The most reverend prelates go on to condemn “the tendency towards saint-worship, and especially its culmination in the worship of the Blessed Virgin.” “The bare suggestion that the intercession of the Virgin Mary, or of any other saint, is in any way to be sought in our approaches to the throne of grace, is an indignity to the one only Mediator and Intercessor which we, his apostolic witnesses, cannot too strongly nor distinctly forbid in his holy and all-sufficient name.” Is this language plain enough for our ritualistic friends?
Do they think these words equivocal? They as apostles have forbidden any one to seek the prayers of the Mother of God or of any other saint. To do so is to offer indignity to Christ, according to their theology. On the same principle, Episcopalians must not ask the prayers of each other, unless they wish to insult the one Intercessor. The reason why the saints cannot intercede for us is that Jesus Christ alone may do it. We cannot, therefore, suppose that living men or women are in a different position in this respect from their departed brethren, especially from the great heroes of Christianity. We really blush at the stupidity of men who call themselves teachers and wear episcopal robes, but it is not our business to criticise their directions to their flock. We simply put before the world what they have so plainly said. All invocation of any one but Christ is to be stopped within their communion by their solemn decree, if, indeed, it was ever practised.
From this restriction of prayer, they pass on to condemn the devotional books which “have been insidiously multiplied of late years in England and America, and are alien in their character to the whole spirit of the Liturgy.” We presume they here refer to the translations of Catholic books of devotion which have become for some time past the pious nourishment of all the advanced Episcopalians. We have seen many of these works ourselves, and have even seen the Book of Common Prayer bound up with parts of the Missal, and preparations for communion and confession taken from well-known Catholic authors. This, to say the least, is an acknowledgment that their own church does not feed their souls, and that they seek a life it can neither give nor support. This alone ought to be sufficient to send them where
they can find a religious system according with their wants. Certainly they can do as they like in the matter. They can put on all our vestments, and their bishops may wear rings and crosses, and bear mitres and crosiers, and they may cross themselves with the left hand, and bow down before an altar which is only wood or stone. They may call themselves the only Catholics in the world, and out-herod Herod himself, and quietly put us Romanists in the shade. But we think the bishops are right to tell them that all this is inconsistent with Episcopalianism, and that they ought to be either one thing or the other. A man has a right before the law to play the Harlequin; but has he a moral right to do so? Is it an honest or fair thing to remain in a church and use devotions and teach doctrines which it condemns? Much is said of “that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.” But can that be a liberty to contradict ourselves, to profess to be what we are not, and to carry private judgment to absurdity? We are forced in reason to commend the advice of the bishops, and to say with them to our good friends, “Gentlemen and ladies, if you wish to use Catholic books, be kind enough to go where they belong. Please do not attempt to foist upon our people a spirituality which is foreign to our Protestant communion.” From our past knowledge, however, we do not believe that the counsel of the reverend fathers will produce much effect. We shall still as ever have Catholic books of devotion luxuriously bound (the binding goes a great ways), “and adapted to the use of the American Church.” For our own part, we hope that this will be the case, since the recitation of our prayers, and the reading of the masters of the spiritual
life, may do much to lead souls to the one true faith.
3. A few remarks will now suffice to show the position in which the Protestant Episcopal Church has placed herself by the action of this convention. If we regard the whole body, including the laymen as well as the clerical deputies, we can see how true to its birthmarks has been the legislation of a communion which glories in the non-committal character of its creed and profession. Two or three parties, with views diametrically opposite, are thus kept together, and in the diversity of opinions is the safety of the whole. When the Episcopal Church begins to have anything like a faith, then will it fall to pieces, and new sects will arise of its component parts. How long it will go on holding together High Church and Low Church, Broad Church and no church at all, we do not know. But this we think, its Protestant character is now well established to all mankind. Not one single link which could bind it to the doctrine or practice of the past has been left. If it will not baptize itself with the names of Luther, Calvin, or Zwingle, it can boast of no father or mother. In the words of its Bishop Lee, if it is not a Protestant church, it disowns its birth, and has no right to be called a church. Through the most solemn action of its supreme authority it has denied the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, the regeneration of children in baptism, the intercession of the saints, and the practice of confession. As for the ritualists, they have been handled without mercy, and their whole system of faith and worship summarily condemned. It will be of little avail to them to say that the bishops only have pronounced a decision, and that the division of the clerical and lay
vote in four or five dioceses saved them from a prohibitory canon of the whole convention. Are the presbyters and lay deputies the successors of the apostles, whom the Lord instituted to govern the church of God? Who made the sheep of the flock the judges in ecclesiastical causes?
We have no heart to believe that the condemnation of the bishops will do any good with the majority of them. A few earnest souls will come, one by one, into the true fold of the Good Shepherd, where a man has to receive and obey Christ, and not make a religion for himself. Yet we fear, and with sadness we say it, that no power whatever could open the eyes of many. If their church should deny the Holy Trinity or the incarnation of God the Son, they would explain away the denial. Blow after blow with a rough hand has been given to these so-called Catholics within the past few years. Many are not shaken, but in spite of all the decisions of their councils and the admonition of their pastors, they go on insisting on vanity, erecting an idol which their own hands have made, and blindly falling down to worship it. Who shall reason with men who have histories and even grammars and dictionaries of their own? Who but God in his infinite mercy can roll away the darkness of hearts which walk in a vain shadow and disquiet themselves for naught, calling evil good and good evil? Here logic is wasted, and the past, with its lessons, ignored, as if the Word made flesh had never been on earth, nor quickened with divine grace our fallen humanity. Fellow-Catholics, let us to prayer, that such souls may not die eternally out of their Father’s house, strangers to the Bread of Life. In their great need, the pitying heart of Jesus crucified will hear, and scales shall fall from many eyes. Oh! how sad to travel long and far in this weary life, and then only to see from a distance the promised land, but never to rest in the tabernacles of the God of Jacob.
[113] Except in American Church.
[114] Give notice of S. Andrew’s Day.