To (Thomas/God Almighty) all things bow and are obedient.
Plagues, diseases, death, and devils, Fire, air, land, and sea. (Thomas/The Almighty) fills the world with glory.
The world offers obeisance to (Thomas/Almighty God).
(The Martyr Thomas/Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ) began to shine forth with miracles [John ii. 11]; restoring sight to the blind [Luke vii. 21]; walking to the lame; hearing to the deaf; speech to the dumb; cleansing to the lepers [Matt. xi. 5]; making the paralytic sound [Matt. iv. 24]; healing the dropsy [Luke xiv. 4]; and all kinds of incurable diseases [Luke iv. 40]; restoring the dead to life [Luke viii. 43. 55]; in a wonderful manner commanding the devils [Matt. viii. 16], and all the elements [Luke viii. 25]. He put forth his hand to unwonted and unheard-of signs of his own power [Mark ii. 12. John ix. 30].
Do thou, O Lord, by the blood of (Thomas/Christ) cause us to ascend whither (Thomas/Christ) has ascended. (O Thomas/O God), send help to us. Guide those who stand; raise up those who fall; correct our morals, actions, and life; and guide us into the way of peace.
Hail, (Thomas!/Jesus!) Rod of Justice, the Brightness of the world, the Strength of the Church, the Love of the people, the Delight of the Clergy. Hail, Glorious Guardian of the flock! Save Thou those who delight in Thy glory.
We shall apply this same test to many of the collects and prayers used, and of necessity to be used, because they are authorized and appointed, even at the present day, in the ministrations of the Church of Rome. The impiety in many of those instances is not couched in such startling language; but it is not the less real. God forbid that we should charge our fellow-creatures with idolatry, who declare that they offer divine worship to the Supreme Being only; or that we should pronounce any professed Christian to have cast off his dependence on the merits of Christ alone, who assures us that he looks for mercy only through those merits. But I know and feel, that according to the standard of Christian truth, and of the pure worship of Almighty God, which the Scriptures and primitive antiquity compel me to adopt, I should stain my own soul with the guilt of idolatry, and with the sin of relying on other merits than Christ's, were I myself to offer those prayers.
That this service excited much disgust among the early reformers, we learn from various writers[85]. On the merits of the struggle between Becket and his king; on the question of Becket's moral and religious worth, (a question long and often discussed among the exercises of the masters of Paris in the full assembly of the Sorbonne[86],) or on the motives which influenced Henry the Eighth, I intend not to say one word: those points belong not to our present inquiry. It may not, however, be thought irrelevant here to quote a passage from the ordinance of this latter monarch for erasing Becket's service out of the books, and his name from the calendar of the saints.
Footnote 85:[(return)]
See Mornay "De la Messe," Saumur, 1604. p. 826. Becon, in his "New Year's Gift," London, 1564, p. 183, thus speaks: "What saint at any time thought himself so pure, immaculate, and without all spot of sin, that he durst presume to die for us, and to avouch his death to be an oblation and sacrifice for our lives to God the Father, except peradventure we will admit for good payment these and such like blasphemies, which were wont full solemnly to be sung in the temples unto the great ignominy of the glorious name of God, and the dishonour of Christ's most precious blood." Then quoting the lines from the service of Thomas Becket, on which we have above commented, he adds, "I will let pass many more which are easy to be searched and found out." Becon preached and wrote in the reign of Henry VIII. and was then persecuted for his religion, as he was afterwards in the reign of Mary.