This distinction is forcibly brought home to a convert, as a peculiarity of the Catholic religion, on his first introduction to its worship. The faith is everywhere one and the same; but a large liberty is accorded to private judgment and inclination in matters of devotion. Any large church, with its collections and groups of people, will illustrate this. The fabric itself is dedicated to Almighty God, and that under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, or some particular saint; or again, of some mystery belonging to the Divine name, or to the incarnation, or of some mystery associated with the Blessed Virgin. Perhaps there are seven altars or more in it, and these again have their several saints. Then there is the feast proper to the particular day; and, during the celebration of mass, of all the worshippers who crowd around the priest each has his own particular devotions, with which he follows the rite. No one interferes with his neighbor; agreeing, as it were, to differ, they pursue independently a common end, and by paths, distinct but converging, present themselves before God. Then there are confraternities attached to the church: of the sacred heart, or the precious blood; associations of prayer for a good death, or the repose of departed souls, or the conversion of the heathen: devotions connected with the brown, blue, or red scapular; not to speak of the great ordinary ritual through the four seasons, the constant presence of the blessed sacrament, its ever recurring rite of benediction, and its extraordinary forty hours' exposition. Or, again, look through some such manual of prayers as the Raccolta, and you at once will see both the number and the variety of devotions which are open to individual Catholics to choose from, according to their religious taste and prospect of personal edification.
Now these diversified modes of honoring God did not come to us in a day, or only from the apostles; they are the accumulations of centuries; and, as in the course of years some of them spring up, so others decline and die Some are local, in memory of some particular saint who happens to be the evangelist, or patron, or pride of the [{57}] nation, or who is entombed in the church, or in the city where it stands; and these, necessarily, cannot have an earlier date than the saint's day of death or interment there. The first of such sacred observances, long before these national memories, were the devotions paid to the apostles, then those which were paid to the martyrs; yet there were saints nearer to our Lord than either martyrs or apostles; but, as if these had been lost in the effulgence of his glory, and because they were not manifested in external works separate from him, it happened that for a long while they were less thought of. However, in process of time the apostles, and then the martyrs, exerted less influence than before over the popular mind, and the local saints, new creations of God's power, took their place, or again, the saints of some religious order here or there established. Then, as comparatively quiet times succeeded, the religious meditations of holy men and their secret intercourse with heaven gradually exerted an influence out of doors, and permeated the Christian populace, by the instrumentality of preaching and by the ceremonial of the church. Then those luminous stars rose in the ecclesiastical heavens which were of more august dignity than any which had preceded them, and were late in rising for the very reason that they were so specially glorious. Those names, I say, which at first sight might have been expected to enter soon into the devotions of the faithful, with better reason might have been looked for at a later date, and actually were late in their coming. St. Joseph furnishes the most striking instance of this remark; here is the clearest of instances of the distinction between doctrine and devotion. Who, from his prerogatives and the testimony on which they come to us, had a greater claim to receive an early recognition among the faithful? A saint of Scripture, the foster-father of our Lord, was an object of the universal and absolute faith of the Christian world from the first, yet the devotion to him is comparatively of late date. When once it began, men seemed surprised that it had not been thought of before; and now they hold him next to the Blessed Virgin in their religious affection and veneration.
As regards the Blessed Virgin, I shall postpone the question of devotion for a while, and inquire first into the doctrine of the undivided church (to use your controversial phrase) on the subject of her prerogatives.
What is the great rudimental teaching of antiquity from its earliest date concerning her? By "rudimental teaching" I mean the primâ facie view of her person and office, the broad outline laid down of her, the aspect under which she comes to us in the writings of the fathers. She is the second Eve. [Footnote 11] Now let us consider what this implies. Eve had a definite, essential position in the first covenant. The fate of the human race lay with Adam; he it was who represented us. It was in Adam that we fell; though Eve had fallen, still, if Adam had stood, we should not have lost those supernatural privileges which were bestowed upon him as our first father. Yet though Eve was not the head of the race, still, even as regards the race, she had a place of her own; for Adam, to whom was divinely committed the naming of all things, entitled her "the mother of all the living;" a name surely expressive not of a fact only but of a dignity; but further, as she thus had her own general relation to the human race, so again had she her own special place, as regards its trial and its fall in Adam. In those primeval events, Eve had an integral share. "The woman, being seduced, was in the transgression." She listened to the evil angel; she offered the fruit to her husband, and he ate of it. She co-operated not as an irresponsible instrument, but intimately and personally in the sin; she brought it about. As the history stands, she was a sine qua non, a positive, active cause of it. [{58}] And she had her share in its punishment; in the sentence pronounced on her, she was recognized as a real agent in the temptation and its issue, and she suffered accordingly. In that awful transaction there were three parties concerned--the serpent, the woman, and the man; and at the time of their sentence an event was announced for the future, in which the three same parties were to meet again, the serpent, the woman, and the man; but it was to be a second Adam and a second Eve, and the new Eve was to be the mother of the new Adam. "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed." The seed of the woman is the word incarnate, and the woman whose seed or son he is is his mother Mary. This interpretation and the parallelism it involves seem to me undeniable; but, at all events (and this is my point), the parallelism is the doctrine of the fathers, from the earliest times; and, this being established, by the position and office of Eve in our fall, we are able to determine the position and office of Mary in our restoration.
[Footnote 11: Vid. "Essay on Development of Doctrine," 1845, p. 384, etc.]
I shall adduce passages from their writings, with their respective countries and dates; and the dates shall extend from their births or conversions to their deaths, since what they propound is at once the doctrine which they had received from the generation before them, and the doctrine which was accepted and recognized as true by the generation to whom they transmitted it.
First, then, St. Justin Martyr (A.D. 120-165), St. Irenaeus (120-200), and Tertullian (160-240). Of these Tertullian represents Africa and Rome, St. Justin represents Palestine, and St. Irenaeus Asia Minor and Gaul--or rather he represents St. John the Evangelist, for he had been taught by the martyr St. Polycarp, who was the intimate associate, as of St. John, 60 of the other apostles.
1. St. Justin: [Footnote 12]
[Footnote 12: I have attempted to translate literally without caring to write English. ]
"We know that he, before all creatures proceeded from the Father by his power and will, . . . and by means of the Virgin became man, that by what way the disobedience arising from the serpent had its beginning, by that way also it might have an undoing. For Eve, being a virgin and undefiled, conceiving the word that was from the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death; but the Virgin Mary, taking faith and joy, when the angel told her the good tidings, that the Spirit of the Lord should come upon her and the power of the highest overshadow her, and therefore the holy one that was born of her was Son of God, answered. Be it to me according to thy word."--Tryph. 100.