The following are among the expressions in which the preacher, in the passage under consideration, addresses the Virgin's tomb: "Thou, O Tomb, of holy things most holy (for I will address thee as a living being), where is the much desired and much beloved body of the mother of God'?" The answer of the tomb begins thus, "Why seek ye her in a tomb, who has been taken up on high to the heavenly tabernacles?" In reply to this, the preacher first deliberating with his hearers what answer he should make, thus addresses the tomb 2: Thy grace indeed is never-failing and eternal," &c. By the maintainers of the invocation of saints, many a passage far less unequivocal and less cogent than this has been adduced to show, that saints and martyrs were invoked by primitive worshippers. 66 We find John Damascenus thus introducing the passage of Euthymius, "Ye see, beloved fathers and brethren, what answer the all-glorious tomb makes to us; and that these things are so, in the EUTHYMIAC HISTORY, the third book and fortieth chapter, is thus written word for word "." Lambecius maintains, that the history here quoted by John Damascenus was not an ecclesiastical history, written by Euthymius, who died in A.D. 472, but a biographical history concerning Euthymius himself, written by an ecclesiastic, whom he supposes to be Cyril, the monk, who died in A.D. 531. This opinion of Lambecius is combated by Cotelerius; the discussion only adding to the denseness of the cloud which involves the whole tradition. But whether the work quoted had Euthymius for its author or its subject, the work itself is lost; and an epitome only of such a work has come down to our time. In that abridgment the passage quoted by Damascenus is not found. The editor of John Damascenus, Le Quien, in his annotations on this portion of his works, offers to us some very interesting remarks, which bear immediately on the agitated question as to the first observance of the feast of the Assumption, as well as on the tradition itself. Le Quien infers, from the words of Modestus, patriarch of Jerusalem, that scarcely any preachers before him had addressed their congregations on the departure of the Virgin out of this life; he thinks, moreover, that the Feast of the Assumption was at the commencement of the seventh century only recently instituted. Though all later writers affirm that the Virgin was buried in the valley of Jehosophat, in the garden of Gethsemane, the same editor says, that this could not have been known to Jerome, who passed a great part of his life in Bethlehem, and yet observes a total silence on the subject; though in his "Epitaph on Paula '," he enumerates all the places in Palestine consecrated by any remarkable event. Neither, he adds, could it have been known to Epiphanius, who, though he lived long in Palestine, yet declares that nothing was known as to the death or burial of the Virgin 2. Again, in his remarks upon the writings falsely attributed to Melito3, the same editor says, that since this Pseudo-Melito speaks many jejune things of the Virgin Mary, (such for example as at the approach of death her exceeding fear of being exposed to the wiles of Satan,) he concludes, from that circumstance, that the work was written before the Council of Ephesus; alleging this very remarkable reason, that "after that 1 Jerome, Paris, 1706. Vol. iv. p. 670-688, ep. 86. 3 P. 880. time there BEGAN TO BE ENTERTAINED, as was right, not only in the East, but also in the West, a far better estimate of the parent of God." Many of the remarks of this editor would appear to savour of prejudice had they come from the pen of one who denied the reality of the assumption, or oppugned the honour and worship now paid by members of the Church of Rome to the Virgin. Nor could the suspicion of such prejudice be otherwise than increased by the insinuation which the same editor throws out against the honesty of Archbishop Juvenal, and on the possibility of his having invented the whole story, and so for sinister purposes deceiving Marcian and Pulcheria; just as he fabricated the writings which he forged for the purpose of securing the primacy of Palestine; a crime laid to the charge of Juvenal by Leo the Great, in his letter to Maximus Antiochenus1. It is moreover much to be regretted that in making the extracts from John Damascenus those who employ it as evidence of primitive belief, have not presented it to their readers whole and entire. In the present case the system of quoting garbled extracts is particularly to be lamented, because the paragraphs omitted in the quotation carry in themselves clear proof that Juvenal's answer, as it now appears in John Damascenus, could not have been made by Juvenal to Marcian and Pulcheria. For in it is quoted from Dionysius the Areopagite, by name a passage still found in the works ascribed to him; whereas by the judgment of the most learned Roman Catholic writers, those spurious works did not make their appearance in Christendom till the beginning of the sixth century, fifty years after the Council of Chalcedon, to assist at which 1 P. 879. Juvenal is said to have been present in Constantinople when the emperor and empress held the alleged conversation with him. The remainder of the passage from the history of Euthymius, rehearsed in this oration of John Damascenus, is as follows: "There were present with the Apostles at that time both the most honoured Timothy the Apostle, and first bishop of the Ephesians, and Dionysius the Areopagite, himself, as the great Dionysius testifies in the laboured words concerning the blessed Hierotheus, himself also then being present, to the above-named apostle Timothy, saying thus, Since with the inspired hierarchs themselves, "when we also as thou knowest, and yourself, and many of our holy brethren had come together to the sight of the body which gave the principle of life; and there was present too James the brother of the Lord', and Peter the chief and the most revered head of the apostles; then it seemed right, after the spectacle, that all the hierarchs (as each was able) should sing of the boundless goodness of the divine power. After the apostles, as you know, he surpassed all the other sacred persons, wholly carried away, and altogether in an ecstasy, and feeling an entire sympathy with what was sung; and by all by whom he was heard, and seen, and known (and he 3 knew it not), he was considered to be an inspired and divine hymnologist. And why should I speak to you about the things there divinely said, for unless I have even forgotten myself, I know that I have often heard from you some portions also of those inspired canticles? And the royal personages having heard this, requested of Juvenal the archbishop, that the holy coffin, with the * This seems confused in the original (καὶ ἐγινώσκετο, καὶ οὐκ ¿yivwokε). The whole passage is involved in great obscurity. clothes of the glorious and all-holy Mary, mother of God, sealed up, might be sent to them. And this, when sent, they deposited in the venerable temple of the Mother of God, built in Blachernæ; and these things were so." It is a fact no less lamentable than remarkable, that out of the lessons appointed by the Church of Rome for the feast of the Assumption, to be read to believers assembled in God's house of prayer, three of those lessons are selected and taken entirely from this very oration of John Damascenus'. This, then, is the account nearest to the time of the supposed event; and yet can any thing be more vague, and, by way of testimony, more worthless? A writer near the middle of the sixth century refers to a conversation, said to have taken place in the middle of the fifth century; in this reported conversation at Constantinople, the Bishop of Jerusalem is represented to have informed the Emperor and Empress of an ancient tradition, which was believed, concerning a miraculous event, said to have taken place nearly four hundred years before, that the body was taken out of a coffin without the knowledge of those who had deposited it there: Whilst the primitive and inspired account, recording most minutely the journeys and proceedings of some of those very persons, and the letters of others, makes no mention at all of any transaction of the kind; and of 1 The Fourth Lesson begins " Hodie sacra et animata arca.” The Fifth The Sixth "Hodie virgo immaculata." "Eva quæ serpentis,” &c.—Æ. 603. These contain the passages to which we have before referred as fixing the belief of the Church of Rome to be in the CORPOREAL assumption of Mary. "Quomodo corruptio invaderet CORPUS ILLUD in quo vita suscepta est ? πῶς διαφθορὰ τοῦ ζωοδοχου κατατολμήσειε σώματος ; |