The mediawal doctrine and practice regarding purgatory were among the leading grounds of the protests of the Waldenses and other sects of that age. The reformers, as a body, rejected the doctrine.
What is called the "historical," or critical view of its genesis, is well given by Mean der (Dogmengeschichte, vol. i.). Ile conceives that its source is to be sought for in the ancient Persian doctrine of a purifying conflagration whit was to precede the of Ormuz, and consume everything that was impure. From the Persians it passed with modifications to the Jews, and from them found its way into the. ethical speculations of the more cultivated Christians. It harmonized admirably with the wide-spread philo sophical notion borrowed by the Gnostic Christians from Neo-platonism, that matter is inherently evil. If, then, the body was to rise, it must be purged of evil, and the instru ment of purification—fire—was at hand for the purpose. Moreover, the high and pure conception of the character of God revealed in the New Testament, necessitating a cor responding moral excellence on the part of his worshipers—" without holiness shall no man see the Lord "—ffiust have greatly assisted in the establishment of the doctrine, for how could men, only lately gross heathens, possessing yet but the rudiments of the new faith, and with most of their heathen habits still clinging about them, be pronounced "holy," or "fit for the presence of God ?" Their " faith" in Christ was sufficient to save them, but the work of sanctification was incomplete when they died, and must go on. Probably it was a strong Christian feeling of this sort that determined the reception of the doctrine of purgatory into the creed a the Catholic church, rather than any Gnostic philosophizings, though the Neo-platonic divines of Alexandria are the first to mention it.
Protestants generally reply to the arguments of Roman Catholics on the subject of purgatory, by refusing to admit the authority of tradition or the testimonies of the fetaen?., .and at the same time by alleging that most—if not all—of the passages quoted from the fathers, as iu favor of purgatory, are insufficient to prove that they held any such doc trine as that now held by the Roman Catholic church, some of them properly relating only to the subject of prayer for the dead, and others to the doctrine of Embus (q.v.). That the doctrine of purgatory is the fair development of that which maintains that prayer ought to be made for the dead, Protestants generally acknowledge, but refuse to admit, the fathers carried out their views to any such consequence. As to the alleged evidences from Scripture, they are commonly set aside by Protestants as merely ridiculous. The much-vaunted argument from the second book of Maccabees, is of course contemned, as being from an apocryphal book, and not one of the best books of the Apocrypha; besides, that the passage relates to nothing more than prayer for the dead. The text Matt. xii. 32 is explained as relating to the finaljudgment; and 1 Cor.' iii. as relating to a trial of works, and not of persons; while 1 Cor. xv. 29 is regarded as haying nothing more to do with the subject than any verse taken at random from any, part of the Bible.