PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN WORSHIP
OR, THE EVIDENCE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE AND THE CHURCH, AGAINST THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS AND ANGELS, AND THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.
BY J. ENDELL TYLER, B.D.
RECTOR OF ST. GILES-IN-THE-FIELDS, AND CANON RESIDENTIARY OF ST. PAUL'S.
Speaking the truth in love.—EPH. iv. 15
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.—1 THESS. v. 21.
SECOND EDITION
LONDON
1847.
TO
THE ONE
HOLY, CATHOLIC, AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH,
AS A TRIBUTE OF VENERATION AND LOVE,
THIS WORK IS DEDICATED,
BY HER DEVOTED SERVANT AND SON.
Nov. 25, 1840.
PREFACE.
Members of the Church of Rome, and members of the Church of England, have too long entertained towards each other feelings of hostility. Instead of being drawn together as brethren by the cords of that one faith which all Catholics hold dear, their sentiments of sympathy and affection have been absorbed by the abhorrence with which each body has regarded the characteristic tenets of its adversary; whilst the terms "heretic" on the one side, and "idolater" on the opposite, have rendered any attempt to bring about a free and friendly discussion of each other's views almost hopeless.
Every Christian must wish that such animosities, always ill-becoming the servants and children of the God of love, should cease for ever. Truth indeed must never be sacrificed to secure peace; nor must we be tempted by the seductiveness of a liberality, falsely so called, to soften down and make light of those differences which keep the Churches of England and Rome asunder. But surely the points at issue may be examined without exasperation and rancour; and the results of inquiries carried on with a singleness of mind, in search only for the truth, may be offered on the one side without insult or offence, and should be received and examined without contempt and scorn on the other.
The writer of this address is not one in whom early associations would foster sentiments of evil will against members of the Church of Rome; or encourage any feeling, incompatible with regard and kindness, towards the conscientious defenders of her creed. From his boyhood he has lived on terms of friendly intercourse and intimacy with individuals among her laity and of her priesthood. In his theological pursuits, he has often studied her ritual, consulted her commentators, and perused the homilies of her divines; and, withal, he has mourned over her errors and misdoings, as he would have sighed over the faults of a friend, who, with many good qualities still to endear him, had unhappily swerved from the straight path of rectitude and integrity.
In preparing these pages, the author is not conscious of having been influenced by any motive in the least degree inconsistent with sentiments of charity and respect; at all events, he would hope that no single expression may have escaped from his pen tending to hurt unnecessarily the feelings of any sincere Christian. He has been prompted by a hope that he may perhaps induce some individuals to investigate with candour, and freedom, and with a genuine desire of arriving at the truth, the subjects here discussed; and that whilst some, even of those who may have hitherto acquiesced in erroneous doctrines and practices, may be convinced of their departure from Christian verity; others, if tempted to desert the straight path of primitive worship, may be somewhat strengthened and armed by the views presented to them here, against the captivating allurements of religious error.
Whether the present work may, by the Divine favour, be made in some degree instrumental in forwarding these results, or in effecting any good, the author presumes not to anticipate; but he will hope for the best. He believes that the honest pursuit of the truth, undertaken with an humble zeal for God's glory, and in dependence on his guidance and light, is often made successful beyond our own sanguine expectations.
With these views the following pages are offered, as the result of an inquiry into the doctrine and practice of the Invocation of Saints and Angels, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
To prevent misconception as to the nature of this work, the author would observe, that since the single subject here proposed to be investigated is, "The Invocation of Saints and Angels and the Blessed Virgin Mary," he has scrupulously avoided the discussion of many important and interesting questions usually considered to be connected with it. He has not, for example, discussed the practice of praying for the dead; he has investigated no theory relating to the soul's intermediate state between our dissolution and the final judgment; he has canvassed no opinion as to any power in the saints and the faithful departed to succour either by their prayers or by any other offices, those who are still on earth, and on their way to God. From these and such like topics he has abstained, not because he thinks lightly of their importance, nor because his own mind is perplexed by doubts concerning them; but because the introduction of such points would tend to distract the thoughts from the exclusive contemplation of the one distinct question to be investigated.
He is also induced to apprise the reader, that in his work, as he originally prepared it, a far wider field, even on the single subject of the present inquiry, was contemplated than this volume now embraces. His intention was to present an historical survey of the doctrine and practice of the invocation of Saints and Angels, and the Virgin, tracing it from the first intimation of any thing of the kind through its various progressive stages, till it had reached its widest prevalence in Christendom. When, however, he had arranged and filled up the results of the inquiries which he made into the sentiments and habits of those later writers of the Church, whose works he considered it necessary to examine with this specific object in view, he found that the bulk of the work would be swollen far beyond the limits which he had prescribed to himself; he felt also that the protracted investigation would materially interfere with the solution of that one independent question which he trusts now is kept unmixed with any other. He has, consequently, in the present address limited the range of his researches on the nature of Primitive Christian Worship, to the writers of the Church Catholic who lived before the Nicene Council, or were members of it.
In one department, however, he has been under the necessity of making, to a certain extent, an exception to this rule. Having found no allusion to the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin, on which much of the religious worship now paid to her seems to be founded, in any work written before the middle of the fifth century, he has been induced, in his examination of the grounds on which that doctrine professes to be built, to cite authors who flourished subsequently to the Nicene Council.
The author would also mention, that although in substance he has prepared this work for the examination of all Christians equally, and trusts that it will be found not less interesting or profitable to the members of his own Church than to any other, yet he has throughout adopted the form of an address to his Roman Catholic countrymen. Such a mode of conveying his sentiments he considered to be less controversial, while the facts and the arguments would remain the same. His object is not to condemn, but to convince: not to hold up to obloquy those who are in error, but, as far as he may be allowed, to diminish an evil where it already exists, and to check its further prevalence.
CONTENTS.
Introduction—The duty of examining the grounds of our Faith—Principles of conducting that examination—Errors to be avoided—Proposed plan of the present work
§ [1. Evidence of Holy Scripture, how to be ascertained]
[2. Direct Evidence of the Old Testament]
[3. Evidence of the Old Testament, continued]
[4. ——— New Testament]
§ [1. Evidence of Primitive Writers]
[2. ——— Apostolic Fathers]
§ [1. Evidence of Justin Martyr]
See also Appendix
[2. Evidence of Irenæus]
[3. ——— Clement of Alexandria]
[4. ——— Tertullian]
——— Methodius
[5. ——— Origen]
See also Appendix
[6. Supplementary Section on Origen]
See also Appendix
[7. Evidence of St. Cyprian]
See also Appendix
[8. Evidence of Lactantius]
[9. ——— Eusebius]
See also Appendix
[10. Apostolical Canons and Constitutions]
[11. Evidence of St. Athanasius]
See also Appendix
State of Worship at the time of the Reformation
§ [1. "Hours of the Virgin"]
[2. Service of Thomas Becket]
Council of Trent See also Appendix
Present Service in the Church of Rome
PART III.
WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN MARY.
§ [1. Introductory Remarks]
[2. Evidence of Holy Scripture]
Evidence of Primitive Writers
Assumption of the Virgin Mary
Councils of Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon
§ [1. Present authorized Worship of the Virgin]
[2. Worship of the Virgin, continued]
[3. Bonaventura]
[4. Biel, Damianus, Bernardinus de Bustis, Bernardinus Senensis,&c.]
See also Appendix
[5. Modern Works of Devotion]
See also Appendix
PART I.
[CHAPTER I.]
THE DUTY OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT.
Fellow Christians,
Whilst I invite you to accompany me in a free and full investigation of one of those tenets and practices which keep asunder the Roman and the Anglican Church, I am conscious in how thankless an undertaking I have engaged, and how unwelcome to some is the task in which I call upon you to join. Many among the celebrated doctors of the Roman Church have taught their disciples to acquiesce in a view of their religious obligation widely different from the laborious and delicate office of ascertaining for themselves the soundness of the principles in which they have been brought up. It has been with many accredited teachers a favourite maxim, that individuals will most acceptably fulfil their duty by abstaining from active and personal inquiries into the foundations of their faith; and by giving an implicit credence to whatever the Roman Church pronounces to be the truth[1]. Should this book fall into the hands of any who have adopted that maxim for the rule of their own conduct as believers, its pages will of course afford them no help; nor can they take any interest in our pursuit, or its results. Whilst, however, I am aware, that until the previous question (involving the grounds on which the Church of Rome builds her claim to be the sole, exclusive, and infallible teacher of Christians in all the doctrines of religion,) shall have been solved, many members of her body would throw aside, as preposterous, any treatise which professed to review the soundness of her instructions; I have been at the same time assured, that with many of her communion the case is far otherwise; and that instead of their being averse to all investigation, a calm, candid, and friendly, but still a free and unreserved inquiry into the disputed articles of their creed, is an object of their sincere desire. On this ground I trust some preliminary reflections upon the duty of proving all things, with a view of holding the more fast and sure what is good, may be considered as neither superfluous nor out of place.
Footnote 1:[(return)]
It is sometimes curious to observe the language in which the teachers and doctors themselves profess their entire, unlimited, and implicit submission of all their doctrines, even in the most minute particulars, to the judgment and will of the authorities of Rome. Instances are of very frequent occurrence. Thus Joannes de Carthagena, a very voluminous writer of homilies, closes different parts of his work in these words, "These and all mine I willingly subject to the judgment of the Catholic Roman Church, ready, if there be written any thing in any way in the very least point contrary to her doctrine, to correct, amend, erase, and utterly abolish it." Hom. Cath. De Sacris Arcanis Deiparæ et Josephi. Paris, 1615. page 921.
But just as it would belong to another and a separate province to examine, at such length as its importance demands, the claims of the Church of Rome to be acknowledged as that universal interpreter of the word and will of God, from whose decisions there is no appeal; so would it evidently be incompatible with the nature of the present address, to dwell in any way corresponding with the magnitude and delicacy of the subject, on the duty, the responsibility, and the privilege of private judgment; on the dangers to which an unchastened exercise of it may expose both an individual, and the cause of Christian truth; or on the rules which sound wisdom and the analogy of faith may prescribe to us in the government of ourselves with respect to it. My remarks, therefore, on this subject will be as few and brief as I believe to be consistent with an acknowledgment of the principles upon which this work has been conducted.
The foundation, then, on which, to be safe and beneficial, the duty of private judgment, as we maintain, must be built, is very far indeed removed from that common and mischievous notion of it which would encourage us to draw immediate and crude deductions from Holy Scripture, subject only to the control and the colouring of our own minds, responsible for nothing further than our own consciousness of an honest intention. Whilst we claim a release from that degrading yoke which neither are we nor were our fathers able to bear, we deprecate for ourselves and for our fellow-believers that licentiousness which in doctrine and practice tempts a man to follow merely what is right in his own eyes, uninfluenced by the example, the precepts, and the authority of others, and owning no submissive allegiance to those laws which the wise and good have established for the benefit of the whole body. The freedom which we ask for ourselves, and desire to see imparted to all, is a rational liberty, tending to the good, not operating to the bane of its possessors; ministering to the general welfare, not to disorder and confusion. In the enjoyment of this liberty, or rather in the discharge of the duties and trusts which this liberty brings with it, we feel ourselves under an obligation to examine the foundations of our faith, to the very best of our abilities, according to our opportunities, and with the most faithful use of all the means afforded to us by its divine Author and finisher. Among those means, whilst we regard the Holy Scriptures as paramount and supreme, we appeal to the witness and mind of the Church as secondary and subsidiary; a witness not at all competing with Scripture, never to be balanced against it; but competing with our own less able and less pure apprehension of Scripture. In ascertaining the testimony of this witness, we examine the sentiments and practice of the ancient teachers of the Church; not as infallible guides, not as uniformly holding all of them the same opinions, but as most valuable helps in our examination of the evidence of the Church, who is, after all, our appointed instructor in the truths of the Gospel,—fallible in her individual members and branches, yet the sure witness and keeper of Holy Writ, and our safest guide on earth to the mind and will of God. When we have once satisfied ourselves that a doctrine is founded on Scripture, we receive it with implicit faith, and maintain it as a sacred deposit, entrusted to our keeping, to be delivered down whole and entire without our adding thereto what to us may seem needful, or taking away what we may think superfluous.
The state of the Christian thus employed, in acting for himself in a work peculiarly his own, is very far removed from the condition of one who labours in bondage, without any sense of liberty and responsibility, unconscious of the dignity of a free and accountable agent, and surrendering himself wholly to the control of a task-master. Equally is it distant from the conduct of one who indignantly casting off all regard for authority, and all deference to the opinions of others, boldly and proudly sets up his own will and pleasure as the only standard to which he will submit. For the model which we would adopt, as members of the Church, in our pursuit of Christian truth, we find a parallel and analogous case in a well-principled and well-disciplined son, with his way of life before him, exercising a large and liberal discretion in the choice of his pursuits; not fettered by peremptory paternal mandates, but ever voluntarily referring to those principles of moral obligation and of practical wisdom with which his mind has been imbued; shaping his course with modest diffidence in himself, and habitual deference to others older and wiser than himself, yet acting with the firmness and intrepidity of conscious rectitude of principle, and integrity of purpose; and under a constant sense of his responsibility, as well for his principles as for his conduct.
Against the cogency of these maxims various objections have been urged from time to time. We have been told, that the exercise of private judgment in matters of religion, tends to foster errors of every diversity of character, and leads to heresy, scepticism, and infidelity: it is represented as rending the Church of Christ, and totally subverting Christian unity, and snapping asunder at once the bond of peace. So also it has been often maintained, that the same cause robs individual Christians of that freedom from all disquietude and perplexity and anxious responsibility, that peace of mind, satisfaction, and content, which those personally enjoy, who surrender themselves implicitly to a guide, whom they believe to be unerring and infallible.
For a moment let us pause to ascertain the soundness of such objections. And here anticipating, for argument's sake, the worst result, let us suppose that the exercise of individual inquiry and judgment (such as the best teachers in the Anglican Church are wont to inculcate) may lead in some cases even to professed infidelity; is it right and wise and justifiable to be driven by an abuse of God's gifts to denounce the legitimate and faithful employment of them? What human faculty—which among the most precious of the Almighty's blessings is not liable to perversion? What unquestionable moral duty can be found, which has not been transformed by man's waywardness into an instrument of evil? Nay, what doctrine of our holy faith has not the wickedness or the folly of unworthy men employed as a cloke for unrighteousness, and a vehicle for blasphemy? But by a consciousness of this liability in all things human, must we be tempted to suppress the truth? to disparage those moral duties? or to discountenance the cultivation of those gifts and faculties? Rather would not sound philosophy and Christian wisdom jointly enforce the necessity of improving the gifts zealously, of discharging the moral obligation to the full, and of maintaining the doctrine in all its integrity; but guarding withal, to the utmost of our power and watchfulness, against the abuses to which any of these things may be exposed? And we may trust in humble but assured confidence, that as it is the duty of a rational being, alive to his own responsibility, to inquire and judge for himself in things concerning the soul, with the most faithful exercise of his abilities and means; so the wise and merciful Ruler of our destinies will provide us with a sure way of escaping from all evils incident to the discharge of that duty, if, in reliance on his blessing, we honestly seek the truth, and perseveringly adhere to that way in which He will be our guide.
It is a question very generally and very reasonably entertained among us, whether the implicit submission and unreserved surrender of ourselves to any human authority in matters of faith, (though whilst it lasts, it of course affords an effectual check to open scepticism,) does not ultimately and in very deed prove a far more prolific source of disguised infidelity. Doubts repressed as they arise, but not solved, silenced but not satisfied, gradually accumulate in spite of all external precaution; and at length (like streams pent back by some temporary barrier) break forth at once to an utter discarding of all authority, and an irrecoverable rejection of the Christian faith. From unlimited acquiescence in a guide whom our associations have invested with infallibility, the step is very short, and frequently taken, to entire apostasy and the renunciation of all belief.
The state of undisturbed tranquillity and repose in one, who has divested himself of all responsibility in matters of religious belief and practice, enjoying an entire immunity from the anxious and painful labour of trying for himself the purity and soundness of his faith, is often painted in strong contrast with the lamentable condition of those who are driven about by every wind of novelty. The condition of such a man may doubtless be far more enviable than theirs, who have no settled fixed principles, and who wander from creed to creed, and from sect to sect, just as their fickle and roving minds suggest some transitory preference. But the believer must not be driven by the evils of one extreme to take refuge in the opposite. The whirlpool may be the more perilous, but the Christian mariner must avoid the rock also, or he will equally make shipwreck of his faith. He must with all his skill, and all his might, keep to the middle course, shunning that presumptuous confidence which scorns all authority, and boldly constitutes itself sole judge and legislator; but equally rescuing his mind from the thraldom which prostrates his reason, and paralyzes all the faculties of his judgment in a matter of indefeasible and awful responsibility.
