next step swerved lamentably from that principle of worship, and the
petitioners addressed their requests to angels and sainted men in
heaven; at first, however, confining their petitions to the asking for
their prayers and intercessions with Almighty God.

5th. The last stage in this progressive degeneracy of Christian worship
was to petition the saints and angels, directly and immediately
themselves, at first for the temporal, and afterwards for the spiritual
benefits which the petitioners desired to obtain from heaven. For it
{69} is very curious, but not more curious than evident, that the
worshippers seem for some time to have petitioned 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 superstition and corruption had spread
through Christian worship, 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 worship exemplified, and it is the
only form now retained in the Anglican Ritual; of which, among other
examples, the following passage 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 superstition had begun to mingle its poisonous
corruptions with the pure worship of {70} Almighty God. 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