e
birthday of her true greatness and glory, and the crown of all
the virtues of her whole life, which we admire single in her
other festivals." Alban Butler, vol. viii. p. 175.]

Before such a solemn office of praise and worship were ever admitted
among the institutions of the religion of truth, its originators and
compilers should have built upon sure grounds; careful too should they
also be who now join in the service, and so lend it the countenance of
their example; more especially should those sift the evidence well, who,
by their doctrine and writings, uphold, and defend, and advance it; lest
they prove at the last to love Rome rather than the truth as it is in
Jesus. So solemn, so marked, a religious service in the temples and at
the altar of HIM who is the truth, a service so exalted above his
fellows, ought beyond question to be founded on the most sure warrant of
Holy Scripture, or at the least on undisputed historical evidence, as to
the alleged matter of fact on which it is built,--the certain,
acknowledged, uninterrupted, and universal testimony of the Church
Catholic from the very time. They incur a momentous responsibility who
aid in propagating for religious truths the inventions of men[106].

[Footnote 106: Very different opinions are held by Roman
Catholic writers as to the antiquity of this feast. All, indeed,
maintain that it is of very ancient introduction; but whilst
some, with Lambecius (lib. viii. p. 286), maintain the antiquity
of the festival to be so remote, that its origin cannot be
traced; and thence infer that it was instituted by a silent and
unrecorded act of the Apostles themselves; others (among whom
Kollarius, the learned annotator on the opinion of Lambecius)
acknowledged, that it was introduced by an ordinance of the
Church, though not at the same time in all countries of
Christendom. That annotator assigns its introduction at Rome to
the fourth century; at Constantinople to the sixth; in Germany
and France to the ninth.] {299}

But what is the real state of the case with regard to the fact of the
Assumption of the Virgin Mary? It rests (as we shall soon see) on no
authentic history; it is supported by no primitive tradition. I profess
my surprise to have been great, when I found the most celebrated
defenders of the Roman Catholic cause, instead of citing such evidence
as would bear with it even the appearance of proba