or
their remnants, were always, whenever it was possible, purchased from
their judges or executioners, and decently buried by the Christians. The
day on which the martyr had suffered was generally marked in the registers
of his church, in order to commemorate this glorious event on its
anniversaries. These commemorations usually consisted in the eulogy of the
martyr, delivered in an assembly of the church, for the edification of the
faithful, the strengthening of the weak, and the stimulating of the
lukewarm, by setting before them the noble example of the above-mentioned
martyr. It was very natural that the objects of the commemoration received
on such an occasion the greatest praises, not unfrequently expressed in
the most exaggerated terms, but there was no question about invoking the
aid or intercession of the confessors whose example was thus held out for
the imitation of the church.

We know from the Acts that neither St Stephen, the first Christian martyr,
nor St James, who was killed by Herod, were invoked in any manner by the
apostolic church, because, had this been the case, the inspired writer of
this first record of the ancient church would not have omitted such an
important circumstance, having mentioned facts of much lesser consequence.
Had such a practice been in conformity with the apostolic doctrine, it
would have certainly been brought forward in the epistles of St Paul, or
in those of other apostles. There is also sufficient evidence that the
fathers of the primitive church knew nothing of the invocation, or any
other kind of worship rendered to departed saints. The limits of this
essay allow me not to adduce evidences of this fact, which may be
abundantly drawn from the writings of those fathers, and I shall content
myself with the following few but conclusive instances of this kind.

St Clement, bishop of Rome, who is supposed to have been instituted by St
Paul, and to be the same of whom he speaks in his Epistle to the
Philippians iv. 3, addressed a letter to the Corinthians on account of
certain dissensions by which their church was disturbed. He recommends to
them, with great praises, the Epistles of St Paul, who had suffered
martyrdom under Nero, but he does not say a word about invoking the aid or
intercession of the martyr, who was the founder of their church, and which
would have been most suitable on that occasion, if such a practice had
already been admitted by the Christians of his time. O