I am neither anxious to establish the progress
historically, nor do I wish to tie myself down in all cases to the exact
order of those successive stages, in my present citation of testimonies
from the Roman Ritual. My anxiety is to give a fair view of what is now
the real character of Roman Catholic worship, rather than to draw fine
distinctions. I shall therefore survey within the same field of view the
two fatal errors by which, as we believe, the worship of the Church of
Rome is rendered unfit for the family of Christ to acknowledge it
generally as their own: I mean the adoration of saints, and the pleading
of their merits at the throne of grace, instead of trusting to the alone
exclusive merits of the one only Mediator Jesus Christ our Lord, and
addressing God Almighty alone.
[Footnote 92: I believe the method best calculated to supply us
with the very truth is, as I have before observed, to trace the
conduct of Christians at the shrines of the martyrs, and follow
them in their successive departures further and further from
primitive purity and simplicity, on the anniversaries of those
servants of God. What was hailed there first in the full warmth
of admiration and zeal for the honour and glory of a national or
favourite martyr, crept stealthily, and step by step, into the
regular and stated services of the Church.
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