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hereafter; at present, I will only add one further consideration. If, as we are now repeatedly told, the utmost sought by the invocation of saints is that they would intercede for the supplicants; that no more is meant than we of the Anglican Church mean when we earnestly entreat our fellow-Christians on earth to pray for us, why should not the prayers to the saints be confined exclusively to that form of words which would convey the meaning intended? why should other forms of supplicating them be adopted, whose obvious and direct meaning implies a different thing? If we request a Christian friend to pray for us, that we may be strengthened and supported under a trial and struggle in our spiritual warfare, we do not say, "Friend, strengthen me; Friend, support me." That entreaty would imply our desire to be, that he would visit us himself, and comfort and strengthen us by his own kind words and cheering offices of consolation and encouragement. To convey our meaning, our words would be, "Pray for me; remember me in your supplications to the throne of grace. Implore God, of his mercy, to give me the strength and comfort of his Holy Spirit." If nothing more is ever intended to be conveyed, than a similar request for their prayers, when the saints are "suppliantly invoked,” in a case of such delicacy, and where there is so much danger of words misleading, why have other expressions of every variety been employed in the Roman Liturgies, as well as in the devotions of individuals, which in words appeal to the saints, not for their prayers, but for their own immediate exertion in our behalf, their assistance, succour, defence, and comfort,-" Protect us from our enemies -Heal the diseases of our minds-Release us from our sin- Receive us at the hour of death?"

In the present work, however, were it not for the example and warning set us by this still greater departure from Scripture and the primitive Church, we need not have dwelt on this immediate point; because we maintain that any invocation of saint or angel, even if it were confined to a petitioning for their prayers and intercessions, is contrary both to God's word and to the faith and practice of the primitive, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. We now proceed to the next portion of our proposed inquiry,-the present state of Roman Catholic worship, with respect to the invocation of saints and angels.

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PART II-CHAPTER III.

SECTION I.

PRESENT SERVICE IN THE CHURCH OF ROME.

IN submitting to the reader's consideration the actual state of Roman Catholic worship at the present hour, I disclaim all desire to fasten upon the Church of Rome any of the follies and extravagancies of individual superstition. Probably many English Roman Catholics have been themselves shocked and scandalized by the scenes which their own eyes have witnessed in various parts of continental Europe. It would be equally unfair in us to represent the excesses of superstition there forced on our notice as the genuine legitimate fruits of the religion of Rome, as it would be in Roman Catholics to affiliate on the Catholics of the Anglican Church the wild theories and revolting tenets of all who assume the name of opponents to Rome. Well indeed does it become us of both Churches to watch jealously and adversely as against ourselves the errors into which our doctrines, if not preserved and guarded in their purity and simplicity, might have a tendency to seduce the unwary. And whilst I am fully alive to the necessity of us Anglican Catholics prescribing to ourselves a

practical application of the same rule in various points of faith and discipline, I would with all delicacy and respect invite Roman Catholics to do likewise. Especially would I entreat them to reflect with more than ordinary scrutiny and solicitude on the vast evils into which the practice of praying to saints and angels, and of pleading their merits at the throne of grace, has a tendency to betray those who are unenlightened and off their guard; and unless my eyes and my ears and my powers of discernment have altogether often deceived and failed me, I must add, actually betrays thousands. Often when I have witnessed abroad multitudes of pilgrims prostrate before an image of the Virgin, their arms extended, their eyes fixed on her countenance, their words in their native language pouring forth her praises and imploring her aid, I have asked myself, If this be not religious worship, what is? If I could transport myself into the midst of pagans in some distant part of the world at the present day; or could I have mingled with the crowd of worshippers surrounding the image of Minerva in Athens, or of Diana in Ephesus, when the servants of the only God called their fellow-creatures from such vanities, should I have seen or heard more unequivocal proofs that the worshippers were addressing their prayers to the idols as representations of their deities? Would any difference have appeared in their external worship? When the Ephesians worshipped their "great goddess Diana and the image which fell down from Jupiter," could their attitude, their eyes, or their words more clearly have indicated an assurance in the worshipper, that the Spirit of the Deity was especially present in that image, than the attitude, the eyes, the words of the pilgrims at Einsiedlin for example, are indications of the same

belief and assurance with regard to the statue of the Virgin Mary? These thoughts would force themselves again and again on my mind; and though since I first witnessed such things many years have intervened, chequered with various events of life, yet whilst I am writing, the scenes are brought again fresh to my remembrance; the same train of thought is awakened; and the lapse of time has not in the least diminished the estimate then formed of the danger, the awful peril, to which the practice of addressing saints and angels in prayer, even in its most modified and mitigated form, exposes those who are in communion with Rome. I am unwilling to dwell on this point longer, or to paint in deeper or more vivid colours the scenes which I have witnessed, than the necessity of the case requires. But it would have been the fruit of a morbid delicacy rather than of brotherly love, had I disguised in this part of my address, the full extent of the awful dread with which I contemplate any approximation to prayers, of whatever kind, uttered by the lips or mentally conceived, to any spiritual existence in heaven above, save only to the one God exclusively. It is indeed a dread suggested by the highest and purest feelings of which I believe my frame of mind to be susceptible; it is sanctioned and enforced by my reason; and it is confirmed and strengthened more and more by every year's additional reflection and experience. Ardently as I long and pray for Christian unity, I could not join in communion with a Church, one of whose fundamental articles accuses of impiety those who deny the lawfulness of the invocations of saints.

But I return from this digression on the peril of idolatry, to which as well the theory as the practice of

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