as he was, he agreed to. Friar John, thus left alone with the young lady, fell in love with her, seduced her, and afterwards murdered her, at the instigation, as was said, of a devil disguised like a hermit. Having been guilty of these horrible crimes, the holy man went right to Rome, and confessed himself to the pope, who, instead of sending him to the gallows, as he deserved, merely ordered him for penance, to return to Montserrat upon all four, like a beast as he was, and not to speak a word, and not to offer to get upon his legs, till a child about three months old should bid him rise, and tell him God had pardoned his offence. Seven years after this the count of Barcelona was a-hunting, when some of his men found out this friar in a den, all over hairy like a bear, whom they took and chained, and brought away with them to the castle of Barcelona, where he was tied up in the stable like a monster. The count soon after made a great feast, and to divert his company, ordered the monster to be brought forth; whom as soon as the earl's child saw, that was there in its nurse's arms, it said distinctly these words:-"Rise upon thy feet Friar John Guerin, for God hath pardoned thy offence." And immediately the friar came to himself, began to speak, and tell the whole story. Upon which the count told him, that since God had pardoned him, he could do no less; but he desired to know where he had buried his daughter, that he might take up her bones, and bury them in his father's sepulchre. The good friar conducted the count's servants to the place where he had interred the lady, and opening the ground, they found her alive and well, as fresh and as handsome as ever, excepting a little kind of streak like a scarlet thread about her neck, where the mortal wound had been inflicted. The maid spoke, and told them she owed her life to the blessed virgin, to whom she had been consecrated, and who had miraculously preserved her. There they built a convent, of which this young lady was the abbess, and Friar John Guerin the confessor. Near this place, in a certain grotto, was found an image of the blessed virgin, exceeding bright and luminous, and perfumed with excellent sweets, which was discovered by angels' melody, that were worshipping it in a cave; this image, they that found it were for carrying away; but when they came as far as the place where the lady had been buried, it grew so heavy on their hands, that they were glad to leave it there with all their hearts. There they built a chapel over it, though it was a very desert place, and mighty incon venient for the pilgrims resorting thither: and this is the rise of that famous chapel, where so many miracles and famous things have been done. See an account of the life and death of the blessed virgin, by Bishop Fleetwood, in the Preservative, &c. Tit. xii. pp. 18, 19.

After giving the names of a host of authors who have defended the practice of invoking the virgin and other saints, The Vindicator proceeds: "I shall add one witness more in favour of praying to the saints and angels, and this is the Protestant church of England. In her book of common prayer is the following collect for the feast of St. Michael and all angels, Sept. 29:-'O everlasting God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of angels and men, in a wonderful order, that as thy holy angels always do thee service in heaven, so by thy appointment; THEY MAY SUCCOUR AND DEFEND US ON EARTH,' &c." Col. 430. Much as popish writers affect to despise and contemn Protestant churches, they are always happy to avail themselves of their authority, when they think

it is in their favour; and if I found the church of England teaching the worship of saints and angels, I would leave her to defend herself, as I have not undertaken to defend her any more than our own establishment; but, in point of fact, she does no such thing; and the words of the prayer which the Vindicator quotes in proof of his assertion, bear on the very front of them, that they are an address to the "everlasting God," and to none else. Here, as in many other passages, Mr. Andrews seems to write on the presumption that his readers will believe his word contrary to the evidence of their own eyes and ears. He gives a passage to prove that the church of England prays to saints and angels; and there is not a syllable in the passage itself that can possibly be construed to imply such a thing. This is a fine specimen of popish impudence; and it deserves to stand in the same sheet in which it is asserted that the apostles practised and taught the worship of the Virgin Mary; for the reader will find this in their writings, as soon as he will find the worship of angels and saints in the collect of the church of England, which is cited to prove this church to agree with Rome on that point. Christians know that angels are employed in the service of the church; that they are ministering spirits sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation; and when a man prays to God that he may enjoy the benefit of this ministry, it is no more a prayer to angels, than a petition that our daily bread may nourish and support our bodies, is a prayer to that which we eat and drink. At the same time, I think it is enough that we commit ourselves to God, and pray that he may succour and defend us, whether by the ministry of angels, or any other ministry which in his infinite wisdom and goodness he may be pleased to employ.

