Primitive Christian Worship / Or, The Evidence of Holy Scripture and the Church, Against the Invocation of Saints and Angels, and the Blessed Virgin Mary

by James Endell Tyler

Closing the inspired volume, and seeking at the fountain-head for the evidence of Christian antiquity, what do we find? For upwards of three centuries and a half (the limit put to our present inquiry) we discover in no author, Christian or heathen, any trace whatever of the invocation of the Virgin Mary by Catholic Christians. I have examined every passage which I have found adduced by writers of the Church of Rome, and have searched for any other passages which might appear to deserve consideration as bearing favourably on their view of the subject; and the worship of the Virgin, such as is now insisted upon by the Council of Trent, prescribed by the Roman ritual, and practised in the Church of Rome, is proved by such an examination to have had neither name, nor place, nor existence among the early Christians. Forgive my importunity if I again and again urge you to join us in weighing these facts well; and to take your view of them from no advocate on the one side or the other. Search the Scriptures for yourselves, search the earliest writers for yourselves, and for yourselves search with all diligence into the authentic and authorized liturgies of your own Church, your missals, and breviaries, and formularies. Hearsay evidence, testimony taken at second or third hand, vague rumours and surmises will probably expose us, on either side, to error. Let well-sifted genuine evidence be brought by an upright and an enlightened mind to bear on the point at issue, and let the issue joined be this, Is the practice of praying to the Virgin, and praising her, in the language of the prayers and praises now used in the prescribed formularies of the Roman Church, primitive. Catholic, Apostolical?

I am aware that among those who adhere to the Tridentine Confession of faith, there are many on whom this investigation will not be allowed to exercise any influence.

The sentiments of Huet, wherever they are adopted, would operate to the total rejection of such inquiries as we are instituting in this work. His words on the immaculate conception of the Virgin are of far wider application than the immediate occasion on which he used them, "That the blessed Mary never conceived any sin in herself is in the present day an established principle of the Church, and confirmed by the Council of Trent. In which it is our duty to acquiesce, rather than in the dicta of the ancients, if any seem to think otherwise, among whom must be numbered Origen." [Origen's Works, vol. iv. part 2, p. 156.]

In this address, however, we take for granted that the reader is open to conviction, desirous of arriving at the truth, and, with that view, ready to examine and sift the evidence of primitive antiquity.

In that investigation our attention is very soon called to the remarkable fact, that, whereas in the case of the invocation of saints and angels, the defenders of that doctrine and practice bring forward a great variety of passages, in which mention is supposed to be made of those beings as objects of honour and reverential and grateful remembrance, the passages quoted with a similar view, as regards the Virgin Mary, are very few indeed: whilst the passages which intimate that the early Christians paid her no extraordinary honour (certainly not more than we of the Anglican Church do now) are innumerable.

I have thought that it might be satisfactory here to refer to each separately of those earliest writers, whose testimony we have already examined on the general question of the invocation of saints and angels, and, as nearly as may be, in the same order.

In the former department of our investigation we first endeavoured to ascertain the evidence of those five primitive writers, who are called the Apostolical Fathers; and, with regard to the subject now before us, the result of our inquiry into the same works is this:

1. In the Epistle ascribed to BARNABAS we find no allusion to Mary.

2. The same must be affirmed of the book called The Shepherd of HERMAS.

3. In CLEMENT of Rome, who speaks of the Lord Jesus having descended from Abraham according to the flesh, no mention is made of that daughter of Abraham of whom he was born.