John Calvin Commentary Luke 16:27

"And he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father`s house;" — Luke 16:27 (ASV)

I beg you, father. To bring the narrative into fuller accordance with our ways of thinking, he describes the rich man as wishing that his brothers, who were still alive, should be warned by Lazarus.

Here the Papists exercise their ingenuity very foolishly by attempting to prove that the dead feel concern about the living. Anything more ridiculous than this sophistry cannot be conceived.

For with equal plausibility, I might undertake to prove that believing souls are not satisfied with the place assigned to them and are driven by a desire to move from it to hell, were it not that they are prevented by a vast gulf. If no one holds such extravagant views, the Papists are not entitled to congratulate themselves on the other supposition.

It is not my intention, however, to debate the point or to defend either one side or another; but I thought it right to mention in passing the futility of the arguments on which they rest their belief that the dead intercede with God on our behalf. I now return to the plain and natural meaning of this passage.