iation of the Holy
Spirit, to which there is no allusion whatever; but to the agency of the
new dispensation in delivering men 'from the bondage of corruption into
the glorious liberty of the children of God.'--If the intercession of
Christ be needless because the Father himself loveth us, much more
needless must be the mediation of the Spirit, even were there such a
separate personal existence; and yet more needless must be the good
offices of Saints, supposing them capable of rendering such a service to
their mortal brethren.

Those who, like ourselves, derive their religious belief from the Bible
alone, can scarcely meet on the ground of argument those who profess
'most firmly to admit and embrace apostolical and ecclesiastical
traditions,' if the subject of discussion be other than the authority of
such traditions. On this discussion we shall enter hereafter. It only
belongs to the present division of our subject to observe, that, not
admitting the authority of ecclesiastical traditions in matters of
faith, and finding in the Scriptures no intimation of homage being due
to the mother of Christ, or the holy men who glorified the Gospel in
their lives and deaths, we offer no such homage, and that the worship
and invocation of such are a direct infringement of the command, 'Thou
shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shall thou serve.'

It is not difficult to trace the origin and progress of a custom which,
though founded on a natural veneration for holiness sealed by death, is
in our opinion more fatal to the purity, and inimical to the dignity of
the Gospel that any other which its professors have adopted.--It was a
custom in the early times of Christianity, to meet for worship at the
tombs of the Martyrs; not for the sake of paying homage to the departed,
but because the survivors found their devotional feelings more sensibly
excited there. Their imaginations were at the same time possessed by the
poetical fictions of the pagan philosophy, which represented the souls
of the departed as hovering round the place of interment, and conscious
of what was passing near. From this superstition arose the practice of
making offerings annually in the name of the deceased, as an
acknowledgement that they were still considered members of their
respective churches. This practice appears to have been first adopted at
the death of Polycarp, and to have speedily grown into a rite scarcely
distinguishable from the superstition