In my first volume, I gave copious extracts from the Garden of the Soul, and other books of popish devotion, which clearly prove the church of Rome idolatrous, inasmuch as she addresses the virgin and other saints, in such language as is proper only in addressing the Divine Being. On this The Vindicator remarks:-"I have no dislike whatever that the subject under discussion should be decided by the language of our authorized books of devotion, provided we are allowed to give the sense of that language in our own meaning, and not in the perverted construction which our adversary puts upon it. He has given, he says, copious extracts from our devotional books, and he challenges any man to say if it be possible to use any language of more direct address, in the form of prayer, to the Divine Being himself, than is addressed to the Virgin Mary.' What he means by direct address,' I am at a loss to understand. If he means, that when we pray to the mother of God we direct our addresses to her, he is right; but if he means, that we invoke the holy mother in the same direct language as we address her Son, he is under a most egregious error, and his assertion is totally false."" Col. 435. The Vindicator then proceeds to give explanations, and make distinctions which I am sure he does not comprehend. It is enough for my purpose to have it acknowledged, that he and all the Papists in the world, address their prayers directly to a creature like themselves. This creature they must invest with the perfections of deity, else she cannot hear the prayers which are addressed to her every hour, from all quarters of the earth. To pray to such a creature is downright idolatry, else there never was idolatry in the world. I use

the word in its plain grammatical meaning; and I am not willing to allow Mr. Andrews the privilege of putting "his own meaning" upon the words of his devotional books. I take the words as I find them; I allow them to have the same power that I would allow them in any other book; and I appeal to every unprejudiced person, who understands the meaning of the words, whether they do not make out the charge of idolatry against the church of Rome as completely as ever it was made out against pagan Rome, or Greece, or Babylon itself.

The principal distinction which the Vindicator makes between Mary and Christ, as objects of prayer, is, that the former is a mediator of intercession, while the latter is the Mediator of salvation; but, as I showed in a late numher, this distinction is a mere invention of popery; for the Bible speaks of only one intercessor in heaven, as of one Mediator. The work of making atonement, and the work of interceding for us, are vested in the same divine person, Jesus Christ, our only Saviour; and the church of Rome would not show greater impiety, were she to take the work of atoning also out of the hands of Christ, and ascribe it to her idol. The Vindicator adverts to Paul's request to the Christians at Rome to pray for him, and to the command of God to Job to pray for his three friends, as bearing him out in his statement about mediators of intercession; but if this proves any thing at all, it proves that every Christian in the world is a mediator for every other Christian, for they all pray for one another, which certainly cannot make out the speciality which he means to establish with regard to the mediatorship of the Virgin Mary.

The Vindicator does not know, with all his powers of quibbling, how to explain away certain words which I quoted from great popish divines, in which the Virgin Mary is exalted above the heavens, and in fact, represented as greater than the Saviour himself. He, therefore, disposes of them in the following summary manner: "In looking over the extracts to which he refers, I find he has quoted the writings of St. Germain, St. Bonaventure, St. Bernardine, &c.; but as they are professed to be taken from the works of Archbishop Usher, and one M'Culloch, both of whom were as staunch antipapists as the Protestant himself, he will allow me to suspect the correctness of his authority, as I have not the least doubt upon my mind, that they were as capable of garbling and misrepresenting the words and sentiments of the authors cited, as I have proved our adversary to be with regard to mine." Col. 436, 437. Quite as capable, and, I believe, not more so; and as the Vindicator has not proved any thing of the kind on my part, it is fair to conclude that nothing of the kind was practised by Usher or M'Culloch, the latter of whom is alive, and abundantly able to answer for himself. That he has proved me guilty of garbling and misrepresenting his words and sentiments, is another assertion of The Vindicator's, without any more foundation, than that the apostles and the church of England teach and practise the worship of saints and angels. I defy him and his Glasgow constituents, with Mr. Scott at their head, to point out a single instance in which I have garbled and misrepresented either his words or his meaning; and I believe Usher and M'Culloch are equally innocent with regard to the authors whom they quoted. But why did he not go to these authors themselves, and see whether their words were correctly given? If he cannot read Latin, he knows that his friend and patron, VOL. II-48

Bishop Milner, can. Why not then have recourse to him? and why not overwhelm me with the exposure of misquotation, had any imposition of the kind been practised? There can be no doubt, the bishop knows the works referred to better than I do; and Mr. Andrews knows what share he had in The Vindicator better than I do; or whether he had any share in it at all, which I cannot aver from my own knowledge, as he can do. I have my suspicions on the subject; and I have what may be considered a moral certainty, that if I had garbled and misrepresented the above-named saints, or copied garbled extracts from their works, some learned Jesuit would long ago have exposed the imposition and as Archbishop Usher published his work when the order of Jesuits was in its glory, he would soon have been detected, had he misquoted or misrepresented a single sentence.

CHAPTER CLXIII.

