PART III. EVIDENCE OF THE EARLY CHURCH DOWN TO THE CHAPTER I. ANCIENT CREEDS AND THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. SECTION I. In pursuing our inquiry into the lawfulness of the worship of the Virgin Mary in the Church of Rome, we are led to examine the evidence of Christian antiquity, not by any misgiving, lest the testimony of Scripture might appear defective or doubtful, far less by any idea of God's word needing the support of man's suffrage. On the contrary, the voice of God in his revealed word seems to us to give no faint or uncertain sound, as it warns us against the lawfulness of a Christian offering prayers, or any religious worship, or any invocation, to the Virgin Mary; and it must be a fixed principle in the Christian's creed, that where God's written word is clear and certain, human evidence cannot be weighed against it. When the Lord hath spoken, well does it become the whole earth to be silent before him; when the Eternal Judge himself hath decided, the witness of man bears on its very face the stamp of incompetency and presumption. But in testing the soundness of our interpretation of God's written word, the works of the earliest writers of the Christian Church are most valuable; and in our investigation of the prevalence of any doctrine or practice in primitive times, those ancient records are indispensable. Now let it be supposed, that instead of the oracles of God's revelation having spoken against the doctrine and practice of offering prayer or religious worship to any being but God alone, the question had been left in Scripture an open question; then what evidence would have been deducible from the writings of the primitive Church for the worship of the Virgin? What testimony do the first ages, after the canon of Scripture was closed, bear upon this point? When we of the Church of England religiously abstain from the presentation of any address of the nature of prayer or supplication, entreaty, request, or any invocation of whatever kind, and from any acts of religious worship and praise to Mary, are we, or are we not, treading in the steps of the first Christians, and adhering to the very pattern which they set? Do not members of the Church of Rome by such acts of worship, directed to the Virgin Mary, as we find in their authorized and appointed liturgies, and in their works of private devotion, depart as far and as decidedly from the model of primitive Christianity as they do from the plain sense of Holy Scripture? The result of a careful examination of the body of Christian writers is this, that at least through the first five centuries the worship of the Virgin, now insisted upon by the Council of Trent, prescribed by the Roman Ritual, and actually practised in the Church of Rome, had neither name, nor place, nor existence among Christians. The writers who lived in those times never refer to the worship of the Virgin as a practice with which they were familiar; and the principles which they habitually maintain, and the sentiments with which their works abound, are utterly irreconcileable with such a practice. Among those indeed who adhere to the Tridentine Confession of Faith, there are persons on whom such. an investigation would not be allowed to exercise any influence. The sentiments of the celebrated Huet, wherever they are adopted, would operate to the rejection of such inquiries as we are now instituting. His words on the immaculate conception of the Virgin are of far wider application than the immediate occasion on which he used them: "That the blessed Mary never conceived any sin in herself, is in the present day an established principle in the Church, and confirmed by the Council of Trent; in which it is our duty to acquiesce, rather than in the dicta of the ancients, if any of them seem to think otherwise, among whom must be numbered Origen."* In the present work, however, we take for granted that the reader is still open to conviction, desirous of arriving at the truth, and, as one efficient means of attaining it, ready to sift honestly and patiently the evidence of the PRIMITIVE CHURCH. SECTION II. THE ANCIENT CREEDS. Before we proceed to inquire into the evidence afforded by individual writers, either in their own recorded sentiments, or with reference to the prevailing belief and practice of their age, it will not be here out of place to observe, that, in the most ancient creeds there is no intimation whatever of any idea being then entertained as to the posthumous exaltation of the Virgin, her assumption into heaven, the invoca Origen's Works, vol. iv. part ii. p. 156. tion of her name, reliance on her merits and patronage, or belief in her intercession. Many creeds are recorded in the early writers, in which the incarnation of the Son of God is invariably an article never omitted, and in some cases it is dwelt upon largely; but the phrases employed allude to no dignity of his mother's nature, no mediatorial office assigned to her, no power of benefiting mankind granted to her, nor any adoration of her name. The three creeds usually employed in the Church now may be regarded as affording conjointly a fair specimen of the language and sentiments of the rest, some of which mention the Virgin by name, others not alluding to her further than as St. Paul does,-" born of a woman." "He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary;"*"He was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary;"+"God of the substance of his Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of the substance of his mother, born in the world." Thus some of the ancient creeds say, “born of a Virgin;" others, "born of Mary;" others, "born of the holy Virgin Mary;" not one referring to her except as the mother of the Incarnate Word, without any allusion to her dignity, or authority, or present state and in this respect they all differ essentially from the creed of Pope Pius IV., to the belief in the truth of which ministers of the Church of Rome are bound, as containing articles of faith, without which there is no salvation.§ That creed not only announces that the saints reigning with Christ are to be worshipped and invoked, but, whilst it asserts that generally due honour and worship must be paid to images Nicene Creed. Apostles' Creed. Athanasian Creed. § Catechismus ad Parochos. Lugduni, 1686; p. 521. of other saints, joins in a marked manner the images of "Christ and the Virgin Mary" together, in contradistinction to the others. Of such things as these there is no more trace to be found in any of the ancient creeds than in the Holy Scriptures themselves.* SECTION III.- EVIDENCE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. In sifting the testimony of the most ancient writers of the primitive Church, it will be necessary, for the satisfaction of all parties, that we examine, in the first place, those ancient writings which are ascribed to an Apostle, or to fellow-labourers of the Apostles, familiarly known as "the Apostolic Fathers." They are five in number: Barnabas, Clement, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp. Some of these works have been generally considered spurious, others have been as generally pronounced genuine. The question, however, of their genuineness, though in itself deeply interesting, will little affect their testimony on the subject before us: whether written or not by the pen of those to whom antiquity has referred them, they are witnesses of the opinions and practices current at the time of their composition. No one can reasonably doubt that they were all in existence long before the Council of Nicæa; whilst some of them with greatest probability may be referred to a point of time within the first century after our Lord's death, or even after his birth. With all their errors, and blemishes, and interpolations, taken at the worst ;-after every reasonable deduction for defects in taste, and style, and We need not here allude to what are called Ancient Liturgies, because none of those whose reputed dates fall within the five hundred years embraced in the present treatise can even with the greatest latitude of admission be regarded as genuine. |