of an Oath, declares expressly "that the Saints "reigning together with Christ, venerandos atque "invocandos esse." Is it still doubtful, whether your Church commands, or only recommends, the practice?

Let us look then to the Trent Catechism,* to the question and answer immediately preceding that, from which you have favoured us with an extract. "Q. Are the Saints also, reigning "with Christ, to be invoked?" "A. In the "second place we fly to the assistance of the "Saints who are in heaven: to whom also that prayers are to be made, is so certain in the "Church of God, that to pious minds no doubt on the subject can occur, which thing, &c." Again, in anothert place the same Catechism tells us, "with good reason the holy Church "of God has added to this giving of thanks,

prayers also and imploration addressed to "the most holy Mother of God; in order that we thus might piously and suppliantly have

recourse to her to reconcile God by her in"tercession to us sinners, and to obtain for us "those good things which are necessary as well

Cat. Rom. p. 4. c. vi. q. 2. quibus etiam preces esse faciendas, ita certum est in Ecclesiâ Dei," &c.

+ Pars 4. c. 5. ad finem.

66

66

for this life, as for life eternal. Therefore we exiled sons of Eve who inhabit this Vale of

Tears, ought constantly to invoke the mother of 66 mercy and advocate of the faithful, that she "may pray for us sinners, and by this prayer "we ought to implore help and assistance from "her, of whom no one without impiety and "nefarious wickedness can doubt, both her

66

pre-eminent merits with God, and her very great willingness to assist mankind."

Lastly in your Liturgies, your Missal, and other formularies, prayers to the Virgin and the Saints form a large portion. Is there "no law of your Church incumbent on her children" to bear a part in these devotions?

if

I think, Sir, that you will hardly venture to answer these enquiries in the negative. And, you will not, how can you justify the statement you have made of the doctrine of your Church in this particular?

But I proceed to examine what is meant by the veneratio et invocatio, which your Church enjoins to be paid to the Virgin and the Saints, especially to the former.

That they imply much more than your modern apologists are ready to admit, will soon be evident. In the first place, it is the doctrine of

of men.

the council of Trent, that the Saints possess what we protestants are in the habit of considering as one of the distinguishing attributes of God,— I mean, a knowledge of what passes in the hearts For the council includes mental prayer in the honour to be paid to saints: it pronounces all those to be guilty of impiety, who hold it foolish to address mental prayer to them, "illos, qui asserunt stultum esse, in cœlo reg"nantibus voce vel mente supplicare, impiè "sentire."* But foolish would be a mild epithet for prayers addressed to those who are not privy to them.

Another attribute apparently ascribed to them, to some of them at least, especially the Virgin Mary, is omnipresence; or, if not simply omnipresence, presence throughout the habitable globe, and in every part of it at the same time. For, as all Christians are required to supplicate her, and it is difficult to conceive how she can receive their prayers without being present to them, I know not in what manner the consequence can fairly be avoided.

I am aware, indeed, that some ingenious expedients for this purpose have been suggested.

*Con. Trid. ib.

For instance, that God is pleased by immediate revelation to inform the Virgin and the Saints, of every supplication addressed to them; and this seems to be the solution favoured by Dr. Milner.* But, as you tell us, that prayers are offered to the Saints, only that they may offer prayers to God on our behalf, it follows, that God first reveals to them what we entreat them to pray to him for us,-a process which is not very satisfactory to men of plain understanding. It is told of a great man who had the misfortune of writing very illegibly, that he was in the habit of accompanying every letter written. by his own hand, with a Transcript of it by his Secretary, in order that he might at the same time testify his respect, and consult for the convenience of his correspondent. Now this, which is the very reverse of the supposed mode of availing ourselves of the assistance of the Saints in our prayers, seems to be much the more rational course of the two.

But another solution of the difficulty has been devised:-that the Saints have their information, not from God, but from the angels.

*End of Controversy, p. 250. "It is sufficient for dissipating the Bishop of Durham's phantom of Blasphemy, that God is able to reveal to the saints the prayers of Christians who address them here on earth."

This, however, I fear, removes the difficulty but a single step. For whence have the Angels a knowledge of our prayers? What supports the Tortoise? Accordingly, a third plan has been thought of:-that the Saints see in the mirror of the Deity all that it is his pleasure they should see, and among other things, the prayers of their supplicants. A fourth mode of explaining the matter is, the supposition of an inconceivable celerity in the locomotion of Angels and Saints, a celerity, which, if it be sufficient for its purpose, is so near akin to ubiquity, that it leaves us where it found us.

I am not aware that any other expedient has ever been invented: and these, which I have recounted, are all the notions of individuals. As, therefore, on the one hand, your Church is not responsible for them; so neither perhaps, on the other, can it claim for its doctrine the benefit of any assistance which any of them may be supposed to yield. That doctrine, I repeat, proposed as it is by the Council in all its nakedness, seems to ordinary understandings to involve the ascription of the divine attributes of knowledge of the hearts of men, and of omnipresence, to the Saints. And this, I conceive, cannot but tend largely to augment the devotion of their votaries towards them.