A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

A little afterwards he says, “I will mention some few instances of extravagant honour which the Papists give, but which we of the Church of England utterly refuse to yield to the Blessed Virgin, out of a true zeal to the honour of God.

“We will not give her lavish and excessive attributes, beyond what the Holy Scriptures allow her, and the holy men of the primitive Church afforded her. We will call her ‘blessed,’ as the mother of our Lord in the sense above explained. But we dare not call her ‘queen of heaven,’ ‘queen of angels, patriarchs, prophets, and apostles,’ ‘source of the fountain of grace,’ ‘refuge of sinners,’ ‘comfort of the afflicted,’ ‘advocate of all Christians,’ as she is called in that Litany of our Lady, still used in their devotions. For we have no instance of such attributes given to the Blessed Virgin in the Holy Scriptures, and they are too big for any mere creature.

“We will not ascribe those excellencies to her that she never had nor could have; as a fulness of habitual grace, more grace than all the angels and archangels of God put together ever had; that she was born without original sin, and never committed any the least actual sin, and consequently, never needed a saviour. These are wild things, which very many of the Papists, drunk with superstition, say of her.

“We will not give her the honour of invocation, or praying to her, as all the Papists do, for the unanswerable reasons above mentioned. Indeed, as long as that one text of Scripture remains in our Bibles, which we read, (1 Tim. ii. 5,) ‘There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,’ we shall never be persuaded, by any sophistry or subtle distinctions of our adversaries, to betake ourselves to the mediation of the Blessed Virgin, much less of any other saint. Much more do we abhor the impiety of those among the Papists, who have held it disputable, whether the milk of the Blessed Virgin, or the blood of her Son, be to be preferred; and at last could pitch upon no better resolution than this, that the milk and blood should be mixed together, and both compound a medicine for their souls.

“We abhor to divide the Divine kingdom and empire, giving one-half, the better half, the kingdom of mercy, to the Blessed Virgin, and leaving only the kingdom of justice to her Son. This is downright treason against the only universal King and Monarch of the world.

“We are astonished at the doxology which some great and learned men of the Church of Rome have not been ashamed to close their printed books with, ‘Laus Deo Deiparæque Virgini:’ ‘Praise be to God, and the Virgin-mother.’

“We should tremble every joint of us, to offer any such recommendation as this to the Virgin Mary. Hear, if you can without horror, a prayer of theirs to her. It is this: ‘O my Lady, holy Mary, I recommend myself into thy blessed trust and singular custody, and into the bosom of thy mercy, this night and evermore, and in the hour of my death, as also my soul and my body; and I yield unto thee all my hope and consolation, all my distress and misery, my life and the end thereof, that by thy most holy intercession, and by thy merits, all my works may be directed and disposed, according to thine and thy Son’s will. Amen.’ What fuller expressions can we use to declare our absolute affiance, trust, and dependence on the eternal Son of God himself, than they here use in this recommendation to the Virgin? Yea, who observes not, that the will of the Blessed Virgin is expressly joined with the will of her Son, as the rule of our actions, and that so as that her will is set in the first place. A plain smatch of their old blasphemous impiety, in advancing the Mother above the Son, and giving her a commanding power over him. Can they have the face to say, that all this is no more than desiring the Blessed Virgin to pray for them, as we desire the prayers of one another on earth? And yet this recommendation is to be seen in a Manual of Prayers and Litanies, printed at Antwerp no longer ago than 1671, and that permissu superiorum, in the Evening Prayers for Friday. A book it is, to my knowledge, commonly to be found in the hands of our English Papists; for I had it from a near relation of mine, (who had been perverted by the emissaries of Rome, but is since returned again to the communion of the Church of England,) who assured me that she used it herself, by the direction of her confessor, in her private devotions.”

No instance of Divine honour paid to Mary (remarks Coleman from Augusti) is recorded of an earlier date than the fifth century. Cyril of Alexandria, and Proklus of Constantinople, were the first to pay these honours to her. Festivals to her memory began to be held about the year 431, but were not generally observed until the sixth century. From this time until the sixteenth century, they were general in all the Western Churches, though differing in number and in rank, in the several countries of Europe. The Greek Church observes only three great festivals of this description.

The following is a brief enumeration of the principal festivals in question.

1. The festival of the Purification. Candlemas, Feb. 2, instituted in the sixth century.