&c. Compare your modern divines with their predecessors; and you will see that instead of returning to antiquity, they every day depart more widely from it. They have taught you to believe that death breaks off all communication between those who remain upon earth, and those who have quitted it. Thus you have accompanied your relations and friends with tears to the grave: but the stone once closed down upon them, you have left them to their fate. You have hoped, it is true, that they were happy, but without daring to pray for their happiness to the sovereign Judge. I am well assured that your affection for them was not extinguished with their life: but it remained sterile and unprofitable to them. Educated in the unhappy principles of a sombre and discouraging creed, you have never yet known the secret calm and resignation infused by the thought that we can benefit our dear friends beyond the tomb. Enter at least now upon this solid and consolatory belief. Were it imaginary, were it an illusion, it would still be delightful; and cruel is that reformation which presumes to forbid it. But

*See Discussion Amicale, vol. 2, pp. 254, 255, 256.

it is incontestable, and a matter of primitive tradition; you have seen that it is built upon the teaching of the apostles, and consequently upon that of their divine Master. Hearken then no more to those ignorant and unfeeling sophists, who strive to deprive you of a resource so precious to those whose lot it is to survive. Practice it henceforth; betake yourself to it with confidence ; I venture to affirm that you will find it a source of hope, of tender feelings and pious emotions.

Invocation of Saints.

XLV. Mr. Faber's chapter XV. is a succession of faults, mistakes, and infidelities, which it would be too long and tedious to exhibit piece by piece. He had just before blamed me for adducing Tertullian as a witness of the primitive faith; and here he himself would have this primitive doctrine estimated by the single testimony of St. Epiphanius who lived two centuries later! I had said that Asterius implored of Phocas that intercession which he himself had solicited and obtained of the martyrs; and he makes me say— p. 227-that Asterius begged "that Phocas, in

"the plenitude of his power, (these words are an " addition of Mr. Faber's) would give to his “survivors those blessings which he himself pos"sessed!" I quoted in favour of the Invocation of Saints, St. Irenæus, Origen, St. Athanasius, Eusebius, St, Ephrem, St. Augustin, St. Ambrose, and the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, that is to say, the brilliant ages of the Church, admitted as such by the most able Protestants; and this man reproves me for so doing! He does not then comprehend how these great doctors, these learned bishops, revered as saints even by the followers of the reformation, could have been other than idolators! Nor does he blush to charge them with idolatry, by attributing sentiments to them which they never entertained! Let it suffice for me to reply that the testimonies of these great personages of antiquity will undoubtedly weigh a little more towards establishing the apostolicity of any dogmatical usage, than the high authority of the Rector of Long Newton, towards overturning it.

XLVI. He next proceeds to shew, p. 231, that the idolatry of the early ages has passed down from hand to hand in the Catholic Church,

where it still holds sovereign sway. He quotes from the Hours according to the use of Salisbury, and draws his proofs from the comments upon them left us by the learned and truth-telling Burnet. He sets out with informing us that these Hours were even printed at Paris in 1520; and with powerful logic he concludes from their Parisian date that it seems abundantly evident that they met with very general acceptation among what the bishop styles the Catholic body. Let us not disturb him in the “abundant evidence" of his splendid conclusion. Without taking the trouble to search out the old rubric of Sarum, he need only have opened our breviaries and the liturgical books in daily use among

He would have found there the same hymns, the same invocations to the blessed Virgin and the Saints; and with the honest and charitable industry which he is so fond of exercising, he might have easily changed our prayers into acts of detestable idolatry.

Would you wish to know, Sir, how he proceeds to convert our devotions into idolatry? He separates certain passages, certain words, suppresses those that precede or follow, and

thus by a very honest process, he succeeds in giving them a sense which they were never meant to convey. In the hymn to the blessed Virgin which so particularly offends him, he suppresses this verse:

Monstra te esse matrem,

Sumat per te preces,

Qui pro nobis natus,

Tulit esse tuus.

As also the words, bona cuncta posce, and consequently all those good things expressed in the insulated verses produced by Mr. Faber. In this manner those words which serve to explain all the rest, are adroitly concealed by him. He only exhibits such passages as he chose to extract, in imitation of his master, the faithful Burnet; and thus the hymn appears entirely covered with a shining varnish of idolatry.

You will readily conceive that Mr. Faber has taken good care not to let those versicles and prayers appear which follow the above hymn, and all those which we address to the blessed Virgin. One of the versicles is as follows; "Pray “for us, O holy Mother of God; that we may be "made worthy of the promises of Christ." In