a place in which the just, who depart out of this life, are supposed to expiate certain offences which do not merit eternal damnation.

Broughton has endeavoured to prove, that this notion has been held by Pagans, Jews, and Mahometans, as well as by Christians.

The doctrine of purgatory is a very lucrative article to the clergy of the Romish church, who are very liberally paid for masses and prayers for the souls of the deceased. We are told by some of their doctors, that purgatory is a subterraneous place, situated over the hell of the damned, where such souls as have not yet made satisfaction to Divine justice for their sins, are purged by fire, after a wonderful and incomprehensible manner: and here they are purified from those dregs which hinder them from entering into their eternal country, as the catechism of the council of Trent expresses it.