Here, too, it is questioned, and not without cause, whether the satisfaction and comfort so often represented in warm and fascinating colours, be really a spiritual blessing; or whether it be not a deception and fallacy, frequently ending in lamentable perplexity and confusion; like guarantees in secular concerns, which as long as they maintain unsuspected credit afford a most pleasing and happy security to any one who depends upon them; but which, when adverse fortune puts their responsibility to the test, may prove utterly worthless, and be traced only by losses and disappointments. Such a blind reliance on authority may doubtless be more easy and more free from care, than it is to gird up the loins of our mind, and engage in toilsome spiritual labour. But with a view to our own ultimate safety, wisdom bids us look to our foundations in time, and assure ourselves of them; admonishing us that if they are unsound, the spiritual edifice reared upon them, however pleasing to the eye, or abounding in present enjoyments, will at length fall, and bury our hopes in its ruin.
On these and similar principles, we maintain that it well becomes Christians, when the soundness of their faith, and the rectitude of their acts of worship, are called in question, "to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good." Thus, when the unbeliever charges us with credulity in receiving as a divine revelation what he scornfully rejects, it behoves us all (every one to the extent of his means and opportunities) to possess ourselves of the accumulated evidences of our holy faith, so that we may be able to give to our own minds, and to those who ask it of us, a reason for our hope. The result can assuredly be only the comfort of a still more unshaken conviction. Thus, too, when the misbeliever charges us with an undue and an unauthorized ascription of the Divine attributes to our Redeemer and to our Sanctifier, which he would confine to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, exclusively of the Eternal Son and the Blessed Spirit, it well becomes every Catholic Christian to assure himself of the evidence borne by the Scriptures to the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, together with the inseparable doctrines of redemption by the blood of Christ, and sanctification by the Spirit of grace; appealing also in this investigation to the tradition of the Church, and the testimony of her individual members from the earliest times, as under God his surest and best guides. In both these cases, I can say for myself that I have acted upon my own principles, and to the very utmost of my faculties have scrutinized the foundations of my faith, and from each of those inquiries and researches I have risen with a satisfaction increased far beyond my first anticipations. What I had taken up in my youth on authority, I have been long assured of by a moral demonstration, which nothing can shake; and I cling to it with an affection, which, guarded by God's good providence, nothing in this world can dissolve or weaken.
It is to engage in a similar investigation that I now most earnestly but affectionately invite the members of the Church of Rome, in order to ascertain for themselves the ground of their faith and practice in a matter of vast moment, and which, with other points, involves the principle of separation between the Roman and Anglican branches of the universal Church. Were the subjects of minor importance, or what the ancient writers were wont to call "things indifferent," reason and charity would prescribe that we should bear with each other, allowing a free and large discretion in any body of Christians, and not severing ourselves from them because we deemed our views preferable to theirs. In such a case we might well walk in the house of God as friends, without any interruption of the harmony which should exist between those who worship the true God with one heart and one mind, ever striving to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. But when the points at issue are of so vast moment; when two persons agreeing in the general principles of belief in the Gospel and its chief characteristic doctrines, yet find it impossible to join conscientiously in the same prayer, or the same acts of faith and worship, then the necessity is imperative on all who would not be parties to the utter breaking up of Christian unity, nor assist in propagating error, to make sure of their foundations; and satisfy themselves by an honest inquiry and upright judgment, that the fault does not rest with them.
Such appear to me both the doctrine and the practice of the INVOCATION OF SAINTS. I have endeavoured to conjecture in what light this doctrine and this practice would have presented itself to my mind, after a full and free inquiry into the nature and history and circumstances of the case, had I been brought up in communion with the Church of Rome; the question to be solved being, "Could I continue in her communion?" And the result of my inquiry is, that I must have either discarded that doctrine at once and for ever, or have joined with my lips and my knees in a worship which my reason condemned, and from which my heart shrunk. I must have either left the communion of Rome, or have continued to offer prayers to angels, and the spirits of departed mortals. Unless I had resolved at once to shut my eyes upon my own personal responsibility, and to surrender myself, mind and reason, soul and body, to the sovereign and undisputed control of others, never presuming to inquire into the foundation of what the Church of Rome taught; I must have sought some purer portion of the Catholic Church, in which her members addressed the One Supreme Being exclusively, without contemplating any other in the act of religious invocation. The distinction invented in comparatively late years, of the three kinds of worship; one for God, the second for the Virgin Mary, the third for Angels and Saints;—the distinction, too, between praying to a saint to give us good things, and praying to that saint to procure them for us at God's hand, (or, as the distinction is sometimes made, into prayer direct, absolute, final, sovereign, confined to the Supreme Being on the one hand; and prayer oblique, relative, transitory, subordinate, offered to saints on the other,) would have appeared to me the ingenious and finely-drawn inventions of an advocate, not such a sound process of Christian simplicity as the mind could rest upon, with an undoubting persuasion that all was right.
This, however, involves the very point at issue; and I now invite you, my Christian Brethren, to join with me, step by step, in a review of those several positions which have left on my mind the indelible conviction that I could never have passed my life in communion with that Church whose articles of fellowship maintained the duty of invoking saints and angels; and whose public offices were inseparably interwoven with addresses in prayer to other beings, than the Holy and undivided Trinity, the one only God.
In pursuing this inquiry I have thought the most convenient and satisfactory division of our work would be—
First, to ascertain what inference an unprejudiced study of the revealed will of God would lead us to make; both in the times of the elder covenant, when "holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," and in that "fulness of time" when God spoke to us by his Son.
Secondly, to examine into the belief and practice of the Primitive Church, beginning with the inspired Apostles of our Lord.
Thirdly, to compare the results of those inquiries with the tenets and practice of the Church of Rome, with reference to three periods; the first immediately preceding the Reformation; the second comprising the Reformation, and the proceedings of the Council of Trent; the third embracing the belief and practice of the present day.
In this investigation, I purpose to reserve the worship of the Virgin Mary, called by Roman Catholic writers "Hyperdulia," and for various reasons the most important and interesting portion of the whole inquiry, for separate and distinct examination; except only so far as our review of any of the primitive writers may occasion some incidental departure from that rule.
May God guide us to his truth!
[CHAPTER II.]
[SECTION I.]—THE EVIDENCE OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.
Here, Christian Brethren, bear with me if I briefly, but freely, recall to our thoughts on this first entrance upon a review of the inspired volume, the principles, and tone of mind, the temper and feelings, in a word, the frame both of the understanding and of the heart, with which we should study the sacred pages, on whatever subject we would try all things, and hold fast what should prove itself to be most in accordance with the will of God. Whether we would regard the two great parts into which the Holy Scriptures are divided, as the Old and the New Covenants; or whether we would prefer to call them the Old and the New Testaments, it matters not. Although different ideas and associations are suggested by those different names, yet, under either view, the same honest and good heart, the same patience of investigation, the same upright and unprejudiced judgment, the same exercise of our mental faculties, and the same enlightened conscience, must be brought to the investigation. In the one case we must endeavour to ascertain for ourselves the true intent and meaning of the inspired word of God, on the very same principles with those on which we would interpret a covenant between ourselves, and a person who had made it in full and unreserved reliance on our integrity, and on our high sense of equity, justice, and honour. In the other case we must bring the selfsame principles and feelings to bear on our inquiry, as we should apply in the interpretation of the last will and testament of a kind father, who with implicit confidence in our uprightness and straightforward dealing and affectionate anxiety to fulfil his intentions to the very utmost, had assigned to us the sacred duty of executor or trustee.
Under the former supposition, our sincere solicitude would be to ascertain the true intent and meaning of the contracting parties, not to seek out plausible excuses for departing from it; not to cull out and exaggerate beyond their simple and natural bearing, such expressions in the deed of agreement, as might seem to justify us in adopting the view of the contract most agreeable to our present wishes and most favourable to our own interests. Rather it would be our fixed and hearty resolution, at whatever cost of time, or labour, or pecuniary sacrifice, or personal discomfort, to apply to the instrument our unbiassed powers of upright and honest interpretation.
Or adopting the latter analogy, we should sincerely strive to ascertain the chief and leading objects of our parent's will; what were his intentions generally; what ruling principles seemed to pervade his views in framing the testament; and in all cases of obscurity and doubt, in every thing approaching an appearance of inconsistency, we should refer to that paramount principle as our test and guide. We should not for a moment suffer ourselves to be tempted to seek for ambiguous expressions, which ingenuity might interpret so as to countenance our departure from the general drift of our parent's will, in cases where it was at variance with our own inclination, and where we could have wished that he had made another disposition of his property, or given to us a different direction, or trusted us with larger discretion. Moreover, in any points of difficulty, we should apply for assistance, in solving our doubts, to such persons as were most likely to have the power of judging correctly, and whose judgment would be least biassed by partiality and prejudice;—not to those whose credit was staked on the maintenance of those principles which best accorded with our own inclination. Especially if in either case some strong feeling should have been raised and spread abroad on any point, we should seek the judgment and counsel of those who had been familiar with the testator's intentions, or with the views of the covenanting party, before such points had become matter of discussion.
Now only let us act upon these principles in the interpretation of THAT COVENANT in which the Almighty has vouchsafed to make Himself one of the contracting parties, and man, the creature of his hand, is the other: only let us act on these principles in the interpretation of THAT TESTAMENT of which the Saviour of the world is the Testator; and with God's blessing on our labours (a blessing never denied to sincere prayer and faithful exertions) we need not fear the result. Any other principle of interpretation will only confirm us in our prejudices, and involve us more inextricably in error.
[SECTION II.]—DIRECT EVIDENCE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
The first step in our proposed inquiry is to ascertain what evidence on the doctrine and practice of the Invocation of Saints and Angels can be fairly drawn from the revealed word of God in the Old Testament.
Now, let us suppose that a person of a cultivated and enlightened mind, and of a sound and clear judgment, but hitherto a stranger to revelation, were required to study the ancient Scriptures with the single view of ascertaining what one object more than any other, subordinate to the great end of preparing the world for the advent of Messiah, seemed to be proposed by the wisdom of the Almighty in imparting to mankind that revelation; could he fix upon any other point as the one paramount and pervading principle with so much reason, as upon this, the preservation in the world of a practical belief in the perfect unity of God, and the fencing of his worship against the admixture of any other, of whatever character or form; The announcement that the Creator and Governor of the universe is the sole Giver of every temporal and spiritual blessing; the one only Being to whom, his rational creatures on earth should pay any religious service whatever; the one only Being to whom mortals must seek by prayer and invocation for the supply of any of their wants? Through the entire volume the inquirer would find that the unity of God is announced in every variety of expression; and that the exclusive worship of HIM alone is insisted upon and guarded with the utmost jealousy by assurances, by threats, and by promises, as the God who heareth prayer, alone to be called upon, alone to be invoked, alone to be adored. So to speak, he would find that recourse was had to every expedient for the express purpose of protecting God's people from the fatal error of embracing in their worship any other being or name whatever; not reserving supreme adoration for the Supreme Being, and admitting a sort of secondary honour and inferior mode of invocation to his exalted saints and servants; but banishing at once and for ever the most distant approximation towards religious honour—the veriest shadow of spiritual invocation to any other Being than Jehovah HIMSELF ALONE.
In process of time, the heathen began to deify those mortals who had conferred signal benefits on the human race, or had distinguished themselves by their power and skill above their fellow-countrymen. Male and female divinities were multiplying on every side. Together with Jupiter, the fabled father of gods and men, worshipped under different names among the various tribes, were associated those "gods many and lords many," which ignorance and superstition, or policy and craft, had invented; and which shared some a greater, some a less portion of popular veneration and religious worship. To the people of God, the worshippers of Jehovah, it was again and again most solemnly and awfully denounced, that no such thing should be. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve," is a mandate repeated in every variety of language, and under every diversity of circumstance. In some passages, indeed, together with the most clear assurances, that mankind need apply to no other dispenser of good, and can want no other as Saviour, advocate, or intercessor, that same truth is announced with such superabundance of repetition, that in the productions of any human writer the style would be chargeable with tautology. In the Bible, this repetition only the more forces upon the mind, and fixes there, that same principle as an eternal verity never to be questioned; never to be dispensed with; never to be diluted or qualified; never to be invaded by any service, worship, prayer, invocation, or adoration of any other being whatever. Let us take, for example, the forty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, in which the principle is most strongly and clearly illustrated. "I am the LORD, and there is none else: there is no God beside me; I girded thee, though thou hast not known me; that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none beside me: I am the Lord, and there is none else. They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of them; they shall go to confusion together, that are makers of idols. But Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end: I am the Lord, and there is none else. I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain. They have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save. There is no god beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else."
But it is needless to multiply these passages; and members of the Church of Rome will say, that they themselves acknowledge, as fully as members of the Anglican Church can do, that there is but one supreme God and Lord, to whom alone they intend to offer the worship due to God; and that the appeals which they offer by way of invocation to saints and angels for their services and intercession, do not militate against this principle. But here let us ask ourselves these few questions:—
First, if it had been intended by the Almighty to forbid any religious application, such as is now professedly the invocation of saints and angels, to any other being than Himself alone, what words could have been employed more stringently prohibitory?
Secondly, had such an address to saints and angels, as the Church of Rome now confessedly makes, been contemplated by our heavenly Lawgiver as an exception to the general rule, would not some saving clause, some expressions indicative of such an intended exception, have been discovered in some page or other of his revealed will?
Thirdly, if such an appeal to the angels of heaven, or to the spirits of the just in heaven, had been sanctioned under the elder covenant, would not some example, some solitary instance, have been recorded of a faithful servant of Jehovah offering such a prayer with the Divine approbation?
Lastly, when such strong and repeated declarations and injunctions interspersed through the entire volume of the Old Testament, unequivocally show the will of God to be, that no other object of religious worship should have place in the heart or on the tongue of his own true sons and daughters, can it become a faithful child of our Heavenly Father to be seeking for excuses and palliations, and to invent distinctions between one kind of worship and another?
God Himself includes all in one universal prohibitory mandate, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." So far from according with those general rules for the interpretation of the revealed will of God, which we have already stated, and from which, in the abstract, probably few would dissent, an anxiety to force the word of God into at least an acquiescence in the invocation of saints and angels, indicates a disposition to comply with his injunctions, wherever they seem to clash with our own view, only so far as we cannot avoid compliance; and to seek how we may with any show of propriety evade the spirit of those commands. Instead of that full, free, and unstinted submission of our own inclinations and propensities to the Almighty's will wherever we can discover it, which those entertain whom the Lord seeketh to worship Him; to look for exceptions and to act upon them, bears upon it the stamp of a reserved and grudging service. After so many positive warnings, enactments, and denunciations, against seeking by prayer the aid of any other being whatever, surely a positive command would have been absolutely necessary to justify a mortal man in preferring any prayer to any being, saint, angel, or archangel, save only the Supreme Deity alone. Instead of any such command or even permission appearing, not one single word occurs, from the first syllable in the Book of Genesis to the last of the prophet Malachi, which could even by implication be brought to countenance the practice of approaching any created being in prayer.
But let us now look to the examples on this subject afforded in the Old Testament. Many, very many a prayer is recorded of holy men, of inspired men, of men, to whose holiness and integrity and acceptance the Holy Spirit bears witness; yet among these prayers there is not found one invocation addressed to saint or angel. I will not here anticipate the observations which it will be necessary to make in consequence of the extraordinary argument which has been devised, to account for the absence of invocations to saints before the resurrection of Christ, namely, that before that event the saints were not admitted into heaven. Although pressed forward with such unhesitating confidence in its validity, that argument is so singular in its nature, and so important in its consequences, and withal so utterly groundless, as to call for a separate examination, on which we will shortly enter: meanwhile, we are now inquiring into the matter of fact.
