Doctrine · The Articles of Religion

Article XIV — Of Purgatory. The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardon, worshiping, and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, but repugnant to the Word of God.

moderately contested

What it says

“The medieval system of purgatory, indulgences, image- and relic-veneration, and prayer to saints is rejected as humanly invented and without scriptural warrant.”

The stake
A whole devotional-economic system denied on one principle — *no warrant of Scripture* — with the church now asking it be read ecumenically, not as anti-Catholic invective.
Why it matters
It is Article V (Scripture sufficiency) enforced against a cluster of practices, and a test case for reading the polemical articles with charity.
The Wesleyan take
Wesley kept it but lived the Catholic Spirit: reject the merit-and-satisfaction economy, never unchurch the Catholic who holds the essentials. The Resolution of Intent is his temper made official.
Original English
The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardon, worshiping, and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, but repugnant to the Word of God. Thirty-Nine Articles Article XXII (1571), 'Of Purgatory,' kept by Wesley verbatim. It is a single sentence rejecting five linked late-medieval practices — purgatory, indulgences ('pardon'), the veneration of images and relics, and the invocation of saints — on one ground: 'no warrant of Scripture' (the rule of Article V). ¶104 footnote 4 places Article XIV first in the list (XIV–XXI) the church's 'Resolution of Intent: With a View to Unity' (2016) directs be read 'in consonance with our best ecumenical insights and judgment.'
VersionRendering
United Methodist Book of Discipline (¶104) The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardon, worshiping, and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, but repugnant to the Word of God.
Thirty-Nine Articles (1571), Article XXII The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also Invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented… kept verbatim by Wesley.
Resolution of Intent (2016) to be read 'in consonance with our best ecumenical insights and judgment' (Book of Resolutions #3144). the church's own qualification: the target is the *abuse* and a specific merit/satisfaction theology, not a polemic against Catholics as such; 'Romish' is the 16th-century word, not the church's present voice.

Traditions cited patristic ·roman catholic ·reformed ·wesleyan ·modern ecumenical

Article XIV — Of Purgatory

The Text

Article XIV is a single hostile sentence aimed at a whole system. “The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardon” (indulgences), “worshiping… of images… of relics, and… invocation of saints, is a fond” (foolish) “thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture.” Five practices, one verdict, one ground: they have no warrant of Scripture — Article V applied with a hammer. Wesley kept it verbatim. The interesting thing now is not the sixteenth-century polemic but the church’s own decision about how to read it: ¶104’s footnote places Article XIV at the head of the articles the United Methodist “Resolution of Intent” (2016) directs be received ecumenically. So this annotation has two jobs: state what the article actually rejects, and model the charity the church has formally asked of its readers.

Translation Notes

“the Romish doctrine.” The sixteenth-century pejorative for Roman Catholic teaching. It is not the United Methodist Church’s present voice — the Resolution of Intent exists precisely so the word is heard as historical, not as the church now insulting its Catholic neighbors.

“a fond thing, vainly invented.” Fond is archaic for foolish; vainly invented means of human, not divine, origin. The charge is not merely “wrong” but “humanly devised” — the opposite of “grounded upon… warrant of Scripture.”

“grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, but repugnant to the Word of God.” The article’s whole logic is Article V. The objection is not aesthetic or tribal; it is that these practices are required of consciences without scriptural warrant — the precise thing Article V forbids (“not to be required of any man… as an article of faith”).

Historical Context

Article XXII of the Thirty-Nine bundled five practices because in late-medieval devotion they were one system: purgatory created the need, indulgences (“pardons”) supplied the relief, the treasury of merit (Article XI) funded it, and the cult of saints, images, and relics oriented the piety. The Reformation attacked the system at its root — Scripture’s sufficiency — and Article XXII is the compressed verdict.

