PART II.

EVIDENCE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.

CHAPTER I.-SECTION I.

THE BIBLE.

If there is one paramount and pervading principle more characteristic of the revealed Word of God than any other, it seems to be this,-the preservation of a practical belief in the perfect unity of God, and the fencing of his worship against the admixture of any other of whatever character or form; the announcement that the Creator and Governor of the universe is the sole Giver of every temporal and spiritual blessing, the one only Being to whom his rational creatures should pay any religious service whatever, the one only Being to whom mortals must seek, by prayer and invocation, for the supply of any of their wants. And to this principle the New Testament has added another principle equally essential that there is one, and only one, Mediator between God and man, through whom every blessing must be sought and obtained, the Lord Christ Jesus, who is ever making intercession for us.

As to the first principle, through the entire volume the exclusive worship of God alone is insisted upon and guarded with the utmost jealousy, by assurances, by threats, and by promises, as the God who heareth

prayer, alone to be called upon, alone to be invoked, alone to be adored. Recourse is had (if we may so speak) to every expedient for the express purpose of protecting the sons and daughters of Adam from the fatal error of embracing in their worship any other being or name whatever, or of seeking from any other than the one Supreme God the supply of their wants: not reserving supreme and direct adoration or prayer to Him, and admitting some subordinate honour and indirect inferior mode of invocation to the most exalted of his creatures; but banishing at once and for ever the most distant approximation towards prayer and religious honour, excluding with uncompromising universality the veriest shadow of spiritual invocation to any other being than the Most High, God himself alone.

And with regard to the other principle we read, without any qualifying or limiting expression whatever, "There is One God, and One Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."*" He is able also to save to the uttermost them who come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them."-Nay, the mouth of Him, who spake as never man spake, thus solemnly and graciously announces the completeness of his own mediation: Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you."‡

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Entire pages to the same effect might be added. One Mediator has been revealed in his person and in his offices, and he is expressly declared to be the One Mediator between God and man; we therefore seek God's covenanted mercies through him. But (it will

* 1 Tim. ii. 5.

+ Heb. vii. 25.

John, xvi. 23.

be asked) is the mediatorship of the Son of God exclusive of all other mediators in heaven? May there not be other mediators of intercession as well as that one Mediator of redemption? We answer, What might have been man's duty, had the Almighty been pleased to give another revelation for man's guidance, is not the question: in the revelation which he has given, we find mention made only of one Mediator. And if it had been his will that we should approach the throne of mercy through any secondary or subsidiary mediators and intercessors, the analogy of his gracious dealings with mankind would compel us to expect a revelation of that will, as clear and unquestionable as that which we know he has vouchsafed of the mediation and intercession of his Son. His own revealed will directs us to pray for our fellow-creatures on earth, and to expect a beneficial effect from the prayers of the faithful upon earth, on our behalf, through the mediation of his blessed Son. To pray for them, therefore, and to seek their prayers, and to wait patiently for an answer, are acts of faith and of duty. But that He will favourably answer the prayers which we might supplicate other intercessors in the unseen world to offer, or which we might offer to Himself through their merits and by their mediation, is nowhere in the covenant. Instead of this, we find no single act, no single word, nothing which even by implication can be forced to sanction any prayer or religious invocation of any kind to any other being except God himself alone; nor any reliance whatever on the mediation or intercession of any being in the unseen world, save only our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

But is not his holy Mother an exception? does not Scripture teach us to infer that the blessed Virgin

has great present influence and power? and that her intercession and mediation may be sought in prayer addressed to her? We answer, that we find no trace or intimation of anything of the kind. But let us search the Scriptures, and see what has been revealed on this subject.

SECTION II.—THE OLD TESTAMENT.

The first intimation given to us that a woman was, in the providence of God, appointed to be the instrument or channel through which the Saviour of mankind should be brought into the world, was made immediately after the fall, and at the very first day of the dawn of salvation. The authorized English version renders the passage thus: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: IT shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."* The Roman Vulgate, instead of the word "it," reads "she;" the Septuagint renders it "he." But, whichever of the renderings of the Hebrew word be correct, for our present purpose it matters little. Whether the word here originally dictated by the Holy Spirit to Moses be so translated as to refer to the seed of the woman generally, or to the male child, the descendant of the woman, or to the word "woman" itself,-and if the latter, whether it refer to Eve, the mother of every child of a mortal parent, or to the immediate mother of the Redeemer, no Christian can doubt, that, before the foundations of the earth were laid, it was ordained in the councils of the Eternal Godhead, that the Messiah, the Redeemer of mankind, should be born of a

woman, and that in the mystery of that incarnation the serpent's head should be bruised; equally indisputable is it, that this prophetic announcement was in progress towards its final accomplishment when the Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary.

The only other reference made in the Old Testament to the mother of our Lord seems to be the celebrated prophecy of Isaiah, about which there can probably arise no controversy affecting the question before us: "A Virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." *

We need not here refer to those applications of Holy Scripture, &c., to the Virgin Mary, (however objectionable and unjustifiable they must appear to us,) which are made both in the authorized services of the Church of Rome, and in manuals of private devotion; because they can never be cited in argument. †

SECTION III.-THE NEW TESTAMENT.

In the New Testament mention by name is made of the Virgin Mary by St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke; and by St. John also in his Gospel, not by name, but as the mother of our Lord; and by no other writer. Neither does St. Paul, in any one of his various Epistles, though he mentions by name many of our Lord's disciples, nor St. James, nor St. Peter, who must often have seen Mary during our Lord's ministry, nor St. Jude, mention her as living, or allude to her as dead; nor does St. John, though, as his own Gospel teaches us, she had been committed to his

* C. vii. 14.

+ Such, for example, are the addresses of the Bride in the Song of Solomon and in the Apocryphal Book of Ecclesiasticus, the Praise of Wisdom.