The Intermediate State and Purgatory.
AMONG the reformers, with Luther at their head, the number who denied the immortality of the soul was so great that Calvin wrote a work against them. In his preface he said: “They are said to circulate their follies in a kind of tracts which I have not happened to see.” He is not the only one who has written against the arguments on this subject without examining them. So violent and bitter was his language that he published a second edition, apologizing for the first, acknowledging that there were good men among the teachers of that view. Dr. Priestley said: “It was, however, the firm belief of so many of the reformers of that age, that had it not been for the authority of Calvin, who wrote expressly against it, the doctrine of an intermediate state would, in all probability, have been as effectually exploded as the doctrine of purgatory itself.”