that, in later times, some versions of the hymn* have translated this passage as though the prayer to Mary was, that she would by her maternal good offices in our behalf prove to us that she is OUR mother. We rejoice to see any such indication of a feeling of impropriety in the sentiment in its plain and obvious meaning: but the change is inadmissible; for not only is it contrary to the whole drift, and plain sense, and meaning of the passage, but it is altogether at variance with the interpretation put upon it both before and since the Reformation. In the second line she is addressed as the MOTHER of God; the Lord Jesus is immediately mentioned in the very next line, and through the entire stanza, as her Son; and the prayer is, that through her that Being, who endured to be her Son, would hear the prayers of the worshippers: and this obvious grammatical and logical meaning, "Shew thyself to be His mother," is the sense attached to it, not incidentally, but of set purpose before the Reformation. In a work† dedicated to the "Youth of * "Faites voir que vous êtes véritablement notre mère." Nouveau Recueil de Cantiques, p. 353.- In the English book called The Prince of Wales' Manual (1688) the lines are thus rendered: "Shew us a mother's care: To Him convey our prayer, It is curious to find that in the present day both these senses are attached to the phrase. The Bishop of Friburg, 1832, thus addresses Mary: "Mother of the Saviour God, and our own, shew that you are both the one and the other-Monstra te esse matrem—and cause us to experience the sweet effects of your POWER AND your motherly goodness." [Mariolatry, p. 118. Piller, Imprimeur de l'Evêché.] + This work was printed by the famous W. de Worde, at the sign of the Sun, in Fleet Street, 1508; and the passage occurs in p. 33, b. Great Britain studious of good morals," and written expressly for the purpose of explaining these parts of the Ritual according to the use of Sarum, the interpretation put on this passage is thus expressed, "Shew thyself to be A MOTHER, that is, by APPEASING THY SON; and let thy Son take our prayers through thee, who endured for us miserable sinners to be thy Son." In the English Primer of our Lady, (of which a MS. copy is now in the Rectory of Draycot, near Stone,) the verse is thus rendered : Shew thyself to be a mother, So that He accept our petition, Was contented to be thy Son. Nor can any other meaning be attached to the translation of the words, as given by Cardinal du Perron in the passage * above referred to. The other interpretation does not appear to have had a place in any one book of former days. It is impossible not to see in this the prototype, in softened colours, of Bonaventura's broad and shocking summons of the Virgin, to exert her maternal authority and command her Son, "By the right of a mother command thy Son." Another prayer in the Breviary runs thus: "Under thy protection we take refuge, Holy Mother of God. Despise not our supplications in our necessities; but This is by no means the only book of the kind: one is printed at Basle, and another at Cologne, in 1504. They are evidently drawn from some common source, but are not copies of the same work. The Cologne edition tells us, it was the reprint of a familiar commentary on the hymns, printed long ago. * "Monstre quetues mère, reçoive par toy nos prières Celuy, qui né pour nous a eu agreeable d'être tien." from all dangers do thou ever deliver us, O glorious and blessed Virgin." * Let us suppose the object of these addresses to be changed; and, instead of the Virgin, let us substitute the name of the ever-blessed God most high, the eternal Father of us all, and we shall find the very words here addressed to the Virgin offered to Him, and spoken of Him in some of the most affecting prayers and praises recorded in the Bible.† But another hymn in the office of the Virgin ad * Est. cxlvi. The identity of the prayers offered to the Virgin with those offered, either in the words of inspiration or in the Roman Ritual, to the Almighty Himself, becomes very striking, if we lay the prayers to the Virgin side by side with the original language of the Roman Liturgy, and the only translation of the Scriptures authorized by that Church: and it is an identity (as may be seen in this hymn and the hymn next cited) not in the form only, but in the substance of the prayers offered and the grace sought. dressed in part to the Saviour himself, and partly to the Virgin Mary, is to us still more revolting. The Redeemer is only asked to remember his mortal birth; no blessing is here sought at his hands in prayer; his protection is not the subject of the petition; no deliverance of our souls at the hour of death is sought from Him; for these blessings, and these divine mercies, supplication is made exclusively to the Virgin. Can such a mingled prayer, can such a contrast in prayer, be the genuine fruit of that Gospel which invites and commands us to seek in prayer to God for all we need of temporal and eternal good, in the name and for the sake of his blessed Son? "O Author of our salvation, remember that once, being born of a spotless Virgin, Thou didst take the form of our body. O Mary, Mother of Grace, Mother of Mercy, do thou protect us from the enemy, and receive us at the hour of death. Glory to Thee, O Lord, who wast born of a Virgin, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, through eternal ages. Amen." SECTION V. We must now refer to another example of the practice of the Church of Rome in her authorized and prescribed Ritual. The Rubric of the Common Prayer of the Church of England directs that at the end of every psalm, throughout the year, shall be repeated Glory be to the Father," &c. In the Roman Breviary also we find this Rubric: "This verse Gloria is always said at the end of all psalms, except it be other 66 * Est. cxlv. There is another reading of this hymn, but it does not affect the sense. wise noted."* The object proposed from of old by the Christian Church in concluding each psalm by an ascription of glory to the eternal Trinity, seems to have been to lead the worshipper to apply the psalm in its spirit to the work of our salvation, accomplished by the three blessed Persons in the Godhead. The Church of Rome by substituting, instead of the "Gloria," anthems in praise of the Virgin (on the feast of her Assumption, for example), does all that can be done to fix the thoughts of the worshipper on Mary, and to apply the spirit of the psalm to her; a practice which sanctions the excesses into which Bonaventura and others have run in their departures from the purity and integrity of primitive worship. In some cases the anthem to the Virgin is so interwoven with the psalm as to render the insertion of the "Gloria " between them, at the very least, unnatural and forced: and where that is not the case,-where the Gloria might be inserted, the annexation of the anthem has a tendency to seduce the thoughts of the worshipper from the truths contained in the inspired psalm, and to fix them upon Mary and her asserted Assumption; changing the Church's address from the Eternal Being alone invoked by the Psalmist, to one who, though a virgin blessed among women, is a creature of God's hand. On comparing, however, the Office of the Assumption and the "Lesser Office of the Virgin," we cannot but infer that, in the former, the Gloria was intended to be altogether omitted; because in the latter, though there are similar anthems to the Virgin annexed to several psalms, the Gloria is inserted between them. This would, indeed, be some degrees worse; but in * Est. 3. |