The whole Book of Psalms is a manual of devotion, consisting alternately, or rather intermixedly, of prayers and praises, composed some by Moses, some by other inspired Israelites of less note, but the greater part by David himself; and what is the force and tendency of their example? Words are spoken in collaudation of "Moses and Aaron among the saints of the Lord," and of "Samuel among such as called upon his name;" and mention is made with becoming reverence of the holy angels; but not one word ever falls from the pen of the Psalmist, addressed, by way of invocation, to saint or angel. In the Roman Ritual supplication is made to Abel and Abraham as well as to Michael and all angels. If it is now lawful, if it is now the duty of the worshippers of the true God to seek his aid through the mediation of those holy men, can we avoid asking, Why the inspired patriarchs did not appeal to Abel for his mediation? Why did not the inspired David invoke the father of the faithful to intercede for him with God? If the departed spirits of faithful men may be safely addressed in prayer; if those who in their lifetime have, to their fellow-mortals, (who can judge only from outward actions, and cannot penetrate the heart,) appeared accepted servants and honoured saints of our Creator, may now be invoked by an act of religious supplication either to grant us aid, or to intercede with God for aid in our behalf, why did not men whom God declared to be partakers of his Spirit of truth, offer the same supplication to those departed spirits, who, before and after their decease, had this testimony from Omniscience itself, that they pleased God? Why is no intimation given in the later books of the Old Testament that such supplications were offered to Moses, or Aaron, or Abraham, or Noah? When wrath was gone out from the presence of the Lord, and the plague was begun among the people, Aaron took a censer in his hand, and stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed. If the soul of Aaron was therefore to be regarded as a spirit influential with God, one whose intercession could avail, one who ought to be approached in prayer, were it only for his intercession, could a stronger motive be conceived for suggesting that invocation, than David must have felt, when the pestilence was destroying its thousands around him, and all his glory and strength, and his very life too, were threatened by its resistless ravages? But no! neither Abel, nor Abraham, nor Moses, nor Aaron, must be petitioned to intercede with God, and to pray that God would stay his hand. To God and God alone, for his own mercy's sake, must his afflicted servant turn in supplication. We find among his prayers no "Holy Abraham, pray for us,"—"Holy Abel, pray for us." His own Psalm of thanksgiving describes full well the object and the nature of his prayer: "When the waves of death compassed me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid, the sorrows of hell compassed me about, the snares of death prevented me; in my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God; and He did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears." [2 Sam. (2 Kings Vulg.) xxii. 5. or Ps. xviii.] Abraham, when on earth, prayed God to spare the offending-people; but he invoked neither Noah, nor Abel, nor any of the faithful departed, to join their intercessions with his own. Isaac prayed to God for his son Jacob, but he did not ask the mediation of his father Abraham in his behalf; and when Jacob in his turn supplicated an especial blessing upon his grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh, though he called with gratitude to his mind, and expressed with his tongue, the devotedness both of Abraham and of Isaac to the Almighty, yet we do not find him appealing to them, or invoking their intercession with Jehovah.
When the conscience-struck Israelites felt that they had exposed themselves to the wrath of Almighty God, whose sovereign power, put forth at the prayer of Samuel, they then witnessed, distrusting the efficacy of their own supplication, and confiding in the intercession of that man of God, they implored him to intercede for them; and Samuel emphatically responded to their appeal, with an assurance of his earnestly undertaking to plead their cause with heaven: "And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die not. And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not.... The Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name's sake.... Moreover, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you." [1 Sam. (1 Kings Vulg.) xii. 19.] Samuel is one whom the Holy Spirit numbers among those "who called upon God's name;" and when Samuel died, all Israel gathered together to lament and to bury him,—but we read of no petition being offered to him to carry on the same intercessory office, when he was once removed from them. As long as he was entabernacled in the flesh and sojourned on earth with his brethren, they besought him to pray for them, to intercede with their God and his God for blessings at his hand, (just as among ourselves one Christian asks another to pray for him,) but when Samuel's body had been buried in peace, and his soul had returned to God who gave it, the Bible never records any further application to him; we no where read, "Holy Samuel, pray for us."
Again, what announcement could God Himself make more expressive of his acceptance of the persons of any, than He actually and repeatedly made to Moses with regard to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? How could He more clearly intimate that if the spirits of the faithful departed could exercise intercessory or mediatorial influence with Him, those three holy patriarchs would possess such power above all others who had ever lived on the earth? "I am the God of your fathers; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob: and Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God." "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you. This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial throughout all generations." [Exod. iii. 6. 15.] Did Moses in his alarm and dread, when he was afraid to look upon God, call upon those holy and accepted servants to aid him in his perplexity, and intercede for him and his people with the awful Eternal Being on whose majesty he dared not to look? Did he teach his people to invoke Abraham? That was far from him. When Moses, that saint of the Lord, was himself called hence and was buried, (though no mortal man was allowed to know the place of his sepulture,) did the surviving faithful pray to him for his help and intercession with God? He had wrought so many and great miracles as never had been before witnessed on earth; whilst in the tabernacle of the flesh he had talked with God as a man talketh with his friend; and yet the sacred page records no invocation ever breathed to his departed spirit. The same is the result of our inquiry throughout.
I will specify only one more example—Hezekiah, who "trusted in the Lord God of Israel, and clave to the Lord, and departed not from following him, but kept his commandments," when he and his people were in great peril, addressed his prayer only to God. He offered no invocation to holy David to intercede with the Almighty for his own Jerusalem; he made his supplication directly and exclusively to Jehovah; and, yet, the very answer made to that prayer would surely have seemed to justify Hezekiah in seeking holy David's mediation, if prayer for the intercession of any departed mortal could ever have been sanctioned by Heaven: "Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father; I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears; I will heal thee. I will save this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake." [2 Kings (Vulg. 4 Kings) xix. 15. and xx. 6.] Of what saint in the calendar was ever such a thing as this spoken?
I have already intimated my intention of referring, with somewhat more than a cursory remark, to the position assumed, and the argument built upon it by writers in communion with Rome, for the purpose of nullifying or escaping from the evidence borne by the examples of the Old Testament against the invocation of saints. The writers to whom I refer, with Bellarmin at their head, openly confess that the pages of the Old Testament afford no instance of invocation being offered to the spirits of departed mortals; and the reason which they allege is this, No one can be invoked who is not admitted to the presence of God in heaven; but before Christ went down to hell[2] and released the spirits from prison, no mortal was admitted into heaven; consequently, before the resurrection of Christ the spirit of no mortal was invoked. The following are the words of Bellarmin at the close of the preface to his "Church Triumphant:"—"The spirits of the patriarchs and prophets before the coming of Christ were for this reason not worshipped and invoked, as we now worship and invoke the Apostles and martyrs, because they were yet shut up and detained in prisons below[3]." Again, he says, "Because before the coming of Christ the saints who died did not enter heaven and saw not God, nor could ordinarily know the prayers of suppliants, therefore, it was not customary in the Old Testament to say, 'Holy Abraham, pray for me,' &c.; but the men of that time prayed to God only, and alleged the merits of the saints who had already departed, that their own prayers might be aided by them."
Footnote 2:[(return)]
The word Hell, signifying, in Saxon, a hidden-place, altogether corresponding in its etymology with "hades," is now used for the place of torment called by the Hebrews "Gehennah;" and we must perhaps regret that the same Saxon word is employed to signify also the unseen region of departed spirits. This circumstance has been the source of much difficulty and confusion.
Footnote 3:[(return)]
"Nam idcirco ante Christi adventum non ita colebantur neque invocabantur spiritus patriarcharum atque prophetarum, quemadmodum nunc Apostolos et martyres colimus et invocamus, quod illi adhuc infernis carceribus clausi detinebantur."—Ingolstadii, 1601. vol. ii. p. 833. "The last edition, enlarged and corrected by the Author."
Now let us inquire into this statement thus broadly made, and ascertain for ourselves whether the point assumed and the argument built upon it can stand the test of examination. Is this argument such as ought to satisfy the mind of one, who would humbly but honestly follow the apostolic rule, "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good?" Is this such an exposition as that the reason of a cultivated mind, and the faith of an enlightened Christian, can acquiesce in it? Let it be examined neither with prejudice in its favour, nor with any undue suspicion of its soundness, but with candour and impartiality throughout.
It is not necessary to dwell at any length on the inconsistencies and perplexities involved in this assumed abstract theory with regard to the souls of the faithful who died before the resurrection of Christ, and which require to be cleared away before its advocates can reasonably expect to obtain for it any general acceptance among thinking men. I do not wish to contravene the theory, far less to substitute another in its stead. On the contrary, I am fully content, in company with some of the most valuable among Roman Catholic writers, following the example of Augustin [Aug. De Pecc. Orig. c. 23. tom. vii. p. 338.—Quoted by De Sacy. 2 Kings (Vulg. 4 Kings) ii.], to leave the subject where Scripture has left it. To the arguments alleged, I would wish to reply independently of any opinion, as a matter of Christian belief, with regard to the place, the condition, and the circumstances of the souls of the patriarchs and prophets before our blessed Lord's resurrection. It may, nevertheless, materially facilitate an inquiry into the soundness of the reasons alleged for the total absence of invocation to those souls, if we briefly contemplate some of the difficulties which surround this novel theory. At all events, such a process will incline us to abstain from bold assumptions on a point upon which the Almighty has been pleased to throw so little light in his Holy Word, or at least avoid all severity of condemnation towards those who may differ from our views.
It is very easy to assert, that all the souls of the faithful departed were kept in the prison-house of Hades, and to allege in its behalf an obscure passage of St. Peter, to which many of the most learned and unprejudiced Christian teachers assign a meaning totally unconnected with the subject of departed spirits. But surely the case of Enoch's translation from this life to heaven, making, as it has been beautifully expressed, but one step from earth to glory, which St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, cites with a most important comment of his own, requires to be well and patiently weighed. He was taken from the earth by an immediate act of Providence, that he should not see death; and before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. Surely the case of Elijah too, when we would ascertain the soundness of this theory, must not be dismissed summarily from our thoughts, of whom the book of eternal truth declares, that Jehovah took him in a whirlwind into heaven; his ascent being made visible to mortal eyes, as was afterwards the ascension of the blessed Saviour Himself. Indeed the accounts of Elijah's translation, and of our Lord's ascension, whether in the Septuagint and Greek Testament, the Vulgate, or our own authorized version, present a similarity of expression very striking and remarkable.
On this subject we are strongly reminded, first, with what care and candour and patience the language of Holy Scripture should be weighed, which so positively declares, that Moses and Elijah, both in glory, appeared visibly to the Apostles at the transfiguration of our blessed Saviour, and conversed with Him on the holy mount: "And behold there talked with Him two men, who were Moses and Elias, who appeared in glory (in majesty, as the Vulgate renders the word), and spake of his decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem;" [Luke ix. 30.]—and, secondly, how unwise it is to dogmatize on such subjects beyond the plain declaration of the sacred narrative. Moreover, how very unsatisfactory is the theory which we are examining as to the state of the souls of the faithful who died before Christ, even the words of Jerome himself prove, who, commenting on the transfiguration of the blessed Jesus, is unhappily led to represent the Almighty as having summoned Elijah to descend from heaven, and Moses to ascend from Hades, to meet our Lord in the Mount[4].
Footnote 4:[(return)]
"Elia inde descendente quo conscenderat, et Moyse ab inferis resurgente."—Hieron. in Matt. xvii. 1. Paris, 1706. vol. iv. p. 77.
Strange and startling as is this sentiment of Jerome, it is, you will observe, utterly irreconcileable with the theory, that the reason why the ancient Church did not pray to the saints departed, was because they were not yet in heaven.
On this point, among Roman Catholic writers themselves, there prevails a very great diversity of opinion, arising probably from the difficulty which they have experienced in their endeavours to make all facts and doctrines square with the present tenets and practices of their Church[5]. Thus, whilst some maintain that Elijah was translated to the terrestrial paradise in which Adam had been placed, not enjoying the immediate divine presence; others cite the passage as justifying the belief that the saints departed pray for us[6]. But not only are different authors at variance with each other on very many points here; the same writer in his zeal is betrayed into great and palpable inconsistency. Bellarmin, anxious to enlist the account given by our Lord of the rich man and Lazarus, to countenance the invocation of saints by the example of the rich man appealing to Abraham, maintains that section of Holy Writ to be not a parable, but a true history of a matter of fact which took place between two real individuals; and of his assertion he adduces this proof, that "the Church worships that Lazarus as verily a holy man[7];" and yet he denies that any of the holy men were in heaven before the death of Christ. Either Abraham was in heaven in the presence of God, or not; if he was in heaven, why did not his descendants invoke his aid? if he was not in heaven, the whole argument drawn from the rich man's supplication falls to the ground.
Footnote 5:[(return)]
See De Sacy on 4 Kings i. 1. See also Estius, 1629. p. 168. Pope Gregory's Exposition; Rome, 1553. p. 99. Stephen's Bible in loc. 1557, &c. The Vulgate ed. Antwerp, 1624, cites a note, "Thy prayers are stronger than chariots and horsemen."
Footnote 6:[(return)]
Gaspar Sanctius, Antwerp, 1624. p. 1360, considers the fable not improbable, that Elijah, living in the terrestrial paradise, wrote there the letters to Joram (mentioned 2 Chron. xxi. 12), and sent them by angels.
Footnote 7:[(return)]
Colit Lazarum ilium ut vere sanctum hominem.—Bellarm. De Ecd. Triumph, p. 864.
Another very extraordinary inconsistency, arising from the same solicitude, forces itself upon our notice, when the same author urges a passage in Leviticus [Levit. xix. 13.] to prove, that the saints are now admitted at once into the enjoyment of the presence of God in heaven, without waiting for the day of final judgment. [Bell vol. ii. p. 865.] "God (such are his words) commanded it to be written, 'The work of the hireling shall not remain with thee till the morning;' therefore, unless God would appear inconsistent with Himself, He will not keep back the reward of his saints to the end of the world." How strange, that in the same treatise [Ibid. p. 833.] this author should expressly maintain, that the reward of Abel and Abraham, and the holy prophet and lawgiver Moses, the very man who was commanded to write that law in Leviticus, was kept back,—the last for a longer period than a thousand years; the first well nigh four thousand years.
I mention these particulars merely to point out how very unsatisfactory and unsound is the attempted solution of the difficulties which surround on every side the theory of those who maintain, that the reason why we have no instance of the righteous departed being invoked in the times of the elder covenant is, that they were not as yet admitted into heaven, but were kept in prison till the resurrection of Christ. I would also observe, even at the risk of repetition, that I am here not maintaining any opinion as to the appointed abiding-place, the condition, and circumstances, the powers of consciousness, volition or enjoyment of the departed, before Christ's resurrection; on the contrary, I am rather urging the consideration of the great and serious caution requisite before we espouse, as an article of faith, any opinion which rests on so questionable a foundation, and which involves such interminable difficulties.
But while we need not dwell longer on this immediate point, yet there are two considerations which appear to be altogether decisive as to the evidence borne against the Invocation of Saints by the writers of the Old Testament. If the spirits of the saints departed were not invoked before the resurrection of Christ, purely because they were not then admitted into heaven; the first consideration I would suggest is this: Why did the faithful and inspired servants of Jehovah not invoke the angels and archangels who were in heaven? The second is this: Why did not the inspired Apostles and faithful disciples of our Lord invoke the spirits of those saints after his resurrection; that is (according to the theory before us), after those saints had been taken by Christ with him into his Father's presence? I wish not to anticipate here our inquiry into the testimony borne by the writers of the New Testament as to the doctrine and practice of the Roman Church in this particular; and I will only add, that whatever be the cause of the absence from the Old Testament of all worship and invocation of Abel and Abraham, whom the Roman Church now invokes, the alleged reason that it was because they were not in heaven till after Christ's resurrection, is utterly set aside by the conduct of the Apostles and disciples of our Lord recorded in the New Testament, for more than half a century after his return to his Father's glory.
This, however, seems to be the proper place for entertaining the first consideration, Why did not the holy men of old, under the elder covenant, invoke angels and archangels, as the Roman Church now does? Writers, indeed, who have declared themselves the defenders of that doctrine and practice, refer us to passages, which they cite, as affording examples of the worship of angels; and we will not knowingly allow any one of those sections of Holy Writ to remain unexamined. We must first endeavour to ascertain the testimony borne by the books of the Old Testament: and that presents to us such a body of evidence as greatly increases our surprise at the perseverance with which the invocation of angels has been maintained by any community of men acknowledging the inspiration of the sacred volume.
