not much to be said for prayer and sacrifice for the dead.
2. So praying like this cannot help the dead, for if they are souls of the righteous, they are in God's hands, as Revelation also says in chapter 14 [:13]: Blessed are those who sleep in the Lord from now on. But if they are ungodly souls, they go with the rich glutton into the abyss of hell, and there all baptism,
all chrism and prayer is lost, as the German proverb says, and the popes themselves confess that no one can be saved from hell.
3. Indeed, Scripture clearly confesses that no one can save another or redeem his soul, as it says in the 49th Psalm [: ]: "A brother can save no one, nor God reconcile anyone, for it costs too much to redeem their soul, that he must leave it forever. From this it is clear that a deceased person is no longer helped by praying, saying Mass, saying vigils, etc. Hence St. Augustine writes, de temp. serm. 219: Frustra parentibus ac propinquis curam tuam injungis: Nemo te post mortem tuam fideliter redimet: quia in vita tute redimere noluisti.
That is:
It is in vain that you enjoin your care on your parents and friends. After your death no one will faithfully save you, because in your life you did not want to save yourself.
4. Much less can we approve of papal supplications and sacrifices in which such abominable abuses are practiced as turning the holy sacrament of the altar into a sacrifice of the Mass, invoking not only God but also the departed saints, submitting the soul to God by such works, and thus turning the most sacred merit of Jesus Christ into water. That the dream of purgatory and other such ungodly doctrines and works should be incorporated, which we cannot approve of in the papal prayer and sacrifice for the departed, because they go straight against God and His holy commandment, and we are only surprised that our opponents still quarrel or condemn us in this case, because we refuse to consent to their doctrine, not without cause, but out of highly important motives.
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that one reads from the ancients how they prayed over the deceased, because the fathers did so in the ancient church, so it is reasonable that we do the same.
We do not deny that the Fathers Tertullian, Cyprian, Chrysostom, Clemente, Augustine, Ambrose, Cyrill, Ephrem, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Athanasius, Basilio, etc., commemorated the prayer for the departed in many ways. The prayers for the departed are often commemorated, and our counterparts should not be so overburdened with their
testimonies from the books of the Fathers, with which they unnecessarily spend many pages, for we know it, we confess it and thus respond:
1. In order to prove that a doctrine is right, not only the antiquity, the testimony of the ancient fathers, is necessary, but first of all the Word of the Most High, as David says in the 119th Psalm [:105]: Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet.
2. Now it is certain that the sacred canonical Scriptures do not report this at all. And the most ancient fathers, not Moses, not David, not Solomon, not Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, not Zacharia, not Malachi, nor Christ or his holy apostles, not Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, these are the true ancient fathers, whose testimony is immediately valid and accepted as the Word of God. Let the adversaries deal with us from this antiquity and, if they can, prove their doctrine by the steps of the prophets and apostles.
3. Nevertheless, a Christian should pay attention to the fact that, although the Fathers remembered prayers for the dead, there was a much, much different opportunity to do so than there is in the papacy. For they had not held a propitiatory sacrifice for the departed souls, they did not want to help the souls through the merits of men, as happens in the papacy, but their prayers for the departed and the prayers over the departed were celebrated and held:
1. That the deceased have been praised, their works and virtues commended, as is still customary in funeral sermons. 2. That they hereby declare their faithful mind, they have wished the deceased all salvation, welfare and blessedness of soul. 3. It was generally done for the consolation of the sorrowful, if they still had any left in life, that they might be reminded of the blessed state into which the soul of the deceased had come. Hence Epiphanius Haeres. 75, which was the cause that such prayers were held: Nempe, quod crederent, eos, qui decesserant, vivere apud Deum, & quod ita restarentur spem suam, utpote, qui adhuc in peregrinatione essent.
That is:
Therefore they prayed, because they believed that those who had died were now living with God, and that they might testify to their
hope, who were still wandering, that they also might hope for eternal life.
To this end, then, they have held such preces, not to redeem or save souls from their torment, as is customary in the papacy, hence St. Chrysostom writes Homil. 70. ad pop. Antiochenum: Quid sibi volunt hymni? Nonne glorificamus Deum, & illi gratias agimus, quia jam defunctum coronavit, & alaboribus absolutum, penes se retinet?
That is:
What do the prayers and hymns mean, do we not praise God and thank him that He has now crowned the deceased, redeemed him from all labor and kept him with himself?
The most distinguished Fathers have referred to this in most of their testimonies. But what equality is there between prayer and the papal prayer for the dead? Just as there is equality between a living man and his likeness, of which no one can say that it is the living man himself. Consider how St. Augustine prayed for his mother (Confess. 1. 9, c. 12). As St. Ambrose prayed for the Emperor Theodosium, so you will not find such papal manifold stubble.
