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PART II-CHAPTER III.

SECTION I.

PRESENT SERVICE IN THE CHURCH OF ROME.

IN submitting to the reader's consideration the actual state of Roman Catholic worship at the present hour, I disclaim all desire to fasten upon the Church of Rome any of the follies and extravagancies of individual superstition. Probably many English Roman Catholics have been themselves shocked and scandalized by the scenes which their own eyes have witnessed in various parts of continental Europe. It would be equally unfair in us to represent the excesses of superstition there forced on our notice as the genuine legitimate fruits of the religion of Rome, as it would be in Roman Catholics. to affiliate on the Catholics of the Anglican Church the wild theories and revolting tenets of all who assume the name of opponents to Rome. Well indeed does it become us of both Churches to watch jealously and adversely as against ourselves the errors into which our doctrines, if not preserved and guarded in their purity and simplicity, might have a tendency to seduce the unwary. And whilst I am fully alive to the necessity of us Anglican Catholics prescribing to ourselves a

practical application of the same rule in various points of faith and discipline, I would with all delicacy and respect invite Roman Catholics to do likewise. Especially would I entreat them to reflect with more than ordinary scrutiny and solicitude on the vast evils into which the practice of praying to saints and angels, and of pleading their merits at the throne of grace, has a tendency to betray those who are unenlightened and off their guard; and unless my eyes and my ears and my powers of discernment have altogether often deceived and failed me, I must add, actually betrays thousands. Often when I have witnessed abroad multitudes of pilgrims prostrate before an image of the Virgin, their arms extended, their eyes fixed on her countenance, their words in their native language pouring forth her praises and imploring her aid, I have asked myself, If this be not religious worship, what is? If I could transport myself into the midst of pagans in some distant part of the world at the present day; or could I have mingled with the crowd of worshippers surrounding the image of Minerva in Athens, or of Diana in Ephesus, when the servants of the only God called their fellow-creatures from such vanities, should I have seen or heard more unequivocal proofs that the worshippers were addressing their prayers to the idols as representations of their deities? Would any difference have appeared in their external worship? When the Ephesians worshipped their "great goddess Diana and the image which fell down from Jupiter," could their attitude, their eyes, or their words more clearly have indicated an assurance in the worshipper, that the Spirit of the Deity was especially present in that image, than the attitude, the eyes, the words of the pilgrims at Einsiedlin for example, are indications of the same

belief and assurance with regard to the statue of the Virgin Mary? These thoughts would force themselves again and again on my mind; and though since I first witnessed such things many years have intervened, chequered with various events of life, yet whilst I am writing, the scenes are brought again fresh to my remembrance; the same train of thought is awakened; and the lapse of time has not in the least diminished the estimate then formed of the danger, the awful peril, to which the practice of addressing saints and angels in prayer, even in its most modified and mitigated form, exposes those who are in communion with Rome. I am unwilling to dwell on this point longer, or to paint in deeper or more vivid colours the scenes which I have witnessed, than the necessity of the case requires. But it would have been the fruit of a morbid delicacy rather than of brotherly love, had I disguised in this part of my address, the full extent of the awful dread with which I contemplate any approximation to prayers, of whatever kind, uttered by the lips or mentally conceived, to any spiritual existence in heaven above, save only to the one God exclusively. It is indeed a dread suggested by the highest and purest feelings of which I believe my frame of mind to be susceptible; it is sanctioned and enforced by my reason; and it is confirmed and strengthened more and more by every year's additional reflection and experience. Ardently as I long and pray for Christian unity, I could not join in communion with a Church, one of whose fundamental articles accuses of impiety those who deny the lawfulness of the invocations of saints.

But I return from this digression on the peril of idolatry, to which as well the theory as the practice of

the Roman Catholic Church exposes her members; and willingly repeat my disclaimer of any wish or intention whatever to fasten and filiate upon the Church of Rome the doctrines or the practice of individuals, or even of different sections of her communion. Still, in the same manner as I have referred to the extravagancies which offend us in many parts of Christendom now, I would recal some of the excesses into which renowned and approved authors of her communion have been betrayed. I seek not to fix on those members of the Roman Church who disclaim any participation in such excesses, the folly or guilt of others; but when we find many of the most celebrated among her sons tempted into such lamentable departures from primitive Christian worship, we are naturally led to ascertain whether the doctrine be not itself the genuine cause and source of the mischief; whether the malady be not the immediate and natural effect of the tenet and practice operating generally, and not to be referred to the idiosyncrasy of the patient. A voice seems to address us from every side, when such excesses are witnessed, Firmly resist the beginnings of the evil; oppose its very commencement; it is not a question of degree, exclude the principle itself from your worship; give utterance to no invocation; mentally conceive no prayer to any being, save God alone; plead no other merits with Him than the merits of his only Son. Then, and then only, are you safe. Then, and then only, is your prayer catholic, primitive, apostolic, and scriptural.

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The most satisfactory method of conducting this

I believe the method best calculated to supply us with the very truth is, as I have before observed, to trace the conduct of Christians at the shrines of the martyrs, and follow them in their successive departures further and further from primitive purity and simplicity, on the anniversaries of those servants of God. What was hailed there

branch of our inquiry seems to be, that we should examine the Roman Ritual with reference to those several and progressive stages to which I have before generally referred; from the mere rhetorical apostrophe to the direct prayer for spiritual blessings petitioned for immediately from the person addressed. I am neither anxious to establish the progress historically, nor do I wish to tie myself down in all cases to the exact order of those successive stages, in my present citation of testimonies from the Roman ritual. My anxiety is to give a fair view of what is now the real character of Roman Catholic worship, rather than to draw fine distinctions. I shall therefore survey within the same field of view the two fatal errors by which, as we believe, the worship of the Church of Rome is rendered unfit for the family of Christ to acknowledge it generally as their own: I mean the adoration of saints, and the pleading of their merits at the throne of grace, instead of trusting to the alone exclusive merits of the one only Mediator Jesus Christ our Lord, and addressing God Almighty alone.

I. In the original form of those prayers in which mention was made of the saints departed, Christians addressed the Supreme Being alone, either in praise for the mercies shown to the saints themselves, and to the Church through their means; or else in supplication, that the worshippers might have grace to follow their example, and profit by their instruction. Such, for instance, is the prayer in the Roman ritual' on St.

first in the full warmth of admiration and zeal for the honour and glory of a national or favourite martyr, crept stealthily, and step by step, into the regular and stated services of the Church.

The references will generally be given to the Roman Breviary as edited by F. C. Husenbeth, Norwich, 1830. That work consists of

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