The inspired writers of the Old Testament, and those to whom through their mouth and pen the Divine word was addressed, were as fully as ourselves acquainted with the existence of angelic beings. They were aware of the station of those angels in the court of heaven, of their power as God's ambassadors, and agents for good. Either their own eyes had seen the mighty operations of God by the hands of those celestial messengers; or their ears had heard their fathers tell what HE had done by their instrumentality in times of old. Why then did not God's chosen people offer to the angels the same worship and invocation which the Church of Rome now addresses to them in common with the patriarchs and prophets of the elder covenant, and with saints and martyrs under the new? In the condition of the holy angels no one ever suggests that any change, affecting the argument, has taken place since the time when man was created and made. And as the angels of heaven were in themselves the same, equally in the presence of God, and equally able to succour men through that long space of four thousand years, which intervened between Adam's creation and the birth of HIM who was Son of Adam and Son of God, so was man in the same dependent state, needing the guidance and protection of a power above his own. Nay, surely, if there was in man any difference affecting the argument, it would all add weight to the reason against the invocation of angels by Christians. The Israelites of old had no clear knowledge, as we have, of one great Mediator, who is ever making intercession for us; and yet they sought not the mediation and intercession and good offices of those superhuman beings, of whose existence and power, and employment in works of blessing to man, they had no doubt[8]. This is a point of great importance to our argument, and I will refer to a few passages in support of it.
Footnote 8:[(return)]
A small section indeed of their countrymen in our Saviour's time denied the reality of a future state, and the existence of angels and spirits; but the sect was of then recent origin, and the overwhelming majority believed as their fathers had believed.
When David, who had, as we know [1 Chron. xxi. 16.], visible demonstration afforded him of the existence and ministration of the angels, called upon them to unite with his own soul, and with all the works of creation through all places of God's dominion, in praising their merciful, glorious, and powerful Creator, he thus conveys to us the exalted ideas with which he had been filled of their nature, their excellence, and their ministration. "The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom ruleth over all: Bless the Lord, ye his angels that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts, ye ministers of his that do his pleasure." [Ps. ciii. 19-21.] David knew moreover that one of the offices, in the execution of which the angels do God's pleasure, is that of succouring and defending us on earth. For example, in one of the psalms used by the Church of Rome at complin, and with the rest repeated in the Church of England, and prophetic of the Redeemer, David, to whom this psalm is probably to be ascribed, declares of the man who had made the Most High his refuge and strength, "There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling; for he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways; they shall bear thee up in their hands lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." [Ps. xci. 10-12.] And again, with exquisitely beautiful imagery, he represents those same blessed servants of heaven as an army, as a host of God's spiritual soldiers keeping watch and ward over the poorest of the children of men, who would take refuge in his mercy: "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them[9]." And yet David, the prophet of the Lord, never addresses to these beings, high and glorious though they are, one single invocation: he neither asks them to assist him, nor to pray for him, nor to pray with him in his behalf.
Footnote 9:[(return)]
Ps. xxxiv. 7. (Vulg. xxxiii. 8.) "Immittet angelus Domini in circuitu timentium eum, et eripiet eos." In the Vulgate the beauty of the figure is lost; which, however, Roman Catholic writers restore in their comments. Basil makes a beautiful use of the metaphor. See De Sacy in loc.
Isaiah was admitted by the Holy Spirit to witness in the fulness of its glory the court and the throne of heaven; and he heard the voices of the seraphim proclaiming their Maker's praise; he experienced also personally the effect of their ministration, when one of them said, "Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." [Isaiah vi. 7.] Still, though Isaiah must have regarded this angel as his benefactor under God, yet neither to this seraph, nor to any of the host of heaven, does he offer one prayer for their good offices, even by their intercession. He ever ascribes all to God alone; and never joins any other name with His either in supplication or in praise. Let us also take the case of Daniel. He acknowledges not only that the Lord's omnipotent hand had rescued him from the jaws of the lions, but that the deliverance was brought about by the ministration of an angel. "My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me." [Dan. vi. 22.] Yet when we look through Daniel's prayers, we find no allusion to any of the highest angels. He had seen Gabriel before his prayer; he had heard the voice and felt the hand of that heavenly messenger who was commissioned to reveal to him what should be done in the latter end; and immediately after the offering of his prayer, the same Gabriel announces himself as one who was come forth to give the prophet skill and understanding. And yet neither towards Gabriel, nor any other of the angels of God, does one word of invocation fall from the lips of Daniel. In the supplications of that holy, intrepid, and blessed servant and child of God, we search in vain for any thing approaching in spirit to the invocation, "Sancte Gabriel, ora pro nobis."
[SECTION III.]—EVIDENCE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT (continued)
We must now briefly refer to those passages, by which Roman Catholic writers have endeavoured to maintain that religious adoration was paid to angels by the faithful sons of God. The two principal instances cited are, first, the case of Abraham bowing down before three men, whom he recognizes as messengers from heaven; and, secondly, the words of Jacob when he gave his benediction to his grandsons.
With regard to the first instance, how very far the prostration of Abraham was in itself from implying an act of religious worship, being as it was the ordinary mode of paying respect to a fellow mortal, is evident from the very words of Scripture. The Hebrew word, which we translate by "bowed himself," and which the Vulgate unhappily renders "adoravit" ("adored"), is, letter for letter, the same in the case of Abraham saluting his three heavenly visitors, and in the case of Jacob saluting his brother Esau. The parallelism of the two passages is very striking.
| GEN. xviii. 2. And he [Abraham] lift up his eyes, and lo! three men stood by him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door; and bowed himself toward the ground. | GEN. xxxiii. 1 and 3. And Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold! Esau came ... And he passed over, and bowed himself to the ground seven times until he came near to his brother. |
By rendering the Hebrew word[10], which means to "bow or bend oneself," by the word "adoravit," which is literally "to pray to," the Latin Vulgate has laid the foundation for much unsound and misleading criticism. But suppose the word had meant, what it does not mean, an act of solemn religious worship; and let it be granted (as I am not only ready to grant, but prepared to maintain) that Abraham paid religious adoration at that time, what inference can fairly and honestly be drawn from that circumstance in favour of the invocation of angels? The ancient writers of the Christian Church, and those whom the Church of Rome habitually holds in great respect, are full and clear in maintaining that the person whom Abraham then addressed, was no created being, neither angel nor seraph; but the Angel of the Covenant; the Word, the eternal Son of God, Himself God[11]. Before the visible and miraculous presence of the God of heaven, who for his own glory and in carrying on the work of man's salvation, sometimes deigned so to reveal Himself, the patriarchs of old bowed themselves to the earth. Can this, with any shadow of reason, be employed to sanction the invocation of Michael and all the myriads of angels who fill the court of heaven?
Footnote 10:[(return)]
Not only is the Hebrew word precisely the same, letter for letter, and point for point, [Hebrew: shahah], but the Septuagint in each case employs the same, [Greek: prosekunaesen]; and the Vulgate in each case renders it by the same word, "adoravit." The Roman Catholic commentator De Sacy renders it in each case, "se prosternavit," which corresponds exactly with our English version. The Douay Bible in each case renders it "adored."
Footnote 11:[(return)]
Many early Christian writers may be cited to the same purpose: it is enough, however, to refer to Justin Martyr and to Athanasius; who are very full and elaborate in maintaining, that the angel here mentioned was no created being, but was the Angel of the Covenant, God, in the fulness of time manifested in the flesh. The passage from Athanasius will be quoted at some length, when we come to examine that father's testimony. For Justin Martyr, see Dial. cum Tryph. ch. 56, &c. p. 150, &c. (Paris, 1742.)
The only other instance to which it will be necessary to call your attention, occurs in the forty-eighth chapter of Genesis. The passage, however, is so palpably and on the very face of it inapplicable, that its examination needs not detain us long. "And he [Jacob] blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God who fed me all my life long unto this day, the ANGEL which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." [Gen. xlviii. 15.] Here the patriarch speaks of God as the Angel, and the Angel as God: being the Angel or Messenger of the Covenant—God manifested to man. He speaks not of Michael or Gabriel, or archangel or seraph, or any created being; but of the Lord Himself, who appeared to him, agreeably to the revelation of God Himself recorded in a previous chapter, and thus communicated by the patriarch to Rachel and Leah: "And the ANGEL of God spake unto me in a dream, saying, Jacob; and I said, Here am I. And he said ... I am the GOD of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and vowedst a vow unto me." [Gen. xxxi. 11.] The Angel whose blessing he desired for the lads was the God[12], to whom he had vowed a vow in Bethel, the Lord Himself.
Footnote 12:[(return)]
It may not be superfluous to add, that this is the interpretation of the passage adopted by primitive writers, Among others see Eusebius Demonstr. Evan. lib. v. ch. 10: who declares that the Angel spoken of by Jacob was God the Son.
Independently, however, of this conclusive consideration, if the latter member of this sentence had merely expressed a wish, that an angel might be employed as an instrument of good in behalf of Ephraim and Manasseh, I could readily offer such a prayer for a blessing on my own children. My prayer would be addressed to the angel neither immediately nor transitively, but exclusively to God alone, supplicating Him graciously to employ the service of those ministering spirits for our good. Such a prayer every Catholic in communion with the Church of England is taught and directed to offer. Such a prayer is primitive and scriptural; and such is offered in the Church on the anniversary of Saint Michael and all angels:
"O Everlasting God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of angels and men in a wonderful order, mercifully grant that as Thy holy angels alway do Thee service in heaven, so by Thy appointment they may succour and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
Such is the prayer of the Church Catholic, whether of the Roman or the Anglican branch; it is in spirit and in truth a Christian prayer, fit for faithful mortals to offer on earth to the Lord of men and of angels in heaven. Would that the Church of Rome, preserving, as she has preserved, this prayer in all its original purity, had never been successfully tempted to mingle in the same service, supplications, which rob the one only God of his exclusive honour and glory, as the God "who heareth prayer;" and to rob Christ of his exclusive honour and glory, as our only Mediator and Advocate!
Here, though unwilling, by departing from the order of our argument, to anticipate our examination in its place of the Roman ritual, I cannot refrain from contrasting this prayer, the genuine offspring of Christian faith, with some forms of invocation contained in the Roman service on St. Michael's day, in which I could not join, and the adoption of which I deeply lament. The first is appointed to be said at the part of the Mass called "The Secret:" "We offer to Thee, O Lord, the sacrifice of praise, humbly beseeching Thee, That by the intervention of the prayers of the angels for us, Thou, being appeased, mayest both accept the same, and make them profitable for our salvation. Through ..." The second is offered at the Post Communion: "Supported [propped up, suffulti] by the intercession of Thy blessed archangel Michael, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord, that what with honour we follow[13], we may obtain also in mind. Through ..."
Footnote 13:[(return)]
I do not understand the exact meaning of these words, which however contain no portion of that sentiment, the presence of which in this prayer I deplore. The original is this: "Beati archangeli tui Michaelis intercessione suffulti, supplices te Domine deprecamur, ut quod honore prosequimur, contingamus et in mente. Per ..." Probably the general sense is, that what we reverently seek we may actually realize.
Still, though here the Christian seems to be taught to rest on a broken reed, to support and prop himself up by a staff which must bend and break; yet I acknowledge that so much violence is not done to my Christian principles, nor do my feelings, as a believer in God and his ever-blessed Son, meet with so severe a shock by either of these prayers, as by the invocation addressed to the archangel himself in the "Gradual" on that same day:
"O holy Michael, O archangel, defend us in battle, that we perish not in the dreadful judgment."
Christians of the Church of Rome! for one moment meditate, I beseech you, on this prayer. It is not addressed to God; in it there is no mention made of Christ: having called upon the angels, and on your own soul in the words of the psalmist, to praise the Lord, you address your supplication to Michael himself; not even invoking him for his intercession, but imploring of him his protection. If it be said, that his intercession is all that is meant, with most unfeigned sincerity I request you to judge for yourselves, whether any prayer from poor sinful man, putting his whole trust in the Lord and imploring his help, could be addressed to our God and Saviour more immediate and direct than this? In the place of the name of his servant Michael, substitute the highest and the holiest name ever uttered in heaven or on earth, and can words form a prayer more direct to God? "O Lord God Almighty, O Lord Jesus our only Saviour, defend us in battle, that we perish not in the dreadful judgment. Hallelujah!"—Can this be right? Were the archangel allowed now, by his Lord and ours, to make his voice heard upon earth by Christians offering to him this prayer, would he utter any other words, than the angel, his fellow-servant and ours, once addressed to Saint John, when he fell down to worship before him, "See thou do it not; for I am thy fellow-servant: worship God."
Such then is the evidence borne by the writers of the Old Testament. No prayer to angel or beatified spirit occurs from its first to its last page. The theory which would have us account for the absence of all prayer to the saints before the advent of Messiah, by reason of their not having been then admitted into their everlasting habitations, and the immediate presence of God proves to be utterly groundless. The holy angels were confessedly in heaven [Matt. xviii. 10.], beholding the face of God; but no invocation was ever addressed to them, by patriarch, or prophet, or people, as mediators or intercessors. God, and God alone, the one eternal Jehovah, is proclaimed by Himself throughout, and is acknowledged throughout to be the only object of any kind of spiritual worship; the only Being who heareth prayer, to whom alone therefore all mankind should approach with the words and with the spirit of invocation. It has been argued by some writers, that in the times of the Old Testament, prayer was not offered to God through a mediator at all; and that as the one Mediator was not then revealed in his person and his offices, the subsidiary intercessors could not of course act; and therefore could not be invoked by man. The answer to this remark is conclusive. That Mediator has been revealed in his person and his offices; and has been expressly declared to be the one Mediator between God and man: we therefore seek God's covenanted mercies through Him. Those subsidiary intercessors have never been revealed; and therefore we do not seek their aid. To assure us that it was the mind and will of our Heavenly Father that we should approach Him by secondary and subsidiary mediators and intercessors, the same clear and unquestionable revelation of their persons and their offices as mediators would have been required, as He has vouchsafed of the mediation of his Son. Had God willed that the faithful should approach Him by the intercessions of the saints and martyrs, is it conceivable that He would not have given some intimation of his will in this respect? If believers in the Gospel were to have unnumbered mediators of intercession in heaven, as well as the one Mediator of redemption, would not the Gospel itself have announced it? Could such declarations as these have remained on record without any qualifying or limiting expression, "He[14] is able also to save to the uttermost them who come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them." "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." But this involves the question to which the next section must be devoted. All I would anticipate here is, that if the irresistible argument from the Old Testament is sought to be evaded on the ground that no mediator at all was then revealed, we must require a distinct revelation of the existence and offices of other mediators and intercessors, before we can be justified in applying to them for their intervention in our behalf. And the question now is. Are they so revealed?
Footnote 14:[(return)]
Heb. vii. 25. I Tim. ii. 5.—Unde et salvare in perpetuum potest accedentes per semetipsum ad Deum, semper vivens ad interpellandum pro nobis.—Vulg.
[SECTION IV.]—EVIDENCE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
Though such is the evidence borne against the invocation of saints and angels by the Old Testament, yet it has been said that we are living neither under the patriarchal, nor the Mosaic dispensation, but under the Gospel, to whom therefore as Christians neither the precepts nor the examples of those ancient times are applicable: the injunctions consequently given of old to preserve the chosen people from idolatry and paganism, cannot be held to prohibit Christians from seeking the aid of those departed saints who are now reigning with Christ. But, surely, those precepts, and denunciations, and commands, are still most strictly applicable, as conveying to us a knowledge of the will of our Heavenly Father, that his sons and daughters on earth should associate no name, however exalted among the principalities and powers in heavenly places, with his own holy name in prayer, and spiritual invocation. I am throughout this address supposing myself to be speaking to those whose heart's desire is to fulfil the will of God in all things; not those who are contented to depart from the spirit of that will, whenever they can devise plausible arguments to countenance such departure.
The cases both of precept and example through the Old Testament affording so stringent and so universal a rule against the association of any name with the name of the Almighty in our prayers; before we can conclude that Christians have a liberty denied to believers under the former dispensations, we must surely produce a declaration to that effect, clear, unequivocal, and precisely in point. Nothing short of an enactment, rescinding in terms the former prohibitory law, and positively sanctioning supplications and prayers to saints and angels, seems capable of satisfying any Christian bent on discovering the will of God, and resolved to worship Him agreeably to the spirit of that will as it has been revealed. But let us read the New Testament from its first to its very last word, and we shall find, that the doctrines, the precepts, and the examples, the pervading reigning spirit of the entire volume, combine in addressing us with voices loud and clear. Pray to God Almighty solely in the name and for the sake of his dear and only Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and offer no prayer, no supplication, no intreaty, to any other being or power, saint or angel, though it be only to ask for their intercession with the great God. But this involves the whole question, and must be sifted thoroughly. Let us then review the entire volume with close and minute scrutiny, and ask ourselves, Is there a single passage, interpreted to the best of our skill, with the aid of those on whose integrity and learning we can rely, which directly and unequivocally sanctions any religious invocation of whatever kind to any being except God alone? And then let us calmly and deliberately resolve this point: In a matter of so vital importance, of so immense interest, and of so sacred a character as the worship of the Supreme Being, who declares Himself to be a jealous God, ought we to suffer any refinements of casuistry to entice us from the broad, clear light of revelation? If it were God's good pleasure to make exceptions to his rule—a rule so repeatedly, and so positively enacted and enforced—surely the analogy of his gracious dealings with mankind would have taught us to look for an announcement of the exceptions in terms equally forcible and explicit. Instead, however, of this, we find no single act, no single word, nothing which even by implication can be forced to sanction any prayer or religious invocation, of whatever kind, to any other being save to God alone.
