ts, and
say that which best serves the cause which they sustain, so as
to protect it against the objections of the gentiles. The
Fathers, as much as in them lies, and as far as they can, avoid
and decline all occasions of speaking about the invocation of
saints then practised in the Church, fearing lest to the
gentiles there might appear a sort of similarity, although
untrue and equivocal, between the worship paid to the saints by
the Church, and by the Pagans to their false divinities; and
lest the Pagans might thence seize a handle, however unfair, of
retorting upon them that custom of the Church." Had a member of
the Anglican Church thus spoken of the Fathers, and thus pleaded
in their name guilty of subterfuge and duplicity, he would have
been immediately charged with irreverence and wanton insult, and
that with good reason. These sentiments of the Cardinal are in
p. 982 of the Paris edition of 1620.] {192}

* * * * *

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

STATE OF WORSHIP AT THE TIME OF THE REFORMATION.

One of the points proposed for our inquiry was the state of religious
worship, with reference to the invocation of saints, at the time
immediately preceding the reformation. Very far from entertaining a wish
to fasten upon the Church of Rome now, what then deformed religion among
us, in any department where that Church has practically reformed her
services, I would most thankfully have found her ritual in a more
purified state than it is. My more especial object in referring to this
period is twofold: first, to show, that consistently with Catholic and
primitive principles, the Catholic Christians of England ought not to
have continued to participate in the worship which at that time
prevailed in our country; and, secondly, by that example both to
illustrate the great danger of allowing ourselves to countenance the
very first stages of superstition, and also to impress upon our minds
the duty of checking in its germ any the least deviation from the
primitive principles of faith and worship; convinced that by the general
tendency of human nature, one wrong step will, though imperceptibly, yet
almost inevitably lead to another; and that only whilst we adhere with
uncompromising steadiness {193} to the Scripture as our foundation, and
to the primitive Church, under God, as a guide, can we be saved from the
danger of making shipwr