Y PRAYING for me: Give me
this and that, BY THY PRAYERS AND MERITS.' For thus Gregory of
Nazianzen, in his Oratio in Cyprianum; and the Universal Church, when in
the hymn to the Virgin she says,

Mary, Mother of Grace,
Mother of Mercy,
Do thou protect us from the enemy,
And take us in the hour of death.

"And in that of the Apostles,

'To whose command is subject'
The health and weakness of all:
Heal us who are morally diseased;
Restore us to virtue.

"And as the Apostle says of himself 'that I might save some,' [Rom. xi.]
and 'that he might save all,' [I Cor. ix.] not as God, but Thy prayer
and counsel."

I wish not to enter upon the question how far this distinction is
consistent with that openness and straightforward undisguised dealing
which is alone allowable when we are contending for the truth; nor how
far the {238} charge of moral obliquity and double dealing, often
brought against it, can be satisfactorily met. But suppose for a moment
that we grant (what is not the case) that in the metaphysical
disquisitions of the experienced casuist such a distinction might be
maintained, how can we expect it to be recognized, and felt, and acted
upon by the large body of Christians? Abstractedly considered, such an
interpretation in a religious act of daily recurrence by the mass of
unlearned believers would, I conceive, appear to reflecting minds most
improbable, if not utterly impossible. And as to its actual _bona-fide_
result in practice, a very brief sojourn in countries where the religion
of Rome is dominant, will suffice to convince us, that such subtilties
of the casuist are neither received nor understood by the great body of
worshippers; and that the large majority of them, when they pray to an
individual saint to deliver them from any evil, or to put them in
possession of some good, do in very deed look to the saint himself for
the fulfilment of their wishes. It is a snare to the conscience only too
evidently successful.

And I regret to add, that in the errors into which such language of
their prayers may unhappily betray them, they cannot be otherwise than
confirmed as well by the recorded sentiments of men in past years, whom
they have been taught to reverence, as by the sentiments which are
circulated through the world now, even by what they are accustomed to
regard as the highest authority on earth[91].

[Footnote 91: See in subsequent parts of this work the
references t