electing the most solemn expressions by which the Christian
Church approaches the Lord of heaven and earth, our Father, our Saviour,
our Sanctifier: employing too the very words of her most solemn form of
belief in the ever-blessed Trinity, and substituting Mary's name for the
God of Christians. On the words, "By thy right of mother command thy
Son," beyond the assertion of the fact that there they are to this day,
I wish to add nothing, because the very denial of their existence often
repeated shows, that many Roman Catholics themselves regard them as
objectionable.

But, if such a man as Bonaventura, one of the most learned and
celebrated men of his age, could be tempted by the views cherished by
the Church of Rome, to indulge in such language, what can be fairly
expected of the large mass of persons who find that language published
to the world with the highest sanction which their religion can give, as
the work of a man whom the Almighty declared when on earth, by miracles,
to be a chosen vessel, and to be under the guidance of the Holy Spirit;
and of whom they are taught by the infallible testimony[134] of his
canonization, that he is now reigning with Christ in heaven, and is
himself the lawful and appointed object of religious invocation. I
profess to you that I see no way by which Christians can hold and
encourage this doctrine of the Invocation of Saints, without at the same
time countenancing and cherishing what, were I to join in such
invocation, would stain my soul with the guilt of idolatry. If the
doctrine were confessedly Scriptural, come what would come, our duty
would be to maintain it at all hazards, {366} and to brave every danger
rather than from fear of consequences to renounce what we believe to
have come from God; securing the doctrine at all events, and then
putting forth our very best to guard against its perversion and abuse.
But surely, it well becomes our brethren of the Church of Rome, to
examine with most rigid and unsparing scrutiny into the very foundation
of such a doctrine as this; a doctrine which in its mildest and most
guarded form is considered by a very large number of their fellow
Christians, as a dishonouring of God and of his Son, our Saviour; and
which in its excess, an excess witnessed in the books of learned and
sainted authors, and in the every day practice of worshippers, seems to
be in no wise distinguishable from the practices of acknowledged
polytheism, and pagan worship