Let us first look to the language and conduct of our blessed Lord, whose prayers to his Father are upon record for our instruction and comfort, and whose precepts and example form the best rule of a Christian's life. So far from repealing the ancient law, he repeats in his own person its solemn announcement, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." [Mark xii. 29.] While the same heavenly Teacher commands us with authority, "When thou prayest, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father, who seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." [Matt. vi. 6.] No allusion in any word of His do we find to any prayer from a mortal on this earth to an angel or saint in heaven. And yet occasions were multiplied on which a reference to the invocation of angels would have been natural, and apparently called for. He again and again places beyond all doubt the reality of their good services towards mankind, but it is as God's servants, and at God's bidding; not in answer to any supplication or invoking of ours. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus has been cited [Bellarmin, p. 895.] to bear contrary evidence; but, in the first place, that parable does not offer a case in point; in the second place, were it in point, it might be fairly and strongly urged against the practice of invoking the spirit of any departed mortal, even the father of the faithful himself. For what are the circumstances of the parabolic representation? A lost spirit in the regions of torment prays to Abraham in the regions of the blessed, and the spirit of the departed patriarch professes himself to have no power to grant the request of the departed and condemned spirit. [Luke xvi. 19.] The practice indeed of our Roman Catholic brethren would have been exemplified, had our blessed Lord represented the rich man's five brethren still on earth as pious men, and as supplicating Abraham in heaven to pray for themselves, or to mitigate their lost brother's punishment and his woes. But then it would have afforded Christians little encouragement to follow their example, when they found Abraham declaring himself unable to aid them in attaining the object of their prayer, or in any way to assist them at all. Without one single exception, we find our blessed Lord's example, precepts, and doctrines to be decidedly against the practice of invoking saint or angel; whilst not one solitary act or word of His can be cited to countenance or palliate it.
Next it follows, that we inquire into the conduct and the writings of Christ's Apostles and immediate followers, to whom He graciously promised that the Holy Spirit should guide them into all truth. In the Acts of the Apostles, various instances of prayer attract our notice, but not one ejaculation is found there to any other being save God alone. Neither angel nor saint is invoked. The Apostles prayed for guidance in the government of Christ's infant Church, but it was, "Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men." [Acts i. 24.] They prayed for their own acceptance, but it was "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." [Acts vii. 59.] They prayed for each other, as in behalf of St. Peter when in prison; but we are expressly told, that the prayer which was made without ceasing by the Church for him was addressed to GOD. [Acts xii. 5.]
To deliver St. Peter from his chains, an angel was sent on an especial mission from heaven; but though St. Peter saw him, and heard his voice, and followed him, and knew of a surety that the Almighty had employed the ministration of an angel to liberate him from his bonds, yet we do not hear thereafter of Peter having himself prayed to an angel to secure his good offices, and his intercession with God, nor has he once indirectly intimated to others that such supplications would be of avail, or were even allowable. He exhorts his fellow-Christians to pray, "Watch unto prayer," but it is because "The eyes of the LORD are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers." [1 Pet. iv. 7; iii. 12.] He Himself prays for them, but it is, that the God of all grace might make them perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle them. He suggests no invocation of saint or angel to intercede with God for them. He bids them cast all their care upon GOD, on the assurance that God Himself careth for them.
Precisely the same result issues from a contemplation of the acts and exhortation of St. Paul. He too experienced in his own person the comfort of an angel's ministration, bidding him cast off all fear when in the extreme of imminent peril. [Acts xxvii. 23, 24.] Many a prayer of that holy Apostle is upon record; many an earnest exhortation to prayer was made by him; we find many a declaration relative to his own habits of prayer. But with him God and God alone is the object of prayer throughout: by him no saint or angel or archangel is alluded to, as one whose intercession might be sought by himself or by us. He could speak in glowing language of patriarchs, prophets, and angels, but unto none of these would he turn. "Be careful for nothing, but in every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God." [Phil. iv. 6.] And let any one receive, in the plain meaning of his words, his prohibitory monition [Col. ii. 18.], and say, could St. Paul have uttered these words without any qualifying expression, had he worshipped angels by invocation, even asking them only to aid him by their prayers. "Let no one beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels; not holding the Head," which Head he had in the first chapter (v. 18) declared to be the dear Son of God, "in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of our sins."
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews could bring before our minds with most fervent uplifting eloquence Abel and Abraham and David,—that goodly fellowship of the prophets, that holy army of martyrs; he could speak as though he were an eye-witness of what he describes, of the general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven. And, surely, had the thought of seeking the support or intercession of saint or angel by invocation addressed to them, been familiar to him; had the thought even occurred to his mind with approbation, he would not have allowed such an occasion to pass by, without even alluding to any benefit that might arise from our invoking such friends of God. So far from that allusion, the utmost which he says at the close of his eulogy is this, "These all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise; God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." [Heb. xi. 39, 40.]
The beloved Apostle who could look forward in full assurance of faith to the day of Christ's second coming, and knew that "when He shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is," has left us this record of his sentiments concerning prayer: "This is the confidence that we have in HIM, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us; and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him." [1 John v. 14, 15.] St. John alludes to no intercessor, to no advocate, save only that "Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who is also the propitiation for our sins." [1 John ii. 1.] St. John never suggests to us the advocacy or intercession of saint or angel; with him God in Christ is all in all.
I will only refer to one more example, that of St. James: the instance is equally to the point, and is strongly illustrative of the truth. This Apostle is anxious to impress on his fellow-Christians a due sense of the efficacy of our intercessions: "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." [James v. 16.] He instances its power with God by the case of Elijah, a man so holy, that the Almighty suffered him not to pass through the regions of death and the grave, but translated him at once from this life to glory: "Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months; and he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit." [James v. 17, 18.] And yet St. James is very far from suggesting the lawfulness or efficacy of any invocation to the hallowed spirit of this man, to whose prayer the elements and natural powers of the sky and the earth had been made obedient. He exhorts all men to pray, but it must be to God alone, and directly to God, without applying for the intervention of any mediators or intercessors from among angels or men. "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth liberally to all men, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him; but let him ask in faith, nothing wavering." [James i. 5, 6.] Like the writer to the Hebrews, he would have us come ourselves "boldly" and directly "to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."
Surely, these Apostles, chosen vessels for conveying the truths of salvation throughout the world, knew well how the Almighty could best be approached by his children on earth; and had the invocation of saint or angel found a place in their creed, they would not have kept so important a truth from us.
Before leaving this part of our inquiry, I would propose the patient and unprejudiced weighing of the import of two passages in the New Testament, often quoted on this subject; one in the Acts of the Apostles, the other in the Apocalypse.
The holy Apostles Barnabas and Paul, by the performance of a striking miracle, had excited feelings of religious reverence and devotion among the people of Lystra, who prepared to offer sacrifice to them as two of their fabled deities. [Acts xiv. 11-18.] The indignant zeal with which these two holy men rushed forward to prevent such an act of impiety, however admirable and affecting, does not constitute the chief point for which reference is here made to this incident. They were men, still clothed with the tabernacle of the flesh, and the weakness of human nature; and the priests and people were ready to offer to them the wonted victims, the abomination of the heathen. Now, I am fully aware of the wide difference, in many particulars, between such an act and the act of a Christian praying to their spirits after their departure hence, and supplicating them to intercede with the true God in his behalf: and on this difference Roman Catholic writers have maintained the total inapplicability of this incident to the present state of things. But, surely, if any such prayer to departed saints had been familiar to their minds, instead of repelling the religious address of the inhabitants of Lystra at once and for ever, they would have altered the tone of their remonstrance, and not have suppressed the truth when a good opportunity offered itself for imparting it. And, supposing that it was part of their commission to announce and explain the invocation of saints at all, on what occasion could an explanation of the just and proper invocation of angels and saints departed have been more appropriate in the Apostles, than when they were denouncing the unjustifiable offering of sacrifice to themselves while living? But whether the more appropriate place for such an announcement were at Lystra, in Corinth, at Athens, or at Rome, it matters not; nor whether it would have been more advantageously communicated by their oral teaching, or in their epistles. Doubtless, had the Apostles, by their example or teaching, sanctioned the invocation of saints and angels, in the course of fifty years or more after our blessed Saviour's resurrection, it would infallibly have appeared in some page or other of the New Testament. Instead of this the whole tenor of the Holy Volume breathes in perfect accordance with the spirit of the apostolical remonstrance at Lystra, to the fullest and utmost extent of its meaning, "We preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities to serve the living God."
Of the other instance, it well becomes every Catholic Christian to ponder on the weight and cogency. John, the beloved disciple of our Lord, when admitted to view with his own eyes and hear with his mortal ears the things of heaven, rapt in amazement and awe, fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed him these things. [Rev. xxii. 8, 9.] If the adoration of angels were ever justifiable, surely it was then; and what a testimony to the end of the world would have been put upon record, had the adoration of an angel by the blessed John at such a moment, when he had the mysteries and the glories of heaven before him, been received and sanctioned. But what is the fact? "Then saith he to me, See thou do it not. I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them who keep the sayings of this book. Worship God." I cannot understand the criticism by which the conclusiveness of this direct renouncement of all religious adoration and worship is attempted to be set aside. To my mind these words, uttered without any qualification at such a time, by such a being, to such a man, are conclusive beyond gainsaying. The interpretation put upon this transaction, and the words in which it is recorded, and the inference drawn from them by a series of the best divines, with St. Athanasius at their head, presents so entirely the plain common-sense view of the case to our minds, that all the subtilty of casuists, and all the ingenuity of modern refinements, will never be able to substitute any other in its stead. "The angel (such are the words of that ancient defender of the true faith), in the Apocalypse, forbids John, when desiring to worship him, saying, 'See thou do it not; I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them who keep the sayings of this book. Worship God.' Therefore, to be the object of worship belongs to God only; and this even the angels themselves know: though they surpass others in glory, but they are all creatures, and are not among objects of worship, but among those who worship the sovereign Lord." [Athan. Orat. 2. Cont. Ar. vol. i. p. 491.] To say that St. John was too fully illuminated by the Holy Spirit to do, especially a second time, what was wrong; and thence to infer that what he did was right, is as untenable as to maintain, that St. Peter could not, especially thrice, have done wrong in denying our Lord. He did wrong, or the angel would not have chided and warned him. And to say that the angel here forbade John personally to worship him, because he was a fellow-servant and one of the prophets; and thus that the prohibition only tended to exalt the prophetic character, not to condemn the worship of angels, is proved to be also a groundless assumption, from the angel's own words, who reckons himself as a fellow-servant with not St. John only, but all those also who keep the words of the book of God,—thus equally forbidding every faithful Christian to worship their fellow-servants the angels. They are almost the last words in the volume of inspired truth, and to me, together with those last words, they seem with "the voice of a great multitude, and of many waters, and of mighty thunderings," from the very throne itself of the Most High, to proclaim to every inhabiter of the earth, Fall down before no created being; adore no created being; pray to, invoke, call upon no created being, whether saint or angel: worship and adore God only; pray to God only. Trust to his mercy; seek no other mediator or intercessor than his own only and blessed Son. "He who testifieth these things saith, Surely, I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." [Rev. xxii. 20, 21.]
Thus the New Testament, so far from mitigating the stringency of the former law, so far from countenancing any departure from the obligation of that code which limits religious worship to God alone, so far from suggesting to us invocation to sainted men, and to angels as intercessors with the eternal Giver of all good, reiterates the injunction, and declares, that invocation in order to be Christian must be addressed to God alone; and that there is one and only one Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of his Father, a merciful High Priest sympathizing with us in our infirmities, ever making intercession for us, able to save to the uttermost those who come unto God through Him.
The present seems to be a convenient place for observing, that however the distinction is strongly insisted upon, or rather implicitly acquiesced in by many, which would admit of a worship or service called dulia (the Greek [Greek: douleia]) to saints and angels, and would limit the worship or service called latria ([Greek: latreia]) to the supreme God only, yet that such distinction has no ground whatever to rest upon beyond the will and the imagination of those who draw it. The two words are used in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, and in the original Greek of the New promiscuously, without any such distinction whatever. The word which this distinction would limit to the supreme worship of the Most High, is used to express the bodily service paid by the vanquished to their conquerors, as well as the religious service paid by idolaters to their fabled deities, and by the true worshippers to the Most High. The word which this distinction would reserve for the secondary worship paid to saints and angels, is employed to express not only the service paid by man to man, but also the service and worship paid to God alone, even when mentioned in contradistinction to other worship. It will be necessary to establish this by one or two instances; and first as to "latria." One single chapter in the Book of Deuteronomy supplies us with instances of the word used in the three senses, of service to men, service to idols, and service to God, xxviii. 36. 47, 48: "Because thou servedst [Greek: elatreusas] not the Lord thy God with joyfulness and gladness of heart; Therefore thou shalt serve [Greek: latreuseis] thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee in hunger and in thirst and nakedness." "The Lord shall bring thee unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known; and there shalt thou serve [Greek: latreuseis] other gods, wood and stone." Next as to the word "dulia." The First Book of Samuel (called also the First of Kings) alone supplies us with instances of this word being used in each of the same three senses of service from man to man, from man to idols, and from man to his Maker and God. 1 Sam. xvii. 9. "Ye shall be our servants and serve [Greek: douleusite haemin] us." xii. 24. "Only fear the Lord, and serve [Greek: douleusate] him in truth with all your heart." xxvi. 19. "They have driven me out from the inheritance of the Lord, saying, Go, serve[15] other gods."
Footnote 15:[(return)]
[Greek: douleue]. In this case also the Vulgate translates all the three passages alike by the same verb, "servire."
It is worthy of remark, that the same word "dulia[16]" is employed, when the Lord by his prophet speaks of the most solemn acts of religious worship; not in general obedience only, but in the offerings and oblations of their holy things. Ezek. xx. 40. "In mine holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of Israel, saith the Lord God, there shall all the house of Israel, all of them in the land, serve me [Greek: douleusousi. Vulg: serviet.]; there will I accept them, and there will I require your offerings, and the first-fruits of your oblations, with all your holy things." St. Matthew also uses the same word when he records the saying of our blessed Lord, "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." [Matt. vi. 24.; Greek: douleuein. Vulg: servire.]
Footnote 16:[(return)]
It is also remarkable that in all these cases, whether the Septuagint employs the word "dulia," or "latria," the word in the Hebrew is precisely the same, [Hebrew: avad]. That in the fifth century the words were synonymous is evident from Theodoret. I. 319. See Edit. Halle.—Index.
I will only detain you by one more example, drawn from two passages, which seems the more striking because each of the two words "dulia" and "latria" is used to imply the true worship of God in a person, who was changed from a state of alienation to a state of holiness. The first is in St. Paul's 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians, i. 9. "How ye turned to God from idols, to serve [Greek: douleuein theo zonti] the living and true God." The second is in Heb. ix. 14. "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve[17] the living God."
Footnote 17:[(return)]
[Greek: latoeuein theo zonti.] In each of these two cases the Vulgate uses "servire."
The word "hyperdulia," now used to signify the worship proper to the Virgin Mary, as being a worship of a more exalted character than the worship offered to saints and angels, archangels, and cherubim and seraphim, will not require a similar examination. The word was invented in later times, and has been used chiefly to signify the worship of the Virgin, and is of course found neither in the Scriptures, nor in any ancient classical or ecclesiastical author.
[CHAPTER III.]
[SECTION I.]—THE EVIDENCE OF PRIMITIVE WRITERS.
