I
profess to you that I see no way by which Christians can hold and
encourage this doctrine of the Invocation of Saints, without at the same
time countenancing and cherishing what, were I to join in such
invocation, would stain my soul with the guilt of idolatry. If the
doctrine were confessedly Scriptural, come what would come, our duty
would be to maintain it at all hazards, {366} and to brave every danger
rather than from fear of consequences to renounce what we believe to
have come from God; securing the doctrine at all events, and then
putting forth our very best to guard against its perversion and abuse.
But surely, it well becomes our brethren of the Church of Rome, to
examine with most rigid and unsparing scrutiny into the very foundation
of such a doctrine as this; a doctrine which in its mildest and most
guarded form is considered by a very large number of their fellow
Christians, as a dishonouring of God and of his Son, our Saviour; and
which in its excess, an excess witnessed in the books of learned and
sainted authors, and in the every day practice of worshippers, seems to
be in no wise distinguishable from the practices of acknowledged
polytheism, and pagan worship. If that foundation, after honest and
persevering examination, approves itself as based sure and deep on the
word of God, and the faith and practice of the apostles and the Church
founded by them from the first, I have not another word to say, beyond a
fervent prayer that the God in whom we trust would pour the bright beams
of his Gospel abundantly into the hearts of all who receive that Gospel
as the word of life.
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