And, 2ndly, If the Church had
{349} intended that her members, when they suppliantly invoked the
Virgin Mary, and had recourse to her aid, should have offered to her
direct and immediate prayers that she would grant temporal and spiritual
benefits, to be dispensed at her own will, and by her own authority and
power, in that case, what words could the Church have put into the mouth
of the petitioners which would more explicitly and unequivocally have
conveyed that idea?

* * * * *

SECTION II.--WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN, CONTINUED.

I have no intention of dwelling at any length on the extraordinary
excesses to which the adoration of the Virgin Mary has been carried in
the Church of Rome, I do not mean by obscure and illiterate or fanatical
individuals, but by her celebrated prelates, doctors, and saints. My
researches have brought to my knowledge such a mass of error and
corruption in the worship of Christians as I never before had any
conception of; and rather than bring it all forward, and exhibit it to
others, I would turn my own eyes from it altogether. Still many reasons
render it absolutely necessary that we should not pass over the subject
entirely in silence. Few in England, I believe, are aware of the real
facts of the case; and it well becomes us to guard ourselves and others
against such melancholy results as would appear to be inseparable from
the invocation and worship of the Virgin. If indeed we could be
justified in regarding such palpable instances of her worship in its
most objectionable form as the {350} marks of former and less
enlightened times, most gladly would I draw a veil over them, and hide
them from our sight for ever. But when I find the solemn addresses of
the present chief authorities in the Church, nay, the epistles of the
present sovereign Pontiff himself, cherishing, countenancing, and
encouraging the selfsame evil departures from primitive truth and
worship, it becomes a matter not of choice, but of necessity, to give
examples at least of the deplorable excesses into which the highest and
most honoured in that communion have been betrayed. On the present
Pope's encyclical letter [A.D. 1840] we have already observed; and in
this place I propose to examine only one more of those many excesses
meeting us on every side, which characterize the public worship of the
Virgin. The instance to which I refer seems to take a sort of middle
station between the auth