Before we enter upon the next branch of our proposed inquiry, allow me to premise that I am induced to examine into the evidence of Christian antiquity not by any misgiving, lest the testimony of Scripture might appear defective or doubtful; far less by any unworthy notion that God's word needs the additional support of the suffrages of man[18]. On the contrary, the voice of God in his revealed word is clear, certain, and indisputable, commanding the invocation of Himself alone in acts of religious worship, and condemning any such departure from that singleness of adoration, as they are seduced into, who invoke saints and angels. And it is a fixed principle in our creed, that where God's written word is clear and certain, human evidence cannot be weighed against it in the balance of the sanctuary. When the Lord hath spoken, well does it become the whole earth to be silent before him; when the eternal Judge Himself hath decided, the witness of man bears on its very face the stamp of incompetency and presumption.
Footnote 18:[(return)]
While some authors seem to go far towards the substitution of the fathers for the written word of God, others in their abhorrence of that excess have run into the opposite, fancying, as it would seem, that they exalt the Divine oracles just in the same proportion as they disparage the uninspired writers of the Church. The great body of the Church of England adhere to a middle course, and adopt that golden mean, which ascribes to the written Word its paramount authority, from which is no appeal, and yet honours Catholic tradition as the handmaid of the truth.
For myself I can say (what I have good hope these pages will of themselves evince) that no one can value the testimony of Christian tradition within its own legitimate sphere more sincerely, or more highly, than the individual who is now soliciting your attention to the conclusions which he has himself drawn from it. When Scripture is silent, or where its meaning is doubtful, Catholic tradition is to me a guide, which I feel myself bound to follow with watchful care and submissive reverence.
Now let it be for the present supposed, that instead of the oracles of God having spoken, as we believe them to have spoken, with a voice clear, strong, and uniform against the doctrine and practice of the invocation of saints and angels, their voices had been weak, doubtful, and vague; in other words, suppose in this case the question had been left by the Holy Scriptures an open question, then what evidence would have been deducible from the writings of the primitive Church? What testimony do the first years and the first ages after the canon of Scripture was closed, bear upon this point? And here I would repeat the principle of inquiry, proposed above for our adoption in the more important and solemn examination of the Holy Volume itself.—We ought to endeavour to ascertain what may fairly and honestly be regarded as the real bearing of each author's remains, and not suffer the general tone and spirit of a writer to be counterbalanced by single expressions, which may be so interpreted as to convey an opposite meaning. Rather we should endeavour to reconcile with that general spirit and pervading tendency of a writer's sentiments any casual expressions which may admit of two acceptations. We adopt this principle in our researches into the remains of classical antiquity; we adopt the same principle in estimating the testimony of a living witness. In the latter case, indeed, the ingenuity of the adverse advocate is often exercised in magnifying the discrepancies between some minor facts or incidental expressions with the broad and leading assertions of the witness, with a view to invalidate his testimony altogether, or at least to weaken the impression made by it. But then a wise and upright judge, assured of the truth of the evidence in the main, and of the integrity of the individual, will not suffer unessential, apparent inconsistencies to stifle and bury the body of testimony at large, but will either extract from the witness what may account for them, or show them to be immaterial. Inviting, therefore, your best thoughts to this branch of our subject, I ask you to ascertain, by a full and candid process of induction, this important and interesting point,—Whether we of the Anglican Church, by religiously abstaining from the presentation, in word or in thought, of any thing approaching prayer or supplication, entreaty, request, or any invocation whatever, to any other being except God alone, do or do not tread in the steps of the first Christians, and adhere to the very pattern which they set; and whether members of the Church of Rome by addressing angel or saint in any form of invocation seeking their aid, either by their intercession or otherwise, have not unhappily swerved decidedly and far from those same footsteps, and departed widely from that pattern?
In one point of view it might perhaps be preferable to enter at once upon our investigation, without previously stating the conclusions to which my own inquiries have led; but, on the whole, I think it more fair to make that statement, in order, that having the inferences already drawn placed before the mind, the inquirer may in each case weigh the several items of evidence bearing upon them separately, and more justly estimate its whole weight collectively at the last.
After then having examined the passages collected by the most celebrated Roman Catholic writers, and after having searched the undisputed original works of the primitive writers of the Greek and Latin Churches, the conclusion to which I came, and in which every day of further inquiry and deliberation confirms me more and more in this:—
In the first place, negatively, that the Christian writers, through the first three centuries and more, never refer to the invocation of saints and angels as a practice with which they were familiar: that they have not recorded or alluded to any forms of invocation of the kind used by themselves or by the Church in their days; and that no services of the earliest times contain hymns, litanies, or collects to angels, or to the spirits of the faithful departed.
In the second place, positively, that the principles which they habitually maintain and advocate are irreconcileable with such a practice.
In tracing the history of the worship of saints and angels, we proceed (gradually, indeed, though by no means at all periods, and through every stage, with equal rapidity,) from the earliest custom established and practised in the Church,—of addressing prayers to Almighty God alone for the sake of the merits of his blessed Son, the only Mediator and Intercessor between God and man,—to the lamentable innovation both of praying to God for the sake of the merits, and through the mediation of departed mortals, and of invoking those mortals themselves as the actual dispensers of the spiritual blessings which the suppliant seeks from above. It is not only a necessary part of our inquiry for ascertaining the very truth of the case; it is also curious and painfully interesting, to trace the several steps, one after another, beginning with the doctrine maintained by various early writers, both Greek and Latin, that the souls of the saints are not yet reigning with Christ in heaven, and ending with the anathema of the Council of Trent, against all who should maintain that doctrine; beginning with prayer and thanksgiving to Almighty God alone, and ending with daily prayers both to saints and angels; one deviation from the strict line of religious duty, and the pure singleness of Christian worship, successively gliding into another, till at length the whole of Christendom, with a few remarkable exceptions, was seen to acquiesce in public and private devotions, which, if proposed, the whole of Christendom would once with unanimity have rejected.
Before I offer to you the result of my inquiries as to the progressive stages of degeneracy and innovation in the worship of Almighty God, I would premise two considerations:
First, I would observe, that the soundness of my conclusion on the general points at issue does not depend at all on the accuracy of the arrangement of those stages which I have adopted. Should any one, for example, think there is evidence that two or more of those progressive steps, which I have regarded as consecutive, were simultaneous changes, or that any one which I have ranked as subsequent took rather the lead in order of time, such an opinion would not tend in the least to invalidate my argument; the substantial and essential point at issue being this: Is the invocation of saints and angels, as now practised in the Church of Rome, agreeable to the primitive usage of the earliest Christians?
Secondly, I would observe, that the places and occasions most favourable for witnessing and correctly estimating the changes and gradual innovations in the worship of those early times, are the tombs of the martyrs, and the Churches in which their remains were deposited; and at the periods of the annual celebration of their martyrdom, or in some instances at what was called their translation,—the removal, that is, of their mortal remains from their former resting-place to a church, for the most part dedicated to their memory. On these occasions the most extraordinary enthusiasm prevailed; sometimes the ardour of the worshippers, as St. Chrysostom [St. Chrys. Paris, 1718. Vol. xii. p. 330.] tells us, approaching madness. But even at times of less excitement, by contemplating, immediately after his death, the acts and sufferings of the martyr, and recalling his words, and looks, and stedfast bearing, and exhorting each other to picture to themselves his holy countenance then fixed on them, his tongue addressing them, his sufferings before their eyes, encouraging all to follow his example, they began habitually to consider him as actually himself one of the faithful assembled round his tomb. Hence they believed that he was praying with them as well as for them; that he heard their eulogy on his merits, and was pleased with the honours paid to his memory: hence they felt sure of his goodwill towards them, and his ability, as when on earth, to promote their welfare. Hence they proceeded, by a fatal step, first, to implore him to give them bodily relief from some present sufferings; then invoking him to plead their cause with God, and to intercede for the supply of their spiritual wants, and the ultimate salvation of their souls; and, lastly, they prayed to him generally as himself the dispenser of temporal and spiritual blessings.
The following then is the order in which the innovations in Christian worship seem to have taken place, being chiefly introduced at the annual celebrations of the martyrs:—
1st. In the first ages confession and prayer and praise were offered to the Supreme Being alone, and that for the sake of his Son our only Saviour and Advocate: when mention was made of saint or martyr, it was to thank God for the graces bestowed on his departed holy ones when on earth, and to pray to God for grace that we might follow their good examples, and attain, through Christ, to the same end and crown of our earthly struggles. This act of worship was usually accompanied by a homily setting forth the Christian excellences of the saint, and encouraging the survivors so to follow him, as he followed Christ.
2nd. The second stage seems to have been a prayer to Almighty God, that He would suffer the supplications and intercessions[19] of angels and saints to prevail with him, and bring down a blessing on their fellow-petitioners on earth; the idea having spread among enthusiastic worshippers, as I have already observed, that the spirits of the saints were suffered to be present around their tombs, and to join with the faithful in their addresses to the throne of grace.
Footnote 19:[(return)]
The Greek word [Greek: presbeia], "embassy," employed on such occasions, is still used in some eastern Churches in the same sense.
3rd. The third stage seems to have owed its origin to orators constantly dwelling upon the excellences of the saints in the panegyrics delivered over their remains, representing their constancy and Christian virtues as superhuman and divine, and as having conferred lasting benefits on the Church. By these benefits at first was meant the comfort and encouragement of their good example, and the honour procured to the religion of the cross by their bearing witness to its truth even unto death; but in process of time the habit grew of attaching a sort of mysterious efficacy to their merits; hence this third gradation in religious worship, namely, prayers to God that "He would hear his suppliants, and grant their requests for the sake of his martyred servant, and by the efficacy of that martyr's merits."
4th. Hitherto, unauthorized and objectionable as the two last forms of prayer are, still the petitions in each case were directed to God alone. The next step swerved lamentably from that principle of worship, and the petitioners addressed their requests to angels and sainted men in heaven; at first, however, confining their petitions to the asking for their prayers and intercessions with Almighty God.
5th. The last stage in this progressive degeneracy of Christian worship was to petition the saints and angels, directly and immediately themselves, at first for the temporal, and afterwards for the spiritual benefits which the petitioners desired to obtain from heaven. For it 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. (See Basil. Oral. in Mamanta Martyrem.)
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 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 fellow-labourers 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[20]. 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 made here will, I am assured, be not unacceptable to any one, who holds dear the religion of Christ[21].
Footnote 20:[(return)]
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.
Footnote 21:[(return)]
The edition of the works of these Apostolic Fathers used here is that of Cotelerius as revised by Le Clerc, Antwerp, 1698.
THE EPISTLE OF ST. BARNABAS.
In the work entitled The Catholic Epistle of Barnabas, which was written probably by a Jew converted to the Christian faith, about the close of the first century, or certainly before the middle of the second[22], I have searched in vain for any thing like the faintest trace of the invocation of saint or angel. The writer gives directions on the subject of prayer; he speaks of angels as the ministers of God; he speaks of the reward of the righteous at the day of judgment; but he suggests not the shadow of a supposition, that he either held the doctrine himself which the Church of Rome now holds, or was aware of its existence among Christians. In his very beautiful but incomplete summary of Christian duty [Sect. 18, 19. p. 50, 51, 52.], which he calls "The Way of Light," we perceive more than one most natural opening for reference to that doctrine, had it been familiar to his mind. In the midst indeed of his brief precepts of religious and moral obligation, he directs the Christian to seek out every day "the persons of the saints," but they are our fellow-believers on earth; those saints or holy ones, for administering to whose necessities, the Scripture assures us that God will not forget our work and labour of love [Heb. vi. 10.]: these the author bids the Christians search out daily, for the purposes of religious intercourse, and of encouragement by the word.
Footnote 22:[(return)]
Archbishop Wake considers this Epistle to have been written by St. Barnabas to the Jews, soon after the destruction of Jerusalem.
The following interesting extracts shall conclude our reference to this work:—
"There are two ways of doctrine and authority, one of light, the other of darkness; and the difference between the two ways is great. Over the one are appointed angels of God, conductors of the light; over the other, angels of Satan: and the one (God) is Lord from everlasting to everlasting; the other (Satan) is ruler of the age of iniquity. The way of light is this ... Thou shalt love Him that made thee; thou shalt glorify Him that redeemed thee from death. Thou shalt be single in heart, and rich in spirit. Thou shalt not join thyself to those who are walking in the path of death. Thou shalt hate to do what is displeasing to God; thou shalt hate all hypocrisy. Thou shalt entertain no evil counsel against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not take away thy hand from thy son or thy daughter, but shalt teach them the fear of the Lord from their youth. Thou shalt communicate with thy neighbour in all things, and call not things thine own. Thou shalt not be of a froward tongue, for the mouth is the snare of death. To the very utmost of thy power keep thy soul chaste. Do not open thine hand to receive, and close it against giving. Thou shalt love as the apple of thine eye every one who speaketh to thee the word of the Lord. Call to remembrance the day of judgment, night and day. Thou shalt search out every day the persons of the saints[23]; both meditating by the word, and proceeding to exhort them, and anxiously caring to save a soul by the word. Thou shalt preserve what thou hast received, neither adding thereto, nor taking therefrom. Thou shalt not come with a bad conscience to thy prayer."
Footnote 23:[(return)]
There is much obscurity in the phraseology of this passage: [Greek: ekzaetaeseis kath hekastaen haemeran ta prosopa ton hagion kai dia logou skopion kai poreuomenos eis to parakalesai, kai meleton eis sosai psuchaen to logo]. In the corresponding exhortation among the Apostolical Constitutions (book vii. ch. 9), the expression is, "Thou shalt seek the person ([Greek: prosopon]) of the saints, that thou mayest find rest (or find refreshment, or refresh thyself) ([Greek: in epanapanae tois logois auton]) in their words." The author seems evidently to allude to the reciprocal advantage derived by Christians from religious intercourse.
The closing sentences contain this blessing: "Now God, who is the Lord of all the world, give to you wisdom, skill, understanding, knowledge of his judgments, with patience. And be ye taught of God; seeking what the Lord requires of you, and do it, that ye may be saved in the day of judgment.... The Lord of glory and of all grace be with your spirit. Amen."
THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS.
This work, which derives its title from the circumstance of an angelic teacher being represented as a shepherd, is now considered by many to have been the production of Hermas, a brother of Pius, Bishop of Rome[24] though others are persuaded that the work is of a much earlier date[25]. The author speaks of guardian angels and of evil angels, and he speaks much of prayer; but not the faintest hint shows itself throughout the three books, of which the work consists, that he had any idea of prayer being addressed to any created being, whether saint or angel. On the evidence of this writer I will not detain you much longer than by the translation of a passage as it is found in the Greek quotation from Hermas, made by Antiochus (Homil. 85), on a point the most nearly, of all that I can find, connected with the immediate subject of our inquiry. The Latin is found in the second book, ninth mandate. It contains sound spiritual advice, of universal application.
Footnote 24:[(return)]
Ecclesiastical writers refer the appointment of Pius, as Bishop of Rome, to the year 153.
Footnote 25:[(return)]
Archbishop Wake thinks it not improbable that this book was written by the same Hermas, of whom mention is made by St. Paul.
"Let us then remove from us double-heartedness and faint-heartedness, and never at all doubt of supplicating any thing from God; saying within ourselves, 'How can I, who have been guilty of so many sins against Him, ask of the Lord and receive?' But with thine whole heart turn to the Lord, and ask of Him without doubting; and thou shalt know his great mercy, that He will not forsake thee, but will fulfil the desire of thy soul. For God is not as men are, a rememberer of evil, but is Himself one who remembers not evil, and is moved with compassion towards his creature. Do thou, therefore, cleanse thy heart of doubt, and ask of Him, and thou shalt receive thy request. But when thou doubtest, thou shalt not receive. For they who doubt towards God are the double-hearted, and shall receive nothing whatever of their desires. For those who are whole in the faith, ask every thing, trusting in the Lord, and they receive because they ask nothing doubting. [See St. James i. 6.] And if thou shouldest be tardy in receiving, do not doubt in thy mind because thou dost not receive soon the request of thy soul. For the cause of the tardiness of thy receiving is some trial, or some transgression which thou knowest not of. Do thou then not cease to offer the request of thy soul, and thou shalt receive it. But if thou grow faint in asking, accuse thyself, and not the Giver. For double-heartedness is a daughter of the devil, and works much mischief towards the servants of God. Do thou, therefore, take to thyself the faith that is strong."
In the twelfth section of the ninth Similitude, in the third book, in the midst of much to the same import, and of much, too, which is strange and altogether unworthy of the pen from which the previous quotation proceeded, he thus writes, as the Latin records his words, the Greek of this passage having been lost.
"These all are messengers to be reverenced for their dignity. By these, therefore, as it were by a wall, the Lord is girded round. But the gate is the Son of God, who is the only way to God. For no one shall enter in to God except by his Son." [Book iii. Simil. 2.]
