These days are observed to
commemorate events declared to us on the most sure warrant of Holy
Scripture; and these prayers are primitive and evangelical. They pray
only to God for spiritual blessings through his Son. The second prayer
was used in the Church {297} from very early times, and is still
retained in the Roman Breviary (Hus. Brev. Rom. H. 536.); whereas,
instead of the first[103], we find there unhappily a prayer now
supplicating that those who offer it, "believing Mary to be truly the
Mother of God, might be aided by her intercessions with Him." [V. 496.]
[Footnote 103: This collect also is found in the Roman Missal,
as a Prayer at the Post Communion; though it does not appear in
the Breviarium Romanum.]
In the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, feasts are observed to
the honour of the Virgin Mary, in which the Anglican Church cannot join;
such as the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, and the immaculate conception
of her by her mother. On the origin and nature of these feasts it is not
my intention to dwell. I can only express my regret, that by appointing
a service and a collect commemorative of the Conception of the
Virgin[104] in her mother's womb, and praying that the observance of
that solemnity may procure the votaries an increase of peace, the Church
of Rome has given countenance to a superstition, against which at its
commencement, so late as the 12th century, St.
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