Part 3 (2/2)
[Footnote 19: The Greek word [Greek: presbeia], ”emba.s.sy,”
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 wors.h.i.+p, namely, prayers to G.o.d 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 pet.i.tions in each case were directed to G.o.d alone.
The next step swerved lamentably from that principle of wors.h.i.+p, and the pet.i.tioners addressed their requests to angels and sainted men in heaven; at first, however, confining their pet.i.tions to the asking for their prayers and intercessions with Almighty G.o.d.
5th. The last stage in this progressive degeneracy of Christian wors.h.i.+p was to pet.i.tion the saints and angels, directly and immediately themselves, at first for the temporal, and afterwards for the spiritual benefits which the pet.i.tioners desired to obtain from heaven. For it {69} is very curious, but not more curious than evident, that the wors.h.i.+ppers seem for some time to have pet.i.tioned 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 superst.i.tion and corruption had spread through Christian wors.h.i.+p, 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 wors.h.i.+p exemplified, and it is the only form now retained in the Anglican Ritual; of which, among other examples, the following pa.s.sage 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 superst.i.tion had begun to mingle its poisonous corruptions with the pure wors.h.i.+p of {70} Almighty G.o.d. 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 G.o.d; 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 a.s.sured 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 {71} 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 {72} 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 {73} regard to the subject before us[20]. They were all in existence before the Council of Nicaea; and we shall probably not be wrong in a.s.signing 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 pa.s.sed over with neglect by any Catholic Christian. The few extracts {74} made here will, I am a.s.sured, be not unacceptable to any one, who holds dear the religion of Christ[21].
[Footnote 20: 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: 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 ent.i.tled 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 G.o.d; 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 a.s.sures us that G.o.d will not forget our work and labour of love [Heb. vi. 10.]: these the author bids the Christians {75} search out daily, for the purposes of religious intercourse, and of encouragement by the word.
[Footnote 22: 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 G.o.d, conductors of the light; over the other, angels of Satan: and the one (G.o.d) 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 G.o.d; 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, {76} 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: There is much obscurity in the phraseology of this pa.s.sage: [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 Const.i.tutions (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.]
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