On the subject of prayer, I cannot refrain from referring you to a beautiful similitude, illustrative of the powerful and beneficial effects of the intercession of Christians for each other. The author compares a rich man, abounding in deeds of charity, to a vine full of fruit supported by an elm. The elm seems not to bear fruit at all; but by supporting the vine, which, without that support, would bear no fruit to perfection, it may be said to bear fruit itself. So the poor man, who has nothing to give in return for the rich man's fruits of charity, beyond the support which his prayers and praises ascending to God in his behalf will obtain, confers a far more substantial benefit on the rich man than the most liberal outpouring of alms from the rich can confer on the poor. [Ibid.] Yet the writer, who had formed such strong notions of the benefits mutually obtained by the prayers of Christians for each other, says not a word about the intercession of saints and angels, nor of our invoking them. He will not suffer us to be deterred by any consciousness of our own transgressions from approaching God Himself, directly and immediately ourselves; but He bids us draw near ourselves to the throne and mercy seat of our heavenly Father.
ST. CLEMENT, BISHOP OF ROME.
It is impossible to read the testimony borne by Eusebius, and other most ancient writers, to the character and circumstances of Clement, without feeling a deep interest in whatever production of his pen may have escaped the ravages of time. "Third from the Apostles," says Eusebius, "Clement obtained the bishopric of Rome; one who had seen the Apostles and conversed with them, and had still the sound of their preaching in his ears, and their tradition before his eyes;—and not he alone, for many others[26] at that time were still living, who had been taught by the Apostles. In the time of this Clement, no small schism having arisen among the brethren in Corinth, the Church in Rome sent a most important letter to the Corinthians, urging them to return to peace, renewing their faith, and [reminding them of] the tradition which had been so lately received from the Apostles." [Euseb. Eccl. Hist. v. c. 6.]
Footnote 26:[(return)]
See St. Paul to the Philippians, iv. 3. "And I entreat thee also, true yoke-fellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow-labourers, whose names are in the book of life."
Of the many works which have been attributed to Clement, it is now generally agreed, that one, and only one, can be safely received as genuine, whilst some maintain that even that one is not altogether free from interpolations, if not itself spurious[27]. But though we must believe the other works to have been assigned improperly to Clement; yet I have not thought it safe to pass them by unexamined, both because some of them are held in high estimation by writers of the Church of Rome, and especially because whatever pen first composed them, of their very great antiquity there can be entertained no reasonable doubt. Indeed, the Apostolical Canons, and the Apostolical Constitutions, both ascribed to Clement as their author, acting under the direction of the Apostolic Council, stand first among the records of the Councils received by the Church of Rome.
Footnote 27:[(return)]
Archbishop Wake concludes that this first Epistle was written shortly after the end of Nero's persecution, and before A.D. 70.
To Clement's first Epistle to the Corinthians, now regarded by many as the only genuine work of that primitive writer, the date of which is considered by many to be about A.D. 90, Jerome bears this very interesting testimony in his book on illustrious men:
"He, Clement, wrote in the person of the Church of Rome, to the Church in Corinth, a very useful epistle, which is publicly read in some places; in its character agreeing with St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, not only in the sense, but even in the words: and indeed the resemblance is very striking in each." [Catalogus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum, Jeron., vol. iv, part ii. p. 107, edit. Benedict. Paris, 1706.]
It is impossible to read this Epistle of one of the earliest bishops of Christ's flock in the proper frame of mind, without spiritual edification. A tone of primitive simplicity pervades it, which is quite delightful. His witness to the redemption by the atoning sacrifice of Christ's death, and to the life-giving influences of the Spirit of grace, is clear, repeated, and direct. His familiar acquaintance with the ancient Scriptures is very remarkable; though we might not always acquiesce in the critical accuracy of his application. His reference to the Epistles written by St. Paul to the same Church at Corinth that he was then addressing, affords one of those unobtrusive and undesigned collateral evidences to the Holy Scriptures, which are as abundant in the primitive writings, as they are invaluable. No one can read this Epistle of Clement, without acquiescing in the expression of Jerome, that it is "very admirable."
Perhaps in the present work the Epistle of Clement becomes even more interesting from the circumstance of his having been a bishop of the Church founded by the Apostles themselves in the very place where that Church exists, to whose members this inquiry is more especially addressed. In his writings I have searched diligently for every expression which might throw light upon the opinions and practice either of the author or of the Church in whose name he wrote; of the Church which he addressed, or of the Catholic Church at large to which he refers, on the subject of our inquiry. So far, however, from any word occurring, which could be brought to bear in favour of the adoration of saints and angels, or of any supplication to them for their succour or their prayers, the peculiar turn and character of his Epistle in many parts seems to supply more than negative evidence against the prevalence of any such belief or practice. Clement speaks of angels; he speaks of the holy men of old, who pleased God, and were blessed, and were taken to their reward; he speaks of prayer; he urges to prayer; he specifies the object of our prayers; he particularizes the subjects of our prayers; but there is not the most distant allusion to the saints and angels as persons to whom supplications could be addressed. Pray for yourselves (such are the sentiments of this holy man); pray for your brethren who have fallen from their integrity; pray to God Almighty, for the sake of his Son, and your prayer will be heard and granted. Of any other intercessor or advocate, angel, saint, or Virgin Mother; of any other being to whom the invocations of the faithful should be offered, Clement seems to have had no knowledge. Could this have been so, if those who received the Gospel from the very fountain-head had been accustomed to pray to those holy men who had finished their course on earth, and were gone to their reward in heaven? Clement invites us to contemplate Enoch, and Abraham, and David, and Elijah, and Job, with many of their brethren in faith and holiness; he bids us look to them with reverence and gratitude, but it is only to imitate their good examples. He tells us to think of St. Paul and St. Peter and their brethren in faith and holiness; but it is in order to listen to their godly admonitions, and to follow them in all pious obedience to the will of our heavenly Father, as they followed Christ. I must content myself with a very few brief extracts from this Epistle[28]:
Footnote 28:[(return)]
I am induced to mention here that two Epistles, ascribed to St. Clement, written in Arabic, and now appended to Wetstein's Greek Testament (Amsterdam, 1751), are believed by many to be genuine, whilst others say they are spurious. At all events they are productions of the earliest times. The manuscript was procured at Constantinople. I have examined the Latin translation carefully, and in some points submitted my doubts to a very learned Syriac scholar. The general subject is the conduct of those who have professed celibacy, whilst of the invocation of saints no trace whatever is to be found. The passages most closely bearing on the point before us are to the following effect:
The writer urges Christians to be careful to maintain good works, especially in the cause of charity, visiting the sick and afflicted, praying with them, and praying for them, and persevering always in prayer; asking and seeking of God in joy and watchfulness, without hatred or malice. In the Lord's husbandry, he says, it well becomes us to be good workmen, who are like the Apostles, imitating the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, who are ever anxious for the salvation of men.
"Therefore (he adds, at the close of the first of these Epistles) let us look to and imitate those faithful ones, that we may behave ourselves as is meet in the Lord. So shall we serve the Lord, and please him, in righteousness and justice without a stain. Finally, farewell in the Lord, and rejoice in the Lord, all ye holy ones. Peace and joy be with you from God the Father, by Jesus Christ our Lord."
Ch. 21. "Take heed, beloved, lest the many loving-kindnesses of the Lord prove our condemnation, if we do not live as is worthy of him, nor do with one accord what is good and well-pleasing in his sight.... Let us consider how nigh to us he is, and that nothing of our thoughts or reasonings is concealed from him. Justice it is that we should not become deserters from his will.... Let us venerate the Lord Jesus, whose blood was given for us."
Ch. 29. "Let us then approach him in holiness of soul, lifting up holy and undefiled hands towards him; loving our merciful and tender Father who hath made us a portion of his elect."
Ch. 36. "This is the way, beloved, in which we find Jesus Christ our salvation, the chief-priest of our offerings, our protector, and the succourer of our weakness. By him let us look stedfastly to the heights of heaven; by him let us behold his most high and spotless face: by him the eyes of our heart are opened; by him our ignorant and darkened minds shoot forth into his marvellous light; by him the Supreme Governor willed that we should taste immortal knowledge: who, being the brightness of his magnificence, is so much greater than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they."
Ch. 49. "He who hath love in Christ, let him keep the commandments of Christ. Who can tell of the bond of the love of God? The greatness of his goodness who can adequately express?... Love unites us to God.... By love the Lord took us; by the love which he had for us Christ our Lord gave his blood for us by the will of God, and his flesh for our flesh, and his life for our lives."
Ch. 56. "Let us pray for those who are in any transgression, that meekness and humility may be granted to them; that they may submit, not to us, but to the will of God; for thus to them will the remembrance towards God and the saints, with mercies, be fruitful and perfect[29]."
Footnote 29:[(return)]
The original is obscure, and has been variously rendered, [Greek: outos gar estai autois egkarpos kai teleia hae pros ton theon kai tous hagious met oiktirmon mneia.] The Editor refers his readers to Rom. xii. 13. "Distributing to the necessity of saints." The received translation is this, "Sic enim erit ipsis fructuosa et perfecta quæ est apud Deum et sanctos cum misericordia recordatio."
Ch. 58. "The all-seeing God, the Sovereign Ruler of spirits, and the Lord of all flesh, who hath chosen the Lord Jesus, and us through him, to be a peculiar people; grant to every soul that calleth on his glorious and holy name, faith, fear, peace, patience, long-suffering, self-control, purity, and temperance, to the good pleasure of his name, through our high-priest and protector Jesus Christ; through whom to him be glory and majesty, dominion and honour, now and for ever and ever, world without end. Amen."
SAINT IGNATIUS.
This martyr to the truth as it is in Jesus sealed that truth with his blood about seventy years after the death of our Lord. From Antioch in Syria, of which place he was bishop, he was sent to the imperial city, Rome; and there he ended his mortal career by a death which he had long expected, and which he was prepared to meet not only with resignation to the Divine will, but even with joy and gladness. His Epistles are written with much of the florid colouring of Asiatic eloquence; but they have all the raciness of originality, and they glow with that Christian fervour and charity which compels us to love him as a father and a friend, a father and friend in Christ. The remains of this apostolic father I have carefully studied, with the single view of ascertaining whether any vestige, however faint, might be traced in him of the invocation of saints and angels; but I can find none. Neither here, nor in the case of any of the apostolical fathers, whose remains we are examining, have I contented myself with merely ascertaining that they bear no direct and palpable evidence; I have always endeavoured to find, and then thoroughly to sift, any expressions which might with the slightest plea of justification be urged in testimony of primitive belief and practice sanctioning the invocation of saints. I find none. Brethren of the Church of Rome, search diligently for yourselves; "I speak as to wise men: Judge ye what I say."
The remains of Ignatius offer to us many a passage on which a Christian pastor would delight to dwell: but my province here is not to recommend his works to the notice of Christians; I am only to report the result of my inquiries touching the matter in question; and as bearing on that question, the following extracts will not be deemed burdensome in this place:—
In his Epistle to the Ephesians, exhorting Christians to united prayer, he says, "For if the prayer of one or two possesses such strength, how much more shall the prayer both of the bishop and of the whole Church?" [Page 13. § 5-7.] "For there is one physician of a corporeal and a spiritual nature, begotten and not begotten; become God in the flesh, true life in death, both from Mary and from God; first liable to suffering, and then incapable of suffering." [In the majority of the manuscripts the reading is, "in an immortal true life.">[
Here we must observe that these Epistles of Ignatius have come down to us also in an interpolated form, abounding indeed with substitutions and additions, but generally resembling paraphrases of the original text. Of the general character of that supposititious work, two passages corresponding with our quotations from the genuine productions of Ignatius may give a sufficiently accurate idea. The first passage above quoted is thus paraphrased: "For if the prayer of one or two possesses such strength that Christ stands among them, how much more shall the prayer both of the bishop and of the whole Church, ascending with one voice to God, induce him to grant all their requests made in Jesus Christ?" [Page 47. c. 5.] The paraphrase of the second is more full: "Our physician is the only true God, ungenerated and unapproachable; the Lord of all things, but the Father and Generator of the only-begotten Son. We have also as our physician our Lord God, Jesus Christ, who was before the world, the only-begotten Son and the Word, but also afterwards man of the Virgin Mary; 'for the Word was made flesh.' He who was incorporeal, now in a body; he who could not suffer, now in a body capable of suffering; he who was immortal in a mortal body, life in corruption—in order that he might free our immortal souls from death and corruption, and heal them, diseased with ungodliness and evil desires as they were." [Page 48. c. 7.]
It must here be observed, that though these are indisputably not the genuine works of Ignatius, but were the productions of a later age, yet no trace is to be found in them of the doctrine, or practice, of the invocation of saints. In this point of view their testimony is nothing more nor less than that of an anonymous paraphrast, who certainly had many opportunities of referring to that doctrine and practice; but who by his total silence seems to have been as ignorant of them as the author himself whose works he is paraphrasing.
To return to his genuine works: In his Epistle to the Magnesians we find these expressions: "For as the Lord did nothing without the Father, being one with him, neither by himself, nor by his Apostles; so neither do ye any thing without the bishop and priests, nor attempt to make any thing appear reasonable to yourselves individually. But at one place be there one prayer, and one supplication, one mind, one hope in love, in blameless rejoicing: Jesus Christ is one; than which nothing is better. All, then, throng as to one temple, as to one altar, as to one Jesus Christ, who proceeded from one Father, and is in one, and returned to one." [Page 19. § 7.] Again he says, "Remember me in your prayers, that I may attain to God. I am in need of your united prayer in God, and of your love."
In his Epistle to the Trallians, he expresses himself in words to which no Anglican Catholic would hesitate to respond: "Ye ought to comfort the bishop, to the honour of God, and of Jesus Christ, and of the Apostles." [Page 25. § 12.] He speaks in this Epistle with humility and reverence of the powers and hosts of heaven; but he makes no allusion to any religious worship or invocation of them.
The following extract is from his Epistle to the Philadelphians: "My brethren, I am altogether poured forth in love for you; and in exceeding joy I make you secure; yet not I, but Jesus Christ, bound in whom I am the more afraid, as being already seized[30]; but your prayer to God will perfect me, that I may obtain the lot mercifully assigned to me. Betaking myself to the Gospel as to the flesh of Jesus, and to the Apostles as the presbytery of the Church; let us also love the prophets, because they also have proclaimed the Gospel, and hoped in him, and waited for him; in whom also trusting, they were saved in the unity of Jesus Christ, being holy ones worthy of love and admiration, who have received testimony from Jesus Christ, and are numbered together in the Gospel of our common hope." [Page 32. § 5.]
Footnote 30:[(return)]
This clause is very obscure, and perhaps imperfect.
I am induced to add the paraphrase on this passage also. "My brethren, I am very much poured out in loving you, and with exceeding joy I make you secure; not I, but by me, Jesus Christ, in whom bound I am the more afraid. For I am yet not perfected, but your prayer to God will perfect me; so that I may obtain that to which I was called, flying to the Gospel as the flesh of Jesus Christ, and to the Apostles as the presbytery of the Church. And the prophets also I love, as persons who announce Christ, as partaking of the same spirit with the Apostles. For just as the false prophets and false apostles have drawn one and the same wicked and deceitful and seducing spirit, so also the prophets and the apostles, one and the same holy spirit, good, leading, true, and instructing. For one is the God of the Old and the New Testament. One is Mediator between God and man, for the production of the creatures endued with reason and perception, and for the provision of what is useful, and adapted to them: and one is the Comforter who wrought in Moses and the prophets and the apostles. All the saints therefore were saved in Christ, hoping in him, and waiting for him; and through him they obtained salvation, being saints worthy of love and of admiration, having obtained a testimony from Jesus Christ in the Gospel of our common hope." [Page 81. § 5.]
In his Epistle to the Romans he speaks to them of his own prayer to God, and repeatedly implores them to pray for him. "Pray to Christ for me, that by these instruments [the teeth of the wild beasts] I may become a sacrifice of God. I do not, as Peter and Paul, command you: they were Apostles, I am a condemned man. They were free; but I am still a servant. Yet if I suffer, I shall become the freedman of Jesus Christ, and shall rise again free: and now in my bonds I learn to covet nothing." [Page 28. § 4.] Again he says, "Remember the Church in Syria in your prayers." [Page 30. § 9.] He prays for his fellow-labourers in the Lord: he implores them to approach the throne of grace with supplications for mercy on his own soul. Of prayer to saint or angel he says nothing. Of any invocation offered to them by himself or his fellow-believers, Ignatius appears entirely ignorant.