The decisive modern fact is the United Methodist Church’s own “Resolution of Intent: With a View to Unity” (2016 Book of Resolutions #3144), which ¶104 footnotes here. The church has formally said Articles XIV–XXI are to be read “in consonance with our best ecumenical insights and judgment” — i.e., as rejecting a specific abuse and theology (a merit-and-satisfaction economy imposed without scriptural warrant), not as a standing denunciation of Roman Catholics, who in modern Catholic teaching are themselves warned against the abuses the Reformers attacked. Honest annotation holds both: the article’s real and still-meaningful objection, and the church’s own instruction not to weaponize it.

Lines of Interpretation

The disputed question: what exactly is denied — a system of merit and satisfaction imposed without warrant, or every form of prayer with the saints and hope of post-mortem purification?

Patristic

Tradition: prayer for the dead; the communion of saints

The early church prayed for the dead and honored the martyrs long before the medieval system; a bare reading of Article XIV that denied all such practice would cut against patristic antiquity, which the Articles elsewhere respect.

Strengths

  • Forces precision: the article targets the Romish doctrine and system, not every ancient practice of memory and communion
  • Coheres with the Resolution of Intent’s call for ecumenical judgment

Weaknesses

  • The line between honored memory and “invocation” needs care the bare article does not supply
  • Patristic practice was not uniform; appealing to it cannot settle everything

Roman Catholic

Tradition: purgatory as purifying grace; the communion of saints

Modern Catholic teaching presents purgatory as final purification by grace (not a second chance, not earned), the intercession of saints as the communion of the one body, and condemns the indulgence abuses the Reformers attacked. It would say Article XIV strikes a sixteenth-century caricature, not the doctrine as the Church now teaches it.

Strengths

  • Distinguishes the abuse (which Trent itself curbed) from the doctrine, exactly the distinction the Resolution of Intent invites
  • Recovers the communion-of-saints concern the bare article can flatten

Weaknesses (of the dispute)

  • The historical practice the article names was real and ruinous, not invented by Protestants
  • “No warrant of Scripture” remains a genuine, not merely tribal, objection to required belief

Reformed

Tradition: sola scriptura; Christ’s finished work

The Reformed reading ties Article XIV tightly to Articles V and XX: purgatory and indulgences presuppose an unfinished satisfaction; Christ’s “one oblation… finished upon the cross” leaves nothing to be paid in purgatory. The objection is Christological, not merely biblicist.

Strengths

  • Gives the article a positive center (the sufficiency of Christ’s finished work), not just negation
  • Connects XIV to XX and V into one coherent argument

Weaknesses

  • Can over-extend into denying all prayerful communion with the faithful departed
  • The Christological argument is strong against purgatory-as- payment, weaker against purgatory-as-sanctifying-grace

Modern / Ecumenical

Tradition: the Resolution of Intent (2016); ecumenical dialogue

The church’s own act: read XIV–XXI with their real targets named and their invective disarmed; honor what is true in the communion of saints while maintaining Scripture’s sufficiency against required extra-scriptural belief.

Strengths

  • The official, binding interpretive frame — not optional softening but the church’s own instruction
  • Models Catholic Spirit applied to the church’s own polemical inheritance

Weaknesses

  • “Read ecumenically” can become “do not mean it,” losing a still- valid objection
  • Requires careful teaching, or the article is either weaponized or ignored

Wesleyan Voice

Wesley kept Article XIV and embodied the Resolution of Intent two centuries before it was written. His operative principle is Catholic Spirit: reject the doctrine you judge unscriptural without unchurching or despising the Christian who holds it. Wesley was a thoroughgoing Protestant on the substance — he held Christ’s atonement finished and complete (Article XX), denied a treasury of transferable merit (Article XI), and made Scripture the sufficient rule (Article V); purgatory and indulgences fall under all three. He could be sharply anti-Roman in controversy. But the same Wesley wrote, in A Letter to a Roman Catholic, one of the eighteenth century’s most irenic appeals across the divide, pleading for mutual love between Protestants and Catholics who hold the common faith. The Wesleyan reception of Article XIV is therefore exactly the church’s later Resolution: hold the scriptural objection to the system; refuse the article as a license for contempt.

