For beside the common prayer that is used in the Mass for the commemoration of all the faithful deceased, that
"Christ would free them from the mouth of the lion, that hell may not swallow them up, and that they may not fall into the place of darkness,"
this prayer is prescribed for the day wherein the dead did depart out of this life:
"O God, whose property is always to have mercy and to spare, we most humbly beseech thee for the soul of thy servant N. which this day thou hast commanded to depart out of this world, that thou mayest not deliver it into the hands of the enemy, nor forget it finally; but command it to be received by the holy angels, and brought unto the country of Paradise; that because he hath trusted and believed in thee, he may not sustain the pains of hell, but possess joys everlasting."
Which is a direct prayer, that the soul of him which was then departed might immediately be received into heaven, and escape not the temporary pains of purgatory, but the everlasting pains of hell. For howsoever the new reformers of the Roman Missal have put in here pœnas inferni, under the generality peradventure of the term of the "pains of hell," intending to shroud their purgatory, which they would have men to believe to be one of the lodges of hell; yet in the old Missal which Medina had respect unto, we read expressly pœnas æternas, "everlasting pains;" which by no construction can be referred unto the pains of purgatory. And to the same purpose, in the book of the ceremonies of the Church of Rome, at the exequies of a Cardinal, a prayer is appointed to be read, that by the assistance of God's grace he might
"escape the judgment of everlasting revenge, who, while he lived, was marked with the seal of the Holy Trinity."
Again,
"there be other prayers," saith Medina, "wherein petition is made, that God would raise the souls of the dead in their bodies unto bliss at the day of judgment."
Such, for example, is that which is found in the Roman Missal:
