As the parish and tithe system developed, this older approach would not do: some other way must be devised to cope with the hopes and fears of a sinful population who could not afford such provision. This was where the idea of a middle state between Heaven and Hell, first envisaged in the theology of the Alexandrian theologians Clement and Origen at the turn of the second and third centuries, proved so useful and comforting. The instinct for justifying salvation by human effort, a constant thread from Origen through Evagrius and John Cassian, emerged once more to confront the ‘grace alone’
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