The deeper Wesleyan note ties XIV to XI and V. The whole cluster the article rejects — purgatory, pardons, the treasury of merit — is the economy of supererogation (Article XI) given an afterlife. Wesley’s gospel has no room for it not because Methodists dislike Catholics but because sola fide (IX) and the one finished oblation (XX) leave no debt for purgatory to discharge and no surplus for pardons to sell. The article is the negative of the Wesleyan positive: the believer is “accounted righteous… only for the merit of… Christ,” and that merit is not eked out in a post-mortem ledger. Read so, Article XIV is not primarily about Rome at all; it is about the sufficiency of Christ — which is why it can be held firmly and preached without a trace of the contempt the Resolution of Intent forbids.

Hymnody

There is no Wesleyan hymn against purgatory; you do not sing a negation. What the tradition sings instead is the finished work that makes the system unnecessary — “Arise, my soul, arise, shake off thy guilty fears; the bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears,” where the only satisfaction is Christ’s, fully made. “Rock of Ages” — “thou must save, and thou alone… nothing in my hand I bring” — is Article XIV’s positive heart: no purgatory because no debt remains to be paid by the sinner, here or hereafter. And the Wesleyan funeral hymnody (“Rejoice for a brother deceased,” “Come, let us join our friends above”) sings the communion of saints as present praise, not as a transaction — honoring what is true in the doctrine the article’s target distorted.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

The first pastoral use is the positive behind the negative. Preach Article XIV not as anti-Catholic point-scoring but as the comfort of the finished work: there is no debt left for the believer to pay in death, no merit to purchase, because Christ’s one oblation is complete (Article XX) and the verdict rests on his merit alone (Article IX). For the grieving and the dying, that is the article’s real gift — not “Rome is wrong” but “it is finished.”

The second use is the Resolution of Intent made pastoral. When this article is read, name explicitly that “Romish” is the sixteenth- century word, not the church’s present voice, and that the United Methodist Church has formally directed it be read ecumenically. This is the place to teach a congregation Wesley’s Catholic Spirit on its own constitution: we may hold a doctrine to be unscriptural and still refuse to despise the Christians who hold it.

The third use is the communion of saints, rightly recovered. The article rejects invocation; it need not, and the Resolution of Intent asks it not, reject honoring the faithful departed and proclaiming the one body across death. Pastorally, this licenses a robust Wesleyan funeral and All Saints practice — singing “Come, let us join our friends above” — that keeps the article’s scriptural caution without surrendering the catholic comfort the medieval system had counterfeited.

Further Reading

  • Hebrews 9:24–28; 10:10–14; Luke 23:43; 2 Corinthians 5:8 — the finished work and the state of the faithful dead
  • Thirty-Nine Articles, Article XXII (1571) — Wesley’s source
  • Book of Resolutions (2016), #3144, “Resolution of Intent: With a View to Unity” — the church’s binding interpretive frame for XIV–XXI
  • John Wesley, A Letter to a Roman Catholic (1749) — the Catholic Spirit toward Rome in practice
  • The merit-economy this presupposes: [[articles-of-religion/article-11-of-works-of-supererogation]]
  • The finished sacrifice that answers it: [[articles-of-religion/article-20-of-the-one-oblation-of-christ]]
  • The rule it enforces: [[articles-of-religion/article-5-of-the-sufficiency-of-the-holy-scriptures]]

