Especially would I
entreat them to reflect with more than ordinary scrutiny and solicitude
on the vast evils into which the practice of praying to saints and
angels, and of pleading their merits at the throne of grace, has a
tendency to betray those who are unenlightened and off their guard; and
unless my eyes and my ears and my powers of discernment have altogether
often deceived and failed me, I must add, actually betrays thousands.
Often when I have witnessed abroad multitudes of pilgrims prostrate
before an image of the Virgin, their arms extended, their eyes fixed on
her countenance, their words in their native language pouring forth her
praises and imploring her aid, I have asked myself, If this be not
religious worship, what is? If I could transport myself into the midst
of pagans in some distant part of the world at the present day; or could
I have mingled with the crowd of worshippers surrounding the image of
Minerva in Athens, or of Diana in Ephesus, when the servants of the only
God called their fellow-creatures from such vanities, should I have seen
or heard more unequivocal proofs that the worshippers were addressing
their prayers to the idols as representations of their deities? Would
any difference have appeared in their external worship? When the
Ephesians worshipped their "great goddess Diana and the image which fell
down from Jupiter," could their attitude, their eyes, or their words
more clearly have indicated an assurance in the worshipper, that the
Spirit of the Deity was especially present in that image, than the
attitude, the eyes, the words of the pilgrims at Einsiedlin for example,
are indications of the same {243} belief and assurance with regard to
the statue of the Virgin Mary? These thoughts would force themselves
again and again on my mind; and though since I first witnessed such
things many years have intervened, chequered with various events of
life, yet whilst I am writing, the scenes are brought again fresh to my
remembrance; the same train of thought is awakened; and the lapse of
time has not in the least diminished the estimate then formed of the
danger, the awful peril, to which the practice of addressing saints and
angels in prayer, even in its most modified and mitigated form, exposes
those who are in communion with Rome.
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