Indeed persons of erudition, judgment, piety, and
charity, in communion with Rome, have not been wanting to express openly
their regret, that decrees so positive, peremptory, and exclusive,
should have been adopted. They would have been better satisfied with the
terms of communion in the Church to which they still adhered, had
individuals been left to their own responsibility on questions of
disputable origin and doubtful antiquity, involving rather the subtilty
of metaphysical disquisitions, than agreeable to the simplicity of
Gospel truth, and essential Christian doctrine. On this point I would
content myself with quoting the sentiments of a Roman Catholic author.
Many of the facts alleged in his interesting comments deserve the
patient consideration of every Christian. Here (observes the commentator
on Paoli Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent[90]) the Council makes
it a duty to pray to saints, though the ancient Church never regarded it
as necessary. The practice cannot be proved to be introduced into public
worship {235} before the sixth century; and it is certain, that in the
ancient liturgies and sacramentaries no direct invocation is found. Even
in our modern missals, being those of our ecclesiastical books in which
the ancient form has been longest retained, scarcely is there a collect
[those he means in which mention is made of the saints] where the
address is not offered directly to God, imploring Him to hear the
prayers of the saints for us; and this is the ancient form of
invocation.
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