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 God; 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 assured 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 worship 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, t