SAINT POLYCARP.
The only remaining name among those, whom the Church has reverenced as apostolical fathers, is the venerable Polycarp. He suffered martyrdom by fire, at a very advanced age, in Smyrna, about one hundred and thirty years after his Saviour's death. Of Polycarp, the apostolical bishop of the Catholic Church of Smyrna, only one Epistle has survived. It is addressed to the Philippians. In it he speaks to his brother Christians of prayer, constant, incessant prayer; but the prayer of which he speaks is supplication addressed only to God[31]. He marks out for our imitation the good example of St. Paul and the other Apostles; assuring us that they had not run in vain, but were gone to the place prepared for them by the Lord, as the reward of their labours. But not one word does he utter bearing upon the invocation of saints in prayer; he makes no allusion to the Virgin Mary.
Footnote 31:[(return)]
[Greek: deaesesin aitoumenoi ton pantepoptaen Theon.] Sect 7.
Before we close our examination of the recorded sentiments of the apostolical fathers on the immediate subject of our inquiry, we must refer, though briefly, to the Epistle generally received as the genuine letter from the Church of Smyrna to the neighbouring Churches, narrating the martyrdom of Polycarp. It belongs, perhaps, more strictly to this place than to the remains of Eusebius, because, together with the sentiments of his contemporaries who witnessed his death and dictated the letter, it purports to contain the very words of the martyr himself in the last prayer which he ever offered upon earth. With some variations from the copy generally circulated, this letter is preserved in the works of Eusebius. [Euseb. Paris, 1628, dedicated to the Archbishop by Franciscus Vigerus.] On the subject of our present research the evidence of this letter is not merely negative. So far from countenancing any invocation of saint or martyr, it contains a remarkable and very interesting passage, the plain common-sense rendering of which bears decidedly against all exaltation of mortals into objects of religious worship. The letter, however, is too well known to need any further preliminary remarks; and we must content ourselves with such references and extracts as may appear to bear most directly on our subject.
"The Church of God, which is in Smyrna, to the Church in Philomela, and to all the branches [Greek: paroikais] of the holy Catholic Church dwelling in any place, mercy, peace, and love of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ be multiplied." [Book i. Hist. iv. c. xv. p. 163.]
"The Proconsul, in astonishment, caused it to be proclaimed thrice, Polycarp has confessed himself to be a Christian. On this they all shouted, that the Proconsul should let a lion loose on Polycarp. But the games were over, and that could not be done: they then with one accord insisted on his being burnt alive."
Polycarp, before his death, offered this prayer, or rather perhaps we should call it this thanksgiving, to God for his mercy in thus deeming him worthy to suffer death for the truth, "Father of thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, by whom we have received our knowledge concerning thee, the God of angels and power, and of the whole creation, and of the whole family of the just, who live before thee; I bless thee because thou hast deemed me worthy of this day and this hour to receive my portion among the number of the martyrs, in the cup of Christ, to the resurrection both of soul and body in the incorruption of the Holy Ghost; among whom may I be received before thee this day in a rich and acceptable sacrifice, even as thou, the true God, who canst not lie, foreshowing and fulfilling, hast beforehand prepared. For this, and for all I praise thee, I bless thee; I glorify thee, through the eternal high-priest Jesus Christ thy beloved Son, through whom to thee, with him in the Holy Ghost, be glory both now and for future ages. Amen."
(I cannot help suggesting a comparison between the prayer of this primitive martyr bound to the stake, with the prayer of Thomas Becket, of Canterbury, as stated in the ancient services for his day, when he was murdered in his own cathedral, to which we shall hereafter refer at length. The comparison will impress us with the difference between religion and superstition, between the purity of primitive Christian worship, and the unhappy corruptions of a degenerate age. "To God and the Blessed Mary, and Saint Dionysius, and the holy patrons of this Church, I commend myself and the Church.")
After his death, the narrative proceeds, "But the envious adversary of the just observed the honour put upon the greatness of his testimony, [or of his martyrdom [Greek: to megethos autou taes marturias],] and his blameless life from the first, and knowing that he was now crowned with immortality, and the prize of undoubted victory, resisted, though many of us desired to take his body, and have fellowship with his holy flesh. Some then suggested to Nicetes, the father of Herod, and brother of Dalce, to entreat the governor not to give his body, 'Lest,' said he, 'leaving the crucified One they should begin to worship this man [Greek: sebein];' and this they said at the suggestion and importunity of the Jews, who also watched us when we would take the body from the fire. This they did, not knowing that we can never either leave Christ, who suffered for the salvation of all who will be saved in all the world, or worship any other." [The Paris translation adds "ut Deum.">[ "For him being the Son of God we worship [Greek: proskunumen], but the martyrs, as disciples and imitators of our Lord, we worthily love[32], because of their pre-eminent [Greek: anuperblaeton] good-will towards their own king and teacher, with whom may we become partakers and fellow-disciples."
Footnote 32:[(return)]
[Greek: axios agapomen]. Ruffinus translates it by "diligimus et veneramur," and it is so quoted by Bellarmin.
"The centurion, seeing the determination of the Jews, placed him in the midst, and burnt him as their manner is. And thus we collecting his bones, more valuable than precious stones, and more esteemed than gold, we deposited them where it was meet. There, as we are able, collecting ourselves together in rejoicing and gladness, the Lord will grant to us to observe the birth-day of his martyrdom, for the remembrance of those who have before undergone the conflict, and for exercise and preparation of those who are to come." [Greek: hos dunaton haemin sunagomenois en agalliasei kai chara parexei ho Kurios epitelein taen tou martyriou autou haemeran genethlion, eis te ton proaethlaekoton mnaemaen, kai ton mellonton askaesin te kai hetoimasian.]
In this relic of primitive antiquity, we have the prayer of a holy martyr, at his last hour, offered to God alone, through Christ alone. Here we find no allusion to any other intercessor; no commending of the dying Christian's soul to saint or angel. Here also we find an explicit declaration, that Christians offered religious worship to no one but Christ, whilst they loved the martyrs, and kept their names in grateful remembrance, and honoured even their ashes when the spirit had fled. Polycarp pleads no other merits; he seeks no intercession; he prays for no aid, save only his Redeemer's. Here too we find, that the place of a martyr's burial was the place which the early Christians loved to frequent; but then we are expressly told with what intent they met there,—not, as in later times, to invoke the departed spirit of the martyr, but to call to mind, in grateful remembrance, the sufferings of those who had already endured the awful struggle; and by their example to encourage and prepare other soldiers of the cross thereafter to fight the good fight of faith; assured that they would be more than conquerors through Him who loved them.
We have now examined those works which are regarded by us all, whether of the Roman or Anglican Church, as the remains of apostolical fathers,—Christians who, at the very lowest calculation, lived close upon the Apostles' time, and who, according to the firm conviction of many, had all of them conversed with the Apostles, and heard the word of truth from their mouths. I do from my heart rejoice with you, that these holy men bear direct, clear, and irrefragable testimony to those fundamental truths which the Church of Rome and the Church of England both hold inviolate—the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity, with its essential and inseparable concomitants, the atonement by the blood of a crucified Redeemer, and the vivifying and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit.
Supposing for a moment no trace of such fundamental doctrines could be discovered in these writings, would not the absence of such vestige have been urged by those who differ from us, as a strong argument that the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity was an innovation of a later date; and would not such an argument have been urged with reason? How, in plain honesty, can we avoid coming to the same conclusion on the subject of the invocation of saints? If the doctrine and the practice of praying to saints, or to angels, for their succour, or even their intercession, had been known and recognised, and approved and acted upon by the Apostles, and those who were the very disciples of the Apostles, not only deriving the truth from their written works, but having heard it from their own living tongue,—in the nature of things would not some plain, palpable, intelligible, and unequivocal indications of it have appeared in such writings as these; writings in which much is said of prayer, of intercessory prayer, of the one object of prayer, of the subjects of prayer, of the nature of prayer, the time and place of prayer, the spirit in which we are to offer prayer, and the persons for whom we ought to pray? Does it accord with common sense, and common experience, with what we should expect in other cases, with the analogy of history, and the analogy of faith, that we should find a profound and total silence on the subject of any prayer or invocation to saints and angels, if prayer or invocation of saints and angels had been recognised, approved, and practised by the primitive Church?
At the risk of repetition, or surplusage, I would beg to call your attention to one point in this argument. I am far from saying that no practice is apostolical which cannot be proved from the writings of these apostolical fathers: that would be a fallacy of an opposite kind. I ground my inference specifically and directly on the fact, that these writers are full, and copious, and explicit, and cogent on the nature and duty of prayer and supplications, as well for public as for private blessings; and of intercessions by one Christian for another, and for the whole race of mankind no less than for mercy on himself; and yet though openings of every kind palpably offered themselves for a natural introduction of the subject, there is in no one single instance any reference or allusion to the invocation of saint or angel, as a practice either approved or even known.
When indeed I call to mind the general tendency of the natural man to multiply to himself the objects of religious worship, and to create, by the help of superstition, and the delusive workings of the imagination, a variety of unearthly beings whose wrath he must appease, or whose favour he may conciliate; when I reflect how great is the temptation in unenlightened or fraudulent teachers to accommodate the dictates of truth to the prejudices and desires of those whom they instruct, my wonder is rather that Christianity was so long preserved pure and uncontaminated in this respect, than that corruptions should gradually and stealthily have mingled themselves with the simplicity of Gospel worship. That tendency is plainly evinced by the history of every nation under heaven: Greek and Barbarian, Egyptian and Scythian, would have their gods many, and their lords many. From one they would look for one good; on another they would depend for a different benefit, in mind, body, and estate. Some were of the highest grade, and to be worshipped with supreme honours; others were of a lower rank, to whom an inferior homage was addressed; whilst a third class held a sort of middle place, and were approached with reverence as much above the least, as it fell short of the greatest. In the heathen world you will find exact types of the dulia, the hyperdulia, and the latria, with which unhappily the practical theology of modern Christian Rome is burdened. Indeed, my wonder is, that under the Christian dispensation, when the household and local gods, the heathen's tutelary deities, and the genii, had been dislodged by the light of the Gospel, saints and angels had not at a much earlier period been forced by superstition to occupy their room.
We shall be led to refer to some passages in the earliest Christian writers, especially in Origen, which bear immediately on this point, representing in strong but true colours the futility of deeming a multitude of inferior divinities necessary for the dispensation of benefits throughout the universe, whose good offices we must secure by acts of attention and worship. I anticipate the circumstance in this place merely to show that the tendency of the human mind, clinging to a variety of preternatural protectors and benefactors, was among the obstacles with which the first preachers of the Gospel had to struggle. In the proper place I shall beg you to observe how hardly possible it would have been for those early Christian writers, to whom I have referred above, to express themselves in so strong, so sweeping, and so unqualified a manner, had the practice of applying by invocation to saints and angels then been prevalent among the disciples of the Cross.
We may, I believe, safely conclude, that in these primitive writings, which are called the works of the Apostolical Fathers, there is no intimation that the present belief and practice of the Church of Rome were received, or even known by Christians. The evidence is all the other way. Indeed, Bellarmin, though he appeals to these remains for other purposes, and boldly asserts that "all the fathers, Greek and Latin, with unanimous consent, sanction and teach the adoration of saints and angels," yet does not refer to a single passage in any one of these remains for establishing this point. He cites a clause from the spurious work strangely ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, which was the forged production, as the learned are all agreed, of some centuries later; and he cites a pious sentiment of Ignatius, expressing his hope that by martyrdom he might go to Christ, and thence he infers that Ignatius believed in the immediate transfer of the soul from this life to glory and happiness in heaven, though Ignatius refers there distinctly to the resurrection. [Epist. ad Rom. c. iv. See above, p. 90.] But Bellarmin cites no passage whatever from these remains to countenance the doctrine and practice of the adoration of saints and angels.
[CHAPTER IV.]
[SECTION I.]—THE EVIDENCE OF JUSTIN MARTYR.
Justin, who flourished about the year 150, was trained from his early youth in all the learning of Greece and of Egypt. He was born in Palestine, of heathen parents; and after a patient examination of the evidences of Christianity, and a close comparison of them with the systems of philosophy with which he had long been familiar, he became a disciple of the Cross. In those systems he found nothing solid, or satisfactory; nothing on which his mind could rest. In the Gospel he gained all that his soul yearned for, as a being destined for immortal life, conscious of that destiny, and longing for its accomplishment. His understanding was convinced, and his heart was touched; and regardless of every worldly consideration, and devoted to the cause of truth, he openly embraced Christianity; and before kings and people, Jews and Gentiles, he pleaded the religion of the crucified One with unquenchable zeal and astonishing power. The evidence of such a man on any doctrine connected with our Christian faith must be looked to with great interest.
In the volumes which contain Justin's works we find "Books of Questions," in which many inquiries, doubts, and objections, as well of Jews as of Gentiles, are stated and answered. It is agreed on all sides that these are not the genuine productions of Justin, but the work of a later hand. Bellarmin appeals to them, acknowledging at the same time their less remote origin. The evidence, indeed, appears very strong, which would lead us to regard them as the composition of a Syrian Christian, and assign to them the date of the fifth century; and as offering indications of the opinions of Christians at the time of their being put together, they are certainly interesting documents. When fairly quoted, the passages alleged in defence of the invocation of saints, so far from countenancing the practice, assail irresistibly that principle, which, with other writers, Bellarmin himself confesses to be the foundation of that doctrine. For these Books of Questions assert that the souls of the faithful are not yet in glory with God, but are reserved in a separate state, apart from the wicked, awaiting the great day of final and universal doom. In answer to Question 60, the author distinctly says:—"Before the resurrection the recompense is not made for the things done in this life by each individual." [Quæstiones et Responsiones ad Orthodoxos, p. 464.]
In reply to the 75th Question, inquiring into the condition of man after death, this very remarkable answer is returned:—
"The same relative condition which souls have with the body now, they have not after the departure from the body. For here all the circumstances of the union are in common to the just and the unjust, and no difference is in them in this respect,—as to be born and to die, to be in health and to be in sickness, to be rich and to be poor, and the other points of this nature. But after the departure from the body, forthwith takes place the distinction of the just and the unjust: for they are conducted by the angels to places corresponding with their deserts: the souls of the just to paradise, where is the company and the sight of angels and archangels, and also, by vision, of the Saviour Christ, according to what is said, 'Being absent from the body, and present with the Lord;' and the souls of the unjust to the places in hades, according to what is said of Nebucodonosor king of Babylon, 'Hades from beneath hath been embittered, meeting thee.'—And in the places corresponding with their deserts they are kept in ward unto the day of the resurrection and of retribution." [Page 469.]
I much regret to observe that Bellarmin omits to quote the latter part of this passage, stopping short with an "&c." at the words hades, or inferorum loca, although the whole of the writer's testimony in it turns upon the very last clause. [Bellarmin, c. iv. p. 851. "Improborum autem ad inferorum loca.">[
The next question (76) runs thus: "If the retribution of our deeds does not take place before the resurrection, what advantage accrued to the thief that his soul was introduced into paradise; especially since paradise is an object of sense, and the substance of the soul is not an object of sense?
"Answer. It was an advantage to the thief entering into paradise to learn by fact the benefits of the faith by which he was deemed worthy of the assembly of the saints, in which he is kept till the day of judgment and restitution; and he has the perception of paradise by that which is called intellectual perception, by which souls see both themselves and the things under them, and moreover also the angels and demons. For a soul doth not perceive or see a soul, nor an angel an angel, nor a demon a demon; except that according to the said intellectual perception they see both themselves and each other, and moreover also all corporeal objects." [Page 470.]
On this same point I must here subjoin a passage from one of Justin's own undisputed works. In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, sect. 5, he says, "Nevertheless I do not say that souls all die; for that were in truth a boon to the wicked. But what? That the souls of the pious remain somewhere in a better place, and the unjust and wicked in a worse, waiting for the time of judgment, when it shall be: thus the one appearing worthy of God do not die any more; and the others are punished as long as God wills them both to exist and to be punished." [Page 107.]
Not only so; Justin classes among renouncers of the faith those who maintain the doctrine which is now acknowledged to be the doctrine of the Church of Rome, and to be indispensable as the groundwork of the adoration of saints. In his Trypho, sect. 80, he states his sentiment thus strongly: "If you should meet with any persons called Christians, who confess not this, but dare to blaspheme the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and say there is no resurrection of the dead ([Greek: nekron]), but that their souls, at the very time of their death, are taken up into heaven; do not regard them as Christians." [Page 178.]