We raise our cry to thee. Remember us,
O most holy Virgin, and for the feeble eulogiums we give thee, grant us
great gifts from the treasures of thy graces, thou who art full of
grace. Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Queen and
mother of God, intercede for us.' Mark well," continues Dr. Wiseman,
"these words; 'grant us great gifts, from the treasures of thy graces;'
as if he hoped directly to receive them from her. Do Catholics use
stronger words than these? Or did St. Athanasius think or speak with us,
or with Protestants?"
In answer to these questions I reply with sure and certain confidence,
first, that the genuine words of St. Athanasius himself prove him to
have spoken and thought with the Anglican Church, and not with the Roman
Church on the invocation of saints and angels, and the blessed Virgin
Mary; and secondly, that whatever words Roman Catholics use, whether
stronger or not than these, these words on which the above questions are
put, never came forth from the pen of St. Athanasius. Their spuriousness
is not a question of doubt or difficulty. It has been shown in the text
that the whole homily has been for ages utterly repudiated, as a work
falsely attributed to St. Athanasius. It is indeed very disheartening to
those, whose object is the discovery and the establishment of the truth,
to find works cited in evidence as the genuine productions of primitive
Christian teachers, which have been so long ago, and so repeatedly, and
that not by members of another communion, but by the most learned men of
the Church of Rome, adjudged to be spurious.
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