But I know and feel, that according to the standard of
Christian truth, and of the pure worship of Almighty God, which the
Scriptures and primitive antiquity compel me to adopt, I should stain my
own soul with the guilt of idolatry, and with the sin of relying on
other merits than Christ's, were I myself to offer those prayers.
That this service excited much disgust among the early reformers, we
learn from various writers[85]. On the merits of the struggle between
Becket and his king; on the question of Becket's moral and religious
worth, (a question long and often discussed among the exercises of the
masters of Paris in the full assembly of the Sorbonne[86],) or on the
motives which influenced Henry the Eighth, I intend not to say one word:
those points belong not to our present inquiry. It may not, however, be
thought irrelevant here to quote a passage {227} from the ordinance of
this latter monarch for erasing Becket's service out of the books, and
his name from the calendar of the saints.
[Footnote 85: See Mornay "De la Messe," Saumur, 1604. p. 826.
Becon, in his "New Year's Gift," London, 1564, p. 183, thus
speaks: "What saint at any time thought himself so pure,
immaculate, and without all spot of sin, that he durst presume
to die for us, and to avouch his death to be an oblation and
sacrifice for our lives to God the Father, except peradventure
we will admit for good payment these and such like blasphemies,
which were wont full solemnly to be sung in the temples unto the
great ignominy of the glorious name of God, and the dishonour of
Christ's most precious blood.
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