the righteousness of the pious! There is a positive precept for receiving the sacrament, which we must do in some posture or other of sitting, standing, or kneeling, which last posture we choose as being more decent, but not more essential than any other. We don't order the worship of latria, or hyperdulia or dulia, to be paid to it. But where is the positive precept for worshipping images?

There is a wide difference between a civil and a religious worship or honour. "Tis only a civil honour we pay to the king, and to each other, but it is a religious honour or worship they pay to images, as they confess themselves.

Upon the whole, then it is plain, that the Romanists worship images in the same sense that the old heathens did; and consequently, that, as they look upon their host to be the body of God in virtue of the consecration, they also look upon images to be either the bodies of God, &c. or their temples; for it seems they can command God, &c. to reside where they please. Wherefore it is usual with them to say, that for instance, every holy person is literally, the temple of the Holy Ghost, as they say that there is a devil lodged in every infant 'till he is baptized; for they breathe thrice upon the infant, and desires the devil to turn out, and give place to the Holy Ghost the comforter. And, in the order for bury→ ing the dead, they require of God to depute an angel to guard the grave. Upon which I have heard a priest, some years ago, desire the people round the grave to pray to God, that he might send an angel from heaven to guard that corpse 'till the day of judgment.

ANGELS AND SAINTS.

THAT the Church of Rome has, in this point as well as in that of Image-worship, adopted the plan and principles of the old heathens, will plainly appear by confronting the doctrines and practises of both.

The Platonists and Pythagoreans held, that there are vast numbers of intermediate powers dwelling in the airy regions between the highest æther and our earth, by whom our prayers and desires are carried up to the Gods, and to whom the management of things here below is committed; and that to them religious worship is to be paid. They even represented the worshipping inferior deities as an honour done to the Supreme, and found fault with those who were for paying their adorations to the supreme God only.

Tertullian tells us, in his Apology for the Christian Religion, that the notion the generality of the heathens entertained of the divinity, was this: "The supreme power belongs to one only God, but he delegates the rest of the Gods to perform his functions and administer the affairs of the universe in subordination to him. The court of heaven is like ours upon earth, where the emperor or king is superior to all, and has certain ministers and officers appointed for the several departments of the administration, to whom respect and honour is to be paid according to their rank and office respectively.'

The philosopher Celsus* says, that those who worship many Gods, do nothing but what is agreeable to the great God, inasmuch as it is not allowed to worship any but such as he has qualified for that honour.

*Apud Origen.

Plato says, in the fifth book of his Republic, that they who die in war, after having behaved with courage and bravery, become holy and ter restrial demons, averters of evil, and guardians of mankind; and that their sepulchres ought to be honoured, and they themselves worshipped as demons.

Apuleius*, in every edition of his book de Deo Socratis, speaks to the following purpose: There are certain middle divinities or powers between the highest heavens, and the lowest earth, by whom our prayers and deserts are conveyed up to the gods. They are called in Greek demons.These are the messengers who carry the prayers of men to the gods, and bring back gifts from the gods to men. They go and come to convey hence prayers, thence supplies. They are, as it were, interpreters between gods and men, and bearers of salutations." Nay it was a common assertion among the heathens, that the worshipping inferior deities, as well as images, was necessary to help human infirmity, and to keep the common people from running into atheism; and that for the instruction of the vulgar, the gods ought to be represented under human, and the like forms. Though some of them, for instance Plutarch, in his Treatise de Osir. & Isid. deny the gods to have been of the human race, and though others endeavoured to turn them into allegory, and interpreted them as signifying physical causes, or the phænomena of nature, or even the several attributes of the Deity; yet, for the reasons above mentioned, they approved and recommended the popular worship of dead men and women, &c. and looked upon every attempt for a reformation of those abuses to be a high degree of impiety and prophaneness, as tending to the utter subversion of all religion among the people.

*He flourished in the 2d century.

All this has been copied by the church of Rome. She says, that the one God who is supreme lord and master of all, is attended, honoured and served by numbers of inferior deities, whom she calls by the soft names of angels and saints, though she sometimes calls them Gods too, as Divus Paulus, Divus Augustinus, &c. she says, they are so many messengers, interpreters and mediators, between God and men, carrying petitions to hea ven, &c. she prays to them, and pays them religious worship; she considers them as so many guardians of mankind; she honours the sepulchres of the saints by worshipping their relics, &c. she has divided the administration of the universe into so many departments; for each of which she has appointed one or other of those subaltern deities. But the Virgin Mary is the prime minister and grand superintendant of all. She is called 'Queen of Angels and Saints,' nay, and of the whole universe'; and to collect the whole heathen extravagance into two words, she is called 'Mater Dei The Mother of God himself,' an expression that implies a contradiction in the very terms: for though the second person of the glorious Trinity was hypostatically united to the humanity of the Messias in her womb, she was no more the mother of God for that, than any man's mother whatsoever is the mother of his soul. Nor will all their postliminous and forced definitions of personality ever justify this heathenish expression. What can be more absurd than such expressions as these: A God was born,' 'a God hungered and thirsted,' 'a God was crucified, ‘a God died and was buried?' Here we find the whole tide of heathenish extravagance pouring upon us at once. This extravagance was swallowed at a draught by the council of Ephesus, who condemned poor Nestorius for rejecting those heathenish expressions, and

defined that the virgin Mary is verily and indeed the mother of God, Vere dicitur ac est Deipara.* The heathens had their mother of God, nay, and mother of all the gods.

The virgin Mary is not only, in like manner, called and believed to be the mother of God; but she is sometimes confounded with God himself. For, though they at one time implore her intercession, they at another time address themselves to her as to the true God. For instance, in the hymn. Ave Maris Stella, they say to her; Funda nos in pace-Solve vincla reis, profer lumen cæcis mala nostra pelle-Nos culpis solutos mites fac & custos, vitam praesta puram, iter para tutum. And in another hymn they say: Maria mater gratiæ, dulcis parens elementiae, tu nos ab hoste protege et hora mortis suscipe. And in another place they say to her: A periculis cunctis libera nos virgo gloriosa. Now I ask what can God do more than is here ascribed to the virgin Mary? Is not she here confounded with God himself? Is it not God alone that can establish us in rest and peace, that can forgive us our sins, that can by his grace bring us to the light of faith, that can heal up all our wounds, and deliver us from all evil? Is it not our Saviour that is to receive us at the hour of death? Is she not here confounded with our Saviour, and God, and all? Certainly none but a God can perform what is here required of her.

6

*It is remarkable, that the title of Mother of God' is no where in Scripture attributed to the virgin Mary; and even though it were, yet that would not justify the stile of modern times. For it is beyond dispute, as will appear farther on, that the holy writers were often under a necessity of expressing themselves in the heathen manner, in order to be understood. The modus of the divine incarnation, for instance, transcends all human comprehension; wherefore St. Luke, to give us some kind of idea of it, was obliged to adopt the figures and expressions used by the heathens on similar occasions.