April 7.
Saints.
Our old acquaintance with the saints is not broken: but they are sad intruders on the beauties of the world, and we part from them, for a little while, after the annexed communication of an attempt to honour them.
Sermon at St. Andrew’s.
For the Every-Day Book.
The following anecdote, under the article “Black Friars,” in Brand’s “History of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,” as a specimen of the extreme perversion of mind in the Romish clergy of former times, is curious, and may amuse your readers as much as it has me.
Richard Marshall, who had been one of the brethren, and also prior of the house, in the year 1521, at St. Andrew’s, Scotland, informed his audience there, that Pater noster should be addressed to God and not to the saints. The doctors of St. Andrew’s, in their great wisdom, or rather craftiness, appointed a preacher to oppose this tenet, which he did in a sermon from Matt. v. 3. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” “Seeing,” says he, “we say good day, father, to any old man in the street, we may call a saint, pater, who is older than any alive: and seeing they are in heaven, we may say to any of them, ‘hallowed be thy name;’ and since they are in the kingdom of heaven, we may say to any of them ‘thy kingdom come:’ and seeing their will is God’s will, we may say, ‘thy will be done,’” &c. When the friar was proceeding further, he was hissed and even obliged to leave the city. Yet we are told, the dispute continued among the doctors about the pater. Some would have it said to God formaliter, to the saints materialiter; others, to God principaliter, to the saints minus principaliter; or primario to God, secundario to the saints; or to God strictè, and to the saints latè. With all these distinctions they could not agree. It is said, that Tom, who was servant to the sub-prior of St. Andrew’s, one day perceiving his master in trouble, said to him, “Sir, what is the cause of your trouble?” The master answered, “We cannot agree about the saying of the pater.” The fellow replied, “To whom should it be said but to God alone?” The master asks, “What then shall we do with the saints?” To which Tom rejoined, “Give them ave’s and crede’s enough, that may suffice them, and too well too.” The readers of the Every-Day Book will probably think that Tom was wiser or honester than his master.
J. F.