is very curious, but not more curious than evident, that the worshippers seem for some time to have petitioned their saints for temporal and bodily benefits, before they proceeded to ask for spiritual blessings at their hands, or by their prayers '.

Of these several gradations and stages we find traces in the records of Christian antiquity, after superstition and corruption had spread through Christian worship, and leavened the whole. Of all of them we have lamentable instances in the present ritual of the Church of Rome, as we shall see somewhat at large when we reach that division of our inquiry. But from the beginning it was not so. In the earliest ages we find only the first of these forms of worship exemplified, and it is the only form now retained in the Anglican Ritual; of which, among other examples, the following passage in the prayer for Christ's Church militant on earth supplies a beautiful specimen: "We bless Thy holy name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and fear; beseeching Thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of Thy heavenly kingdom: Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ's sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen."

We now proceed to examine the invaluable remains of Christian antiquity, not for the purpose of testing the accuracy of the above catalogue of gradations seriatim and in order of time; but to satisfy ourselves on the question, whether the invocation of saints and angels prevailed from the first in the Christian Church; or whether it was an innovation introduced after pagan superstition had begun to mingle its poisonous corruptions with the pure worship of

1 See Basil. Orat. in Mamanta Martyrem.

Almighty God. And here, I conceive, few persons will be disposed to doubt, that if the primitive believers were taught by the Apostles to address the saints. reigning in heaven and the holy angels, and the Virgin Mother of our Lord, with adoration and prayers, the earliest Christian records must have contained clear and indisputable references to the fact, and that undesigned allusions to the custom would inevitably be found offering themselves to our notice here and there. I do not mean that we should expect to meet with full and explicit statements either of the doctrine or the practice of the primitive Church in this particular; much less such apologies and elaborate defences of the practice as abound to the overflow in later times. But, what is more satisfactory in proof of the general and established prevalence of any opinions or customs, we should surely find expressions incidentally occurring, which implied an habitual familiarity with such opinions or customs. In every record, for example, of primitive antiquity, from the very earliest of all, expressions are constantly meeting us which involve the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity, the atoning sacrifice of Christ's death, the influences of the Holy Spirit; habitual prayer and praise offered to the Saviour of the world, as very and eternal God; the holy Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper; with other tenets and practices of the Apostolic Church. It is impossible to study the remains of Christian antiquity without being assured beyond the reach of doubt, that such were the doctrines and practice of the universal Church from the days of the Apostles. Is the invocation of saints and angels and the blessed Virgin to be made an exception to this rule? Can it stand this test?

The great anxiety and labour of Roman Catholic

writers to press the authors of every age to bear witness on their side in this behalf, proves that in their judgment no such exception is admissible. It is clearly beyond gainsaying, that if the present doctrine of the Church of Rome, with respect to the worship of angels and saints, as propounded by the Council of Trent; and if her present practice as set forth in her authorized liturgies and devotional services, and professed by her popes, bishops, clergy, and people, had been the doctrine and practice of the primitive Church, we should have found evident and indisputable traces of it in the earliest works of primitive antiquity, in the earliest liturgies, and in the forms of prayer and exhortations to prayer with which those works abound. It by no means follows that if some such allusions were partially discoverable, therefore the doctrines and practice must forthwith be pronounced to be apostolical; but if no such traces can be found, their absence bears witness that neither did those doctrines nor that practice exist. If, for example, through the remains of the first three centuries we could have discovered no trace of the doctrine or practice of holy Baptism and the Eucharist, we must have concluded that the doctrine and the practice were the offspring of later years. But when we read every where, in those remains, exhortations to approach those holy mysteries with a pure heart and faith unfeigned; when we find rules prescribed for the more orderly administration of the rites; in a word, when we perceive throughout as familiar references to these ordinances as could be now made by Catholics either of Rome or of England, while this would not of itself necessarily prove their divine origin, we should with equal plausibility question the existence of Jerusalem or Constantinople, or of David or Constantine, as we

should doubt the prevalence both of the doctrine and practice of the Church in these particulars, even from the Apostles' days.

With these principles present to our minds, I now invite you to accompany me in a review of the testimonies of primitive Christian antiquity with regard to supplications and invocations of saints and angels, and of the blessed Virgin Mary.

SECTION II.-CENTURY I.

THE EVIDENCE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS.

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 fellowlabourers of the Apostles; familiarly known as the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. They are five in number, Barnabas, Clement, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp. Many able writers, as well of the Roman as of the Anglican communion, have discussed at large the genuineness of these writings; and have come to very different results. Some critics are of opposite and extreme opinions, others ranging between them with every degree and shade of variation. Some of these works have been considered spurious; others have been pronounced genuine; though, even these have been thought to be, in many parts, interpolated. The question, however, of their genuineness, though deeply interesting in itself, will not affect their testimony with

regard to the subject before us'. They were all in existence before the Council of Nicæa; and we shall probably not be wrong in assigning to the first two a date at the very lowest computation not less remote than the middle of the second century; somewhere, it may be, at the furthest, about one hundred years after the death of our Lord. (A.D. 130-150.) With all their errors and blemishes and interpolations taken at the worst, after every reasonable deduction for defects in matter, taste, and style, the writings which are ascribed to the Apostolic Fathers are too venerable for their antiquity, too often quoted with reverence and affection by some who have been the brightest ornaments of the Christian Church, and possess too copious a store of genuine evangelical truth, sound principle, primitive simplicity, and pious sentiment, to be passed over with neglect by any Catholic Christian. The few extracts

1

I do not think it suitable in this address to enter upon the difficult field of inquiry, whether all or which of these works were the genuine productions of those whose names they bear; and whether the Barnabas, Clement, and Hermas to which three of them are ascribed, were the Barnabas, Clement, and Hermas of whom express mention is made in the pages of Holy Scripture. I have determined, in conducting my argument, to affix to them in each case the lowest proposed antiquity. The edition of Archbishop Wake, (who maintains the highest antiquity for these works, though I have not here adopted his translation,) may be consulted with much profit.

Did the question before us relate to the genuineness and dates of these works, they could not, with any approach to fairness, be all five placed without distinction under the same category. The evidence for the genuineness of Clement, Ignatius in the shorter copy, and Polycarp, is too valuable to be confounded with that of the others, which are indisputably subject to much greater doubt. But this question has only an incidental bearing on our present inquiry, and will be well spared.