Part 4.1 - Conclusion

CONCLUSION.

We have now, my fellow Christians, arrived at the conclusion of the task which I proposed to undertake. I have laid before you, to the utmost of my abilities and means, the result of my inquiry into the evidence of holy Scripture and primitive antiquity, on the invocation of saints and angels, and the blessed Virgin Mary. In this inquiry, excepting so far as was necessary to elucidate the origin and history of the Roman Catholic tenet of the Assumption of the Virgin, we have limited our researches to the writers who lived before the Nicene Council. That Council has always been considered a cardinal point,-a sort of climacteric in the history of the early Church. It was the first Council to which all the bishops of Christendom were summoned; and the influence of its decrees is felt beneficially in the Catholic Church to this very day. In fixing upon this Council as our present boundary line, I was influenced by a conviction, that the large body of Christians, whether of the Roman, the Anglican, or any other branch of the Church Catholic, would consent to this as an indisputable axiom,-that what the Church Catholic did not believe or practise up to {393} that date of her existence upon earth, cannot be regarded as either Catholic or primitive, or apostolical. Ending with St. Athanasius, (who, though he was present at that Council, yet brings his testimony down through almost another half century, his death not having taken place till A.D. 873, on the verge of his eightieth year,) we have examined the remains of Christian antiquity, reckoning forward to that Council from the times of the Apostles. We have searched diligently into the writings, the sentiments, and the conduct of those first disciples of our Lord. We have contemplated the words of our blessed Saviour himself, and the inspired narrative of his life and teaching. With the same object in view we have studied the prophets of the Old Testament, and the works of Moses; and we have endeavoured, at the fountainhead, to ascertain what is the mind and will of God, as revealed to the world from the day when He made man, on the question of our invoking the angels and saints to intercede with Him in our behalf, or to assist and succour us on the earth. And the result is this:-From first to last, the voice of God Himself, and the voices of the inspired messengers of heaven, whether under the patriarchal, the Mosaic, or the Christian dispensations, the voices too of those maintainers of our common faith in Christ, who prayed, and taught, in the Church, before the corruptions of a degenerate world had mingled themselves with the purity of Christian worship, combine all, in publishing, throughout the earth, one and the self-same principle, "Pray only to God; draw nigh to Him alone; invoke no other; seek no other in the world of spirits, neither angel, nor beatified saint; seek Him, and He will favourably, with mercy, hear your prayers." To this one {394} principle, when the Gospel announced the whole counsel of God in the salvation of man, our Lord himself, his Apostles, and his Church, unite in adding another principle of eternal obligation,-There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; whatsoever the faithful shall ask the Father in the name of that Mediator, He will grant it to them: He is ever living to make intercession for those who believe in Him: Invoke we no other intercessor, apply we neither to saint nor angel, plead we the merits of no other. Let us lift up our hearts to God Almighty himself, and make our requests known to Him in the name, and through the mediation of Christ, and He will fulfil our desires and petitions as may be most expedient for us; He will grant to us, in this world, a knowledge of his truth, and in the world to come life everlasting!