THE SUBJECT of the ADORATION OF THE VIRGIN, CONTINUED. THE VIRGIN MARY AS REALLY A SAINT AS PAUL. THE VINDICATOR'S OPINION OF PRAYERS TO SAINTS. REPLY TO HIS CHARGE OF ABUSE. CHARACTER OF THE VIRGIN'S WORSHIPPERS IN GLASGOW.

SATURDAY, August 25th, 1821.

THE Catholic Vindicator seems to be satisfied with his devotion to the Virgin Mary. He makes very little account of other saints, or even of their relics. He disposes of both in a very summary way. "I wish," says he, "the reader particularly to remark it: the church of Rome approves and recommends the veneration of the saints, and the honouring of their relics; but mark! she does not make it a law, nor does she consider it an essential part of Christianity. Neither does she encourage the superstitions and impositions which our adversary says she does. On the contrary, the guardians of her faith and doctrine are bound, upon the hazard of their eternal salvation, to exert themselves to destroy the abuses of superstition, and that cupidity which makes a shameful traffic of images and relics." Col. 565, 566. This is an admission, that in the holy and infallible church of Rome, there have been abuses of superstition, and a shameful traffic in images and relics; and it is a very poor defence to say that she does not make it a law, she only approves and recommends the veneration of the saints, and the honouring of their relics, that is, the worshipping of both, for this is the practical inference which every true Papist will draw from the words; and I apprehend that approving and recommending creature worship, is enough to convict a church of idolatry, whether such worship be established by law or not.

I have already shown that if creature worship be at all admitted, it matters not what be the rank of the creature. It may be the Virgin Mary, or it may be a fragment of her handkerchief; the worship of the one is as really idolatry as the worship of the other; and seeing the Vindicator declares that he does regard the virgin as an object of devotion in a religious sense; (col. 443,) and seeing he admits that Papists address their prayers directly to her, (col. 435,) it is needless for me to spend more time in proving Papists to be idolaters. Our

Glasgow ones, at least, are convicted by the pen of their own advocate, whose book cost them so much money, and which even the recommendation of Mr. Scott could not enable them to sell.

This subject being set at rest, before proceeding to another, I shall notice a little more of the Vindicator's trifling. I had said, in one of my numbers, that "the sinner who believed in Christ yesterday for the first time, is as really a saint as Paul, or Peter, or even the Virgin Mary." The Vindicator affects to understand me as saying, as great a saint, instead of as really one; and to his own perversion of my words he replies at length, quoting scripture against me, about one star differing from another star in glory, which is usually understood to prove that there are degrees of glory among the saints in heaven, which, whether it be so or not, is a thing that I never disputed. If I were to say that Mr. Andrews is as really a sinner as Judas Iscariot, I suppose, he would not deny the charge; but I question if he would admit that he is as great a one, which I do not by any means assert; but I might do so with the utmost propriety, if I were to reason as he does. By a sinner believing in Christ, I mean one who has forsaken his sins, and who has begun to live a holy life. This person is a saint in the Bible sense of the word; he may, indeed, be one one of the very lowest rank of those who are called babes in Christ; but as an infant of a day old is as really a human person as the man of a hundred years, so he who began yesterday to live a holy life is as really a saint as any of the apostles were. He shall receive the reward of a saint if he persevere in holiness to the end; but the greatness of the reward, or degree of glory that shall be conferred, is quite another matter, and a matter with which we have nothing to do. I admit that the word of God seems to countenance the idea, that there shall be a distinction among the saints in heaven; for there are special promises to apostles and others who have been honoured to turn many to righteousness; but as their reward, first and last, is all of grace, it must not be calculated according to human reckoning, or according to merit in one more than in another. For any thing we know, the thief who confessed Christ on the cross has a higher place in heaven than the Virgin Mary. I do not say it is so, or that I believe it to be so; but I do say that we know nothing of the matter: and, therefore, supposing it were proved that saints in heaven were proper objects of worship, no one could tell whether the thief or the virgin had the highest claim to our devotion. Perhaps there are delicate minds that will feel hurt by placing these two individuals in such close contact; but the fact, that both were sinners saved by grace, ought to do away all such squeamishness. Nay, we have greater certainty of the thief's being in heaven than of the virgin's being there. By inference from certain premises, we come to a charitable conclusion with regard to the latter, though we have no evidence of her persevering to the end in faith and holiness; but for the former we have the express words of our Saviour, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise."

Speaking of the impossibility of the saints' hearing and attending to all the prayers of their devout worshippers, I used a word or two, of which, perhaps, the Vindicator has cause to complain. My words were, "I suppose he very piously makes use of the prayers which he has composed for the worshippers of his favourite idol, St. Wenefride; and