PART III.-CHAPTER II.

EVIDENCE OF PRIMITIVE WRITERS.

CLOSING the inspired volume, and seeking at the fountain-head for the evidence of Christian antiquity, what do we find? For upwards of three centuries and a half (the limit put to our present inquiry) we discover in no author, Christian or heathen, any trace whatever of the invocation of the Virgin Mary by Catholic Christians. I have examined every passage which I have found adduced by writers of the Church of Rome, and have searched for any other passages which might appear to deserve consideration as bearing favourably on their view of the subject; and the worship of the Virgin, such as is now insisted upon by the Council of Trent, prescribed by the Roman ritual, and practised in the Church of Rome, is proved by such an examination to have had neither name, nor place, nor existence among the early Christians. Forgive my importunity if I again and again urge you to join us in weighing these facts well; and to take your view of them from no advocate on the one side or the other. Search the Scriptures for yourselves, search the earliest writers for yourselves, and for yourselves search with all diligence into the authentic and authorized liturgies of your own Church, your missals, and breviaries, and formularies. Hearsay evidence, tes

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timony taken at second or third hand, vague rumours and surmises will probably expose us, on either side, to error. Let well-sifted genuine evidence be brought by an upright and an enlightened mind to bear on the point at issue, and let the issue joined be this, Is the practice of praying to the Virgin, and praising her, in the language of the prayers and praises now used in the prescribed formularies of the Roman Church, primitive, Catholic, Apostolical?

I am aware that among those who adhere to the Tridentine Confession of faith, there are many on whom this investigation will not be allowed to exercise any influence.

The sentiments of Huet, wherever they are adopted, would operate to the total rejection of such inquiries as we are instituting in this work. 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 of the Church, and confirmed by the Council y of Trent. In which it is our duty to acquiesce, rather than in the dicta of the ancients, if any seem to think otherwise, among whom must be numbered Origen '."

In this address, however, we take for granted that the reader is open to conviction, desirous of arriving at the truth, and, with that view, ready to examine and sift the evidence of primitive antiquity.

In that investigation our attention is very soon called to the remarkable fact, that, whereas in the case of the invocation of saints and angels, the defenders of that doctrine and practice bring forward a great variety of passages, in which mention is supposed to be made of 1 Origen's Works, vol. iv. part 2, p. 156.

those beings as objects of honour and reverential and grateful remembrance, the passages quoted with a similar view, as regards the Virgin Mary, are very few indeed whilst the passages which intimate that the early Christians paid her no extraordinary honour (certainly not more than we of the Anglican Church do now) are innumerable.

I have thought that it might be satisfactory here to refer to each separately of those earliest writers, whose testimony we have already examined on the general question of the invocation of saints and angels, and, as nearly as may be, in the same order.

In the former department of our investigation we first endeavoured to ascertain the evidence of those five primitive writers, who are called the Apostolical Fathers; and, with regard to the subject now before us, the result of our inquiry into the same works is this:

1. In the Epistle ascribed to BARNABAS we find no allusion to Mary.

2. The same must be affirmed of the book called The Shepherd of HERMAS.

3. In CLEMENT of Rome, who speaks of the Lord Jesus having descended from Abraham according to the flesh, no mention is made of that daughter of Abraham of whom he was born.

4. IGNATIUS', in a passage already quoted, speaks of Christ both in his divine and human nature as Son of God and man, and he mentions the name of Mary, but it is without any adjunct or observation whatever, “both of Mary and of God." In another place he speaks of her virgin state, and the fruit of her womb; and of her having borne our God Jesus the Christ; but he adds no

more; not even calling her "The blessed," or "The Virgin." In the interpolated Epistle to the Ephesians, the former passage adds "the Virgin" after "Mary," but nothing more.

5. In the Epistle of POLYCARP we find an admonition to virgins', how they ought to walk with a spotless and chaste conscience, but there is no allusion to the Virgin Mary.

JUSTIN MARTYR. In this writer I do not find any passage so much in point as the following, in which we discover no epithet expressive of honour, or dignity, or exaltation, though it refers to Mary in her capacity of the Virgin mother of our Lord :-"He therefore calls Himself the Son of Man, either from his birth of a virgin, who was of the race of David, and Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham, or because Abraham himself was the father of those persons enumerated, from whom Mary drew her origin"." And a little below he adds, "For Eve being a virgin and incorrupt, having received the word from the serpent, brought forth transgression and death; but Mary the Virgin having received faith and joy (on the angel Gabriel announcing to her the glad tidings, that the Spirit of the Lord should come upon her, and the power of the Highest overshadow her) answered, Be it unto me according to thy word. And of her was born He of whom we have shown that so many Scriptures have been spoken; He by whom God destroys the serpent, and angels and men resembling [the serpent]; but works a rescue from death for such as repent of evil and believe in Him." One more passage will suffice 3, "And according to the command of God, Joseph, taking Him with Mary, went into Egypt."

Among those "Questions" to which we have referred under the head of Justin Martyr's works, but which are confessedly of a much less remote date, probably of the fifth century, an inquiry is made, How could Christ be + free from blame, who so often set at nought his parent? The answer is, that He did not set her at nought; that He honoured her in deed, and would not have hurt her by his words;—but then the respondent adds, that Christ chiefly honoured Mary in that view of her maternal character, under which all who heard the word of God and kept it, were his brothers and sisters and mother; and that she surpassed all women in virtue'.

IRENEUS. To the confused passage relied upon by Bellarmin, in which Irenæus is supposed to represent Mary as the advocate of Eve, we have already fully referred. In that passage there is no allusion to any honour paid, or to be paid to her, nor to any invocation of her. In every passage to which my attention has been drawn, Irenæus speaks of the mother of our Lord as Mary, or the Virgin, without any adjunct, or term of

reverence.

3

CLEMENT of Alexandria speaks of the Virgin, and refers to an opinion relative to her virgin-state, but without one word of honour.

TERTULLIAN. The passages in which this ancient writer refers to the mother of our Lord are very far from countenancing the religious worship now paid to her by Roman Catholics: "The brothers of the Lord had not believed on him, as it is contained in the Gospel pub

1 Qu. 136. p. 500.

3 Stromat. vii. 16. p. 889.

4

Paris, 1675. De carne Christi, vii. p. 315. De Monogamia, vii. p. 529. N. B. Both these treatises were probably written after he became a Montanist.