Watching the tide of evidence through its whole progress, we find it to flow all in this one direction. Here and there indeed attempts have been made to raise some mounds and barriers of human structure, in order to arrest its progress, and turn it from its straight course, but in vain; unchecked by any such endeavours, it rolls on in one full, steady, strong, and resistless current. Until we have long passed the Nicene Council, we find no one writer of the Christian Church, whose remains tell us, that he either himself invoked saints and angels, and the Virgin Mary, or was at all aware of any such practice prevailing in Christendom. Suppose, for one moment, that our doctrine is right; and then we find the whole tenour of the Old and New Testaments, and the ancient writers, in their plain meaning, agreeably to the interpretation of the most learned and unbiassed critics, fully coinciding in every respect with our view of God being the sole object of invocation, {395} and of the exclusive character of Christ’s intercession, mediation, and advocacy. Suppose, for another moment, the Roman Catholic theory to be correct, then the whole general tenour and drift of Scripture must be evaded; the clearest statements and announcements must be explained away by subtle distinctions, gratuitous definitions, and casuistical refinements, altogether foreign from the broad and simple truths of Revelation; then, too, in ascertaining the sentiments of an author, not his general and pervading principles, evidenced throughout his writings, must be appealed to; but casual and insulated expressions must be contracted or expanded as may best seem to counteract the impression made by the testimony of those principles. We may safely ask, Is there such evidence, that the primitive Church offered invocations to saints and angels, and the Virgin, as would satisfy us in the case of any secular dispute with regard to ancient usage? On the contrary, is not the evidence clear to a moral demonstration, that the offering of such addresses is an innovation of later days, unknown to the primitive Christians till after the middle of the fourth century, and never pronounced to be an article of faith, until the Council of Trent, more than a thousand years after its first appearance in Christendom, so decreed it. The tendency, indeed, of some Roman Catholic writings, especially of late years, is to draw off our minds on these points from the written word of God, and the testimony of the earliest Church, and to dwell upon the possibility, the reasonableness of the doctrines of the Church of Rome in this respect, their accordance with our natural feelings, and their charitableness. But in points of such vast moment, in things concerning the soul’s salvation, we can depend with satisfaction and {396} without misgiving, only on the sure word of promise; nothing short of God’s own pledge of his own eternal truth can assure us, that all is safe. Such substitution of what may appear to us reasonable, and agreeable to our natural sentiments, and desirable if true, in place of the assurances of God’s revealed Will, may correspond with the arguments of a heathen philosopher unacquainted with the truth as it is in Jesus, but cannot satisfy disciples of Him who brought life and immortality to light by his Gospel. Such questions as these, "Is there any thing unreasonable in this? Would not this be a welcome tenet, if true?" well became the lips of Socrates in his defence before his judges, but are in the strict sense of the word preposterous in a Christian. With the Christian the first question is, What is the truth? What is revealed? What has God promised? What has He taught man to hope for? What has He commanded man to do? By his own words, by the words and by the example of his inspired messengers, by the doctrine and practice of his Church, the witness and interpreter of the truth, how has He directed us to sue for his mercy and all its blessings? On what foundation, sure and certain, can we build our hopes that "He will favourably with mercy hear our prayers?" For in this matter, a matter of spiritual life and death, we can anchor our hope on no other rock than his sure word of promise. That sure word of promise, if I am a faithful believer, I have; but it is exclusive of any invocation by me of saint, or angel, or virgin. The pledge of heaven is most solemnly and repeatedly given; God, who cannot lie, has, in language so plain, that he may run who readeth it, assured me that if I come to HIMSELF by HIS SON, my prayer shall not be cast out, my suit shall {397} not be denied, I shall not be sent empty away. In every variety of form which language can assume, this assurance is ratified and confirmed. His own revealed will directs me to pray for my fellow-creatures, and to expect a beneficial effect from the prayers of the faithful upon earth in my behalf. To pray for them, therefore, and to seek their prayers, and to wait patiently for an answer to both, are acts of faith and of duty. And were it also appointed by God’s will to be an act of faith and duty in a Christian to seek the prayers, and aid, and assistance, of saints and angels by supplicatingly invoking them, surely the same word of truth would have revealed that also. Whereas the reverse shows itself under every diversified state of things, from the opening of the sacred book to its very last page. The subtle distinction of religious worship into latria, dulia, and hyperdulia, the refined classification of prayer under the two heads of direct, absolute, final, sovereign, on the one hand, and of oblique, relative, transitory, subaltern, on the other, swell indeed many elaborate works of casuistry, but are not discoverable in the remains of primitive Christians, nor in the writings of God’s word have they any place. I cannot find in the inspired Apostles any reference to the necessity, the duty, the lawfulness, the expediency of our seeking by prayer the good offices of the holy dead, or of the angels of light. In their successors the earliest inspired teachers and pastors of Christ’s fold, I seek in vain for any precept, or example, or suggestion, or incidental allusion looking that way. Why then should a Christian wish to add to that which God has been pleased to appoint and to reveal? Why should I attempt to enter heaven through any other gate than {398} that gate which the Lord of heaven has opened for me? or why should I seek to reach that gate by any other way than the way which He has made for me; which He has Himself plainly prescribed to me; in which He has promised that his word shall be a lantern unto my feet; and along which those saints and servants of his, who received the truth from his own lips, and sealed it by their blood, have gone before?

Whenever a maintainer of the doctrine and practice of invoking the Saints asks me, as we have lately been asked in these words, "May I not reasonably hope that their prayers will be more efficacious than my own and those of my friends? And, under this persuasion, I say to them, as I just now said to you, holy Mary, holy Peter, holy Paul, pray for me. What is there in reason or revelation to forbid me to do so?" To this and similar questions and suggestions, I answer at once, God has solemnly covenanted to grant the petitions of those who ask HIM for his mercy, in the name and for the sake of his Son; and in his holy word has, both by precept and example, taught us in this life to pray for each other, and to ask each other’s prayers [James v. 16; I Tim. ii. 1.]; but that He will favourably answer the prayers which we supplicate angels to offer, or which we offer to Himself through the merits and by the intercession of departed mortals, is no where in the covenant. Moreover, when God invites me and commands me to approach Him myself, in the name of his Son, and trusting to his merits, it is not Christian humility, rather it savours of presumption, and intruding into those things which we have not seen [Coloss. ii. 18.], to seek to prevail with Him by {399} pleading other merits, and petitioning creatures, however glorious, to interest themselves with Him in our behalf, angels and saints, of whose power even to hear us we have no evidence. When Jesus Himself, who knows both the deep counsels of the Eternal Spirit, and man’s wants and weaknesses and unworthiness, and who loveth his own to the end, pledges his never-failing word, that whatsoever we ask the Father in his name, He will give it us, can it be less than an unworthy distrust of his truth and faithfulness to ask the Father for the merits and by the intercession of another? and as though in fear lest God should fail of his promise, or be unmindful of us Himself, to invoke angels and the good departed to make our wants known unto HIM, and prevail with HIM to relieve us?

Surely it were wiser and safer to adhere religiously to that one way which cannot fail, than to adopt for ourselves methods and systems, for the success of which we have no guarantee; which may be unacceptable in his sight; and the tendency of which may be to bring down a curse and not a blessing. May the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls pour down upon his Church the abundance of his mercy, preserving those in the truth who now possess it, restoring it to those by whom it has been lost, and imparting it to all who are yet in darkness. And, whilst we speak the truth in love, and endeavour to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, may HE, for his own glory, and for the safety and comfort of his people, shed this truth abroad in our hearts, and enlighten us to receive it in all its fulness and integrity, and in the very sense in which the Holy Spirit, when He guided {400} the pen of St. Paul, willed the Church to interpret it, "There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

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.

O Almighty God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head corner-stone; Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple, acceptable unto Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O Almighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord; Grant us grace, so to follow thy blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys, which Thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly love Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.