'We should rather imitate here the modesty of the apostolic Doctors': Bishop Bull and the Middle State after death
From Bishop Bull's sermon ' The Middle State of Happiness or Misery ', an extract rejecting both the doctrine of purgatory and speculative theories about the post-mortem state, resting instead in a conventionally Reformed understanding of "the plain doctrine of the Holy Scriptures", with no need to go beyond the "modesty of the apostolic Doctors". Bull here echoes how the Prayer Book Burial of Dead - a graveside prayer of which is quoted in this extract - rests in the promises of Scripture and eschews fanciful speculations: I have shewn you, that the Apostolic writers were wont to express the different place and state of good and bad men presently after death, by this and the like phrases, that they went to their "own proper, due," or "appointed places": that is, to places agreeable to their respective qualities, the good to a place of happiness, the wicked to a place and state of misery ... I have now said all that I can think necess