Related

The Articles of Religion

Article I — Of Faith in the Holy Trinity. There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Article II — Of the Word, or Son of God, Who Was Made Very Man. The Son, who is the Word of the Father, the very and eternal God, of one substance with the Father, took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin; so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one person, never to be divided; whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man, who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men. Article III — Of the Resurrection of Christ. Christ did truly rise again from the dead, and took again his body, with all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature, wherewith he ascended into heaven, and there sitteth until he return to judge all men at the last day. Article IV — Of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God. Article V — Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation. The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. Article VI — Of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is not contrary to the New; for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man, being both God and Man. Although the law given from God by Moses as touching ceremonies and rites doth not bind Christians, nor ought the civil precepts thereof of necessity be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral. Article VII — Of Original or Birth Sin. Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually. Article VIII — Of Free Will. The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will. Article IX — Of the Justification of Man. We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by faith, only, is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort. Article X — Of Good Works. Although good works, which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God's judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and spring out of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree is discerned by its fruit. Article XI — Of Works of Supererogation. Voluntary works — besides, over and above God's commandments — which they call works of supererogation, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety. For by them men do declare that they do not only render unto God as much as they are bound to do, but that they do more for his sake than of bounden duty is required; whereas Christ saith plainly: When ye have done all that is commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants. Article XII — Of Sin After Justification. Not every sin willingly committed after justification is the sin against the Holy Ghost, and unpardonable. Wherefore, the grant of repentance is not to be denied to such as fall into sin after justification. After we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given, and fall into sin, and, by the grace of God, rise again and amend our lives. And therefore they are to be condemned who say they can no more sin as long as they live here; or deny the place of forgiveness to such as truly repent. Article XIII — Of the Church. The visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments duly administered according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same. Article XIV — Of Purgatory. The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardon, worshiping, and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, but repugnant to the Word of God. Article XV — Of Speaking in the Congregation in Such a Tongue as the People Understand. It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the primitive church, to have public prayer in the church, or to minister the Sacraments, in a tongue not understood by the people. Article XVI — Of the Sacraments. Sacraments ordained of Christ are not only badges or tokens of Christian men's profession, but rather they are certain signs of grace, and God's good will toward us, by which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm, our faith in him. There are two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel; that is to say, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Article XVII — Of Baptism. Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christians are distinguished from others that are not baptized; but it is also a sign of regeneration or the new birth. The Baptism of young children is to be retained in the Church. Article XVIII — Of the Lord's Supper. The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another, but rather is a sacrament of our redemption by Christ's death… The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner. And the means whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is faith. Article XIX — Of Both Kinds. The cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the lay people; for both the parts of the Lord's Supper, by Christ's ordinance and commandment, ought to be administered to all Christians alike. Article XX — Of the One Oblation of Christ, Finished upon the Cross. The offering of Christ, once made, is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifice of masses, in the which it is commonly said that the priest doth offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, is a blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit. Article XXI — Of the Marriage of Ministers. The ministers of Christ are not commanded by God's law either to vow the estate of single life, or to abstain from marriage; therefore it is lawful for them, as for all other Christians, to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same to serve best to godliness. Article XXII — Of the Rites and Ceremonies of Churches. It is not necessary that rites and ceremonies should in all places be the same, or exactly alike; for they have been always different, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's Word. Every particular church may ordain, change, or abolish rites and ceremonies, so that all things may be done to edification. Article XXIII — Of the Rulers of the United States of America. The President, the Congress, the general assemblies, the governors, and the councils of state, as the delegates of the people, are the rulers of the United States of America, according to the division of power made to them by the Constitution of the United States and by the constitutions of their respective states. And the said states are a sovereign and independent nation, and ought not to be subject to any foreign jurisdiction. Article XXIV — Of Christian Men's Goods. The riches and goods of Christians are not common as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as some do falsely boast. Notwithstanding, every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability. Article XXV — Of a Christian Man's Oath. As we confess that vain and rash swearing is forbidden Christian men by our Lord Jesus Christ and James his apostle, so we judge that the Christian religion doth not prohibit, but that a man may swear when the magistrate requireth, in a cause of faith and charity, so it be done according to the prophet's teaching, in justice, judgment, and truth. Of Sanctification (appended 1939; legislative, not constitutionally protected). Sanctification is that renewal of our fallen nature by the Holy Ghost, received through faith in Jesus Christ, whose blood of atonement cleanseth from all sin; whereby we are not only delivered from the guilt of sin, but are washed from its pollution, saved from its power, and are enabled, through grace, to love God with all our hearts and to walk in his holy commandments blameless. Of the Duty of Christians to the Civil Authority (appended 1939; legislative, not constitutionally protected). It is the duty of all Christians, and especially of all Christian ministers, to observe and obey the laws and commands of the governing or supreme authority of the country of which they are citizens or subjects or in which they reside, and to use all laudable means to encourage and enjoin obedience to the powers that be.