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A Prefatory address to the Catholike Reader.
Dear Reader,
THe drift of this Treatise is not to prove Purgatory but taking it for granted as a prime maxime of Catho∣licism, that God has a suffering Church in the other world, besides that which triumphes in heaven and is mili∣tant here upon earth, the design is to set it forth in such lively colours, as may not only express its nature (as far as we are able to judge of it at so great a distance) but raise your thoughts, first to a compassionate care for the present, of procuring all possible relief for such distressed souls, as are already faln under the lash of those merciless torments, and secondly to a provident prevention for the future, that the like mischief may not involve your selves hereafter. Now this being the chief aime of these my labours, I am put up∣on a kind of necessity of giving you the trouble of this Prefatory address. For should this Survay of Purgatory fall