| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Disputation of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther: purgatory, is just like the power which any bishop or curate
has, in a special way, within his own diocese or parish.
26. The pope does well when he grants remission to souls [in
purgatory], not by the power of the keys (which he does not
possess), but by way of intercession.
27. They preach man who say that so soon as the penny jingles
into the money-box, the soul flies out [of purgatory].
28. It is certain that when the penny jingles into the
money-box, gain and avarice can be increased, but the result
of the intercession of the Church is in the power of God
alone.
|
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: themselves in that year, than are put down in the bill of all put
together: for many of the bodies were never found who yet were
known to be lost; and the like in other methods of self-destruction.
There was also one man in or about Whitecross Street burned himself
to death in his bed; some said it was done by himself, others that it
was by the treachery of the nurse that attended him; but that he had
the plague upon him was agreed by all.
It was a merciful disposition of Providence also, and which I have
many times thought of at that time, that no fires, or no considerable
ones at least, happened in the city during that year, which, if it had
been otherwise, would have been very dreadful; and either the people
A Journal of the Plague Year |
