erating with his hearers what
answer he should make, thus addresses the tomb: "Thy grace indeed is
never-failing and eternal," &c. [P. 881.] By the maintainers of the
invocation of saints, many a passage far less unequivocal and less
cogent than this has been adduced to show, that saints and martyrs were
invoked by primitive worshippers.

We find John Damascenus thus introducing the passage of Euthymius, "Ye
see, beloved fathers and brethren, what answer the all-glorious tomb
makes to us; and that these things are so, in the EUTHYMIAC HISTORY, the
third book and fortieth chapter, is thus written word for word." [P.
877.]

Lambecius maintains, that the history here quoted by John Damascenus was
not an ecclesiastical history, written by Euthymius, who died in A.D.
472, but a biographical history concerning Euthymius himself, written by
an ecclesiastic, whom he supposes to be Cyril, the monk, who died in
A.D. 531. This opinion of Lambecius is combated by Cotelerius; the
discussion only adding to the denseness of the cloud which involves the
whole tradition. But whether the work quoted had Euthymius for its
author or its subject, the work itself is lost; and an epitome only of
such a work has come down to {311} our time. In that abridgment the
passage quoted by Damascenus is not found.

The editor of John Damascenus, Le Quien, in his annotations on this
portion of his work, offers to us some very interesting remarks, which
bear immediately on the agitated question as to the first observance of
the feast of the Assumption, as well as on the tradition itself. Le
Quien infers, from the words of Modestus, patriarch of Jerusalem, that
scarcely any preachers before him had addressed their congregations on
the departure of the Virgin out of this life; he thinks, moreover, that
the Feast of the Assumption was at the commencement of the seventh
century only recently instituted. Though all later writers affirm that
the Virgin was buried in the valley of Jehoshaphat, in the garden of
Gethsemane, the same editor says, that this could not have been known to
Jerome, who passed a great part of his life in Bethlehem, and yet
observes a total silence on the subject; though in his "Epitaph on
Paula," [Jerome, Paris, 1706. Vol. iv. p. 670-688, ep. 86.] he
enumerates all the places in Palestine consecrated by any remarkable
event. Neither, he adds, could it have been known to Epiphanius, who,
though he lived long in Palestine, yet declares