4. If the popes thus flaunt antiquity and the ancient Fathers, and desire that one should do all that they did, that was held and was customary with them, why do they not do other things more, which are to be found both with the Fathers and were customary with them, as: in the liturgies of St. Chrysostom it is to be seen that the ancients also prayed for the Virgin Mary, for the holy prophets and apostles, for the holy martyrs. The popes do not do this, the ancients prayed for the wicked, who had died, the popes pray only for the pious, the ancients celebrated their birthdays publicly, holding their prayers and other ceremonies, the popes do not do this, and countless other things. What is the reason that they do not follow the ancients in this? They must confess that they are not bound by all that the Fathers did, are they not bound? Who wants to bind us to the fathers? Are we directed to them by God? No, but they with us to Christ, to the Scriptures, to the Word of God. Therefore we can ill
say, when they come up so incessantly with their antiquities, with their fathers, what is written there in 1 Samuel 2: Let your great boasting and rebellion cease, let the old things be in your mouths, for the Lord is a God who notices such things and does not allow such pretensions to succeed. And in the 20th chapter of the prophet Ezekiel [:18-19], God speaks thus: You shall not live by the commandments of your fathers, nor keep their statutes. Again: You shall live by my commandments, and you shall keep my statutes and do them.
In the days of the Lord Jesus Christ, the ancients were also dressed in this way, but Christ Jesus did not want to turn to them because they were not the true ancients, the prophets, as we read in Matthew 5, where Christ says [:21-22],: You have heard that it was said to the ancients, etc. But I say unto you. Let it hereby be understood that the ancients said and spoke much without and contrary to God's Word and understanding, especially as it is written in the 43rd verse, that one should hate one's enemies, which was an old but quite false tradition and teaching.
A pious, Christian heart will be content with these narrated pieces and will not allow the name of the old church to be betrayed, especially because it was not ever customary in the apostolic church and all kinds of stubble have subsequently grown in the churches through carelessness, to which we are not bound that we should also sow them or allow them to grow in our churches.
Its highest foundation is from the second book of the Maccabees in the 12th chapter in the 43rd and 46th verses, where the sacrifice and prayer for the deceased is explicitly mentioned.
This foundation does not deepen anything:
1. For it is taken from a book which is not canonical, not inspired by the Holy Spirit, as St. Cyprianus in exposit. Symp., St. Jerome in lib. Sapient. and St. Augustine contra Gaudent lib. 2. c. 23 testify.
2. There are all kinds of other errors in this book, from which it appears that it was not inspired by God. The second book of the Maccabees speaks of the death of Antioch in the 1st chapter quite differently from the first book in the 6th chapter, and it is false that this book reports that the Jews were led in perfidy,
it is false that Razias did right by killing himself. In particular, that this book was not inspired by the Holy Spirit is obvious from the conclusion of this book, which reads: If I had done it sweetly, I would have liked to, but if it is too little, I have done as much as I could. The Holy Spirit does not need such an excuse in the canonical books, much less does he say that he might be too little and that he could not have done more, which also moved some popes, so that they did not consider this book to be canonical. As Pope Gelasium, who with 70 other bishops only accepted the first book of the Maccabees and not the second. Since this book is not at all strong to discuss a controversy, as St. Augustine himself writes, it cannot count for anything in this respect either, but is suspect precisely because, among other things, it contains the error of the sacrifice for the dead and praises it. Beyond this, if one examines the text and the history itself, it will be found that the papists cannot get away with it. It is beyond all doubt that in the times of the Maccabees many and great errors in religious matters were introduced and all kinds of superstitions came to them from the Gentiles, which the Historia [Acts of the Apostles] shows, and it is not an infernal, pagan lie, as the one says, that this sacrifice and prayer of the popes, even Jude the Maccabee, arose from paganism. After all, it is not from God's Word, for Moses recorded in Leviticus all kinds of sacrifices that had to be offered, but there is no mention of an atoning sacrifice for the deceased, not even a single word or letter. Nevertheless, all Jews were pointed to the commandment of God in the 4th and 12th chapters of the 5th book: What I command you, you shall observe to do according to it; you shall not add to it, nor subtract from it. Judas, therefore, made such sacrifices without God's command and against his command, and therefore he sinned and did wrong. Furthermore, the popes themselves say that sacrifices should only be made for the pious, so that they may be saved from purgatory. Now those for whom Judas sacrificed and prayed were not pious, but had committed a real mortal sin. Thus purgatory, as many papists say, was not yet in the Old Testament, which is why this example of Jude proves nothing at all powerful. Otherwise, if it had been God's command
that one should sacrifice and pray for the dead, even for the wicked, the holy patriarchs would not have omitted to do so, David would also have sacrificed and prayed for Saul, for Absalom, since we find nothing of the kind anywhere in all the histories of the Old Testament, regardless of the fact that all kinds of ceremonies and customs held for the deceased were distinguished, not even in the New Testament, since we also have histories of the burials of the dead, there is nothing about sacrificing or praying for them.
Finally, to sum up and conclude, even if such sacrifices and other ceremonies had been commanded in the Old Testament (which they are not), it does not follow that we are bound to them in the New Testament, because the ceremonial law has been abolished by Christ Jesus. Otherwise, O faithful God, how much more would we have to perform sacrifices and other things that we were obliged to do in the Old Testament by virtue of God's commandment, which all Christian hearts know and understand for themselves, if only they read in the third, fourth and fifth books of Moses [Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy] and consider how such commandments no longer apply in the New Testament. Now that the argument in favor is sufficiently refuted, we hope that everyone will manfully note that there is no reason for sacrifices and pontifical prayers for the deceased, and that we cannot and should not consent to this article for highly important reasons. May the Holy Spirit prick the blind and deceived and enlighten them through His Holy Word for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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