falling within the limits of our present inquiry, nor have I neglected any one passage which I could find bearing testimony to any honour paid to the Virgin. The result of my research is, that I have not discovered one solitary expression which implies that religious invocation and honour, such as is now offered to Mary by the Church of Rome, was addressed to her by the members of the primitive Catholic Church.

PART III.-CHAPTER III.

THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN MARY.

By the Church of England, two festivals are observed in grateful commemoration of two events relating to Mary as the mother of our Lord:-the announcement of the Saviour's birth by the message of an angel, called, "The Annunciation of the blessed Virgin Mary," and "The Presentation of Christ in the Temple," called also, "The Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin." In the service for the first of these solemnities, we are taught to pray that, as we have known the incarnation of the Son of God by the message of an angel, so by his Cross and Passion we may be brought to the glory of his resurrection. In the second, we humbly beseech the Divine Majesty that, as his only-begotten Son was presented in the Temple in the substance of our flesh, so we may be presented unto Him with pure and clean hearts by the same, his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. These days are observed to commemorate events declared to us on the most sure warrant of Holy Scripture; and these prayers are primitive and evangelical. They pray only to God for spiritual blessings through his Son. The second prayer was used in the Church

from very early times, and is still retained in the Roman Breviary; whereas, instead of the first 2, we find there unhappily a prayer now supplicating that those who offer it," believing Mary to be truly the mother of God, might be aided by her intercessions with Him "."

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In the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, feasts are observed to the honour of the Virgin Mary, in which the Anglican Church cannot join; such as the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, and the Miraculous Conception. On the origin and nature of these feasts it is not my intention to dwell. I can only express my regret, that by appointing a service and a collect commemorative of the Conception of the Virgin in her mother's womb, and praying that the observance of that solemnity may procure the votaries an increase of peace, the Church of Rome has given countenance to a superstition, against which at its commencement, so late as the 12th century 5, St. Bernard strongly remonstrated, in an epistle to the monks of Lyons; a superstition which has been supported and explained by discussions in no way profitable to the head or the heart.

Of all these institutions however in honour of the Virgin, the Feast of the ASSUMPTION appears to be as it were the crown and the consummation". This festival

1 Hus. Brev. Rom. H. 536.

2 This collect also is found in the Roman Missal, as a Prayer at the Post Communion; though it does not appear in the Breviarium Romanum. V. 500.

3 Vide page 496.

* Ut quibus beatæ Virginis partus exstitit salutis exordium, conceptionis ejus votiva solemnitas pacis tribuat incrementum. H. 445. Epist. 174. Paris, 1632, p. 1538.

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"The Assumption of the Virgin Mary is the greatest of all the festivals which the Church celebrates in her honour. It is the consummation of all the other great mysteries by which her life was ren

is kept to celebrate the miraculous taking up (assumptio) of the Virgin Mary into heaven. And its celebration, in Roman Catholic countries, is observed in a manner worthy a cause to which our judgment would give deliberately its sanction; in which our feelings would safely and with satisfaction rest on the firmness of our faith; from joining in which a truly pious mind would have no ground for inward misgiving, nor for the aspiration, Would it were founded in truth!

Before such a solemn office of praise and worship were ever admitted among the institutions of the religion of truth, its originators and compilers should have built upon sure grounds; careful too should they also be who now join in the service, and so lend it the countenance of their example; more especially should those sift the evidence well, who, by their doctrine and writings, uphold, and defend, and advance it; lest they prove at the last to love Rome rather than the truth as it is in Jesus. So solemn, so marked, a religious service in the temples and at the altar of HIM who is the truth, a service so exalted above its fellows, ought beyond question to be founded on the most sure warrant of Holy Scripture, or at the least on undisputed historical evidence, as to the alleged matter of fact on which it is built, the certain, acknowledged, uninterrupted, and universal testimony of the Church Catholic from the very time. They incur a momentous responsibility who aid in propagating for religious truths the inventions of men 1.

dered most wonderful. It is the birthday of her true greatness and glory, and the crown of all the virtues of her whole life, which we admire single in her other festivals." Alban Butler, vol. viii. p. 175. Very different opinions are held by Roman Catholic writers as to the antiquity of this feast. All, indeed, maintain that it is of very ancient introduction; but whilst some, with Lambecius (lib. viii.

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But what is the real state of the case with regard to the fact of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary? It rests (as we shall soon see) on no authentic history; it is supported by no primitive tradition. I profess my surprise to have been great, when I found the most celebrated defenders of the Roman Catholic cause, instead of citing such evidence as would bear with it even the appearance of probability, appealing to histories written more than a thousand years after the alleged event, to forged documents and vague rumours. I was willing to doubt the sufficiency of my research; till I found its defenders, instead of alleging and establishing by evidence what God was by them said to have done, contenting themselves with asserting his omnipotence, in proof that the doctrine implied no impossibility; dwelling on the fitness and reasonableness of his working such a miracle in the honour of her who was chosen to be the mother of his eternal Son; and whilst they took the fact as granted, substituting for argument glowing and fervent descriptions of what might have been the joy in heaven, and what ought to be the feelings of mortals on earth.

At every step of the inquiry into the merits of this case, the principle recurs to the mind, that, as men really and in earnest looking onward to a life after this, our duty is to ascertain to the utmost of our

p. 286.), maintain the antiquity of the festival to be so remote, that its origin cannot be traced; and thence infer that it was instituted by a silent and unrecorded act of the Apostles themselves; others (among whom Kollarius, the learned annotator on the opinion of Lambecius) acknowledge, that it was introduced by an ordinance of the Church, though not at the same time in all countries of Christendom. That annotator assigns its introduction at Rome to the fourth century; at Constantinople to the sixth; in Germany and France to

the ninth.